Following Rovers’ first win in five, which came in the weekend’s early kick-off, as the Blues beat Queens Park Rangers, 1-0, courtesy of a Reda Khadra free-kick, Tony Mowbray expressed his delight after his side had notched their fourteenth clean-sheet of the league campaign.
“Ryan Nyambe has got a big brace right down his leg. The doctor tells us that it’s his medial knee ligament, which he’ll have scanned between today and Monday, but we won’t know the extent or the grade of the injury until the scans come back, but medial knee ligaments tend to be up to 6-8 weeks. It could be a mild one, however, because Ryan’s not really used to injuries and doesn’t pick them up very often, so he’s possibly in shock because he’s never really experienced an injury of that magnitude. Let’s hope it’s not a bad one, but it does seem to be the inside of his knee that’s the problem, which will, as I said, take around 6-8 weeks to recover. The doctor and physios trying to bend his knee, can feel whether he has an elasticity to his knee and their first thoughts were that it was a minor one, so we’re crossing our fingers in the hope it’s a mild one. If it’s not, then so be it. What Ryan needs for himself, ultimately, is to be fit towards the end of the campaign. He’s a young guy who’s out of contract and it doesn’t look as if he’ll be renewing, so for him, he needs to be fit in the summer in order to make a move.
“A 1-0 victory was the least we deserved in such a big and important game. At home, we have to win these types of games, I think. The Middlesbrough game a month, or so ago, was a tight game that we managed to win 1-0 and we’ve done the same today. The Nottingham Forest defeat was the one that irritates the most, because we had an amazing chance to take the lead in that game and we ended up having a sending off and losing the game. All the games in recent weeks have been a tad frustrating. We even had chances to win in the West Bromwich Albion game and on Wednesday night against Sheffield United, we missed a penalty. I think we’re a decent team capable of giving any team in this division, a decent game. Ultimately, it’s all about putting the ball into the back of the net and getting three points, which we thankfully managed to do today. I think we deserved to score more goals, yet, oddly enough, our goal was probably a mistake from their goalkeeper, (David Marshall), but we’ll take it because we did enough to score three or four goals, today and put to bed the negativity over the goal drought.
“It’s good to get the points and go back into 3rd place. I know that can change if other teams around us win, which I’m sure they will, but it’s just good to keep accumulating points. Three of our next four games are at home and that gives us a huge opportunity to win games, even though there’s no guarantee that you’re going to win three on the bounce at home, just because you’re at home. We’ve got to go to Fulham, next weekend, then we host Millwall, Bristol City and Derby County who all have their own challenges, but they’re all games that we should be targeting, be aggressive in and try to win.
“I think the players were really connected with the achievement of what they needed to do in order to get it and they worked extremely hard for each other. When I look at our strikers working as hard as they do – and I know their job is to put the ball in the net – the fact they help the team keep clean-sheets has given us the chance to win games. As I say to them, ‘all that hard work will create a chance. Lewis Travis will pinch a ball that you’ve pressed, and he’ll slide you back in to score.’ I say to them that, ‘the goals don’t always have to be worldies into the top corner, because you’ll still have a goal against your name, regardless of whether you side-foot it in, so laser it into the top corner.’ That’s how we’re trying to do things, at the moment. I thought we played some good football, both in possession and out of possession, which made the game feel one-sided and yet you could feel their quality, with the likes of Stefan Johansen, Ilias Chair and Chris Willock, they’re a good team. We always had to be mindful of their quality, but the most pleasing aspect for me was that I feel as if we’re improving in possession and are growing into a game where we’re always going to be really good out of possession and working really hard to nick the ball off teams, but you can’t live like that thinking that you’re going to win every game on the break with 30% possession.
“The fact that we’re picking better passes now, switching the play more and having more patience to go back across and out the other side before playing into the strikers’ feet with people running past the ball. They’re all aspects that we’ve worked on a lot, and I’ve always said to them that we need the balance between turning up and being angry and aggressive and on the front-foot and winning every tackle, but they should also not forget to actually play football. ‘We’ve got the ball, you don’t have to give the ball back to the opposition, in order to try and win it back. Keep if off them for as long as you want, but don’t be negative with it, don’t play backwards and sideways, play forwards. It’s okay if you overhit the pass, because we’re really good at nicking it back if they try to play through us.’ It’s the balance that we’re working towards, which is good, because we’re getting better in possession.
“Reda (Khadra) practices his right-footed dead-balls and set-pieces a lot, even to the point where I force him to come in after we’re done, because he can’t stay for 30 minutes after training, whacking balls with his right-foot otherwise he’d potentially hurt himself. That’s probably why he grabbed the ball on Wednesday for the penalty, because he’s very good on dead-ball situations and he tries to whip his corners with a lot of pace. It’s a bit frustrating at times when he scuffs it and it gets cleared by the first man, but generally his set-pieces are generally wicked, both his in-swingers and out-swingers. He’s working extremely hard and the growth area for him at our club is his out-of-possession game, because most wide attackers stand around for someone to give them the ball and dribble, yet Reda is working really hard when we don’t have the ball, but also is capable of producing in possession and is a threat to our opposition.
“Tyrhys (Dolan) is amazing. He’s been injured and he’s been out of it, but we’ve been winning games in his absence and John Buckley has been doing exceptionally well in his place by producing the required goals, assists and chances he’s created, even though I know he’s missed quite a few recently. I’ve persevered with John, yet when I studied QPR, I felt as if they overplayed in their own box and in their own final-third and I thought it was a day for Tyrhys, rather than for John, because Tyrhys has got so much energy. Bucko is a ‘thinking footballer’, who intercepts and reads people’s eyes has good off-the-ball movement, whereas Tyrhys just runs them down, which helped our team today. There’ll be games that I think aren’t suited to him, but there’ll be other games where I think he’ll be the main man to help the team get the right result. I’ve always said to Tyrhys that he’s a massively important player for our club and I think it’s important that we look after him and make him feel that he’s an important player and not a peripheral one who’s always on the bench. He’s important because he can help us win games, as he did today. He’s got a really bright future as a footballer because of his desire and attitude.
“I think today’s win feels bigger than other victories. I can give you stock answers and say ‘I’ve been happy with the performance level of the team over this period where we’ve not been picking up results’, and yet you have to win football matches. Our job is to find ways to win. I know the team have played pretty well over the past few weeks, in my opinion, because of the way we ask them to play isn’t ‘total domination’. We’re not Manchester City, we never will be, but the way we play, I think they’ve worked extraordinarily hard and made every game difficult for every team we’ve played, and we have had chances to win those games, but things haven’t been going our way in the really tight matches, but today it did. It wasn’t such a tight match today, but the score suggests that it was and we’d have all been really disappointed if we’d have drawn 0-0 or lost 1-0 from a last minute corner, like Wednesday. The point is that I believe this team are on an upward curve and I think they’re moving in the right direction. I know we all get judged on results, but I think with 12 games to go, we’re more than capable of winning five or six of them, which will cement us in the playoff places. We then need to see where that takes us and see how we do.
“I hope the togetherness between the team and the supporters is because the supporters watch the games, whether in-person or on the TV. I think they see a team fighting for every ball and running and chasing and trying to do the right things. I know I’ve talked about how young this team are, and they are a young team. I played Bradley Johnson today, to bring a bit of experience as he’s a player who’s been around the top of this division chasing to get promotion with different teams. I think he helped, today, but he’s a great lad, is Johno. People who don’t know him, just see the footballer, but he’s a brilliant lad, he’s with the team and very supportive, even if he’s not playing and I thought he did well for the team today and brought his experience when we needed it. Collectively, I was really happy with them, and the result and three points makes today, a good day.”
