After Rovers fell to their fourth defeat from their last six games, following a 2-0 away defeat to league leaders, Fulham, Blues boss Tony Mowbray discussed his side’s rather lacklustre display, which was beamed on Sky Sports as Saturday’s early kick-off.
“The nature of the goals that we lost today, were really disappointing for us. Mistakes are mistakes, you have to accept them sometimes and it’s difficult to plan for mistakes like that, really. Fulham didn’t really deserve both goals, in my opinion, but you can’t be too critical of the players. Thomas Kaminski has been very good for us this season and has kept a lot of clean-sheets and helped the team win games, but he made a few errors today and that’s probably cost us, but at the same time, we haven’t managed to score, so the blame isn’t all on Thomas’ shoulders. There’s no blame game, these things happen, it’s just unfortunate. We came up against a good side, of course, that’s Championship football for you. Fulham are top of the league for a reason, they’re a very talented team with a good identity about the way they play. It was a difficult game for us, but I thought we competed pretty well, but it’s hard to impose your style on the game when you’re playing against a good team such as Fulham.
“The first goal in games like today, are absolutely crucial. It’s really difficult to talk about their opener, because it was a shot straight at our goalie, and he’s fumbled it and they’ve tapped it in. We have to put that behind us and move on. I’ve just said to them in the dressing room, as I have for a few weeks, it’s not about the defeats, it’s about the points we can gain. We probably have to win five more games to secure ourselves a playoff spot. I’m not particularly bothered about what the teams around us are doing, we have to focus on ourselves and try and win five matches. We might require more than that, of course, but given that the teams play against each other, if you hit mid-70s for points, you generally have a pretty good chance of making the playoffs, so if we get another 15 or so points, we’ll hit the mid-70s and that should be enough, but let’s just wait and see. We’ve got three consecutive home games coming up and we hope to take maximum points in all of them. We have to really focus and pick the right team. You can see that the squad is starting to deplete a little bit with the injuries. I’m not sure whether Darragh (Lenihan) is now suspended after today’s booking, he might have one game left, but we’ve got a few players close to that cut-off point where they’re staring at two-game bans, so, hopefully we’ve got enough to get the better of Millwall on Tuesday night. Three points and increasing our position in the table will make everyone feel better.
“I think it would have been a very exciting last 15-20 minutes if Sam Gallagher’s goal had stood, because we had great momentum and were on the front-foot and I know that Fulham are capable of cutting you open at any moment, but generally, our performance was okay. I’m just frustrated that we’re not as free-flowing and scoring as many goals as we have been over the past few years, let alone the first-half of the season, because we’ve scored quite a few goals over the past couple of years. But given that we’ve been without (Ben) Brereton Díaz and (Bradley) Dack, of course, things have been a little bit more difficult as the chances come and go, as the natural movement in the box, isn’t the same. We just have to keep working on it and stay in games. We’ve shown that we can win games and grind out 1-0 performances in recent weeks, the Middlesbrough game at home springs to mind, as does last week’s win vs QPR. As long as you try and keep that clean-sheet and then snatch a goal by whatever means, whether that’s from a set-play or great strike, or ironically, a fumble from a goalie, whatever it might be, you can win football matches.
“Reda (Khadra) was struggling with a knock at the break, but I wanted to get Sam (Gallagher) on regardless, so that almost made the decision for me. We had a balance between trying to protect the squad a little bit, ahead of the games that you target to win. You target victories in every game, of course, but when you feel there’s a bit of fatigue in certain players, do you keep pushing them or do you sit them on the bench, knowing they’ve played half-an-hour or a half, and you can get them ready for the next game? We’ve got to pick the right team vs Millwall in order to give ourselves the best chance of getting the three points on Tuesday.
“The next couple of weeks will probably be more defining for our season that today. Three out of the next four of our games are at home and we have to take points in those games, there’s no question about that. Hopefully we can use those games to go into the international break on a high, before taking a gulp of air, getting everyone back fit, prior to final sprint towards the end of the season.”
