After Rovers were held to a 1-1 draw at home to Lancashire neighbours, Blackpool, Tony Mowbray reflected on a sombre afternoon for his side.
“This is the second week on the bounce where we’ve dropped two points. We dropped two away at Coventry City in the last minute and it feels really hard at the moment. The dressing room is really flat, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think we deserved more than a point over the 90 minutes. It wasn’t one of our better performances and Blackpool made the game really stodgy. I’ve already said this to them, even though I don’t like to criticise my teams publicly, but I felt the back-three struggled with Gary Madine’s physicality, today. Our back-three have probably been our three best players since switching to that system, which is why I’ve persevered with that system for long spells of games, as it gives us a platform to win matches from. I felt Madine’s physicality was a problem for us with the goal epitomising that, as the ball stayed in the box and they didn’t really have to create it. We didn’t make first contact on their set-piece to get the ball out as soon as we can and it ended up bobbling around a bit and they stuck it away. Despite saying all that, we still weren’t fluid enough with the ball and we didn’t create enough opportunities leading to the afternoon becoming a frustrating one.
“The forced changes we had to make didn’t help us. We had a few players end up with cramp towards the end and Scott Wharton ended up having his face smashed to bits. We lost a bit of balance towards the end. During the ten-minutes spell where (Bradley) Dack and (John) Buckley were playing as two number tens, we gave Blackpool some real problems. John ended up having a great opportunity after we sliced through their defence and yet, John ended up playing at right-back, we lost a fluency and we didn’t look like we were going to win it. You hope to build up momentum in the last few minutes when you’re at home and chasing a goal, which is something teams do against us when we’re away. We couldn’t really do that because of the enforced changes and the fact some players were playing out of position. We’re all frustrated because we didn’t perform at our best, yet if we perform at our best and still don’t win, we have to accept that, but today we were a bit below standard and I can’t really give you or the fans a reason why that was, other than the fact Blackpool are a difficult, direct team who fight for every ball and that’s one of the main reasons why they’re still in the division and have done pretty well. They’re not easy to play against as their results this season have shown.
“I said to the lads at half-time that I felt their equaliser coming and that we had to do the basics better. I questioned why we weren’t getting first contact on their set-pieces, and Blackpool started the second-half with two corners and two wide free-kicks which eventually led to their goal. I’m trying not to be critical because they’re amazing lads and I say it every week, but they’re trying like hell to get the victory and the supporters should know that there’s huge disappointment in the dressing room when they don’t win. We fell a bit short today and we have to accept it, but when I look at the results, that’s not uncommon. Middlesbrough have been flying under Chris Wilder got beat by Hull City today, and QPR lost away at Preston North End. Nottingham Forest seem to be the team who have the answers at the moment and generally, they’re a pretty good counter-attacking side with their two strikers who give teams problems. If we’d have gotten three points today, it would have been amazing with the way the results around us went, but we still picked up a point, whereas other teams didn’t. We need to work hard in the week and turn our focus for when we go to Peterborough United on Friday.
“Every game for us between now and the end of the season is a cup final. When you’re playing at this level, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re at home or away, because we’ve got five more opportunities to get three points in each game and we’ll be doing our very best to get them, first at Peterborough United and then at home to Stoke City, who got a fantastic result today by beating West Bromwich Albion, 3-1, who themselves just beat Bournemouth 2-0 in midweek. The league’s crazy, really. What we do know is that, to win matches, we have to be at our best and our individually talented players have to be at their best to help the team win, but we look forward to every challenge. The season’s coming to an end and we’ve got to try and keep the energy, intensity and adrenaline going, because there are no easy games in this league. Blackpool, realistically, had nothing to play for coming into this game and yet, look at the intent and ferocity they played the game with. We have to be aware that we can’t go to Peterborough thinking it’ll be a comfortable game, that definitely won’t be the case. We have five cup finals left which we have to play better than we did today, in. If we get the victories required, we’ll give ourselves the best chance of finishing the campaign inside the playoffs.
“Scott Wharton had a lot of blood around his face when he came off. I spoke to our doctor and he said that he was going to inject Scott to try and stop the blood flow, and yet it wouldn’t stop, so we had to bring him off because he was bleeding out of the bridge of his nose. Those decisions are quick-fire decisions because he wanted to stay on, but he was covered in blood from head to toe. We needed to make a change at the time, and although it was common to see defenders in that state, 30 years ago when I played, I’m sure Scott will be ready for the game on Good Friday.”
