After Rovers fell to their sixth defeat of the campaign, from a dozen games played, Jon Dahl Tomasson reflected on, what was, a very poor night for Rovers as they fell to a late 1-0 defeat in South Wales against Cardiff City, with misery compiled further due to a stoppage time missed penalty by George Hirst.
“We’re extremely disappointed to be leaving here with no points. It was not our best game, of course. We’ve taken many positive steps since we’ve come into the club, but today was a step backwards. We got a penalty late on, which is the best chance you can be given in football and we didn’t score it. I have to give credit to George (Hirst) for wanting to take it. Bradley (Dack) scored before the penalty as well, and the referee (John Brooks) was a bit too quick to blow the whistle. Overall, we’re disappointed. We didn’t play well, but we defended our box extremely well, which is a positive we can take. Today was a setback in our journey.
“I do think the referee should have waited before blowing his whistle. It makes it harder, knowing what happened, but we can’t blame the referee. Everybody makes mistakes, but at the end of the day, we have to look at ourselves. Normally, Ben Brereton Díaz is our penalty taker, but he was fatigued, and we substituted him, just like we did on Saturday. I thought he needed a rest. As I said, credit is due to George, sometimes you miss, but most of the time you score, but today was not our day.
“The second-half was very balanced. It could have gone both ways and it summed up the whole league, in a way. The league is full of inconsistency and results can change very quickly. We’re disappointed that we weren’t able to take any points back with us to Blackburn.
“When you’re not at your best, you have to try and find a way to take something from a football match. You always need to stay in the game and we’re disappointed that we gave away such an unnecessary goal. We had a lot of bodies around their throw-in and we failed to put any real pressure on the ball and that led to a goal that we cannot accept.
“The inconsistency is normal and it will be like that for a long time, but it’s frustrating and I hate it.”
