After Rovers were dumped out of the Carabao Cup in the Fourth Round by newly-promoted Premier League side, Nottingham Forest by a 4-1 scoreline, Jon Dahl Tomasson discussed how his young side performed on Wednesday night, highlighting the evening as a ‘learning curve.’
“Tonight’s game was very difficult. It’s always disappointing to lose. On the other hand, we knew that it would be a big challenge, against our second Premier League opposition in a row. Tonight, was a good opportunity to develop the youngsters who have been playing throughout this competition. It’s important to find out who can cope and manage the expectation and pressure and who can stay focussed and concentrated for 90 minutes and make good, quick decisions. It’s clear to see that Nottingham Forest are an excellent team. They have spent a lot of money over the summer, but I feel we can be disappointed with some of the goals we conceded, even though we played against a high-quality opponent.
“It’s been a good cup run. When you’re playing in the same round where Manchester City are facing Liverpool, you know you’ve got quite far into the competition. We need these kinds of games in order to keep everyone up to speed during a busy Christmas period, but also, we need to try and develop these youngsters as we want to create value over time. It’s good for the young boys to play at such a high level, because they’ll learn what it takes to play Premier League football. They need a lot, and that’s not only on matchdays, but they also need to show it in training. They need to be quicker both on and off the ball.
“This cup run has given us a great opportunity to try and face some top teams, because we know that we need to put in a lot, in order to match them. You can see the quality of Premier League players and of Nottingham Forest, tonight. Our players then get the opportunity to see their speed, their decision-making and their quality on the ball and they realise the difference in the levels of quality, so they know what to focus on in order to try and match that quality during their development. This is what we’re trying to achieve, every day, in training.
“That’s the challenge that everybody in the squad should be aiming for, not just the youngsters. Everybody is always dreaming of something bigger than they have. We as a club want to build towards something and achieve it over time, but when you look at the quality of opposition in West Ham United and Nottingham Forest, who we’ve played against, we know we’ve faced some great players. Nottingham Forest have had players who have just come back from the greatest competition in the world, the World Cup, which further shows how much of a great opportunity tonight was for development. But now, we need to learn from tonight’s defeat.
“Forest had plenty of chances that should have won them the game easily, but we were in the game until the third goal. Their third was a stupid unnecessary goal, where we should have had a free-kick after (Tyrhys) Dolan was fouled. After that, there was a pass-back by Forest, meaning we should have had another free-kick, but that directly led to their third goal. We’re disappointed because we were still in the game at that point, but that’s football. We’re annoyed, but we can’t change it now.
“We lost a lot of the fine margins tonight. The deflection for their free-kick as well as what I’ve mentioned about the third goal. You can see their quality. They’re a couple of steps higher than us, but that’s not a disgrace. That’s life.
“I haven’t spoken to the medical department yet to get an update on Tyrhys. I’m assuming he got injured after that foul before the third goal, where we should’ve had a free-kick, but I’m not sure. I will receive an update on him over the next few days. I hope it’s nothing long-term, because during this period of the season, you can miss a few matches with just a little injury. It’s annoying because he did very well against Norwich City on Saturday.
“We’re going into a great period in the calendar: Christmas and Football! It’s great for fans, but that schedule is one of the reasons why we didn’t want to risk a lot of senior players, tonight, because we have a very tough schedule against some good sides, in such a short period. There’s potential that Hayden Carter and Daniel Ayala could be back in the squad for Boxing Day against Sunderland, but I don’t have confirmation of that, yet.”
