Rovers’ return to action from the midweek World Cup break saw Lancashire divided into Eastern frustration and Western delight, as Preston North End won the derby 4-1, at Ewood Park. Jon Dahl Tomasson assessed the lackadaisical performance from his side when speaking to RoversTV.
“We’re all disappointed, staff, players and fans. The fans were right to boo, because such a performance like this was not good enough. We were not intense enough; we played a very slow game on the ball and didn’t play forwards. We were missing players who were willing to commit and run in-behind. We didn’t win our individual duels and we know that when we’re not intense, both with and without the ball, we don’t play well. We have never had such a poor performance like this at Ewood Park. It’s been a bit of a fortress for us, so to put in a performance like that is extremely disappointing and not good enough.
“This performance came out of nowhere. I’m not sure of the reasons as to why we performed like we did. We’ve had a good build-up to today and a positive week training after another positive time in Spain. At the end of the day, it’s about decision-making; ‘what do you do when you have the ball’ and ‘what do you do when you don’t have the ball?’ We have to do that as a team, but it starts with winning individual duels, and we didn’t do that.
“The manner of the performance in-front of our fans hurt the most from today. We’ve had some great togetherness here at our fortress and they don’t deserve to witness a performance like that. You always make mistakes when you concede goals. We didn’t do well enough to stop or prevent the chances that Preston had, today. When you score and get back into the game, you need to stay in the game, because there was still a lot of time from Bradley’s (Dack) goal. We conceded way too early in the second-half and then the third and the fourth followed, which is not what you want. We need to be mature in that sense.
“I think we should examine today, because it was about stepping up and showing a reaction from the Burnley defeat and we didn’t produce a good game, so now we have to show a reaction to today’s defeat in the next game. We’ve seen that the players are capable of producing a good reaction and we need to work on that and I’m sure we’ll get a good reaction next week against Norwich City.
“I’m unsure as to the extent of Callum’s (Brittain) injury. He’s gone to hospital and we’ll get a report later on tonight. The checks are just precautionary and once I know what the problem is, I will let the fans know.”
