After Rovers were dismantled by lowly Rotherham United and suffered a 4-0 defeat on the road, live on Sky Sports, Jon Dahl Tomasson spoke to RoversTV about his side’s abysmal display.
“It’s an extremely disappointing result and a poor performance. We need to apologise to our fans. Conceding four goals, as we did, is not good enough at all. We spoke about starting the game well and we ended up conceding a very unnecessary goal after 35 seconds. We were in control for the rest of the first-half and we didn’t concede any chances. We had three opportunities, probably the best of the game, but we missed them. We lacked quality in the moments that mattered. Conceding the second goal in the second-half and seeing the goals go in was incredibly embarrassing.
“If you look at the overall picture, we cannot be satisfied with any aspect of this game, even though we had the three best chances of the first-half. We could have done a lot better in the first-half, so those chances are meaningless. If you go 2-0 down, you need to make sure you stay in the game, because you never know what could happen. We were very soft and immature, today. If you want to be successful in football, you have to take those chances. It’s not an excuse, but you can see that we were missing Ben (Brereton Díaz), who is our top scorer. He’s scored a lot of our goals, both this season and last season. We should still have taken those opportunities, even without Ben. Football is all about goals, of course. It’s extremely difficult to come back after conceding, so you need to take the chances you create.
“We were poor defensively, today. Rotherham United have been losing a lot of games this season, and in each of their games before today, they were creating chances in their games without scoring, but today, they scored after 35 seconds. That’s the difference in football. One side took their chances, and the other didn’t. I feel sorry for our fans, because a lot of them came to watch and support their team.
“I do feel (young) age and (lack of) experience is why we struggle to come back into games. We have a lot of players who haven’t experienced this level of football much, but they’re playing in a role with more responsibility than they’ve been used to in the youth teams or in lower leagues. I think this is something we need to improve and be better at. We are not good at coming back from a goal down, and that showed again today.
“Football is always about confidence. Players are not robots, otherwise they’d do all the right things. Confidence is a big part of the game, and that only increases for the opponents when they score so early on. Rotherham have brought in some new players which also gave them intensity, energy and confidence today.
“I don’t look at the result today and think we need signings. I’ve said from the beginning that we should not waste a transfer window. The result and the transfer market are separate. The result and performance was very poor, but we also do need to bring players in to help the group and increase the quality and depth in the squad.
“We shouldn’t waste energy talking about Ben’s absence. He was a big miss, but we should be wasting energy discussing what we didn’t do well and how we can improve and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
“Dom (Hyam) has an issue with his ankle, which is why he came off. I’m not sure how long he could be out for, we need to wait a couple of days before we know the full damage.”
