With the Sky Sports cameras firmly fixated on Ewood Park, Jon Dahl Tomasson offered his post-match reaction to RoversTV, as Blackburn Rovers and Wigan Athletic played out a goalless draw on Monday night.
“We knew tonight was going to be a tough game against a Wigan Athletic side who are fighting for their life. They have a new manager and despite that, we had some good opportunities and moments where we should have been more clinical, which is disappointing. We were extremely solid out of possession and (Aynsley) Pears earnt his second clean-sheet in a row. We gave a lot of chances away, but we need to be more clinical in order to earn three points.
“I think at the moment, we’re creating a lot of chances. At the moment, we’re creating the chances, but not finishing them. Scoring goals is the hardest part of football, we know that. On the other hand, you do need to score to win games. If you look at the overall performance of the game, we gave very little away and were solid, which is a good start. We created all those attacking moments from crosses, but we weren’t in the right positions to create chances from them, which we should have. On another day, we could have scored from one of those chances. I thought we should have also had a penalty, either in the first-half or the end of the game. There was contact on Harry (Pickering) at the end, but we should not rely on penalties for our goals.
“First of all, there was period earlier on in the season where Ben (Brereton Díaz) wasn’t getting many chances, but now, he’s getting a lot of chances per game, which is a positive. You need to get chances in order to score, but I thought, if the chance he got in the first-half came a few months ago, he would have put it into the top corner. That’s football. He just needs to keep believing and getting in the right positions and we need to create the chances for him to score.
“The clean-sheet is a good start, if you can’t score. We were solid throughout the whole 90 minutes, tonight. Thomas (Kaminski) was involved in an incident in training, yesterday, so we need to see how he is. I’m not sure how long he will be out for. It’s very valuable to have Pears. He’s done a good job in both cups this season and now he’s earned his opportunity in the league and did a good job, today. It was not a busy day at the office, but he still had to keep a clean-sheet. Every day is an opportunity to impress and Aynsley has been impressive, both in training and in the games he’s played.
“We have two tough away games next, but at this moment, I’m not thinking about the next games. I’m thinking about how we did not win tonight. It’s very disappointing not to get all three points, tonight.”
