Rovers fell to their second successive defeat, as they returned from the international break in the worst possible fashion. Birmingham City fought hard and managed to earn three points courtesy of ex-Rover, Reda Khadra’s goal, but Jon Dahl Tomasson reflected on a blank in-front of goal from his side.
“We’re always frustrated when we lose games, and we’re disappointed with today’s result. It was an even game, but although we probably didn’t do enough to win today, we definitely shouldn’t have lost. If you look at the stats over the course of the whole 90 minutes, I don’t think we deserved to lose. When you’ve played a team multiple times in a season, as we have with Birmingham City, as this is the fourth time we’ve played them, you can see that the players begin to know each other. Today’s game was quite even.
“I thought we started the game brightly. We should have scored in the opening moments, but we played some good, quick football, yet suddenly, we slowed the tempo down which allowed Birmingham back into the game, which I was disappointed with. When you concede a goal, you then have to chase. We were quite slow in possession, at times, but when we played forwards quickly, we created many dangerous situations where we just lacked the right decision in the final third. The right pass in the final third was not perfect, which was disappointing.
“We’re frustrated to lose today and we’re disappointed on behalf of our amazing fans who made the journey to support us. I know they had a bit of a nightmare in the traffic to come here. We know that we’re at a stage in the season where we could potentially have some bumps along the road, which is typical towards the end of a tight league, and that’s not just us, that’s the case for all the clubs in the division. We will stick to our plan and do everything to remain in the playoffs at the end of the season.
“It’s always a missed opportunity when you don’t pick up three points. I want to win every game, so do the players, but we know that won’t always happen. We know that there is a possibility to lose every game in this league, which is visible by the other results, today. What I think is important, is that we need to keep looking at ourselves and asking, ‘what can we do better?’ There was a lot of good stuff from the lads today, but also a lot we can improve on.
“It sounds obvious, but if you score a goal, the chances of you winning the game becomes higher. If you score the second goal, then the game is almost won, if you look at all the stats. We were chasing a goal, but I thought we created a lot of opportunities in the second-half, if you look at (Bradley) Dack’s shot which was saved and (Ryan) Hedges also saw his shot saved by the goalie. We had a lot of moments where we lacked a bit of quality, despite having a lot of chances.
“We always feel like we’re going to create chances if we follow the plan we have for the players. I’m not surprised that we’re improving as the season continues, because we’re working on it, so credit must be given to the lads. Yet, you can lose games at any stage of the season because this league is full of good teams. We’ve played against Birmingham four times, this season and all four games have been quite even.
“It’s important now that we learn from today, but don’t think about it, because we cannot change the result. The mentality would be the same, even if we won today. We need to stay level-headed and stable and focus on the things that we can control as a team.”
