During the aftermath of Rovers’ 2-1 victory over MK Dons, which saw the Blues move into 1st place in League 1, Tony Mowbray spoke with the clubs’ media team as he summed up his thoughts on the clash, which by half-time looked seemingly won from a Rovers perspective, but a late MK Dons rally forced Rovers into grinding out a victory.
“We were glad to hear the final whistle as when you’re 2-0 up, you know that the next goal in the game is an important one, as we talked about it at half-time and unfortunately for us, the next goal in the game fell to them and it spurred them on during the last 15 minutes of the game to try and get an equaliser. We had some nervous moments during the final stages, yet we also had a chance to kill the game off through Dominic Samuel which he missed, to make it 3-1, but that’s football. At times, you have to be wary that teams will have large, dominant spells of possession throughout the game which they showed during the last 15 minutes when they gambled to get an equaliser.
“For me, it’s all about the points, especially at this stage of the season. The way I look at things, I don’t even bother with the league table before the first 10 games of a season as I try to see how things develop as the teams settle down in the league depending on their results. I like to average around 2 points per game and we’re beyond that at the moment. Somebody told me that Bolton Wanderers got promoted last year with 86 points and we’re currently on 82, so we just have to keep going and continue to pile the points on as we continue with the difficult games until the end of the campaign.”
The manager was questioned as to whether the desire and commitment to not allow the hosts to equalise showed that the Rovers players were determined for promotion.
“I think it does, however, even if they had nicked a late equaliser, I wouldn’t have been able to question the fantastic desire from the lads. They’re a group who are sticking together, and we’re trying to keep them focused on the individual games ahead, not on the overall prize, the games that are down the line or how the teams around us are doing. If the players believe and stick to our game plan, then the results will follow.
“At times, I expect Adam Armstrong to score whenever he’s got the ball in and around the box. He can shoot with no preference to either foot, despite being predominantly right-footed. His low centre of gravity and his burst of pace are devastating and we’ve talked about him remaining on the wide right, which makes him look like he’s not doing anything, but one transition, one forward pass in behind and he’s through on goal. That’s what we’ve been working on in training and hopefully we can continue to do that. I can’t pinpoint how valuable his goals are had he not been here as I believe that somebody else would have stepped up in his place as we’ve got players who are chomping at the bit to go out there and score goals, yet I’m happy that Adam’s here, but we have to keep him fit. Harry Chapman was kind of a fan’s favourite during the first-half of the season, but now that we’ve brought in Adam, he has seemingly taken over that title, but I’m happy for Adam as he’s had a frustrating time at Newcastle in recent years and to add to that, he had a rather unsuccessful loan spell at Bolton earlier this season, but he’s hit the ground running here and got himself back in the goals.
“I’m delighted for the fans who made the trip down here, but we haven’t achieved anything yet. We’ve still got 7 games left, which includes 4 tough away games, so we have to keep going, working hard and prepare for the weekend. Our reaction towards our tremendous travelling support says it all and I firmly believe that if we finish outside of the top 2, this will be marked as a ‘disastrous season’, so we have to keep going as the fans deserve us to be successful this season due to the money they’ve spent to come and watch their team win on the road.”
