After Rovers succumbed to a heavy 4-1 thrashing away at Deepdale, against Lancashire rivals Preston North End, Tony Mowbray spoke to BBC Radio Lancashire, as he reflected on a disappointing afternoon for himself, his side and the 5,533 travelling fans.
“Ultimately, today was a difficult afternoon for us, which wasn’t helped by the start that we made. Our defending was uncharacteristic today and I don’t think we dealt with their forward players, at all today. There were some individual errors from the players and collectively, we played way too deep, which invited trouble onto us.
“If I’m looking for excuses; (Charlie) Mulgrew has hardly trained over the international break because of the injury he picked up, which of course meant he didn’t go away with Scotland. (Darragh) Lenihan has been away with the Republic (of Ireland) and he hasn’t been part of what we were working on. Their separation over the break certainly showed today with their performances and they need to get back to the form that we know they can hit, as soon as possible.
“It’s always hard coming back from the situation we found ourselves in, yet I thought we dominated the last half-an-hour of the first-half. We had total control of the game, put a lot of balls into their box and created some brilliant opportunities from set-plays, which could have seen a pair of them go in. I think (Kasey) Palmer should have scored his header, after we pulled off a set-piece we’d worked on during the international break and Lenihan had one that he glanced over, which I think would have gone in had he got a firmer connection. We’ve also had a perfectly good goal from Ben (Brereton) disallowed for offside which, having watched it back, was never offside, even if the linesman thinks (Bradley) Dack’s flicked it on, which he didn’t.
“We shouldn’t look too deep into the performance and nit-pick everything. What we need to do is make sure we’re better defensively, starting with the game at Wigan Athletic on Wednesday, which is just another opportunity for 3 points. You’re always going to lose matches in this league because of the sheer competitiveness of it. When you’re below the standard of performance that you normally set, you generally come out of games on the losing side, as we have done today.
“Danny (Graham) hasn’t trained in nearly a fortnight, with his first day being the Thursday just gone. In my opinion, he’s 33 and hadn’t done any training in nearly 2 weeks, so I didn’t want to expose him to, potentially, another 90 minutes. He came on and, of course, made an impact, but I don’t sit here regretting the decisions I’ve made with the team selection because I thought the team picked was fine.”
