Following Rovers being unable to make it back-to-back victories, with a crushing 4-2 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday, Blues’ boss Tony Mowbray offered his thoughts on the game he had just witnessed, as well as some criticism towards his players who had conceded their 60th league goal of the season during the tie.
“Our inability to defend crosses has ultimately cost us today. When you’re sat trying to match up people, before the game, for the man-marking on set-pieces, it was an embarrassing mismatch because we had midfielders who are 5’8” up against forwards who are 6’6”. It was a mismatch physically today because of the lack of central defenders at our disposal and that’s how it panned out.
“I think that for long spells of the game, we were on top and in control, even though we let an embarrassing goal go in inside the opening 10 minutes. From then on, although I thought we were good on the ball, we were undone by their crosses into the box which they capitalised on, due to their height advantage. It’s a situation that we need to sort out, which we will do, but saying that, it’s easier to fix when you have the likes of (Charlie) Mulgrew, (Darragh) Lenihan and (Jack) Rodwell available, because then you get the men to do a man’s job, however I thought (Tyler) Magloire applied himself well again today, but at this moment, he’s only a boy and his physical strength isn’t his strongest attribute.
“Although the result on paper looks bad, with us shipping another 4 goals, if you were to watch the match and see the balance of play, we created a lot of opportunities through some good play, however that’s all meaningless if they score from every set-piece or cross they have. At this moment, we don’t have that player takes charge and heads the ball away, although I think that Lenihan is the closest we have to that, he’s not 6’2” like I was, for example, which makes it a little bit more difficult. We have to try and recruit some central defenders over the summer, who, on days like today, will earn their living by taking charge at set-pieces and clearing their lines.
“Hopefully, by the time the Aston Villa game rolls around in a fortnight, we’ll have Mulgrew, Lenihan and Rodwell back. If they didn’t make it back in time, I would suggest that it would be very difficult to find the answer to our problems, because if you’re 5’9” and you’re marking someone who’s 6’5”, it’s very difficult to deal with them, as we found out today. It was a tough ask for a young team today. We talked pre-game about keeping them away from our goal, keeping a high line so that we wouldn’t have to deal with headers and yet it was the headers from the set-pieces that undid us.
“We had lots of chances today and I thought we gave them a lot of problems which led to them feeling our ability to pick holes in them, but ultimately, although we should have scored more, we didn’t and with us leaking goals at the other end, it’s always difficult to keep driving forwards and playing with intensity.
“Joe (Rothwell) does alright for us when he’s in possession of the ball. Joe shows his quality in flashes, yet he’s a young boy with a lot to learn and I’ve told him what I thought of his performance in the dressing room, and I think he’s got a long way to go. He’s in a similar situation to what Harry Chapman was in at the start of last season, and as a football manager, I need to feel what works for the team and what they’ll benefit from, and if a specific player can dance past someone once or twice a game, it doesn’t mean that he’s helping the team, specifically defensively, throughout the whole 90 minutes. Football teams are about men getting a man’s job done and today, we were short of a few men. I’ve tried not to be too harsh on them, because we’ve got a very young squad, but everyone has felt my frustrations after today’s performance.
“John Buckley was with the squad today because of our injuries and because he’s talented enough to be here. Unfortunately, John’s not 6’3”, so he couldn’t really help us defensively, but equally, I didn’t think bringing on Richie Smallwood would have helped either. We needed, at that point, a passer on the pitch who could help us break through their lines and craft a potential goalscoring opportunity and I think John did that very well. He’s a good footballer and I’m happy for him after his cameo today. He’s going to have a big career which this is just the very start of, and I look forward to seeing him develop into a really good player, over the years. He’s going to be a really good player in the future because he’s good on the ball, but he came on today for a run out, with no expectation from me to do much because he’s in the infancy of what will hopefully be a long and successful career here at Blackburn Rovers. Even though he played a large portion of Friday night’s game for the u23s, we were forced to draft him in due to our injuries.
“We need to take the positives from today, despite the frustrating defending from set-pieces. This international break gives the lads an extra 2 weeks to get back for Villa, yet I think that Lenihan is the biggest miss for us, because he’s commanding at the back and is somebody who has based his game around wanting to head the ball away, which is the basic quality missing from our team at the moment. There is a chance that he might not feature at Villa Park, depending on how his body reacts over the break, because he’s been out for a long time. There’s sometimes an expectation on a player who’s been out for a while, to come back in and change everything, but that might not happen. I’ll have to judge him to see whether he’s capable of entering the hostile Villa Park environment so soon after his injury.
“It’s been difficult for us, because Charlie’s based his game around his technique, whereas Jack is naturally a midfielder, but is at the back for us, due to his height. At this stage, Lenihan is the only person who wants to deal with the ball and my job in the summer is to find some players who also want to head the ball out. Once we do that, we’ll evolve into a decent team, which although we are on the ball, doesn’t show in the final result when we’re conceding every set-piece.”
