As Norwich City’s promotion party boomed in the background following their 2-1 victory over Rovers, Tony Mowbray managed to gather his thoughts across to Rovers’ media team, as the manager reflected on a mixed performance that ultimately ended in his side’s first defeat in 4 games.
“It looked for spells, as if we’d find the equaliser and I thought we’d got on top for the last half-an-hour of the game, which led to them having a bit of anxiety, which would have been expected considering their dominance for most of the game, but ultimately we couldn’t get that second goal. We’ve had some similar performances over the past couple of weeks with the game at Villa Park standing out to me the most. We fell under the cosh for most of the game and came alive during the last 30 minutes and probably deserved a draw out of that game and you could probably argue we deserved a draw from this game as well, based on the final 30 minutes we played, but it wasn’t to be. Norwich City are a good team, which you can’t deny, and they’ve got some really talented players who can pick the right pass, make good runs and ask questions of you, but ultimately, we weren’t quite good enough tonight.
“My frustrations tonight come due to the manner of their long-range goals. The midfield players were almost doing the defenders’ jobs. They were very deep at a stage where they should have been pushing out and engaging with the opposition, rather than letting them pass around and keep the ball. Whether that was a bit of fear, I’m not sure, but you have to engage teams who keep the ball in order to try and disposes them, rather than sitting back and waiting for them to give it away, because they rarely will. Tonight, has been a learning curve for us, as we’ve played a good team capable of passing around and through our defence, however as the game went on, we got better as we grew into it.
“Games like this are good as a learning curve for the players we’ve already got, but there will hopefully be a few new players coming in in the summer who will hopefully make us better as they will naturally be able to do the things we want them to do. I said to the lads in the dressing room, ‘if you want to come on the journey, then you’ve got to be braver and better than we were tonight, particularly in the first-half.’ That’s their challenge as a group of players really, do they want to come along and be a technical team that can keep the ball, move it around and score lots of goals? And if they do, then we have to get to work during pre-season in order to take that into next season.
“You can’t just say you want to play like Norwich do, if you don’t have the players capable of pulling off such a style. This is why I’ve spent the last 2 years saying we haven’t got the players to play as certain brand of football and we’ve been playing to our strengths. We have a very physical midfield who press the opposition and work hard in trying to get the ball back in order to start a counter-attack. We haven’t got a technical midfield, which showed today because we put Joe Rothwell in there for the last 20 minutes in order to give us some technique in the midfield because he wanted to get on the ball, look forwards and play in tight areas, rather than just focussing on tackling people, which saw us move the ball around better as a whole. We’ll do our best over the summer to change our team and make us stronger and better ahead of the new campaign, which is the challenge for us going forwards.
“I don’t think Joe (Rothwell) has the ability to play in the centre of midfield permanently, but I felt I had to put him in there in order to help us stay on the ball and build-up some possession. You can’t just keep giving the ball back to the opposition, which we did a lot during the first-half when we hit it long into Danny (Graham). I just wanted someone in midfield who was comfortable there and capable of retaining possession in order to build-up attacks, however the job over the summer is to get some central midfielders who naturally want to retain possession and pass forwards, which will free up Joe to play his natural game in his natural position.
“Despite his goal today, Lewis Travis remains a young boy with lots to learn and lots to develop about his game. He’s got a fantastic attitude and some fantastic attributes, which is why he’s in the team almost every week, but ultimately, he has to improve his game which he is aware of. I think, when he looks back and sees their goals tonight, he’ll be kicking himself regarding how deep he was, as he was almost stood on the toes of our centre-halves, whilst offering their midfielders all the time in the world to smash it into the net. He’ll have to learn from his mistakes tonight, but overall, he’s got good attributes which he needs to develop whilst also competing against the current midfielders and those who we will hopefully bring in, for a place in the team.
“We managed to get the ball out to Harry (Chapman) on a number of occasions and he managed to take their full-back on a couple of times. If you’re not a good defender, Harry will skip past you, but today, we were up against a strong and fast backline who are very good at their jobs, but it was good to give Harry the game time after such a long injury layoff, because he’s been fighting to get fit, whilst also learning the standards of our club.
“We move onto the final game of the season at home to Swansea City in the hope we can win it. We try to win every game we play, but Swansea, like Norwich, are a good technical team who have some good players that are capable of keeping the ball. They also have some lightning fast centre-forwards who score bags of goals, so it’ll be a big test for us, but one we’ll be relishing whilst also being really positive in our mindset and game plan in the hope that we can end the season on a victory for the fans, in-front of what will hopefully be a big crowd.”
