Following Rovers’ last game before the first international break of the season, which ended in a narrow 3-2 defeat against West Bromwich Albion, away at The Hawthorns, Blues boss Tony Mowbray offered his thoughts on his side’s frustrating defensive efforts, to the club’s media team.
“I think we competed well with West Brom, but the second-half was much better than the first, despite us getting off to a good early start. From going ahead, you could really feel their quality which stopped us getting a foothold in the game, as they began to push us back for the remainder of the first period. We changed things around at the break after getting ourselves back in the game at 3-2 and we managed to put in a better performance in the second-half than we did the first.
“We’re frustrated with the disallowed goal because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with what happened and yet in terms of our overall play in the second-half, we got ourselves in good positions but couldn’t force that much needed equaliser. Overall, we’re frustrated and disappointed, but I was happier with the second-half than I was with the first because I thought we had to be brave in possession of the ball, as we were in midweek against Sheffield United in the (Carabao) cup. We didn’t see any of that in the first-half, but after the changes at the break we were better and more fluid in possession, which gave us a foothold in the game and yet, although I thought we did enough to get a point out of today, West Brom would have probably been disappointed had they not got the win.
“Looking back at the goals we conceded in the first-half, I think we should have done much better with them, especially with how good our defence had been in recent weeks. It was a frustrating day littered with individual errors that, I don’t think can be blamed on defensive positioning or anything that can be worked on. For their first goal, I’m assuming Greg (Cunningham) was trying to hold off Matt Phillips to try and buy some time for Christian (Walton) to come and collect the ball, but the ‘keeper was never on the same wavelength which allowed Phillips to brush Greg off and score. We were very slow when reacting to their second, which gave them the time and space to pick their spot and their third was just Darragh (Lenihan) getting caught in possession which gave their lad (Grady Diangana) the opportunity to run through and dink it in.
“We’re disappointed with how we gifted West Brom their goals. When you’re up against these good teams who have a lot of good technical players, you need to make life difficult for them to score and get their crowd frustrated yet, we handed them a few goals on a plate, today. It’s been a very different defensive display to what we’ve seen over the past few weeks as we’ve had to make teams work to try and score against us, whilst we’ve gifted a few goals today, but whilst we are disappointed, there were some positives in the second-half that we can work on.
“I’ve watched the disallowed goal back again and I’m pretty sure the referee can’t see exactly what’s going on as he’s looking through about eight or nine bodies in order to figure out what’s going on. Ultimately, I think he (referee Tony Harrington) played safe and decided to disallow the goal. I believe the ball came off the bar and their ‘keeper had no leverage to jump, whilst Bradley (Dack) did and Dack’s just connected with the ball that their goalie missed, causing it to go in. Although I think the official played it safe and I think we’ve been hard done by, it doesn’t matter now as the game’s over, but that’s football sometimes.
“The changes at half-time weren’t enforced due to injury, they were tactical alterations I made in order to try and get ourselves back in contention in the second-half. When you play against good teams, you can’t keep giving them the ball back thinking that you can score on every transition, you need to be able to work the opposition by keeping possession and building up play, which is why I thought the switches were needed at the break. We made the changes thinking that we could get on the ball more and take a bit of intensity out of their play, which worked as we improved in the second-half and asked a lot more from their defenders than we had done first-half, but unfortunately we didn’t get the fruits our second-half labour deserved.”
The boss concluded his interview by rounding up his thoughts on Rovers’ start to the campaign which left them on seven points from their six games played.
“We’re frustrated ultimately, with the three losses that we have on the board as we can’t keep losing matches. I think we’re going to get better, because this team is a ‘work in progress’, and I think that, after the international break, we need to really target the home games as, although every fixture is difficult, they become slightly more favourable for us as the season progresses. We need to see where we are after 12 games, because the opponents we’ve played after our first six games are all, probably bar a couple, top-half or top-six candidates. We’re currently on seven points, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to build momentum and push onwards and upwards as we progress.”
