After overseeing his side’s third consecutive home victory, and their second consecutive home triumph over Brentford, Blues boss Tony Mowbray reflected on Rovers’ narrow, but convincing 1-0 victory over the playoff-seeking Bees, to the club’s media team.
“In patches, today’s performance was a sparkling one for different reasons. I thought we played some wonderful football in the first-half and the goal showed that as we cut them open, cut it across goal and then finished it off, and yet, on the other side of the coin, we showed our resilience, our ability to put men behind the ball and compete with the likes of (Corry) Evans and (Lewis) Travis, who were fantastic today, before we counter-attacked away. Stewy (Stewart Downing) showed his experience and his quality. I know Joe Rothwell got awarded the Man of the Match, yet there were a lot of players out there who performed to their level, tonight. That’s what you need in this league if you want to win matches and be successful, you don’t just need two or three having good games, you need seven, eight or nine to consistently perform at their best in order to be successful.
“I’m pleased for the boys because it was tough after Saturday and I know we got the three points at the weekend, but it’s tough when you’re facing the team at the bottom of the league because that comes with an expectation that you’ll be in for a comfortable victory, but that’s never the case in this division. Tonight, we faced a different kettle of fish, a team who have won their last five out of six and have won 3-0 twice and got a 3-1 win in their last three away games, so, hopefully that result has raised a few eyebrows around the league. It’s good to have won three on the bounce at home because it gets us back to where we believe we should be and yet the huge frustrations for us, as I keep mentioning is that we’ve lost to two newly-promoted teams at home, otherwise that would have meant that we’d have stayed unbeaten at home this year. We obviously need to try and find an answer to our away form as two wins and six losses from eight away games played is nowhere near good enough. We need to find ways in order to grind out results on the road and tonight’s performance has shown us that we can do that against any team. The lads need a break, but they’ll come in tomorrow as we need to give them a couple of days work for Stoke City away, which is next up at the weekend, but we should look forward to that challenge now. We’ve just been saying in the dressing room now that we need to try and find the answers away from home and keep doing what we’re doing at home in order to be where we want to be.
“We can’t just sit and rest on our laurels, we need to push on having done so well tonight. There are a lot of games coming and the pleasant thing for me is that, we can make four or five changes to the team and the team still functions. The ability to rotate is key because we have some players in their mid-thirties who will not play three games a week, or if they do, it’ll risk their bodies breaking down or they’ll potentially be off the pace which will hinder the team’s performances. We have to utilise the squad at this stage of the season, and I think that the lads on the fringes of the squad know that their time is coming and that we’ll soon need them to show us what they’ve got after working hard in training all this time.
“I’ve talked a lot, ever since the start of the season, about wanting to be better with the ball and at retaining the ball and I feel as if we’re in transition from this ‘warrior-like’ team who goes to war with opponents and makes life difficult for them, because I don’t believe that you can gain promotion by just doing that, we have worked really hard about being better with the ball and it seems as if it’s at detriment of the effort and work they put in, because they’re thinking so hard about their positional play and we’re trying to bring it together and I think that tonight, in spells, we got it right. We played our positions, we moved the ball around quickly and everyone worked really hard. Now, it’s difficult to jump from being a team who hit 60-yard diagonal pass to Danny Graham who nods it down to Bradley Dack, every time we get the ball, to a team that is a bit more patient and puts passes together. The transition for us has been a bit more difficult, but tonight they showed good signs that we can continue in that vein.
“Joe (Rothwell) had all the time in the world, it appeared, for him to slot his chance home and make it 2-0. He’s obviously seen the gap on David’s (Raya) left-hand side and he’s tried to bend it into the corner and David’s read it and saved it, yet Joe’s one-on-one inside the box and I’m sure that if he got his time again, he would have took it on a few more yards before rolling it into the corner. We had a few good opportunities for counter-attacks which Joe and Adam (Armstrong) are vital for with their blistering speed. They’re different types of runners, Armstrong generally runs without the ball, whereas Rothwell runs with the ball. We looked very potent on the transition tonight and I was delighted with the disciplined defensive display. I’m delighted for Tosin (Adarabioyo) and Darragh (Lenihan), yet I do think that Darragh is a great miss for us when he doesn’t play and yet I hated standing here and making excuses whilst he was out injured. I’m delighted for him after today’s clean sheet, but we need to keep him fit. This clean sheet was big against a side like Brentford who have scored so many goals on the road and can cut teams open. I’m pleased for the boys, they’re all happy in the changing rooms, but they know there’s still a lot of hard work to come, but we need to stick together and keep going.
“I’m not surprised with how positive Joe Rothwell is when he gets the ball and drives towards goal because he does it in training every day. What I haven’t seen in a long time, is his work-ethic and discipline to get back in and fill holes and track full-backs, yet I think he’s understanding that if he doesn’t do that, he won’t play and yet, when he has played, he’s had no shots or crosses, and yet tonight, he’s had a couple of efforts on goal and has been able to slip people in or create a chance for someone else. Hopefully the ‘penny has dropped’ for Joe and we see a lot more of him on the pitch, and that’ll be down to him, not me.
“I’m not stupid, if I have such a talented player, I’ll play him, so long that he’s committed to helping out the team defensively and when we’re out of possession. I hope he’s understood what’s expected from him and I hope he’s a big player for us going forwards. I’m excited by the prospect of Joe playing week in, week out, because you want the ball to land to his feet, I’m sure every fan in the stadium does, as I do, because when the ball lands, and he skips past that first challenge, you see space and think ‘wow, nobody’s catching him’, and because of his good technique, he can dink the last pass and can pick the right option for a Graham, Dack or Armstrong to slide him in. Rothwell can play for anybody and hopefully he can remain our little secret throughout the second half of the season and yet, if he plays like he did tonight on a regular basis, I’m sure a lot of people from outside the club will be taking notice of Joe Rothwell.
“I’m a big fan of Corry Evans, and yet he doesn’t play every week. I think that an ‘angry’ Corry Evans is a ‘fantastic’ footballer and sometimes I annoy him by leaving him out of the team as I know that, when I put him back in, he’s going to be the best player on the pitch and tonight, he covered every blade of grass, he won so many tackles, won us possession back a lot and put in a brilliant performance. He doesn’t get all the headlines because he’s not the guy who hits wonder passes, and slides people in, but he’s a wonderful footballer for a team in transition, which is what we are, ‘win it back, give it to Dack, Armstrong makes the run and receives the ball, then crosses to Danny Graham who scores’. It’s tried and tested really, and we need people who can win the ball back like Travis and Evans. I’m delighted for Corry. We need to see how Corry is at the weekend because he’s played today off the back of playing two important games for Northern Ireland, so it remains to be seen whether I play him or not. We’ll see how he and a few others, including Ryan Nyambe who came off at the end due to some cramp. We’ll assess our options over the next few days before picking a team that will try to cause Stoke some problems.”
