After Rovers clinched their fifth clean sheet from their tenth league game, following a 0-0 home draw with Middlesbrough, in a game which was broadcasted live on Sky Sports, Tony Mowbray reflected on his team’s under-par performance to the club’s media team.
“Tonight’s game was difficult, against a team that we know how they play. I said to the team before the game that we had to try and get out of the game with a clean sheet, and hopefully a 1-0 win, because clean sheets are what Middlesbrough do under Neil (Warnock). They play three or five at the back, whatever you want to call it, they have four in midfield, with a lone striker and they make it really hard for you to play. It’s a trend we’re starting to see around the Premier League with the likes of Newcastle United and Leicester City, who play it a different way, of course. It’s very hard to break through a bank of nine players and as a result, we tried to go a bit longer tonight than we usually do, because of the block of players in-front of our attack. They also had a lot of speed on the transition with the likes of (Hayden) Coulson, (Marcus) Tavernier and (Djed) Spence are very sharp, quick footballers and if we’d had given it away in the wrong areas tonight, we probably would have lost goals on transitions, so we got away from what we normally do by playing a bit longer without that much joy. We had one or two moments where the ball was bouncing around and flashing across their six-yard box and it would have been nice to be stood here talking about a 1-0 win from a terrible game, but it wasn’t to be. We need to put the point in the bag and move on because we know we’re better than that performance. Let’s see what Saturday brings, against a different type of opponent in Queens Park Rangers.
“We’re still struggling for balance within the squad with no left-sided players to balance it out and we’ve got nobody in midfield who can give us some stability out of possession, so let’s take the positive of our fifth clean sheet in ten games, from tonight’s game and move on. As I’ve said, I’m really excited by this team because it will grow, because once we get the balance right and we get the players back, I think we’ve got a decent squad. The issue at the moment now is that it’s depleted and we’re hanging on against a team in Middlesbrough who, I’ll be hoping that we’re beating comfortably down the line once everyone’s back. Middlesbrough are a hard team to beat and have kept a few clean sheets over the past couple of games, but we’re happy that we didn’t lose a game that we could have easily lost tonight.
“Aynsley (Pears) is a young boy who’s managed to get his first clean sheet today. You can hear me shouting on the side at him, because there’s still a lot more he can learn and improve. He has to affect crosses more, take braver starting positions and improve his kicking, among other attributes and yet, he was brought here, not to play as our first-choice, but to learn and develop and as a player and hopefully in the future, he’ll be a really top goalie, but we’re happy for him that he’s kept a clean sheet, particularly with it being against the side he’s just departed, but saying that, Aynsley still has a lot of room for plenty of growth, as all of our players have. I can’t really remember the saves he made, bar the one he tipped over the bar. It was probably a good night to have no fans in the stadium, because I honestly thought it was a rubbish game. Yet saying that might seem a bit harsh because, I would say that out of the ten games we’ve played seven or eight of them have been of real high value and yet you sometimes get nights like this. It’s difficult because of the way we’re trying to play because the opposition have their own way of playing. It’s like a boxing match, I suppose, where you get two boxers with contrasting styles that don’t hit off and you end up with a bad fight and this was the football equivalent.
“I’m past talking about the situation with the injuries and the COVID isolations, to be honest. We’ll pick whatever team we’ve got available at the weekend and give it our best shot against QPR and we’ll see how we get on. I’ve been doing this for 16 years now, and you can stand in-front of cameras and reel off the names on the injury list and talk about a lack of balance, which I’ve been trying to do and yet at the end of the day, we only get judged by the result and the performance at the end of the day, because whoever you pick won’t really hit the headlines. You – (Neil Yardley – the iFollow Rovers interviewer) – could play at centre-half on Saturday against QPR and nobody will say; ‘Oh, you had Neil playing at centre-half, what’s going on?’ We’re pretty deep into our squad, I would say, so we have to see who’s available for Saturday.
“This is as bad as we’ve had it in my time here, because a fortnight ago, I felt as if had a really good squad and we’d recruited well in the window and I thought the depth looked really good and yet, within two weeks, that squad has been decimated. Players, whether isolating or injured will eventually come back, however and hopefully we can get some good work done on the training ground and we can see more of the positive play that we’ve been seeing over recent weeks.”
