After losing his 200th game in charge of Blackburn Rovers, as Queens Park Rangers snuck a 1-0 home victory to end a five-game winless home run, Blues boss Tony Mowbray reflected on a sobering afternoon for his side, as they started February in the worst possible fashion.
“Today was another frustrating afternoon for us and we’ve had a few of those on the road this season. We were generally the better team today and we’ve come away with nothing, which is quite frustrating. We missed some good chances today and let in a really soft goal, even though I can’t really remember QPR creating a chance other than that one, too be honest. Off the back of that, to come away from this game with nothing, is really frustrating and it compounds a disappointing day.
“Regardless of how tough the division is, the bottom line is that I’m more worried about us lacking the ruthlessness required to win these types of games. We had some pretty good chances to come away from today with the win and yet, for whatever reason, they didn’t go in. You can’t come to these places and create dozens of chances, but I thought we created enough to win today and we somehow managed to lose it, which is frustrating. There’s not intention for people not to take their chances, of course, but maybe things have balanced out after we’ve scored a late goal and won games late on? We just have to take things on the chin, I suppose, because sometimes things don’t fall your way. QPR worked extremely hard to keep us out and I thought their goalkeeper (Seny Dieng) played pretty well, but it’s turned out to be one of those days for us.
“We were alright in the second part of the first-half, but they made things difficult for us during the opening 20 minutes of the game. They pushed on and forced a competitive game which brought out a few bookings and that forced us to stand our ground in that period. After the game settled down, we managed to get on top and we were pretty hopeful at half-time that we’d go on and win the game by making our superiority count, yet a sloppy free-kick was our undoing. It was a poor set-piece to give away, to be honest, as Ryan (Nyambe) shouldn’t have put a foot in, because it was clear that the referee was a bit pernickety over free-kicks, and that put us under pressure to defend our box. Darragh (Lenihan) won the first header, but it came of one of their guy’s back and then Jarrad (Branthwaite) swung a boot at it off-balance, which gave their guy (Yoann Barbet) the space and time to stick it in, but never mind. We have to take it on the chin, as I said and move onto the next game. I expect Adam (Armstrong) to score, but I don’t want to be critical of him because he’s done amazingly well this year, but he’ll be disappointed in himself that he didn’t score today. The team played alright in spells, but we weren’t brilliant. I think we needed a lot more enthusiasm, and a bit more craft and knowledge and yet we have relatively young team out there and it looked at times like we needed a bit more experience and nous in order to pick the right final pass that would have created a goal.
“Lewis’s (Holtby) injury is disappointing for us all. It looks like he’s done his lateral knee ligament again, which he’s previously had an operation on in the summer. It looks to be the same injury, but until it’s scanned, we can’t confirm anything yet, but things are a bit down in the dressing room at the moment. We’re hopeful that the injury isn’t as bad as it was last time, so we can’t confirm if it is a season-ender, but it’s the same area as before, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
