After Rovers were forced to settle for a goalless draw at home to Nigel Pearson’s Bristol City, Blues boss Tony Mowbray reflected on the drab game that was played out on Wednesday night.
“I thought there was a goal coming for us tonight, because there was that much play around their box, but it never did, which is really frustrating. On the balance of play, I don’t think they deserved a point, but that’s football. We weren’t good enough in order to score a goal tonight, despite all the possession and goals are what win you games. The way we played tonight and the amount of possession we keep is how our team play, it’s what we do, so I can’t say it ‘pleased me’ because that’s what we’re asking of them and that’s the norm, yet we didn’t manage to put the ball in their net which is what you need to do to make it all worthwhile. There were a lot of positives in our build-up play and control of the game was we knew where we were going with the ball and the rotations in our team allow us to play as we do, but ultimately you need an individual to bend one into the top corner, or whack one into the bottom corner or have a shot that ricochets off someone and goes in, but we didn’t do that tonight.
“I thought we were missing that bit of magic from someone. Adam (Armstrong) has done it for most of the season, and yet tonight he played against a pretty deep defensive line which limited the spaces he could run into. He almost got away once or twice in the first-half, but it wasn’t quite what we wanted and although he had a few half-chances, I don’t remember him having a real clear-cut chance. We had a few of those throughout the team, however, (Joe) Rankin-Costello had one towards the end of the first-half where he probably should have shot across the face of goal rather than aiming at the near-post and Lewis Holtby also had one in the second-half, where, if he also went across the goalie and the face of goal, I believe he would have scored, but he also opted to go near-post. (Joe) Rothwell had some amazing individual runs and moves during the first-half, but we’re all ultimately left frustrated because it was a game we all felt that we dominated and should have won, but we didn’t and maybe that’s the way things are going for us at the moment? The positive is that they didn’t manage to nick a scrappy goal to win it 1-0 which would have changed the mood of this interview completely. We just have to keep working hard and hope that we can find a way to score more.
“I look forward to the day the supporters are allowed back into the stadium so that the players can react off the intensity from the terraces, who suck the ball into the net. Their presence will also allow the players to go that extra inch in order to force the ball over the line. I think the supporters make a big difference to how we play here at Ewood Park. I believe that with all of that possession that we had around their box, the fans would have ‘demanded a goal’ AlAand although I know we’re all ‘demanding a goal’, sometimes the noise and the roar from the crowd whether it’s impetus for our players or a negative vibe on their defenders, it creates a different atmosphere. I’m not saying our players are trying not to score a goal, but the fans make a huge difference. Liverpool are the best example of that. There’s no way that Liverpool would have lost six games in a row, at Anfield this season, if the crowd was there. I know we’re on a poor home run with only one win in our last seven at home, but things don’t feel normal. In my years at this club the fans at Ewood have played a huge part in maintaining our solid home record, which has been good over recent years, yet when you hear the stat that there’s been 20% more away wins than ever in the history of football, it suggests how harder it has become to win more consistently at home.
“Although we made six changes to the starting-eleven, I thought the team began to look a bit leggy after an hour, which is what can happen when you bring in players who haven’t played in a while. I thought the team performed alright, tonight and I’ve just told them that in the dressing room. I wasn’t in there throwing things around and shouting at them. They’ve been working extremely hard over the past few weeks and they feel a little hard done by, because they’re thinking along the lines of ‘what more do we have to do in order to score and win a game?’. It’s also a question of finding a balance between how many men you commit into the box in order to create chances, but we’ll review and analyse the game tomorrow and we’ll see how we react on Saturday. It’s quite funny, because we’ve had games where we’ve won after playing nowhere near as well as we did tonight and although we’ve also lost games in that manner, it’s quite baffling how we’ve come away from tonight with only one point, but I suppose Bristol City also got the point they came for.
“I thought there would have been a goal in Lewis (Holtby) given the way he was playing, even though I was thinking about bringing him off given he’d only just returned from an injury. I told Adam beforehand that he was only going to get an hour of football and he told me he felt leggy by then, so that wasn’t even a decision. It was a gamble to even play him, but it became a case of how to react to his fatigued body. It was a similar case with Bradley (Dack) when he came back because, when the body starts to get tired, it becomes more vulnerable and I thought that it was best to take him off after an hour, even though he was supposedly ‘our best option at trying to score’. Although I understand that view which the fans may take, the welfare of the player takes priority in my opinion. Tyrhys (Dolan) has done really well for this club, so we gave him the opportunity to try and impact the game and with the amount of balls that we were getting into the box, we thought Sam (Gallagher) would use his physicality to sneak in and score with a header, but it wasn’t to be. I think John Buckley is a beautiful footballer, as he’s able to use his physique and his hips to dance around the box and I thought those changes, along with the addition of (Tom) Trybull gave the team a bit more belief, energy and a spark to it, but it was a shame that we didn’t manage a goal from all the positives we displayed.”
