After Rovers fell to a frustrating 3-0 away defeat against Plymouth Argyle, Jon Dahl Tomasson discussed the poor afternoon in Devon, with RoversTV.
“We’re extremely disappointed with the result. I think the result isn’t a fair reflection of the performance. Normally, with all of those chances that we created, we shouldn’t lose the game and I was thinking in the 75th minute, ‘how are we behind?!’ Football is about scoring goals and we had the first chances of the game, but we didn’t take them. They then had a shot that went in via a deflection and when we had a shot that got deflected, it came back off the bar, so it’s really ‘one of those days’. Of course, we made a mistake with the second and third goals, but we’re disappointed not to score. On the ball, coming into the final third, we were very good, but it sounds crazy to say that after a 3-0 defeat.
“Ryan’s (Hedges) chance was game changing. Last week he won the game for us away at Watford, but today he’s missed a great chance to give us to lead. He knows that, and he’s disappointed with himself. We had a few more moments, to be honest. Firstly, we need to create the chances. Are we doing that? Yes, we’re creating a lot. Are we scoring? No. We need to be more clinical. We need to improve.
“You can see that the connection between players could be better. We’re working a lot on that, but at the end of the day, you need to be clinical. It’s not that easy to put the ball in the net. The goals we conceded today were sloppy and very unnecessary. Normally, when you concede goals, they’re off the back of mistakes – that’s football. Normally, when a striker misses a chance, you don’t concede a goal, but today, we lost an unnecessary second goal which gave them an easy tap-in and the third goal was also disappointing. When that happens, you know that you’ve made a couple of mistakes as a team.
“It’s been a good week for the club, but I hate losing. I hate losing in any circumstances, but even more so when I believe we should have won. It’s been a challenging week, which we mustn’t forget. We had a great win at Watford, the record-breaking victory against Harrogate Town, but then we’ve come here today knowing we’re playing a side who are very strong at home, having won 20 of their 23 home games, last season. We knew it would be a difficult game, but when you create so many chances and don’t take them, we end up finishing the week disappointed.
“Dom (Hyam) wasn’t feeling well at half-time. I’m not sure why, but he told me during the first-half that he felt unwell. It’s been a very busy week. We’ve travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in the bus with the air condition on, so that could be why, but I’m not sure.”
The boss soon turned his attentions to Rovers’ late dealings, ahead of the transfer window’s closure, on Friday, which saw the Blues loan in defender James Hill and purchase attacker, Semir Telalović.
“I’ve said it many times, that I thought we needed help with more bodies through the door. I think our CEO, Steve (Waggott) said that we needed experience, which was one of the assets we needed. We needed goals and to bolster the squad as a whole. It’s good that we got a couple of bodies in. They’re young players, which is good, as I like to develop young players, but we didn’t succeed in bringing in any experience, which is an important factor when you’re playing in such a competitively tough league. Hopefully, we’ve managed to secure some goals with the addition of Semir, but we’ll have to wait and see. We’re disappointed to lose John (Buckley) as he’s a good player, and the squad is stretched, but as I understand it, we needed to balance the books.
“I thought we’d get one more player in, to replace John. It didn’t happen. The reasons behind that, I don’t know, but we all know that we need some depth in some positions to compete in this tough league.
“The recruitment team have worked on Semir for a long time. He’s a player who’s a late developer and one who has scored a lot of goals, but he’s not used to the Championship. He’s a player who wants to improve and hopefully, we can do that. We have to wait and see whether he can come straight into the team. Playing in the Championship is different to where he’s played previously. Today, young Tom (Bloxham) got his first minutes in the Championship, and he found out how tough the league is. Time will tell, but we will work hard to help Semir, as will the rest of the team who I know are also going to work hard over the break and will continue to work hard across the season.
“We’re disappointed that we now have an international break. We, as staff and players, along with the fans, hate losing. There were a lot of fans who made the long journey down today and I’m disappointed that we couldn’t reward their efforts with at least a point after creating so many chances. The fans are like us, we all want to see the ball flying into the net. We will be disappointed for the first couple of days in this international break, but then we will work hard to try and improve and develop this young and interesting team.”
