After Rovers’ 1-0 win over Gillingham, Tony Mowbray spoke with the clubs’ media team in regards to his thoughts on the game and how he believed Rovers performed in their second successive home game of the week.
“I thought we were good in the first half again, we probably deserved more than the one goal. I stand here relieved that we’ve got the three points, Gillingham had a 0-0 with Scunthorpe on Tuesday which showed how resilient and strong they can be defensively and then they had a go at the end, they pushed everybody forwards and we had to play with our backs to the wall for a bit. It was frustrating that we didn’t manage to score a second goal, we hit the woodwork twice and I think a second goal would have knocked the stuffing out of them and killed the game, against a side who are struggling at the wrong end of the table. The second goal didn’t come however and we had to hang on, which we did as David (Raya) made a great save at the end.
“We need to put the points in the bag and move on, we should try and take some lessons in not becoming the team who are hanging onto a one goal lead, let us see if we can finish games off. I’m happy with the three points and now – bar the Checkatrade Trophy game on Tuesday night – we’ve got an international break coming up, so we’ll get ready to go again in the league after the break.
“The final few minutes were frustrating; I think we have a slight lack of physicality in our side in comparison to other teams, we’ve only got Charlie Mulgrew and Paul Downing who have some sort of physicality. When you look around the team, Paul Caddis for example isn’t a monster of a lad, whilst the central midfield players can be warriors for us however they’re not big human beings and at times I think set-pieces against us have caused us a bit of anxiety and yet we had a clean sheet today and a clean sheet on Tuesday so there’s not a lot I can moan about other than it’s something to try and address as we move forward.”
The manager was asked whether the target of 6 points from a possible 6 available that he set out at the start of the week was satisfactory following his disappointment at the performance against Shrewsbury Town, seven days ago.
“Yeah, I don’t think we’ve won back-to-back home games for a while, I think at the end of last season, the Derby and Wigan games were when we did it, we’re trying to get rid of this perception of there being a hoodoo at home where people believe that we find it difficult to play at home. A second, third and potential fourth goal would have been nice in order to have a convincing win but we’ll take the three points. I know that we’ll be better over a longer period of time moving forwards. I thought we were good for 45 minutes today, as we were on Tuesday but we have to try and keep that going for longer and see if we can finish games off earlier.
“The clean sheets have got us 6 points this week. I’m pleased for Paul Downing who has come in and has played three games and in the process has picked up three clean sheets. He’s still got things that he needs to develop and learn but he’s doing exceptionally well alongside Charlie. My focus is now on the next hurdle which is what I keep saying to the lads, we need to get over the next oncoming hurdle which are the cup game in mid-week and Oldham away after the break, and then we can keep moving on.
“It’s good to see the relief on Dom’s (Samuel) face when he broke his scoring duck after four or five games. If it had gone on too long, he would have begun to snatch at every chance he would have got. (Marcus) Antonsson scored a few over the past three or four games, Dominic is back on the score sheet, Bradley (Dack) scored last Saturday so we need to get Danny Graham on the pitch and scoring on a regular basis as well and that’s what the team needs, we need people who can put the ball into the back of the net and get us three points which allows us to keep accumulating goals and points.
“Being 6th in the table is the least of what we would have hoped for or expected, we need to be towards the top end of the table, we’re a game behind and we had a pretty poor start where we lost our first two games and taking them out of the equation, I’m sure over the last six or seven games, we’d be towards the top of the division. We have to keep going, keep grinding results out, hopefully win some games where all the chances go in and we feel as if we can beat teams heavily, but there are going to be games where we will have to grind them out and we managed to do that today.”
