Prior to Rovers’ first home game following October’s international break, Tony Mowbray sat down with the club’s media team to discuss his thoughts on tonight’s opposition, Plymouth Argyle as well as how he wanted the team to respond after losing out to a late Oldham Athletic goal on Saturday.
“It’s a game we’re looking forward to; let’s see whether we can put it right after Saturday. They’re all tough games in this league, Plymouth have had a difficult start to the season, but when you analyse their results, they are all tight matches; they seem to be losing 2-1 or 1-0 with the odd draw, so they’re all tight games, I don’t see many 5-0 defeats in there, so we’re expecting a really tough game but we have to try and get back to winning ways as quickly as we can.
“A lot of the games in this league are tight, there aren’t many teams who are running away with it, scoring lots and lots of goals, there doesn’t seem to be any Man City’s in League One who can win by seven goals, but I think it’s the attritional nature of the league, everybody can fight and tackle and make life difficult which makes it harder to totally dominate a game. We scored 4 against MK Dons, but we only got two in the last 5 minutes, which shows that teams struggle to run away with games. I think the nature of all the games in the division makes them tight ones and you’re just hoping that you have enough quality in your side to make a difference. It unfortunately didn’t make a difference at the weekend, but let’s see what Tuesday night brings.
“We know that it’s a big game for every team that plays us, they’ve seen the heightened expectations of the crowd, their players are ready for the match, I’ve watched two or three games that some teams have played before facing us and I don’t see the same intensity in those games that I see when they face us, which we have to live with. I’ve told the players that they have to be ready for every single game and the first two games (of the season), really highlighted how teams were going to approach us. We had some hard lessons in the first couple of games, but then we managed to recover and pick up some points, but we’ve had some disappointment along the way with Wimbledon and now with Oldham, so you hope that we acclimatise and find some consistency as we go along that can get us over the line in tight games, but there will be spells now and then that we don’t see coming and we have to be mentally ready for games that don’t go our way. Let’s see if we can react on Tuesday and follow the reaction up with a string of victories.
“In this league, more than half the battle is a mental one. We have to remain positive, the players have to keep believing, we have to get on the front foot and try and force the game. I’ve talked after games about the balance of our team not being quite right; I’ve always coached teams who are aggressive and play high up the pitch and yet the personnel we’ve got fit and available are dictating how we play at the moment, as we’re a little bit deeper and letting the opposition have more of the ball than I’d like, but we can only play with the players’ we’ve got so we have to try and find a way to win.”
The manager was asked whether the forward players were able to focus some of their training schedule, in the short space of time between Saturday and Tuesday, on being able to finish more accurately as well as concentrating on general aspect of forward play, such as running in behind.
“We had a full day yesterday, going through the clips of Saturday’s game, we were stimulating their brains with brighter and sharper movements and we hope that they pick it up as we go along. It’s not something we can work on in training, you need to show it to them and hope they take it in. I’ve said to the whole team that ‘the days we don’t win matches, makes it easy for the players who haven’t been playing, to knock on my door and ask whether they’re ever going to get a chance.’
“To stay in the team, you’ve got to keep producing and keep scoring goals. You’ve got to find a level of performance that doesn’t make me think about changing you for someone else. At this moment in time, after the weekend, I think there are places up for grabs for players to get an opportunity to stake their claim in the first team.
“Saturday’s result provided more questions than answers for me. You always choose the team that you think is going to win, you analyse the opposition and see how they’re playing; I knew Oldham were confident, they were playing some good football and we tried to nullify their threats, which I think we did in the first half. We made the changes to try and go more attacking and ultimately that left up more exposed at the back, which cost us. I was under the belief that we could go to Oldham and win comfortably, which is why as a manager, you make positive changes to try and win the game, but unfortunately the decision backfired and we have to put it behind us.
“My approach as a manager is to try and win the game and not settle for a draw; which is why I’m frustrated at the moment because I don’t think we have the personnel to do that. As we’re a bit vulnerable in the backline, we can’t afford to play the high pressing, attacking style I’d like to. With Lenihan’s injury, we lose his athleticism and speed in the backline; we haven’t got that speed in the back line yet. Ryan Nyambe has been an option that I could have put in at right-back, but he’s been injured as well. We’ll have to address it in the future in order to change our style of play from a counter-attacking side, to a more dominant, attacking side.
“We had two clean sheets at home before the break; the defence has been positive and our ‘goals against’ column is looking very healthy, but with the defenders we have, we can’t afford to play the style that allows us to dominate games. My conundrum is either, playing a free-flowing attacking game, where we’re more likely to concede or to play a little bit deeper, allowing the opposition possession of the ball and hitting them on the break.
“Corry Evans picked up an ankle injury during the international break, he trained on Thursday and didn’t survive the session and we gave him a few days off. I plan that he’s going to be able to train this Thursday and if he come through training then he’ll be available on Saturday. Paul Downing was training with the physio department and he won’t be far away, and like Evans I presume he’ll be back on Thursday.
“There are no fresh injury concerns; I believe it’ll pretty much be the same players who were at Oldham. We’ll think about freshening it up, we’ll have a look at them in training today. We’ve started studying Plymouth, what problems they’ll give us and how they’ll set up. They’ve got some decent footballers, but we have to make sure we come out on the right end of the result.”
