Following Rovers’ 1-1 draw at home to bottom of the league Plymouth Argyle, Rovers’ manager Tony Mowbray displayed his thoughts on the performance to the club’s media team as he was satisfied with the number of chances his side created as well as the way they played overall.
“We created a lot of chances and I’m wondering how we haven’t won that game. We had a lot of chances and shots at their goal as we kept putting the pressure on, but we lacked a bit of guile, a bit of craft, a bit of composure in the box to pick out the right pass or to find the right finish and yet it was more like how I want the team to play, more on the front foot with more pressure on the opposition. I took a chance today playing Ryan (Nyambe) at centre-half but he does give us some mobility and speed, yet it was a bit hairy at times, he hasn’t got the composure and the understanding of the position and yet I think he does use his mobility and speed to take the team 20 yards higher up the pitch than where we were at the weekend.
“It’s frustrating as on the balance of play, this was a game that we should have won, but as the players have been saying, there are a lot of games still to play, a lot of time for us to try and find some consistency, find some ruthlessness and finish these teams off and I’m sure that’ll come. I’m sure there will be a spell where we win a lot of games on the bounce which would really catapult our position up the league table; that being said our positon at the moment is still reasonably healthy, with our game in hand, we can definitely be in the top six, waiting to pounce in the second half of the season.
“We’re lacking a bit of know-how and a bit of composure at the moment. The ball probably broke to the wrong players at times. This is football and it’s all about the quality in the final third. You watch the Premier League and the Champions League and the best players can always pick out the right pass and are clinical and that’s what we’re lacking tonight, that clinical finishing in the box. It’ll come, we’ve just got to keep working on it, the team is currently a work in progress and there were enough positives tonight to show everybody that we can win games at home.
“I’ve been pretty angry with the players over the past three or four weeks but I don’t think tonight was a time to be overly angry with them and question aspects of their performance. The reality was, was that we gave it a real good shot, we were very dominant over the course of the game and yet we couldn’t get the winning goal. I think we applied enough pressure to make me think that we were going to score, even right at the death there, I don’t even think the referee played the four minutes he allocated, but we had some unbelievable chances even in stoppage time and yet we gambled a little bit which saw them break away once or twice but it showed me that we were trying to win the game. There will be plenty of games that we win if we keep playing at that tempo and intensity and if we keep creating that many chances.
“Ben (Gladwin) was quite upset in the dressing room to be honest; it was an opportunity for him as he hasn’t played much football for us. It was a great chance, I asked him to go on and make the difference. I played him in the central area and he tried to be precise with the finish and it ricocheted over the bar. We have to take the result on the chin; it was a night where we should have got all three points against a team who have been struggling, yet we do know that there are no easy games, they almost beat Shrewsbury at the weekend and that shows that there are no mugs in this division, everybody works hard, everybody’s very competitive, everybody’s strong, so we have to accept the point and move on.”
