Blackburn Rovers manager Tony Mowbray has offered no excuses for the defeat to Barnsley on Saturday.
Hosting the side at Ewood Park for the game, a poor performance saw Blackburn relinquish two goals in the opening ten minutes of the match and even with greater chances overall and more possession, the side couldn’t mount a comeback.
Speaking to Rovers.co.uk Mowbray knew he could offer no excuses for such a poor start to the game and also he could credit the side ‘huffing and puffing’ and putting the effort in to try and get back into the match, ultimately when chances came we lacked the composure to truly threaten them or their goalkeeper.
‘The dressing room is a very quiet after that trying to put the thoughts together of what actually happened today. We had talked long and hard about how Barnsley play, they are very much a counter-attacking team, youthful, full of energy breaking away. So to be two goals down after less than ten minutes gave us a very difficult conundrum to try and deal with really because they are a huge threat on the break.’
Mowbray went on to say that there were no excuses and he wasn’t going to try and make any, the players simply have to be better in their performance levels and in how they start matches as you can’t expect to win when you’re two down inside of ten minutes.
‘It is not a place for me to stand and make excuses, we lost a goal from a set-play in the first few minutes and they followed it up pretty quickly with a 25-yarder in off the bar. So we had to go chasing the game, we had to try and make the game long and spread out and hope we got the next goal, try and make it more end to end. But we lost our composure, we went too direct. We had half opportunities but nothing really happened, we kept hitting bodies and it didn’t go in.’
He added.
‘It looked as if it wasn’t going to be our day, we huffed and puffed but never got there. Then when you come in and see the results from the other sides it becomes more and more pertinent. It has obviously been a black day for us, a difficult day for everybody really. But what else do you do but stick together and prepare for the next game. There is plenty of things that weren’t good today, we have to show the passion, we’ve got five more games to go and we’ve got to win as many as possible.’
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