'Pretty dominant' - What Blackburn Rovers boss Tony Mowbray said about defeat to Sheffield United
Tony Mowbray had harsh words for his players in the dressing room after Blackburn Rovers’ defeat to Sheffield United
Blackburn Rovers boss Tony Mowbray bemoaned ‘soft goals’ conceded by his team as Sheffield United came from behind to win 2-1 at Ewood Park.
Mowbray felt his side were ‘pretty dominant’ and that after Kristi Montgomery put them in front after pinching the ball off Sydie Peck, Rovers should have really gone on to sew the game up.
However, Tom Cannon equalised on 35 minutes after being slipped in by Peck and then a memorable night for the midfielder was completed when Peck scored what would turn out to be a brilliant winner just before half time.
Missed chances came back to haunt the home side as the Blades held on to bounce back from Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Norwich at Bramall Lane and move up to ninth in the table with nine points in the bag.
What Tony Mowbray said about Sheffield United’s win over Blackburn Rovers
“Ultimately we lost the game and I think the goals we lost were very soft,” Mowbray told BBC Radio Lancashire Sport. “The first one was a goalkeeper kicked it out of his six-yard box down the middle of our pitch and within a few seconds it was in the back of our net. That's just soft really, you've got to do the basics better.
“I think on the positive side, I'm just saying to somebody else, without seeing any data or any stats, it felt like we were pretty dominant in the game to me. It felt like we were the team that had the most shots, had the most chances, had the most, if we want to talk about data, expected goals, all of that stuff it felt like. Now I don't know what the data is saying but I think there's lots of positives to be looked at and I think we got into some great areas, you know, less than a minute before they scored to equalise.
“We scored a goal marginally offside, Cantwell would have made it 2-0 and it felt like a 2-0 game to me and there would have been no way back I hope for them but, you know, we almost managed to lose a game that we shot ourselves in the foot really because you can spend a lot of time around the opposition box and balls flashing across.
“I'm thinking of Ryan [Alebiosu] going through one-on-one, I'm thinking of Dapo [Afolayan] in the six-yard box with a tap-in that doesn't go in the net. Lots of half little moments like that that have to be goals for us and yet they're not at the moment and you can argue that we didn't have any centre-forwards on the pitch today so they weren't ruthless enough because the centre-forward lives for scoring goals you would hope.
“So I don't want to be too harsh on them, you know, I have been pretty harsh on them in the dressing room there about being soft and you can't give games away like that, that you're so dominant in that you deserve to win, you deserve to score more goals. You can't keep letting two goals in a game because you're not going to win very many if you do that.”