‘Take it personally’ - Tony Mowbray slams two West Brom players after Blackburn defeat
Tony Mowbray didn’t hide his anger towards two of his players after West Bromwich Albion 0-2 Blackburn Rovers.
West Brom’s defeat to Blackburn at The Hawthorns on Wednesday night was avoidable and the players should know better, head coach Tony Mowbray admitted post-match.
Deflated as he entered the press lounge, Mowbray expressed his disappointment at the lack of bravery in attack but he felt the more significant let-down was the nature of the goals conceded – particularly the first. Makhtar Gueye scored a beautiful volley to give Blackburn a 1-0 lead but the striker should never have had the opportunity in the first place as Dominic Hyam was afforded far too much space to assist the goal by heading a deep corner back into the danger area.
Mowbray has laid the blame on his two central defenders - Torbjorn Heggem and Mason Holgate - who he believes should’ve done a far better job of clearing the ball away. “I’m having to say to the defenders that it’s gotta hurt like hell if they lose a goal. It’s such a soft goal, as a corner comes along a big lad at the back heads it across and the centre-forward smashes it in. It’s too easy and it can’t happen,” Mowbray exclaimed.
“I spent my whole career trying to make first contact from set plays and you’re got to make first contact. Even a flick or a glance, you don’t have to bullet header everything to the halfway line, you just can’t let them have a free header that goes back across the six-yard box for the boy to volley in.
“I know what drives me and makes me want to win every game — you have to take it personally. When I played, that’s what football was all about. That first goal would’ve never happened if I was playing. I shouldn’t talk about 30 years ago but you have to take it personally.
“Today, if Bartley had played, they wouldn’t have scored the first goal in my opinion. It doesn’t happen to them (Blackburn), they get touches on it, they head it out, they throw their bodies in the way. Why aren’t we doing that? I need to get to the bottom of that and peel back the layers,” Mowbray added.
Inconsistency costing West Brom
The good news is Albion have an opportunity to bounce back away at Millwall at the weekend. Inconsistency has been a problem all season long with so many draws, hot-and-cold patches and shock defeats here and there, so a win at The Den would help calm the nerves.
Mowbray knows it won’t happen overnight but he’s calling for better consistency and mentality from his players to ensure Albion beat their rivals to a play-off spot come the end of the season. “We haven’t won back-to-back games since September,” Mowbray told BirminghamWorld.
“It feels like when the wheels stop turning in May, you’ve got to be on a good run to find yourself in the top six. When I was at Sunderland, we had to rely on everyone else’s results. If you don’t win games, you won’t get there.
“You’ve got to get to 70 points or maybe more. It doesn’t matter which games you win, we’ve got to find a way from 14 games to win half of them. That’s where we are and we have to accept it. We try to find consistency, we try to find the players who can do the job and I do think we’ve got a good squad,” Mowbray concluded.