Sky Bet Championship: Blackburn boss Gary Bowyer hails his side
Monday 27 October 2014 10:09, UK
Blackburn boss Gary Bowyer felt his side's ruthless display at the City Ground had been coming - but he has told his players that they must keep getting better after their impressive 3-1 win at Nottingham Forest.
Three goals in the space of 11 second-half minutes helped Rovers cancel out Matty Fryatt's opening goal for the home side and romp away with all three points.
Forest fan Alex Baptiste fired the visitors level, before substitute Rudy Gestede and Jordan Rhodes both scored in the space of two minutes to put the game out of Forest's reach.
Stuart Pearce's side had not lost at home this season, but the City Ground was left shellshocked by the performance from the home side and the result, as they suffered a seventh Championship game without a win and dropped out of the play-off places.
"If you had seen us this season, we have put performances like that in before this season, Huddersfield at home, Watford at home - we have shown that we can create chances," said Rovers boss Bowyer.
"We have ability in the dressing room and belief and that was shown. We have the ability to create chances and score goals.
"Our local media did some research on how many chances we create in games and it turned out that we had been creating something like 20 chances a game, on average.
"There is a lot of improvement needed for us to keep getting better. But we do have belief and we do have ability.
"Of course it is important for us to get on a run now. But if you look at the Championship there are probably 15 teams who could break into the play-off places with a couple of wins.
"It is about finishing the season strong and we still have 30 odd games to go, so we are not getting carried away."
Pearce simply admitted that his side had not been good enough to deserve anything but a defeat.
"We were reasonably pleased in the first half, coming in ahead," he said. "We felt we could get on top of them in the second half; we felt we could get a second goal.
"But we did not take the game by the scruff of the neck and the more Blackburn got on top of us, the more we did not show the leadership required to stem the flow.
"We were unfortunate at 1-1, not to get back in the game, with Britt Assombalonga's effort and Henri Lansbury's chances. But it was a disappointing performance from us and credit to Blackburn, because they deserved that win on the back of their second-half performance.
"It was a disappointing afternoon and I am not going to gloss over that.
"We as a group and as coaching staff, we have to galvanise ourselves and make sure that we work hard, from Monday morning, to make sure we deliver a performance next weekend."
