Every word John Eustace said on Blackburn Rovers form, clean sheets and defending
John Eustace insists Blackburn Rovers can’t continue with a ‘hard luck’ story if they want to maintain their push for the Championship’s top-six.
Tuesday night’s 2-1 defeat at Queens Park Rangers was the latest tight match that Rovers have been on the wrong side of. They have lost seven of their last 11 outings in the league; six of those by a one-goal margin.
It would be fair to suggest they have deserved more points in that run but an inability to grind out points has left their head coach frustrated. He was particularly angry with their latest costly concession and reiterated they must improve to stay where they are in the division.
“You can't look backwards. We're still in a good position,” Eustace told The Lancashire Telegraph.
“We've got to learn quickly from our individual errors and we've got to learn how to keep the ball out of the net again.
“The goal they actually scored, I thought it was a little bit against them in a play. You know, we'd seen that bit of pressure.
“I think I'm just disappointed with the manner we've conceded that second goal. We're playing against good championship teams week in, week out. And if we want to win games or pick up points, we need to be better than what we have done today.
“As I say, if we want any aspirations of pushing up the league and staying in where we are, we need to be better. We don't want to accept okay, we don't want to accept, we should have got something out of the game.
“We need to play home and away, whoever we play against, and make sure we pick up points. Even if we're not playing at our best, we keep clean sheets and come away with more points than we have of late.”
Eustace conceded that Rovers were good enough to take a draw on their first-half showing but having improved after the break and drawn level, a 1-1 draw would have been a positive result.
He once again felt that a lack of ruthlessness in both boxes decided an otherwise tight Championship game, yet again.
“I don’t think it would have been a fair result, if I'm going to be honest,” he said on whether they would’ve taken a draw.
“But, we would have taken a 1-1, of course, after a fantastic win at the weekend. And then it leaves us in good shape then going into the Albion game for our next league game.
“But again, another disappointing result. We don’t want to be a team that keeps saying we deserve more points. We need to make sure we’re getting them and putting our bodies on the line to do that.
“I thought we defended the box well, at times. They had pressure and, you know, a great save from Pearsy just before half-time.
“And apart from that, nothing really, they didn’t cause us any problems. But they had pressure, which you're going to get here. And just defending that second phase, the ball's obviously gone nearly out of play and they've reacted quicker than us.
“We need to put bodies on the line to make sure that ball doesn't go in the net. We want to come and play in real tight games and stay in the games and get points.
“In these last 15 games, we've got to defend the box better than we did today. And we've got to be more clinical in that final third because, again, we still had two or three great chances.”
