• Blackburn manager claims his players lack mental toughness
• ‘Players are putting themselves up for being dropped’
Sam Allardyce launched a stinging attack on his Blackburn Rovers players after their “pathetic” second-half performance at Chelsea, claiming they lack the necessary mental toughness to pick up points away from Ewood Park and warning them that they are risking their future involvement in the first team.
The Lancashire club slipped to their ninth successive away defeat in the Premier League after shipping four goals in 16 shambolic second-half minutes. They have conceded 30 times in that sequence stretching back to mid-March, mustering only four goals in response, with Allardyce’s patience finally appearing to snap after the latest humiliation at Stamford Bridge.
“At the moment we’re simply not good enough, and that’s the bottom line,” he said. “In the Premiership the mental side is even more important than the ability side. You can only play in this league if you have that mental toughness and resilience. Ability comes after that. But, at the moment, the mental resilience is not there, and the physical challenge to the opposition is not there either.
“It’s not about the getting beat, it’s the way we are getting beat that concerns me most. If we’d have stuck to our guns and perhaps come off having lost this game 1-0, or if they scored at the end for 2-0, then you’ve got something to work on. But I’m back to square one again.
“They have to realise things are going to have to stop because they are going to lose their place in the team if they are not careful. They are putting themselves up for being dropped. We want them all saying: ‘You can’t drop me, I’ve got the shirt, someone else is going to have to take it off me, you have to fight for it.’ But it’s not difficult to change the team at the moment.”Rovers were denied a quartet of key players in west London, with David Dunn and Christopher Samba succumbing to a virus, Pascal Chimbonda injured and Franco di Santo ineligible against his parent club. Yet, despite Gael Givet putting through his own goal midway through the first period, Allardyce had not envisaged the second-half capitulation and will be concerned given their next away fixture is at Old Trafford on Saturday. “I never saw that coming,” he added. “What looked as if it was working well tactically in the first half completely went out of the window in the second half. I can’t understand the mentality of my players losing what I asked them to do.
“They’re listening because you saw what happened in the first half. What they are deciding when the game goes is: ‘We are 2-0 down, let’s forget about that and let’s go and try and score three.’ Well that’s a bit naive to say the least, at Stamford Bridge, isn’t it? Scoring one’s hard enough here. It was the old Jekyll and Hyde job We just opened ourselves up again and said: ‘Score as many as you want.’ We’ve got Manchester United away next week. I’m going to try to play with 13 there.”
Blackburn’s last nine Premier League away games
14 March Arsenal 0-4
11 April Liverpool 0-4
18 April Stoke City 0-1
2 May Manchester City 1-3
17 May Chelsea 0-2
22 August Sunderland 1-2
20 September Everton 0-3
4 October Arsenal 2-6
24 October Chelsea 0-5
31 October Manchester United
Blackburn RoversSam AllardycePremier LeagueDominic Fifieldguardian.co.uk
