Allardyce: Defeat Hard To Accept

Blackburn Rovers manager Sam Allardyce discusses his thoughts on our defeat at Everton on Saturday with Sky Sports.

Rovers twice fought back from being a goal behind with superb goals from Steven N'Zonzi and Jason Roberts at Goodison Park, however, it was Tim Cahill's 90th minute winner that saw Everton through to a 3-2 win. Allardyce was disappointed with the defending that allowed Everton to win and felt this is what let us down.

Allardyce told Sky Sports: "To have scored two outstanding goals in a game at Ewood, it's very difficult to accept defeat in the final minute.

"For the first time in a very long time our defending has let us down, which is very unusual, we're normally very solid and sound defensively.

"But today because we've switched off on all three occasions - they could have been avoided.

"Rather than Everton's good play it's our bad defending and rather than Everton's bad defending it's our great play in terms of the goals we scored and it's a great shame that they mean nothing for us.

"Great fight back from the players, though, it's a great spirit that we have and we played against a very, very good team who are on a great run at the moment."

Big Sam believes that Mikel Arteta (who opened the scoring for Everton) should have later been sent off after a confrontation with Morten Gamst Pedersen (who will decide his Rovers future in the coming days), which saw both players pick up yellow cards. However, the Rovers manager believes that under the letter of the law the Everton midfielder should have gone, yet he wasn't blaming this decision (or lack of) for our defeat, or blaming it on the referee.

He added: "I don't like seeing any team going down to ten men but the letter of the law says if you're putting hands in people's faces and poking them in the eye, then that's a sending off.

"That would have made a big difference because that's a big decision in the game.

"Having said that, it's not the fault of the referee who has lost us the game today, it's the fault of our own defending in the end."

Allowing the early goal was always going to make our task all the more difficult, however, to lose it in injury-time after twice coming back from behind (with two superb goals as well) is tough to swallow.




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