Blackburn Rovers boss Jon Dahl Tomasson admits it hurt to lose in the 91st minute against Sunderland, as his side suffered their fourth defeat in six Championship games. Sunderland came from behind to win at the Stadium of Light against third-placed Rovers, with Ross Stewart scoring from the penalty to spot to make amends for his earlier unfortunate own-goal before Ellis Simms came off the bench to hit the winner in injury-time and give head coach Tony Mowbray victory against his old club.
Former Newcastle United forward Tomasson felt there was a foul in the build-up to Simms' goal, which came when Sunderland put the ball into the box from a late free-kick, but says his team should still have defended the set-piece better. "We’re disappointed, every time we concede a goal or lose a game we're disappointed," said Tomasson.
"Of course we want to do better but we need to learn from those situations and conceding a goal that late in a game to lose, it hurts of course. It wasn't a brilliant game, we didn't play well.
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"It's very disappointing conceding a goal that late, it shouldn't happen, but at the end of the day that's football. We have to be better in those situations and we need to cope with the second phase.
"It was a free kick, but should have dealt with that better. Even though it was a free kick [that came] in our box, we shouldn't have conceded.
"When you have a game that's very close, it was a very close, you should try and bring something back. We didn't do that."
With the game still at 1-1, Tomasson made a double substitution with a little over ten minutes still to play as the experienced duo of Bradley Dack and Sam Gallagher went off, to be replaced by George Hirst and Lewis Travis. Tomasson said he made the changes because Blackburn face three games in the space of a week, with the trip to Sunderland followed by back-to-back home games against Middlesbrough on Thursday night and then Cardiff City on New Year's Day.
He said of the substitutions: "I thought, if you look at the picture of the game, we were the better team at that time, and also before, but it's also players who weren't able to play 90 minutes three games in a row and when we don't have 30 players at the same level you need to make your decisions regarding those things. We have not that big a squad, and having three games in a week in a short period we have some players who can't play three games of 90 minutes.
"We need to look that we have three games in seven days with a very inexperienced squad and some players who aren’t used to playing 90 minutes. If you look at the situation after the changes, it should have been a draw."
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