TONY Mowbray lamented his side’s build-up play in the 1-1 draw with Shrewsbury Town, feeling Rovers weren’t brave enough on the ball.

And he felt that didn’t give Rovers the chance to carry out their game-plan and bring the best out of Danny Graham on his return to the starting line-up.

Graham was recalled to the side for the first league game since August 12, but withdrawn as part of the triple substitution which was made with 18 minutes to go.

The 32-year-old was given little service during his time on the pitch, and Mowbray said: “We had a specific game-plan, Danny tried to carry that out but the rest of the team didn’t.

“I would have to say that we weren’t brave enough on the ball to get in to the areas that we had asked them to.

“I am sure that Danny Graham would have had a massive impact on the game if we could have done that.

“He didn’t, because the service came from the wrong areas of the pitch.

“I thought the service forward was pretty poor, we didn’t give the strikers much service to work with, and their competitive edge in midfield gave us some problems.

“There are things to work on, but hopefully it will jar a few ready for Tuesday night.”

Mowbray says the game-plan did involve playing slightly more direct, to bypass Shrewsbury’s five-man midfield, but felt his side played too many hopeful balls forward.

He added: “When you are playing against a team like Shrewsbury who are strong and athletic in midfield and break and run it’s difficult to play passes in your own half and play balls along the floor.

“We were going to go that bit longer, past their strength, but it came from the wrong areas of the pitch, too many straight long balls on to their centre halves’ heads, despite the work we had done on the week.

“It’s important that we didn’t lose the match, I would just have liked us to have been better and put a marker down in the ground and say that Blackburn Rovers can go away to an unbeaten team and show that we are going to be strong.  We didn’t, yet Wigan came here and lost 1-0.

“I’ve said to the boys, we will analyse it, put it bed quickly and I’m sure we will be better in the next one.”

One positive for Rovers was that attacker Bradley Dack came through his first full game, and scored his first goal, for the club.

He was recalled to the starting line-up for the first time since August 19 in place of the injured Craig Conway on the left side of midfield.

And Mowbray said: “The key for Bradley is on the back of 90 minutes, can he play another 90 minutes, or 60 minutes.

“The worst case scenario for us is after playing 90 minutes his hamstring goes in the next one.

“It was a difficult afternoon for him, we asked him to play in a position that was slightly foreign to him, and he played on the side of the pitch where their right winger gave us lots of problems which is we made the switch with Bennett, but that didn’t effect much.

“I was pleased to see Bradley score, in training he is probably our best, most technical, finisher with both feet and we have to get him in to those positions in and around the box to show what he can do.”