Tony Mowbray believes Dapo Afolayan can get even better after Blackburn brace

Boss Tony Mowbray challenged “intelligent” Dapo Afolayan to keep improving after his brace helped Blackburn defeat Millwall 3-1.

Afolayan celebrated turning 29 on Friday with his first Blackburn league goals, a deft first-half flick opening the scoring and, after Lyndon Dykes’ penalty – his third goal in two games – drew Millwall level soon after the restart, putting his team back in front with a powerful strike on the hour.

Substitute Andri Gudjohnsen capped off an encouraging performance by slotting home in stoppage time to give Blackburn a second home win of the campaign.

Mowbray believes his match-winning forward can get even better.

He said: “I remember Afolayan playing for Bolton and he was really direct, positive and aggressive. He’s a really bright and intelligent kid who loves football.

“He has an opinion on everything. Overly intelligent sometimes because overly intelligent people have an opinion on everything don’t they? You might not always agree with them but that’s what Dapo is and I like him because of that.

“When I say to him ‘you’re not working hard enough, when you lose it you’ve got to react’, he has an answer and knows what I’m talking about. So I feel as though I can connect with him to make him the best version of himself because he understands.

“I like Dapo and that position (on the left), something we were potentially looking at, I’m more than happy with Dapo. He has got aspects he needs to learn and work on but he’s a very intelligent kid and there’s scope to get better out of him.”

The match marked the first time since 2018 that a member of owners Venky’s attended a game at Ewood. The fans made their feelings clear with Balaji Rao in attendance but Mowbray believes the noise helped his team.

He said: “I’m very aware of the chants and noise. If anything, it created an environment of noise and atmosphere in the stadium, and I think the team bounced off that. I can only personally thank the supporters for the support for the team.

“I think the ownership being here, I don’t think it hurt the team, because of the noise and the atmosphere.”

Millwall boss Alex Neil felt Tairyk Arconte’s disallowed goal with the score 2-1 was ‘soft’, but said Blackburn’s ‘clinical’ finishing was the difference.

He said: “The fourth official told me it (disallowed goal) was for (Liam) Cooper holding which is incredible really because both of them are standing waiting for the ball to come in.

“Naturally you don’t stand with your arms behind your side. I thought it was really soft.

“I thought it was for something in the box beyond the flick so for it to be for Coops holding which is what he said. But you know what it’s like. Moments decide matches and I thought today summed that up.

“I didn’t think there was a dominant team in the game. I didn’t think we were great, I didn’t think they were great, I just thought they were more clinical in moments than what we were during the match and sometimes at this level, that’s the difference.

“Over the last 19-20 months since I’ve been here, we’ve been brilliant in both boxes. Unfortunately today, we weren’t.”