After poor performances and results, the response is everything in football but for Bristol Rovers, their hopes of bouncing back accordingly seven days' on from the drubbing at Morecambe took less than two minutes to be dented.
MK Dons claimed a 2-0 win at the Mem on Saturday in a game bookended by goals for the visitors. The Mem was vibrant and doing its bit to draw a response from Joey Barton's players, but it took little more than 90 seconds for the mood to change.
Mo Eisa won and scored a chap penalty to put the Gas on the back foot again and for all their efforts to battle back, patiently trying to craft attacks, they finished with nothing to show for it as Max Dean clinched the victory in the final minute of the 90.
Adversity like that early goal has so often been overcome by the Gas, but at this point, they are not the force we know they can be. Confidence has been affected, crucial players are out injured and things aren't flowing the way they typically do.
The Gas have fallen to 13th in League One as a result, leaving Barton with plenty to consider.
A nightmare start and a predictable finish
Barton's post-match press conference began with a facetious question whether any of the assembled journos had flattened a cat en route to the Mem on Saturday, with the Gas out of form and lacking the rub of the green in recent weeks.
After a shocking scoreline like the drubbing at Morecambe, what matters most is the response. After a week of planning, preparing and grafting at The Quarters, though, that hard work went out the window with the early concession of a penalty by Jarell Quansah.
The Liverpool loanee again was impressive for long periods in his second appearance in blue and white, but he showed a touch of naivety to snap at a loose ball in the area after only about 90 seconds and Eisa gleefully took the contact before stepping up and converting from 12 yards.
Against a team near the bottom end of the table that has been galvanised by a new manager, the optimal situation is to not give them anything to hold onto, but MK held onto it very well. They were rigid in their shape and had willing runners on the counter-attack to keep the Gas defence honest.
But by and large, Rovers had the game under control despite trailing. The challenge for them was to break down a deep-set defence amid an understandable shortage of confidence after a pair of poor defeats.
For all their possession, the afternoon was trending one way for Rovers. They never quite had the guile nor the battering ram to force an equaliser. The likelier scenario was a breakaway goal for an MK team that had offered very little in the second period, and it played out that way. Eisa was the pantomime villain for his Bristol City connections as well as baiting the crowd after opening the scoring, but he kept a cool head in the 90th minute to draw in the last defender and square the ball for Dean to wrap up the victory.
It feels like Rovers are caught in a cycle. They keep giving away the first goal and that means games are being played on their opponents' terms. No matter how good the attack is, it is not feasible to win games often from that position.
Barton and his players need to break that cycle.
A team-wide malaise
The defensive side of the team, rightly, has taken a fair bit of stick in recent weeks and months; the Gas have shipped too many goals (52 in 29 games) and it has placed a huge strain on the match-winners at the other end of the pitch to do the heavy lifting.
But this is now a malaise that has set in across the pitch; the defence is still conceding too freely, experienced midfielders Paul Coutts and Sam Finley have hit a dip in form and now the attack has been faced with roadblocks. Rovers have not scored a meaningful goal in the past three games, with only Aaron Collins' consolation in the 5-1 defeat at Morecambe last week to show for 270 minutes of effort.
Collins continues to pose a he delivered a trio of good crosses in this game which were pretty much the best moments the Gas were able to muster, but a lack of fluidity across the pitch has led to the top scorer getting few chances to threaten in dangerous areas.
Josh Coburn, meanwhile, had perhaps his toughest game in a Rovers shirt so far. A combination of a lack of quality service and another referee that allowed too much pushing and pulling from centre-backs up against the number 40 made life difficult, but Coburn did not make much of the bits and bobs that came his way either and this rarely ineffective performance was summed up by the fact he was subbed off in the closing stages with the Gas chasing a leveller.
That is all part of the learning curve for the big lad, but it is clear the Gas are not functioning correctly across the pitch. Once again, they won the possession battle, but they created little with it. You then get into a horrible situation where the attack is not confident the defence can keep goals out and the defence is not confident that the attack can score regularly – harking back to that awful 2020/21 season.
To be clear, this team is nothing like that one and with 17 games to play, they are just one point behind the total that side amassed across 46 League One games. Those were season-long flaws the last time the Gas were in this division where as this feels like a midseason blip.
Having seen what his team can do in the back end of 2022, Barton is justifiably confident that is the case, although he has the tricky job of revitalising a team that is short of its best across the park.
'If we're not careful...'
"We’ve got to stick together and keep scrapping away because if we’re not careful, we could get drawn into a fight we don’t want to be involved in," Barton said in his post-match press conference, referencing the stall the Gas have suffered in recent weeks that has seen them slip into the bottom half of the table.
The primary aim this season was survival and the Gas have gone a long way to achieving third-tier status for next season, but the mission has not been accomplished yet.
With 37 points from 29 games, this is not the time for the Gas to be looking over their shoulder, but it is not uncommon for teams to sink dramatically from midtable in the closing stages of the season and an equation like that is not yet impossible for Rovers.
A 46-game season is a gruelling slog and blips and slumps are inevitable for a club like Rovers at this level, but Barton is right to be wary. A three-game losing streak alone is not problematic in the context of the good work the Gas did ahead of Christmas and it would take a total capitulation to be dragged into a dogfight, but if their problems continue to snowball things will quickly feel uncomfortable.
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