Well, Joey, all good things come to an end. I guess the first half was a frustration?
Yeah, I’m disappointed for the lads and the travelling Gasheads, who have come out in their numbers again and we were a rabbit in the headlights. We’ve got some lads who need to play an awful lot better, especially when you come to this type of stadium.
We actually didn’t, we gave Derby a leg up from our own naivety or mistake, whichever way you want to look at it, and then the crowd were with them and we were certainly nowhere near the team that we have been in recent weeks.
We have to remember you are a young group and mistakes will happen.
Yeah, and it’s part of their learning. The reality for us is we are still trying to build our team and establish ourselves in this division.
When you come to these tough places, you have to be pretty much perfect and your start to the game has got to be exceptional. Today, it wasn’t and we got punished.
You also faced players like David McGoldrick, albeit in the twilight of his career, who is ex-Premier League.
Yeah, you can see that with the calibre of his finishing today. We got punished for every mistake we made and we conceded two set plays to start the game. We’ve got a throw-in and we gave the ball and they put him through and he puts it away and the second one is a routine set-play.
I think we suffered today. We’ve got seven players out, big players in our group. They are experienced and their manliness has stood us in good stead, so to lose them today, I thought we were into lads who were a little bit short of confidence and that showed.
But this is Bristol Rovers and after that goal just before half time, what was the message?
We said get out and win the second half. It’s important for our fans, they have come in their numbers and if Derby get the next goal, their fans are going to be baying for blood. We said ‘We have to get the next goal and if we get it, there might be an opportunity to cause a bit of angst in the stadium and we might be able to pounce upon that.
As it was, the challenge was not to lose the second half. I know it’s a big cliché, but the journey we’ve been on, it was important we didn’t get smashed here today.
I challenged a few of them at half time to be better and then we made changes. It’s great for me that we get James Connolly back because I think he showed the level of player he is. Scotty Sinclair got more minutes and showed real composure and real maturity.
A bad day at the office. I lost my uncle this morning. My uncle died at 7am, so a really bad day at the office, but we’ll be back bigger and stronger and it starts with the cup on Saturday against Rochdale and then Fleetwood in our stadium, so we’re ready to rock and roll.
Best wishes to you and your family, Joey. At the end, the ovation you got from the fans. One swallow doesn’t make a summer and you were eight unbeaten and now the challenge is to go unbeaten again.
Yeah, and we’ve got a strong group culture that has been forged in the fire of League Two with the promotion and anyone who knows our team and our group knows we will respond.
We get an opportunity next Saturday in the cup to do that in our stadium against Rochdale and we must be miles better than we were today.
Some big players missing today. Will they be back for next week?
They are maybe going to be a couple of weeks, so it may well be the Fleetwood and Peterborough games that we’re looking at.
But for us, the people who are tasked with the responsibility to maintain the level of performance, I think today across the board we haven’t been good enough, so we will make sure we’re better when we play Rochdale.
I am gutted for the Gasheads, but they stayed with the lads until the end and it’s more about the journey we’ve been on as a football club, so I’m delighted we’re back in these stadiums.
It was a full stadium today; proper football grounds, proper football clubs, but we must better in the next opportunity we get in a big stadium.
Is this a good week not to have a midweek fixture?
It’s one of them. I have seen things there that I’m happy with. It sounds bizarre, but the bravery in the second half to come and get on the ball and still try to play.
I know we’ve lost the game, but you’ve got to take the positives out of it. We’ve managed to keep a clean sheet in the second half, we’ve dominated possession. You might say they’ve backed off and they’re happy with the win, but we could have been put to the sword today due to the level of the finishing in the first period.
The second part of that was towards the end of the game and looking at the physical levels. I was looking at their players and our players and I believe in our processes on the training ground.
We’ve had less recovery time than them, we’ve had to travel twice and we were still full of running at the end and we were short on bodies. That will bode well.
It’s a long, hard slog, a 46-game League One season. We must be better but we’ve got to take the positives out of the last little block of games.
Condolences, Joey. You do have to remember this is League One and not the Premier League, so it is inevitable that even the best teams will lose quite a lot of games and it is about managing the blips, so when you have a day like this, you bounce back straight away.
Yeah, and we always work in those 10-game blocks and we’re seven games into the secondary 10-game block. We’ve won three, drawn three and lost today, so that is disappointing.
We’ve got Fleetwood and Peterborough to come in the league at our place to finish this 10-game block off strongly.
But we just haven’t been good enough. We were second best in the opening part of the game, we find ourselves behind and very quickly concede that second goal, so at that point the stadium is with the Derby team and their players grew from that confidence and we must learn those lessons.
You must be proud, though, that you have created a culture where you always feel like you’re in the game and you pop up with these goals out of nothing. You are always in games.
Yeah, and I think that is 38 goals away from home in the calendar year and it puts us with the most free-flowing scoring teams in the pyramid away from home.
But if you defend like that, you give yourself a mountain to climb. In recent weeks, we’ve been good defensively, really good, but I think the changes to that backline today disrupted us and we compounded that by conceding very early and then from that point on I felt a few of our players were caught in the headlights a little bit.
They will learn those lessons, so we’ve got to be mindful of where we’ve come from. Rome isn’t built in a day and we get a good gauge for how close we are to the bigger teams in the division this week.
We’ve got work to do, but we’ve made enormous strides in the past 12 months as a group.
You’ve got a young defence and that has worked for you, but today do you think they got a bit old-manned by David McGoldrick? Particularly for the third goal, he rolls Luca Hoole and uses his experience, and for the fourth he preys on Bobby Thomas as well. It felt like he, in particular, preyed on a bit of naivety.
Yeah and Collins and McGoldrick are quality operators, certainly at League One level. You see the level of McGoldrick’s finishing, it was first class, and we will have to learn those lessons.
We had two kids at centre-half, really, in Hooley and Bobby. If Bobby has got Lewis Gibson next to him or James Connolly next to him, it gives us a bit more seniority albeit those are young boys.
I feel for Hooley, he’s lost a bit of confidence and he’s been shuffled about. You’ve got to expect with young players that there is going to be a dip.
When they’re 25/26, you expect them to be more consistent, but when you work with younger players you have to expect there is going to be a bit of fluctuation in their performance.
Unfortunately for Hooley, he’s having a bit of a tough time at the minute and I think today we had to play him. James wasn’t ready to play 90, Alf I don’t think is ready and Hooley sits in that next slot.
I was hoping today would be a chance for him to regain that confidence, but we haven’t defended well enough as a team and Hooley’s confidence at this moment in time hasn’t got any higher.
Fans watching that game will probably be wondering at times ‘Why are we playing out from the back over and over again?’ Do you think it was an error in tactics, or was it just composure and execution that let you down?
We want our teams to play and be bold, so as a manager you have to take the responsibility for that. I always believe in controlling the football, I think it’s a good way of nullifying the crowd here, but when we analyse the game between now and Monday, we’ll pick the bones out of it.
For us, I think it is self-explanatory in terms of what happened, but as the manager it is my responsibility so we must give them better exit strategies.
You have had a brilliant month though, Joey, and you have given yourself a platform and established yourself, and some players have established themselves as League One players.
Yeah, and we’ve got work to do. That statement you’ve made just there, establishing ourselves, I think after 46 games, we can talk about that. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
Alright, we have made better strides in recent weeks, but we’ve got to get back to our bread and butter and Fleetwood at home, they have won against Accrington today, Scotty Brown will have them disciplined and they will be a tough nut to crack.
We’ve got to deal with Rochdale in the cup first, but we’ve got to stay positive. We’ve come a long way in a short space of time, and we’ve got to be not too doom and gloom. Bad day at the office today, but we will learn loads of lessons from this.
Rochdale in the FA Cup, does that come at a good time? You’ve got key players that are missing so it gives you a chance to freshen legs, build confidence of certain players and try a few things, although you obviously want to win.
Yeah, I think so. We’re coming in full of confidence and I think if Lewis Gibson and Ryan Loft are fit, you’re thinking we can cause a lot of problems for these. They had players out as well, Davies and Chester, so we have to accept with their squad density and the finances these clubs have, the next man in line isn’t a young academy product, it’s Craig Forsyth for them today who is a Scotland international and has played in many big arenas.
The disappointing thing is I feel we haven’t given the best account of ourselves in front of a massive crowd. The lads will be frustrated, but we’re back at this arena and back at this table.
This is where the club wants to be and the past few games have consolidated how confident I am in a short space of time. It might come a bit quick at us for this season, but in a short space of time we will have Rovers out of this division and playing in the Championship.
The fanbase, absolutely brilliant today.
We after the warm-up went down and walked to them and I’ve played for some big clubs, as you know, but it was goosebumps when the crowd went up for the players.
I don’t know if that’s affected some of them, I don’t know, but we were definitely not at the right frequency.
Those boys will learn from it, but the problem for us today was the backline. It was young, it got disconnected, it made mistakes and if you come to places like Derby and they’ve got McGoldrick, Mendez-Laing, Dobbin, Hourihane, Collins, and you give them anything to seize on, they are players who have played at a high level and they will punish you for lack of confidence or naivety.
We will learn lessons and come back stronger, but we aren’t a million miles away from these teams. In a short space of time, we will come here again no doubt, or they will come to our stadium, and we will have improved markedly.
We are fitter than them, it sounds mad to say that, and I’ll take great salvation from that because with their level of athlete and how much they are getting paid, they should be absolutely running all over our boys.
It tells me the training ground processes are right and there was just a bit too much energy expended this week, with a couple of players picking up little strains and we haven’t got the finances to have the next level of player, but we will get there.
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