Joey, two points outside the play-off places after that win against Barrow and no doubt you’ll see this as a great opportunity to get into the play-off places this weekend.
We’re just trying to win every game and be the best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. We’ve always had that belief that if we can get that way and get that way consistently, the league table and everything we’re trying to achieve will take care of itself.
There are another three points on offer in Saturday’s game and we’re going to have to be as good as we have been in recent weeks and months to maximise that opportunity.
You’ve always been confident within the squad, but it must increase the confidence the longer an unbeaten run goes. You must be building and building with confidence?
Football is a game where you can only get confidence if you get positive performances and positive results. In recent weeks and months, we’ve managed to do that and the levels of confidence and belief and everything required to be a good team have started to rise.
But we’ve still got an enormous amount of work to do and there are 13 games to go. We’re in the race. We fell out of the stalls at the opening part of the season, but I think over a consistent period we have shown we’re a good side and we’ve shown we’ve got improvement in us.
We still feel like we’re getting stronger, we still feel like we’ve got the best parts of our season yet to come.
You made three changes against Barrow. Do you think rotation will be key in the run-in as you look to get in the play-off places?
No, we take it game by game so we just felt there was a bit of freshness needed because of the schedule we’ve been on recently. We’ve got the capability in our squad due to the depth we have to be able to do that.
But you’d ideally want to pick the same team for each matchday because it breeds consistency and relationship development between key parts of the team.
The schedule doesn’t always allow you to do that. For us, it’s just about picking the best team we have for each matchday and we’re lucky in terms of the quality we’ve got and, obviously, a few have come back from injury now.
The bench is starting to get stronger and it’s not only getting more difficult to pick a starting XI but your bench. There is real competition for places to get in the matchday squad now.
For me as a manager, they become problems and you need to manage and make sure you keep everybody psychologically and emotionally connected to what the squad and the team are trying to do, but also for us it is a case of rotation.
I don’t believe in it. I believe in players playing in that regular football rhythm and if they are lacking in energy or they’ve had a knock, injury or suspension then we’ll use the squad to jockey the positions of the team around.
For me, if you’re in my team and you do well, I’ve been a player myself and you don’t want to come out of the team when you’re playing well and you’ve got a good team that you’re in and you feel in good fettle and good form. The last thing you want is the manager to rest you and rotate you all the time because you lose that consistency and continuity.
For us, if it’s not broken we won’t be fixing it, but also if there is an opportunity to freshen it up we’ve got more than 11 good players and we’ll do that.
Are Alfie Kilgour and Josh Grant nearing a return?
No, neither of them are nearing a return.
What sort of a game are you expecting from Newport?
They’ve changed style recently. Last time they played us, they were ahead of us and they beat us on that day.
They were playing a back three, a 3-4-1-2, and watching them in the past couple of days, they’re playing a 4-2-2-2. Stylistically different, but a lot of key components, certainly in the attacking part of the picture, they’ve got the league’s top scorer and we’ve got to make sure of him.
He’s a livewire. I think he got a hat-trick or two (goals) in the game at our place, so we’ve got to make sure we shut him down and take care of him.
On the other side of that, we’ve come on an enormous amount as a team since that day so we’re looking forward to the game.
They’ve probably got as good a pitch as us at their stadium and I think it’s another good test for our team.
I think we’ve been lucky in recent weeks. We’ve played pretty much everybody who was at the top of the form table and we’ve become used to playing the teams riding high in the division. In the midst of that, we’ve become one of those teams.
The secret is out with us now. I think everybody knows there is a big blue-and-white-quartered horse coming through the field like a juggernaut. We’ve known it silently and secretly for a period, we felt it coming as a group, but now due to the league table and the result in the week and other teams slipping up in the week, the cat’s out of the bag.
But we’ve got 13 more fences to go, a really big fence at Newport on Saturday. One we’re confident of clearing, but we know it won’t be straightforward. It’s a Becher’s Brook kind of moment and we’ve got to make sure with every fence we meet that we clear it with aplomb.
You will be boosted by a large following. Rovers’ ticket allocation selling out in no time. That must be a big lift for the team knowing you’ve got that much support travelling over?
Yeah and they’ve done it pretty much everywhere we’ve been, even in the opening gambit of the season. They’ve turned up in their numbers and supported us and the good thing now is it is just growing.
We had a massive crowd for us on Saturday, followed by a really good crowd on a cold, wet Tuesday night. They are huge signs and we’ve got to remember what they’re coming for. They’re coming because they believe in this group of players and they believe in the way they and they believe they represent their football club and the quarters in the right manner. That’s why we’ve had that synergy with the fans of late. We’ve all benefitted from that massively.
Newport on Saturday are going to have their crowd in, but for us to sell out another away allocation speaks volumes for the quality of fanbase we have and also the quality of players and teamship that we’ve developed in the period of time since we’ve been on a decent run.
Newport have had quite a few wild games of late. They’ve had a 3-3, a 4-2 and a bunch of red cards. Your games, in contrast, have had control and clean sheets. If it does get a bit chaotic and end-to-end, do you back yourselves in that space at the moment?
I wouldn’t say it necessarily suits us. Newport will be tricky because they’ve got some pace on the counter and the way we want to control it game is by squeezing games in having quite an offensive line. That’s why Belly’s been so important with his positioning and athleticism in the goalkeeping position.
For us, the basketball type games, we’ve been involved in enough of them and I’d prefer not to be involved in that type of game because as a coach I would always want as much control as you can possibly have.
But again, the really good thing for this group is we speak about finding a way to win. All the good sides I’ve been involved in, you can’t play like the way we did at Stevenage every single week and just total football them and create chance after chance after chance.
There are going to have to be nights where we have to dig in and grind draws and wins out. I know we won 1-0 the other night and we scored a wonder goal, but think we were grinding. We were just trying to get that first goal and get in the ascendancy.
That’s the beauty. Looking at it now, the lads have found multiple different ways of winning and multiple different goalscorers. We are not like Newport in terms of we’re not reliant on Dom Telford to score us loads of goals.
We’ve got the goals shared amongst the team. You look at Forest Green and (Matty) Stevens and (Jamille) Matt, who’ve scored the lion’s share of the goals, and you look at Newport, Telford has scored a load of the goals.
It would have been nice to have those type of players who get you 20 goals in the season, but we’ve had to find a different way to do that. For us, it’s been a lot more controlled way of doing it and if we’re going to be successful, we’re going to have to implement our strategy and play our way.
I think recent weeks have shown us in this division it doesn’t matter where you are in the form table, every single team is a different challenge.
Barrow were as difficult an opponent over two games that we’ve played and they were down to 10 men after 30 minutes, but they were really resolute and difficult to break down. We were actually playing better against them twice with 11 men, so I hope Newport keep 11 men on the pitch because we tend to play better against 11 men than 10.
The other night is a sign of our progression. We got the job done and we showed out learning from teams going down to 10 against us. In the second period, we really stretched them and we tried to create lots of opportunities. We probably didn’t get enough bodies in the box and on the end of crosses.
The X-factor that we’ve got, whether it’s Aaron Collins, Antony Evans, Sam Finley, Sammy Nicholson, whoever it may be has come up with a match-winning moment.
We’ve got to go into the Newport game full of confidence, but we know it’s going to be a tough game. We know it’s going to be a good game.
If it’s end-to-end and we win it, we’ll take that. If it’s us controlling it for a large part and winning, we’ll take that. If it’s us getting battered for 90 minutes and winning late on, we’ll take that. We just want to win.
You mentioned Dom Telford. You’ve been in a ridiculously hectic period of the season where you’ve played Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday for more than a month. How much time do you get to plan for individual players and individual teams? Are you relying on analysts and do you get much chance yourself?
The last few teams we’ve played have had lots of similarities. Barrow came to our place playing 3-4-3 out the gate, even though they pushed Ollie Banks a bit higher and they put Gotts to wing-back. Leyton Orient were similar, so we’ve faced this threat before.
The difficulty is most teams we’ve played who had our number in the early part of the season turned back up with a similar team. Newport are the first team who beat us in the first half of the season – they were really good when they came to our place – who’ve changed their team. They’ve gone to a four at the back and I think that’s due to injuries in the defensive areas.
They’ve had another lad sent off in a defensive area the other night, (James) Clarke, who will be suspended so there may be a couple of changes for them. They’ve gone to a kind of 2-2-2, so it’s a different challenge.
In terms of preparation for them, we’re at the stage where our preparation is about us. It’s about getting fitness, freshness and energy back into the players. If we execute the way we want to execute, we can cause a lot of problems for Newport, but on the other side of that a bit of video analysis and grass work tomorrow will tighten up the detail in and around the idiosyncrasies of what Newport bring as opposed to what Barrow were bringing on Tuesday night.
Luckily for us, the two sides have quite similar format. A 3-4-3 playing a two and a one, which was Barrow, and a 4-2-2-2 (for Newport) and it ends up with them in many ways, certainly leaving two up the park.
The boy from Swansea who’s done well for them, (Oli) Cooper. He was a real livewire last time for them, playing in the number 10. Even though they’ve dropped him down to play in the two in the advanced midfield positions, he’ll still float in and around that number 10 position.
Slightly different tactical thing, but it’s not a major or massive difference.
It will be a sold-out away allocation. You’ve had a few of those this season. It’s local game, which probably makes a difference, but if you look at social media there are people desperate for tickets for this game in a way that I have not seen in my time covering the club. You used the analogy of you’re a band on Tuesday, it is like you’ve got people outside hunting for tickets.
It’s great, isn’t it? It’s a sign that we’re all moving in the right direction as a football club. It’s a sign that the fans are back believing in the football club.
The football team sits at the apex of that because if a football team is not doing well, it’s difficult for the football club to do well. Man United are finding that out now. The football club is running as a great business but the team is not doing what the team needs to do. Sometimes in football you can get away from that.
For us, it was our duty to get the team playing as well as it can and everything else flows out of the back of that.
The fact we’ve got fans desperate for tickets and scrapping around trying to buy them is a good sign of where the club is at. People are feeling good about the quarters, people are feeling good about supporting Rovers and if we keep building this the way we’re building it, I want to see people walking around the city with the quarters jersey on and taking over.
That’s the plan. I haven’t just come here to get promoted out of League Two and finish mid-table in League One, that’s not what I’ve come here for. I want to do things that haven’t been done here for a long time. Some would argue they’ve never been done here, but that’s what I’m here for.
I’ve said a lot of bold and brash things in my time here and I know I’ve been ridiculed and people have laughed at me and said I’ve lost the plot, and you have to accept that when the team isn’t functioning as well as it can, but I don’t think we’re playing anywhere near the level I think we can play at.
We’re doing loads of good things and we’ve been superb in recent weeks, but the best is yet to come from this group. This group has still got its final few progressions to take before this season is out and I think iron sharpens iron.
Big fixtures, big pressure and big expectation bring out the best in you and over the course of the next 13 games I think we’re going to see the emergence of some big players who produce big moments in this football club’s history.
Is that something you say to your players? This is a time to become a hero and put themselves in Rovers folklore.
You’ve got to win to do that. You can do really well at an unsuccessful club and become a legend but not win anything and not be successful if there is not a great deal of quality that’s gone before.
But I always think teams that win promotions, they’re the sides I’ve heard about since I got here – the great players and the great teams in those eras, the Darrell Clarke era with multiple promotions.
You hear those stories. The reason is people remember people who are successful and win.
For this group, our fans have really taken to this team. You’d have to ask them who’s their favourite, I don’t know, but one week Antony Evans scores the goal and you can imagine being a young Gashead standing in the Thatchers End and that ball goes in the back of the net and the feelings that brings towards those players.
I think about Belly’s rapport with the fans and I see Lofty’s in the club shop on Wednesday and I see Aaron Collins making the progress he is. Billy Elliot’s (Anderson) been a smash since he got here, they loved Sam Finley right out of the gate. Big Connor Taylor, Nick Anderton and James Connnoly are growing beside him, and Luca Hoole is one of their own.
All of these good stories are interwoven all along, but if they want to be remembered and if we want to be remembered, you’ve got to win, you’ve got to get promoted and you’ve got to get the job done. We haven’t lost track of that and we’re constantly having internal conversations about how much better we can get and that we’ve got a long way to go.
We’re not even in the play-off picture at this moment in time. We’ve just got to turn up and keep doing what we’re doing, which is give everything each matchday to take maximum points.
If we continue in the form we’ve been in over recent months, then eventually the table and the score will take care of themselves.
If you look at the fixtures, you have to play a lot of teams in the promotion picture between now and the end of the season. But with the positive way with which you look at things, is this a good thing because you are control of your destiny even more by playing rivals for positions and you can take points off them while advancing your own cause? You can take chunks out of teams.
We don’t think like that. My thinking is they have got to play us. I’m looking at that and thinking ‘They’ve still got to play us’.
Everyone looks at the form table because it’s an indicator. It mightn’t be over five games, but over a 10-15 game period, it tells you where teams are at. You don’t get lucky over 10 or 15 games. You might have a really nice, friendly schedule for five games and you can get a bit of false form data off a five-game spell, but if I look at us over a 10, 15 or even 25-game spell, we sit really high in the consistency part of the table.
We had a slow start which didn’t really help us, but it’s been the making of us as a group, I think, and the making of everybody. We’ve all had to go through that tough time to figure out why getting it right is so special.
You’ve got to remember all of those teams are going to be looking at us now going ‘They had a slow start, but you don’t want to be playing them at the minute’. They’re all going to be looking at all the results, the clean sheets, the wins we’re having.
That’s before they look at the team sheet and go ‘My god, look at the bench. Look at the starting XI. Who’s the weakest link?’, because you’re only as strong as you’re weakest link.
What is starting to happen now is teams are creaking, teams are getting suspensions and injuries, teams are having to take on a load of 30-plus games now, and we’re getting stronger now at every opportunity, we’re getting stronger and stronger and stronger.
I really do think nobody wants to play us at this moment in time, we’re not the team you want to play. Newport won’t be fearful because of the result they had against us, but also the fact they’ve got a home tie and with what’s at stake, it’s a big game.
With 13 to go, it’s a high-stakes game, it’s a six-pointer in many ways and I look around my group and go ‘Whoa, I’ve got 92 Ireland caps there, I’ve got a promotion to the Premier League there and I’ve got Premier League goals there’
And I’ve got a lovely balance of hungry young lions and old and experienced lions who don’t get carried away, saying ‘Settle down, we haven’t done anything yet’.
Training is still on the money and no-one is getting carried away, there are no big celebrations after a win. It’s very much business, very clinical approach we’ve been taking in recent months because we know there is a long way to go before this race finishes.
We know we’re moving in the right areas at the right times and we’re confident about what we’re doing, but also nothing’s been done yet and we’ve got a massive game on Saturday and another massive game on Tuesday at Crawley, who’ve had a bit of a renaissance.
Iron sharpens iron and we’ll find out about this group of lads and this team in the next period.
We’re coming into the end of the season with a live chance. Earlier in the season, Sam, we’re looking over our shoulder to make sure we stay in the football league and finally we got the 50-point mark, which means we’re safe.
That’s the first job done. When you get relegated, the first job is making sure you stay in the division you drop into. That’s job one done and now we’ve got to make sure with the games remaining we can make this an exciting end to the season for the Gasheads.
I’d prefer it to be exciting but finish when it finishes, and to do that we’ve got a bit of work to do and some points to make up, but luckily we’ve got to play a load of those teams who are above us at the moment.
Has the virus that was going through a couple of the members of your group passed and the likes of Alex Rodman and Trevor Clarke plus the lads who dropped to the bench, Paul Coutts and Sam Finley, are they going to be alright for the weekend?
Rodders has trained, albeit separated from the group today, so he’s going to struggle for the game on Saturday.
Trevor is just knocking on my door here as I’m talking to you. He’s trained today and I think that’s a knock on the door to ask if there is any chance of being back involved. I always had this game earmarked for him with his progression.
Sam had a virus before the Exeter game and you could see he was running on fumes in that game. We just took the sting out of him during the week because he, Nick Anderton and Luca Hoole had a virus, but they had overcome it quite well. It went around everybody, a bit of a bad belly. Some were affected by it more than others but it seems to have cleared out, we haven’t had anybody in the last 48 hours with any symptoms.
Tricky Trev’s about to barge through my door here and demand to be in the squad, I think. He’s been chomping at the bit and he’s had a season of frustration, but we add another quality player to our squad.
Couttsy and Sam are a bit freshened up from a breather during the week. Luckily, we didn’t have to use them.
I was trying to get Jon Nolan into the game, but I went with Harvey Saunders to try to get that goal to win it, even though after we scored we ended up with a really offensive team on the pitch to try to navigate the last five minutes, but thankfully we got the winner and the squad’s in good fettle.
We’re getting stronger all the time. We got another 70 minutes into Leon Clarke, which I think will be big for him, so I’m looking forward to the last quarter of the season.
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