Well Joey, as three points come, that was hard-earned but probably well deserved, in the end?
Yeah, I thought we were probably the better team with 11 without creating a great deal. I thought we certainly were the best team when they went down to 10 men. We had the lion’s share of possession.
We had to make a few adjustments because of the state of the game and, obviously, we wanted to get more attacking personnel on there to get somebody on the end of something and get that first goal which we knew was going to be key.
I’m really pleased with the control until we scored because then they were playing f-it football, where you’ve got nothing to lose and you chase the game. Credit to them, they kept pushing and pushing and James Belshaw’s had to make a couple of decent saves and we’ve had to block a few.
We’ve had to defend our goal properly to get the maximum points over the line, so I’m really pleased.
It’s always difficult against 10 men, especially when they sit so deep. What was it you told your players you wanted them to do at half time to exploit that?
We wanted to keep the width on the play. We tried to encourage always having somebody wide, whether that was Luca Hoole, Nick Anderton or Harry Anderson and Sammy Nicholson, to keep stretching them and keep the ball and be patient.
We said we might win it in the first minute of the second half or the last minute of the game. We have to be patient and always be mindful of keeping that backdoor closed. If you remember the game there, which you know doubt won’t, it was when I famously had a chat with Sam about where I thought we’d end up.
The challenge that day was I felt we just kept smothering our work. We never had the width on the play and they posed a real threat on the counter attack. There were a lot of harem-scarem moments in that game where we didn’t control the transitional phase and they had players who were capable of springing on the counter.
At half time, we were mindful of that. We want to win the game, but we need to manage the transitional phase and we need to make sure that whilst we’re trying to win, we don’t leave the backdoor unlocked and I thought the lads were superb, up until we scored and then it got a bit frantic.
Thankfully, we managed to get the job done. Looking at results that have gone in the league tonight, with a draw we wouldn’t have lost ground on anyone. It would’ve been disappointing because the opposition were down to 10 twice against Barrow and we didn’t manage to convert, but luckily it looks a helluva lot different because of a world-class moment, which is what it is.
If you look around the Champions League, if anyone strikes it that clean from that distance… Their keeper was inspired tonight and it was going to take something special to beat him, and luckily for us Evo has produced another high-quality moment.
Big players make big plays and key times and he’s stepped up for us again, but at the back end the defenders defended properly and kept a clean sheet. Belly didn’t have much to do tonight, but everything he did do was at the level he has been at all season, which is exceptional.
Really pleased, a good team performance. There was a bit of rotation tonight so we utilised the squad a bit with a couple of lads having illnesses, but looking at results I can sit back tonight and have a cup of tea and reflect on a good night’s work.
And how do you approach what is, hopefully, going to be an exciting run-in because you’re only two points of the play-offs and five points off third place. It’s unbelievably tight and there will be a lot of teams who feel they can get the play-offs or even better.
We’re coming into form at the right part of the race. You want to be coming into form when the finish line is in sight and you want to be moving through the field. We’ve still got 13 fences to go over. It is the Grand National in many regards, a League Two 46-game campaign.
Tonight, we got over the fence. It mightn’t be as crisp or as clean or into the stride as it what it maybe could have been if we scored a bit earlier, but at the end of the day we’ve navigated the fence, we’ve navigated it with momentum. A few of the teams in and around us have clipped the fence and not taken maximum points and that’s what we’ve got to do.
We’ve got another tough game at Newport on Saturday. We know they are a good side from when they came here, but also we’re finding different ways to win games of football at the minute.
We’ve got a young hungry group with depth in the squad and players coming back to fitness and I’m looking forward to the last months of the season.
Rightly so. I was going to bring up the previous game against Barrow because in the second half there, it never felt like you had control of the game. You were always searching and Barrow had as many chances as you. Tonight, that wasn’t the case and it shows the evolution of that team I suppose?
Yeah and there is a lot of different personnel out there as well. Mark Hughes was playing, Brett Pitman was playing and we had different personnel for sure, but also the lads were on a learning curve. Winning games accelerates that because it brings confidence, which always helps you play better, but also the lads are starting to understand a lot more what we’re looking for.
For me, I always talk about it being great going forward in the centre of the ring throwing punches, but if you overexpose yourself you can get it on the chin and certainly that first Barrow game up at their place, we were guilty of smothering our own work and overcommitting and that left them with the opportunity to put a sting in the tail.
But tonight, I thought we were really professional in managing the game, making sure there were very few counter-attacking moments for them up until we scored, and then they had nothing to lose and came on.
But I’m really pleased with the lads. That’s an important three points for us tonight off the back of a scrap against a side in and around us. It was important we took maximum points tonight. We left it late, but we controlled the game for 80-odd minutes and in League Two that hasn’t always been the case with us.
We’re getting better and stronger and we’re also finding different ways to win with different personnel. There were a couple of lads with illness in the squad and it needed freshening up tonight.
I thought Glenn Whelan was superb, really outstanding, and I thought Clarkey gave us a different dimension up there. A bit of counter movement gets him off the backside of their player, which leads to the red card, which gives us a numerical advantage.
For us, to see him back on the park and able to start games, big Leon, it was key. Pleased, really pleased with the lads, but we’ve got to rest and recover.
The stakes get higher now because we’ve got another tough fixture across the bridge in to Wales on Saturday. No doubt we’ll have a big following and it sets us up for a good game.
They’ve probably got as good a playing surface as I’ve seen in the league. They’ve spent a few quid on it, so I’m looking forward to a tough game, but also we’re full of confidence we’ll cross the bridge with a big following and some momentum.
Joey, you used the phrase ‘f-it football’ with the way Barrow were playing. Was there a moment of that with Antony because you’d exhausted a lot of the other avenues? You’d been really patient, but it opened up for Antony and he trusted his ability.
I’d had a pop at him from Saturday’s game because I felt he was shooting from unrealistic angles. Obviously, we run the data models on it. We talked about if it’s there, we’ve got to pass and pass and pass, but you’re only doing that to work an advantage and for one of their players to switch off.
We knew down to 10 men, if we kept moving them vertically, they will collapse down and be quite content sitting on the edge of their box, but we knew moving the ball horizontally would tire them out and you saw that as the game went on with their full-backs and the amount of opportunities our wider players.
I thought Luca Hoole’s delivery was superb and Clarkey probably should have scored off the chance he had, but you could see the toll of playing 90 minutes with a wet pitch against a team controlling the ball.
In the first half, he never shot, Evo, and it was a bollocking from me ringing in his ears because (on Saturday) he was shooting left footed and from 40 yards out with people in between him and I said ‘Maybe the pass was on there’.
I think in the first half tonight, my bollocking was ringing in his ears so I said to him ‘Look, if you get an opportunity and you can open yourself up for a free shot at the target with your quality, you’ve got to take it’.
I’m not claiming an assist by the way, but I thought he picked the opportunity superbly. He’s still got some work to do from there. I’ve watched it back and it’s a helluva strike. I think it’s still on the way up on the way in and that’s a goal capable of winning any game.
For Gasheads, it’s worth the admission fee alone. If I was a paying fan and I came and see Evo stripe that in from 30-odd yards, I’d go away happy, so I was buzzing to see it go in, but I would have taken one going in off someone’s backside or an own goal. You just need to get that first goal and thankfully tonight the lads kept plugging away and got it and we got the job done and took maximum points.
You’ve had about four years as a manager. Is he the best signing you’ve ever made, coming in on deadline day and making the impact he has? Regardless of whether this is his only season at the club, it will go down as one of the best individual seasons of recent times because of the sunning goals he’s scored and the moments he’s had.
Best signing I’ve had… that’s a tough one because at all different junctions you need lads to come in and we’ve had some great lads, some great people that we brought into Fleetwood. I’ll get back to you on that in about five years.
He’s certainly been great value for money on a free and if you knew the figures involved, it’s even bigger value for money because we’re massively underpaying him. Ridiculously underpaying him.
If he wants to sign a new contract, we will definitely bring him into line, but that is going to play out.
We spoke about that when he first came in. We said ‘Come and have a great year, get yourself back on track and we’ll take it from there’.
I know the Gasheads are desperate to get him reengaged, as are we. I think his agent was here tonight getting wined and dined by Wael, so maybe he’s signed a new deal, I don’t know. Hopefully he signed it before his goal went in.
He’s been a superb signing, he really has, but not only that. His qualities as a player are self-evident but he’s been brilliant around the dressing room. He’s great young man with a good head on his shoulders, really wants to progress his career and keen to learn every day, trains properly every day, does everything right every day, lives his life right.
If he does leave here, what a year we’ve had with Ant. Hopefully we keep him for the next 10 years because that would mean we’re making progress and heading in the right direction, and I think if we get up I think we’ve got a really good chance of building a really good side with some of the talent we’ve got, but that will all play out.
What a signing he’s been. Deadline day, came in late, but better late than never.
How big a challenge was it overcoming the atmosphere tonight because it is often an asset here, but it was quite frustrated at times because you were against the 10 men and struggling to break through?
Were you not here early on in the season? They were a lot more frustrated earlier in the season.
But there is a lot more expectation now…
I thought they were brilliant tonight. They knew the state of play and they were anxious and nervy because they were probably aware of the scores and the movement of the others in the table more than us because they’ve got their social media feeds and score feeds.
So how big a challenge will that be moving forwards because it’s a new factor. At the start of the season, you were not really playing well, but now there is a lot on the line and other factors elsewhere. This could be a nervous time and it’s important you overcome that.
I don’t think so. I’ll level with you, we’ve got to educate the fanbase. They were not in for COVID and then they came in when it was on a death spiral and they turned up and took their frustration out early in the season and we were poor.
We weren’t good enough and we spoke about it, we’ve got to make them scream and shout and cheer and keep feeding them because if I was turning up and someone was playing abject football, I wouldn’t be jumping for joy in the stands. It’s a two-way street and we’ve got to work hard to keep feeding them.
With this team and this group of players, they’ve really bought into the players, certainly since the turn of the new year. We haven’t sold out since 2016, I’m told, so Saturday’s game was progress for us.
If you’re a band and you’re playing music, you want to be selling all your tickets. That’s a sign that people like your music and what you’re doing and they like what you stand for.
Tonight, they’ve backed us up with another big crowd, pissed wet through, freezing cold. It would have been a good night to stay in the house and maybe watch on the iFollow or wait for the result to come in, but they didn’t. They got out in numbers again, they supported the lads, they stuck with them to the end.
I was at the Carabao Cup final on Sunday, there was 80,000 in there. There was angst in that stadium, it was nervy with extra time and pens because there are big stakes and if we want to be a proper football club and our players want to be proper players, the challenges get higher every week, the stakes get higher and you should relish that.
Pressure, for me, is a privilege. There is nothing worse than when your season is over. We felt that drifting into League Two obscurity last season. That was so painful to take.
It’s so much better coming and having the butterflies and expectation and the nerves because it really means you’ve got something to play for. I hope we get more nervous and more anxious because it means the stakes are getting higher. If we want to be a proper football club, we’ve got to meet that expectation.
More nights like this, the fans start getting used to it and they start going ‘We know what this is about’ and hopefully by the end of my tenure here, we get that expectation of we’re Bristol Rovers and we win games of football and we’re successful.
We had that at Fleetwood in the end and by the time we leave here we’ll get that. We expect teams that have got miles bigger resources. We’d go to Portsmouth with Fleetwood and we’d got two away fans in and we thought we’d beat Portsmouth every single time we played them. The same with Sunderland.
Imagine when we get this army going. We had big numbers in here and I’m looking around Wembley on Sunday going ‘Wow, 40,000 Gasheads in here’. I’m hoping we don’t go there for loads of reasons, you don’t want to go there if you don’t have to, but I’m going ‘If we come here, we’re going to fill our allocation and we’re probably going to eat into whoever we play against’s allocation. We’ve got an army.
Liverpool took over and I walked around the stadium beforehand and I said to myself ‘Liverpool are going to win this’ because their fans are better than Chelsea’s. They were louder, they all over the City and that is why you have to get to cup finals. You have to get there because you take over London. It’s like a Viking horde going from Bristol to London for those weekends.
The Gasheads here, I want to take them to Sunderland and I want them coming here. That’s the next step because if you play in a final against them there is 80,000 in. It’s special when you play in those Wembley games and that’s the reason I came here. I’d seen they had 40,000 at that Conference play-off final. There are no teams outside the top two divisions – Sunderland and Ipswich maybe – but there is not many that can do that. Even your Charltons, you’re asking questions on selling 40,000 tickets.
Nobody has tapped this goldmine and I can understand, after being here for a year, how it’s not been done because it was difficult and it’s still got some tough moments. Aligning you guys in the Bristol media is tough enough, never mind the football department and the fans. They’d got used to getting beat and that’s not their fault, that’s the football club’s fault.
We have to get them used to winning games, coming here to win games and being disappointed. We were disappointed we never beat Exeter on Saturday. They were 4-0 and 5-0 up on us in 45 minutes twice when we’ve been down there and that’s a sign of the team’s progress.
We were gutted leaving the stadium, I’m gutted leaving for London after the game. They’ve missed a chance late doors – Belly says he had it covered, by the way, and I wouldn’t doubt him – but we could have lost the game. A big point and that looks an even bigger point after the three points tonight.
You have to grind lots of times. I’ve been good sides and got promotions a few times in a few different ways and they’re special.
That’s the one I’m most proud of tonight because imagine the frustration coming out of here if we didn’t capitalise and take maximum points. It would have felt like a defeat, but as it is now we bounce into Newport looking up at the teams above.
The fences are coming thick and fast and we’re finding different ways of getting over them.
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