Joe, are you frustrated after that?
Yeah, we’re disappointed. We’ve had a number of really good opportunities but goals change games. We gift them the first goal - I do think it’s our pitch, it takes a bobble and Lamare won’t be used to that playing at Aston Villa. I can’t be any more critical of the pitch, I think I’ve said my piece on that in recent weeks.
I think we’re 20th for home form. After factoring in our pitch into that, we want to get the ball down and play, and as we’ve seen from their first goal, you can’t hit a molehill or a bobble and it gets away from Lamare and Brandon (Hanlan) gets the opportunity to score.
At that point, we were the better side. They score in that moment and then it gives them the opportunity to sit back. We’ve still created a number of opportunities and via poor finishing, good defending and good goalkeeping, we haven’t managed to put it in the back of the net.
You were the better side in both halves…
For us, I don’t think Wycombe are going to go up. They’ve got a bit of work to do, it’ll be a hell of an achievement for them to go up based on what I’ve seen over the two games against them. The group there - Derby and Barnsley - certainly from our skirmishes with them, seem to be a little bit ahead of them. Although Wycombe have beat us twice and taken six points. But I expect to see them in the division next season, if we can get the required points between now and the end of the season to stay in the division.
But, again, a good benchmark for us; a team with a bit of Championship experience in there, a few wily old foxes and they’ve marshalled our attack and managed to keep a clean sheet.
You have to give them credit for that; good defending and good goalkeeping.
Do Coburn and Loft need a goal? Both tonight put themselves about, Josh had a couple of good chances and went very close with one drive but they’ve gone a while without a goal…
I think all strikers do, it does wonders for the confidence. Josh has had a couple of good opportunities tonight, certainly when he was in form in the early part of the season you’d have fancied him to put them away. To be honest, when you see him going through, you do really fancy Josh but he’s a young striker and they do go through spells.
Lofty, he’s huffing and puffing, he’s hit the post there. Comes back out and goes straight to John Marquis, Josh manages to get a strike on it, hits the keeper’s hand. And, again, you just need one to go in off your backside, something like that, and then away you go.
If they keep getting in there and we keep servicing it - 21 attempts, I think eight on target, for us it’s quite high. It’s a lot of opportunities, that, to not score.
You said you expect to see Wycombe in the division next year, and they may be not quite top six, are they still a little bit ahead of you, overall?
I mean they’ve beaten us twice but I don’t think, if you watch them play, I wouldn’t want to play like that - it’s horrendous football, you just boot it. Again, Gareth (Ainsworth, now of QPR) has been successful there, he’s now moved along and I think it’ll be very, very difficult to maintain the standard that Gareth has set and the culture he’s built but Matt (Bloomfield) has made a good fist of it so far and it’ll be interesting to see what he does there.
They’ve got a lot of experience in the group, some Championship and League One, a couple of promotions and stuff, so I don’t think they’ll be a million miles away but there are some good sides in our division now, some big teams with big budgets and I do feel there are six or seven better than Wycombe and the end of the season. After 46 games, you’ll see that.
Another top-half team coming on Saturday in Portsmouth, but you want to be in that top half, mixing with that lot, don’t you?
Yeah, it’d be nice. You’ve seen tonight that strength in depth for us is an issue; we lose Luca Hoole before the game and the next player up coming in is not ready to execute and operate and unfortunately for us, we’ve got to take our time at this level and build a squad capable.
There are a few things I’ve seen tonight which I’m disappointed about but, again, 10 games to go, we’ve got to get a few more points to make sure that we are in the division next year, albeit Morecambe got beat, Burton got beat, Accrington got beat, so 12 points from the relegation zone… but until that’s mathematically impossible that we can get sucked into it, we’ll always be aware of that.
I understand we have a big rebuild again in the summer. We’ll lose the really good players we’ve got in the side because they’re loan players; I’ll be gutted to lose Lewis Gibson, Jarell Quansah and Lamare Bogarde because I think they’re elite-level players, if possible, but for us, at League One level, they’re really talented boys. That’s difficult in itself but, for us, we’ve got to build a team capable of certainly not being as soft as what we can be at times.
Have you spoken to Aaron about the Welsh squad and how he’s taken not being in it?
Aaron?
Yeah, Collins…
Was he here tonight? Did he turn up? I thought he was ill. I didn’t know Aaron turned up.
I’ll have a chat with him when he comes in in the morning, having not seen him tonight, but the focus is about the game, Wales is none of my business, it’s Rob Page and the Welsh FA’s business.
It’s not like Aaron’s been in the squad before and he’s been expected to be called up. He’s made a bit of noise in the division but international managers don’t care about League One, surely Aaron knows that. You’ve got to set it on fire to get in an international squad.
I think in recent weeks, I don’t think Aaron has hit his bootstraps. Wales are a smaller international country, and it means they’re less likely to be a possession-dominant team. Aaron does a lot of his best work when his team has got the ball. He’s not the finished article when he doesn’t have the ball.
If I’m honest I’ll be very, very surprised if he gets an international call-up based on his body of work so far.
Just about Luca, was he in your starting XI right up to kick-off? At what point was he ruled out?
Yeah, we would have picked the same team again. Not even this morning, 3 o’clock this afternoon when he turned up white, like a sheet. He was very pale and he just couldn’t have played.
You only picked six substitutes…
That’s us down to the bare bones, we’ve got a coach on there in Whelo. James Gibbons picked up the suspension. Sam Finley’s still ill. Couttsy’s knee. And that’s us, that’s where we are.
But also that’s the reality of it, we’ve got a squad to build here and 10 games to go, we’ve got 45 points and we’ve got to make sure we’re a League One side next year but that game to me, Wycombe will be a top eight team this season. I think they’ll finish seventh or eighth. I might have to eat my words here but I just don’t see how they get to those play-off places.
I just think teams that we’ve played ahead of them, and I might be wrong, they’re just further ahead. No disrespect to Matt, but I think Gareth Ainsworth had that formula to get the results. Based on watching them again tonight, I know they were without Wheeler, Sam Vokes and Alfie Mawson, but I think don’t think they’re going to have the results profile going into keep pace with that top six. There are some good sides in there and they’re in-form as well and winning games. I may well be wrong on that.
So they’re the benchmark for kind of top eight, top 10 next year because they’ll keep the major part of that core together but they’re more streetwise than us. We’ve got a lot of young people in there.
My captain has gone up for a header in our half and ducked. For me, I’ve told him in no uncertain terms, when you put on the quartered jersey and you’re the captain and we’re in the Mem, you can’t duck anything. I’m not saying you need to fly in, blood and thunder, but you’ve got to go and complete your sequence, put your body on the line and secure the ball, or at least get your head on it. And that was really disappointing again. They’re the steps we have to take as a group, we’ve got to be more streetwise.
How does Aaron take criticism, or observations, like that?
When you’re brilliant I’ll tell you you’re brilliant, and you’ll know I mean it because I’m a truthful guy but when you’re not brilliant I’ll tell you and you have to take it as it is.
For me, there are loads of ways you can manage people, I’ve decided to do it my way and that’s going to have good and bad moments but my way is the truthful way. It’s my truth.
But I think I speak for the supporters, if you’ve got a quartered jersey on, and the captain of Bristol Rovers Football Club and we’re playing at home and a ball’s in the air, you have to go and contest that.
I’m not saying you turn into a Duncan Ferguson-type, because that’s not the type of person you are, but you have to compete and I’ve seen a few things there from a couple of players that I’m not happy with. I’ll keep that for the one-on-one chats on Thursday.
But also, on the other side of that, we have created a number of opportunities and the lads kept pushing and pushing, we just never managed to find a recipe to break their defence.
Grant Ward said a moment ago that the home form has been discussed. I know you mentioned the pitch but is there anything else behind that?
We’ve got to be better, for sure. But I’ve spoken to Tom and the owner about the pitch saying, ‘look if that pitch doesn’t get fixed, I’m going to have to recruit completely differently to what I want to do’. To the point where I’m like, it almost might be better bringing in another coach in; somebody who doesn’t need grass who just wants to go back to front relatively quickly.
Because if the pitch doesn’t get resolved, as you’ve seen tonight, we’ve played a squad pass in there, it’s hit a bobble and it’s put the opposition through one-on-one. I know that does happen from time to time but I want to build a team that controls the ball.
Last year, in League Two, we had a better pitch than we have in League One. They tell me there’s problems with the drainage, stuff’s collapsed… I don’t know, but we’ve got an owner who spends a lot of money on the facilities, we’ve got lots of grounds people but yet our training pitches are better than our matchday pitch and that is not acceptable.
To the point where I might have to change how I recruit in the summer and the style of football we play because of the surface that we’re going to play on, there’s no point us playing 23 games and I’m building a team to control the ball. We play 23 on a surface we control that is not conducive to the way we want to play.
You’ll get all the people saying, ‘oh, what’s his excuse this time? It’s not the ref, it’s the pitch’ but you’re asking me a question and I’m giving you an answer: is the pitch the reason we got beat tonight? No, absolutely not. Is it a mitigating circumstance to the first goal and goals change games, yeah, you have to look at that bobble and think it is.
You’ve watched Lamare play in recent weeks, he very rarely gives it away. If you watch the ball, it hits a bobble, hits his other foot and then puts Hanlan in for the first goal.
We need to get to the bottom of it because if we want to get promoted out of this division, my teams usually have the ball, build through. I can coach a different way, I played a different way so it’s no problem for me. But I don’t want to do it because I believe I can do it a different way. It’s a lot easier to strip this back and go route one but it means I’ll have to recruit completely differently in terms of personnel and we’ll be in the market for Wycombe-type players who can handle the physicality.
Last one, but Cheltenham?
Cancelled. Absolutely. What I usually do is give the lads a points target for like 10 game blocks and if they hit that we reward them with the carrots that are out in front of them.
We had a 10-game block here and we’ve fallen two or three points short of that. Unfortunately, if you come up short of the targets then you don’t get the opportunity to celebrate. We’ve got 10 games to go then they can go and get p****d for six weeks, as far as I’m concerned, it’s their own time. But on my time, we have to rest and recover because we have a big game here on Saturday against Pompey.
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