Joey, we’ll start on team news. Antony Evans, how is he looking for the weekend?
He’ll get a scan today at some point. Once we get the findings back for that we’ll assess it and see where he is.
We’ve taken him off as a precautionary measure and hopefully we get some good news back once the scan is in.
Josh Grant?
Josh had a little injection just to settle a few things down. He feels great today and hopefully he’ll get through training tomorrow and that puts him in contention for the weekend.
Injuries are one thing, but we were obviously concerned with Connor Taylor on Tuesday. How is he?
Yeah, fine. Strange really. I’ve got to be careful. Last time I spoke to you… I’m not allowed to share confidential medical conversations.
I always try to tell you the truth as much as I can, even if it gets me in trouble sometimes.
He had a bit of a chest infection from what I gather and that’s just messed with his biorhythms and caused that little bit of an issue.
Because of what happened in and around the Rochdale game, we had to take precautionary measures.
It wasn’t ideal as it disrupted our preparation a little bit, but the main thing is Connor is fine.
He’s trained fully this morning and hopefully it’s a little bit of a lingering chest infection that’s made him feel a little bit poorly.
Without giving any confidences away, if it was serious at all, no doubt he would have surgery or treatment right now. Is that one of the reasons it can be delayed for a few weeks and months?
The doctor and Stu (Leake, club physiotherapist) would be better answering it.
He just had an elevated heart rate. His heart rate jumped a little bit and it didn’t settle for a prolonged period.
That’s why he came off in the Rochdale game and we didn’t know if that was due to a bang on the head or whatever.
It turned out there is a quite straightforward procedure he can get done, which will probably put him out for two to four weeks, nothing major.
At some point, he’s going to have to explore that.
For us, when it flares up on Tuesday night, you instantly think back to what it was and what we’ve subsequently found is he’s had a little bit of a chest infection. It’s been going around quite a bit in the group and it’s just made him feel unwell and because of what he’d had in the past, we have to take those precautionary measures.
Everything’s fine. He was good to go in the dressing room but we didn’t think it was the right thing to do.
He’s trained fully today and feels fine, so great news for us that all seems well as the big man.
That makes sense, so it’s not as serious as perhaps you thought on Tuesday night?
No. With what he had had previously and with his age and anything to do with your heart rate elevating, you’ve got to be doubly careful, especially in the current climate after you’ve seen Christian Eriksen and so on and so forth.
A friend and teammate of mine, Marc-Vivien Foe sadly lost his life, so any time it’s anything to do with anyone’s heart, even if it isn’t – in this case, it’s a chest infection – but as soon as the heart rate elevates and off the back of what happened in the Rochdale game, for me, we can’t take any chances.
There’s no way in the world until we’re absolutely sure what’s going on here, we can ask Connor to play football (against Oldham on Tuesday). As it turns out, it was very, very mild. He’s absolutely fine.
I’d rather it be that and be relieved, rather than somebody go in and something stupid or untoward happening.
I’m presuming Ryan Loft and Leon Clarke still won’t be available for the weekend?
Clarkey’s back on the grass today, so he’s joined in, albeit in a supplemented part. He didn’t do the full session because it’s only his first couple of days back on the grass.
He was moving quite well.
I’m not sure if the weekend will be a little bit too soon for him or not, but we’ll assess that depending on how he wakes up after training today, how he comes out of the gym this afternoon and how he trains tomorrow to see whether he will be in the matchday squad.
How soon before we might see Jon Nolan in the squad?
He’s getting closer. We’re at the back end of his return to play.
Nolo is chomping at the bit but because he’s been out for quite a long period over the past 12-18 months, he’s somebody that we want to get the best out of and we’ve got to make sure we get him in a position where we don’t just have him for two or three games and we have him for a prolonged period with us.
We’re going softly, softly with that. He’s coming along really nicely.
The weekend’s game might be too soon for him, but certainly in the next couple of weeks, he’ll be in contention.
How do you tackle the next few weeks? We talked about the schedule on Tuesday, you’re playing two games a week for the next six weeks or so. Is it inevitable that reluctantly you will have to make some team changes? You made five changes on Tuesday, is it just one of those things that you have to rest and rotate the squad sometimes?
Yeah, you want to pick the same team every week. Usually, a good marker for success is “Same again boys”.
Off the back of travelling to Sutton with a quick turnaround and getting back on the road and travelling up to Oldham and with the schedule coming, I felt Tuesday night we had a couple of bodies and we could rotate a little bit.
It didn’t obviously go to plan as we didn’t get the desired result, so you’ve got to manage the load of the group, but for me in reality the amount of changes you make, when you’re really successful you might make one or two.
On the Tuesday night game, we were making four and obviously Connor’s chest has made that five. That’s not ideal because it’s pretty much half your outfield players.
You don’t want that disruption in there, especially when you’ve got very limited time on the grass like we have in terms of the congestion and the travel.
It’s one of those things that you have to judge on a game-by-game basis.
For me, the sooner I can get into the realms of little to no changes, it usually means you’re pretty much into your strongest team and you know what your best XI is.
That will mean, if you’re not changing, that you’re getting results as well, but with that congestion of the fixtures, it would be foolish of me to think I was going to use the same 11 players for the next six or seven-week period.
The squad is going to be tested. It already has been in this period, whether it’s by COVID or just a run of games. I expect it will be and if we are going to be successful it will be due to the group effort and the squad effort.
Presumably, you’re a lot happier with the squad than the one that took on Mansfield on August 7. I just wonder why things are so much better now because I was looking at the starting line-up at Field Mill and there aren’t too many faces that day that aren’t still playing for you now. Is it maybe the squad’s better? Are you happier with the squad, rather than the starting XI, that you had on that first day?
Yeah, we’re in the process of getting better and we put ourselves under enormous pressure because we want to win every game and shoot up the table as quickly as we can.
In reality, we’ve only had two transfer windows and 50 per cent of those windows has been clearing out the deadwood pretty much. It’s not all been about who we’re getting in and recruiting. We’ve been clearing out a lot of deadwood.
Where the group is at now, it’s certainly moving in the right direction. I always talk to you about 10-game cycles and I was talking to the lads about it this morning.
The first block of 10 games, we won three, drew one and lost six. Second block, we were three, four and three.
In these seven games subsequently, we are four, two and one, which is approaching the success profile we’re looking for, albeit Tuesday night was disappointing.
But the group and the whole club is in a real uplift of positivity and confidence. That isn’t going to turn us into Manchester City overnight because you probably need a couple of billion quid to spend.
But we went six unbeaten and in my time here, I don’t think we’ve done that. I don’t think the feel-good factor has been as good at any point as it has been in the new year.
We’re all growing together and the group’s still growing and we’re not going to be perfect.
You know where I think the group is at in terms of level of performance, which means I think there is a lot more to come out of the group.
We are moving in the right direction in many regards as a football club, so I’m pleased with where we are but we’ve got to keep pushing on and get better and better because that’s what we want. We want to be the best version of Bristol Rovers that there has ever been.
I think we’ve turned a sinking ship around, a real juggernaut around, and we’re starting to make progress in the right direction and long may that continue.
Mansfield are quite possibly the form team in the whole EFL at the moment. Twelve wins in 14 games. It’s quite a run, isn’t it, and you’ve got to try to stop it on Saturday?
Yeah. It’s just another game. It will be a tough game. They are in red-hot form.
We’re in front of our fans in our stadium, we’ve got the disappointment of Tuesday night. I’ve got some bears with sore heads who are desperate to get back on the grass and put it right.
You get the benefit of a quick turnaround between fixtures, we don’t have a week to sulk and feel sorry for ourselves.
We’ve got to get back on the horse relatively quickly. We’ve got two tough home fixtures coming up on Saturday and Tuesday and it’s a challenge we’re looking forward to, stopping an in-form side, taking their momentum but also continuing our uplift and positive trajectory.
Afternoon Joey, things are improving at home where you have won three consecutively. That’s not been common in recent history. You also had the biggest home crowd of the season in the last home game. How important is the Mem and the crowd going to be for you in the run-in, particularly with a lot of the promotion-contending sides to face?
It will be huge, Sam, for us to engage that fanbase to be that big noise, that big energy.
We know the bad side of it from the earlier part of the season and we’ve also felt the COVID period where we’ve had nobody in there.
I think, for me if I’m honest, I’d rather have nobody in the stadium than negative energy in the stadium because I think it’s easier for players to play in that.
But then the upside of having positivity in the stadium, which the lads have fed off certainly in recent times. I think it’s grown belief and the amount of late goals we’ve scored, even thinking back to the Oxford game and the scenes there.
For me, that’s where our passionate fanbase can be a massive benefit and boost for us.
We’ve got to turn up and perform and work hard and keep feeding the crowd. You’ve seen from my programme notes just how important I feel the crowd at the Mem could be.
The lads are seeing it now based on the away followings we’ve had and the support they get in and around the city. We had about 7,500 home fans for the last fixture and I think they know there are good times ahead for the club.
It’s not going to be straightforward, we’re not just going to be winning every single week five, six and seven-nil, because football isn’t like that. You’re going to have good, bad and indifferent days, but I do think the fanbase knows that everybody here deeply cares about helping the football club get better.
Have you seen the desired response today after what was a performance that disappointed you on Tuesday? Have you seen the right sort of energy around The Quarters today?
It’s one of those weird days. The lads are fine. We had a chat about the (Oldham) game this morning and broke it down, analysed bits of it where we felt we could improve, bits of it where we certainly want to do better.
We’re quite truthful as a group. We sat there and went “OK, we’ve got to get better and improve”.
We’ve probably had our most dominant spell of possession. We’ve had 650-odd passes, 70-odd per cent possession, but we’ve lost the game 2-1 and it probably should have been 3-1 had the linesman had his readers on.
But if he had them on, we would have had a penalty. One, if not two. It was the same guy that side that missed, for me, a blatant handball, and missed a barge in the back as Harvey Saunders was trying to get on the end of a cross.
For us, settling the lads down and saying “We know we’re on the right track, we know we’re doing the right things. You can tell by all the noises internally and externally that we’re going in the right direction,” we’ve just got to keep fostering that.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and I think the fans, certainly the hardcore, have latched onto that. There is such a different feeling in the stadium. I feel “Wow, these are behind us and we can win here”, and if I’m feeling that, I can’t imagine what our players are feeling.
They’re growing into the shirts. We’ve got a young side in many regards and the best is yet to come from this team.
There are going to be moments where we’re not at our best like we weren’t in the Hartlepool game, where we weren’t at our best but we managed to win it. Oldham, we weren’t at our best and they’ve managed to score early and had something to hang onto.
For us, it’s a case of continuing that upward trajectory of the football club. We’ve got a great group of lads here, they’re disappointed with the result on Tuesday night and they know just how difficult the next couple of games are and they are keen to put it right.
What are the biggest threats and strengths of Mansfield that you have zeroed in on? As has been mentioned, they are the in-form side in the division and have surged from near the bottom to near the automatic promotion places.
Mansfield are a good side, you don’t need me to tell you that. The form table and league table attests to that.
I felt when we went there, we were unlucky not to get a point and if we had got a point there I knew it would be a tricky place to go based on the fact they are one of the few sides that pay more money than us.
They blew us out of the water for a few players. We’re one of the big hitters in the division, but so are Mansfield.
They have built a good side. They fact they took young Matty Longstaff on loan from Newcastle shows the quality they are able to recruit.
Cloughie, as he does, has built another good side, a side capable of getting out of the division.
A four-diamond-two, which has been really effective for them, but I’m not sure if Rhys Oates is out of the game. They made four subs on Tuesday night and I’m surmising one of them was a concussion substitution, so whether they might make a change based on one of those guys missing out, I’m not sure.
But I think it’s quite set in stone what they’ll do. They won’t change for us and they won’t change if they played Man City probably because they’re on such a good run of form.
But it’s a good tie, it’s a great tie in the division. It’s an opportunity for us to grab momentum, it’s an opportunity to put right the disappointment of Tuesday night and, even more so, it’s an opportunity to get back in front of, hopefully, another good crowd at the Mem and give another good performance.
Has James Belshaw’s knee settled down after the treatment he had and is he back in contention to play?
Yeah, he’s trained this morning. He feels fine, so barring getting through tomorrow, everything should be fine for him and he’ll come back into contention in the squad.
Good news on that front.
Have you made your decision on who starts? Does James have possession of the gloves because of his form?
I’m going to go with Jed Ward, I think. I’ll leave both of them out and play Jed, better for us.
Do you seriously believe I’m going to tell you who's playing in goal on a Thursday? I may as well phone Nigel Clough myself.
Worth a try, but fair enough. Ryan Jones has travelled with you pretty much every game this season. He has not yet made his EFL debut, but he seems to be in and amongst the squad. How close is he to forcing his way into the first-team reckoning or is he player to consider next season?
I don’t know, you never know in football. He’s making nice progress and he’s strengthening up. He was quite a lightweight boy when we came in and he’s starting to get a bit more physicality about him.
He’s a young apprentice who’s learning his trade. For me, he’s going in the right direction, but I would like him to maybe get a loan this season.
I think he’s a player who would certainly benefit from that and I think in the long term he could be a good player for the club, but we’ve just got to make sure we get the development for him at this stage right.
I think at this moment in time, training with the first team is big. It’s really aiding his development, but it won’t be until he’s needing a bit of game time.
The plan is to get him out on loan, get him playing and then hopefully in pre-season he comes and shows us he’s developed and the loan has been beneficial and he pushes into the first team next season.
But with the pandemic, you’re always a couple of positive results and injuries from getting thrown in at the deep end. It’s happened to Luca Hoole at other times and he’s gone in and taken full advantage of those opportunities.
Jonesy will be the same, he’s someone I think highly of and somebody I think, with the right development, could end up being a first-team player for the football club.
Joey, I just wanted to ask about Sion Spence. How close is he to breaking into the first team, because he’s been on the bench for the past few games?
He’s been good, Spenno. When he’s come on, he’s affected games.
He’s probably frustrated that he’s not getting the amount of minutes that he would probably want, but these first loans are key for them.
They come out of their parent clubs and into the real world of division three and four and there is a huge learning curve that they’re on.
Spenno’s been really pleasing to watch because he’s starting to come out of his shell a bit. He’s a really quiet boy in and around the training ground. With his peer group he’s OK, but with the more senior players he’s a little bit quieter, but he’s starting to evolve in those processes on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis.
I know I can turn to him to produce. He’s popped up with goals, but the problem he has got is there is huge competition for places running right throughout our group and our squad. Certainly in that midfield area, it’s very congested and because he’s a bit of a luxury player, an eight to 10 player, he’s unlucky that he’s run into us taking Antony Evans on the last day of the window and him becoming a big player for us.
The future’s bright for Sion. Even if he finished his loan tomorrow, it will have benefitted him for the rest of his career, no doubt.
He’s a talented boy and he’s got the best years out in front of him and he’ll definitely play minutes between now and the end of the season. It will be up to him whether they are from the start or from the bench. His performances will show that.
You said at the end of the window that there hadn’t been any talks with Crystal Palace, but do they ask anything of you? I know Mark Bright comes to a few of the games to have a look at him, but is anything said about his loan?
I think the parent clubs know the reasons they send them out and it’s a huge bonus if they go out and play all the time.
Usually, if it’s a player they think should play every week, they will put a caveat in the deal that you don’t pay if he plays but you do pay if he doesn’t. With lots of other loans, it’s just a case of they want to get them out.
It’s like getting work experience for them, especially the first loan, and if they do well on their first loan then it allows them to ask for a bit more of an uptake on salary on the next loan.
But with first loans, I think a lot of the time the parent clubs are keen to get them out and in a different environment. Obviously, in our case it’s a more senior environment than he’s been in with Crystal Palace under-23s.
They do aid is development and it would aid it even quicker if he was playing every week, as Connor Taylor is benefitting from, but again it’s not the case that every single week you’re going to play younger players.
They have to take the shirt and they have to not relinquish it and at this moment in time we’ve got some young players who’ve done that and we’ve got some others who are still trying to put a marker down and show what they can do on a first-team scale.
Aaron Collins got an assist on Tuesday. Do you feel he will benefit from having a Leon Clarke or Ryan Loft so he can feed off a striker? At the moment, he’s got the pressure of leading the line, but perhaps on Tuesday he was passing to teammates rather than being in the best of shooting positions?
Az would definitely benefit from playing with a nine, as we saw in the Swindon game when Lofty was in there, and at times in the Scunthorpe game when big Leon came onto the pitch.
I don’t see him as the nine, albeit for a large part of the season he’s had to occupy that role due to either us not having one in the building or the one’s we’ve had in the building not being fit to play.
He’s done that task manfully, but once we get those platforms off our number nines, it will add another dimension to Aaron’s game.
He’s done really well in recent weeks and months after a tough start and I think the best is yet to come. His best days in a Bristol Rovers shirt are not far around the corner and I think it is massively intertwined with us getting a focal point in the number nine jersey.
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