Hi Joey, thanks for your time. First of all, two new players arriving this week. Tell us what Jon Nolan and Elliot Anderson will bring to the squad?
Real quality, based on this morning’s training session.
We’re always looking for players who can add to the group and we feel they are two guys who are at different ends of the spectrum, but we really think they can add some much-needed competition for places and quality in those midfield berths.
You obviously had no qualms about throwing them into the mix. Have they settled in well?
Yeah. Both joined in training today, albeit in different parts.
Elliot did the full session and completed it. Jon, we’re still in the figuring him out stage. He, obviously, missed a lot of game time at Ipswich and we have to tread carefully with him.
Young Elliot is at a different end of the scale. He’s at that Superman age when you’re pre-23 or whatever it is for a player when you feel invincible.
They settled into the group relatively quickly today and contribute massively towards helping a good squad effort in rising through the table as we have been in recent weeks and months.
Jed Ward recalled today. Is that related to James Belshaw’s injury last week?
Yeah. Belly's had a bit of good news in terms of what we thought it could have been.
We had a few scares after we had the scans and being looked at by the specialist but, thankfully, the prognosis seems to be really, really good.
The weekend's game is probably going to be too soon for Belly but luckily for us we have a Finnish international in Anssi Jaakkola who's been chomping at the bit, waiting for an opportunity but such has been Belly's great form, it's been tough for him.
As football has a strange way of doing, An opportunity has presented itself and we're lucky in that regard that we have two first-class keepers and a really good young prospect in Jed who was getting much-needed minutes but will have to come back and help the first team.
I guess Anssi’s chomping at the bit and he’s really excited by the opportunity, albeit he would have liked it not to come via injury?
Yeah. Obviously, I think he would rather it be via form but in football that's not always the way it goes.
He's been fit for a period and it's been great for his body to have that spell of training and now a first-team opportunity presents itself.
We’re fortunate in terms of it's tough to find keepers of Belly's quality but we're fortunate that we've got two.
Is there any update on Brett Pitman’s situation with finding a new club?
I believe Brett is very close to or has joined Eastleigh on loan.
It works for all parties. It’s a lot closer to Brett’s home, it gets him out playing and that’s how you want to finish your career.
You don’t want to finish your career, after such a good career like Brett has had, by sitting on the bench and not even making the squad.
I felt it was key and he was due the respect of finishing his career on his own terms.
He wants to play and, for me, he wasn’t going to play a lot for us and it was natural that we would help him get an opportunity.
As it is, it’s dropped in really nicely for him. A club that’s close to his home and he’ll hopefully be able to play and kick on from there.
Sutton next up at the weekend. It’s a team you played not that long ago in the FA Cup. Two teams in form so it should be a good game on paper.
Yeah. We played them in the FA Cup so we know what type of opponent we’re facing.
We know we’ll have to be at our best to take something out of the game.
They have been superb in the league this year and the table attests to that, but we’ve got out on priorities, focus and aim for our season.
It’s going to be a difficult afternoon, but one where if we’re at our best we’re confident we can take points out of the game.
Does it help that you’ve played them reasonably recently?
Yeah and no. Every game is a completely different event.
For us, it gives a bit of familiarity in terms of what they’ll do and how they’ll shape up, but they’ll have one or two changes and we’ve had a few changes since then.
I’m looking forward to the game. It’s a pity we couldn’t get more tickets because it seems like everywhere we go at the minute, the fans have bought all the tickets up.
We’ll have as many as we can get in there, but it’s going to be a hostile atmosphere. It’s a tight little ground and they have been successful getting out of the National League and they’ve made a fantastic start to league football.
We know where they are in the table. They’re above us and we want to close gaps on the teams above us.
To do that, we’ve got to keep picking up points from games. We’ve been excellent at that in recent weeks and long may that continue.
Afternoon Joey, is Brett’s loan until the end of the season and do you have a recall option to mitigate for an injury crisis up front?
Yeah, on all of those counts. If you loan to the National League, you usually do.
It would be bizarre if we use him, but those options are there.
For us, that is the benefit of loaning to the National League. You do have the option to recall players.
As we’ve seen with Jed in recent weeks, it’s been great for him to go out on loan and get games, which we need him to do, but we also have to give ourselves security of being able to recall should the situation with our squad require that.
You stated before deadline day you wanted a left-back but it didn’t quite happen. Does that bring Junior Brown back into your thinking or will he follow a similar route to Brett out of the club?
You know were in the market for that and we were quite vocal about it.
Both the left-backs who were earmarked for that position are injured at the moment. The reality is one of them might have an opportunity to scrap it out for that place because we didn’t manage to take the cover we were requiring in that position.
One man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity, so it’s down to them but the guys in the jersey now won’t be wanting to give it up.
Whether those guys can get back into my thinking, the ball is in their court.
For me, it’s focusing on who we have in the building and getting the maximum out of them.
For those guys, they were sliding towards the exit door, certainly Junior was, but as luck would have it for them, an opportunity has presented itself should they be in a position to take advantage of it.
Talk me through your deadline day. From the outside looking in, it seems like it was quite a long period of frustration and then you struck late with Elliot Anderson and Jon Nolan as a free agent the next day. The hard work seems worth it after maybe not having the start to the day you would maybe had hoped for?
See, this is where we differ. For you, you seem to feel we were frustrated and we weren’t. The signings we were trying to make weren’t befitting of a League Two club when you think about it.
I’m not going to talk about who they were and we had going on in the privacy of our war room, but we were trying to sign players from above the level and people would have been very surprised had we got hold of them.
We always want the best quality in the building.
We executed relatively early in the market for Ryan Loft because we felt it was absolutely necessary. We were also moving some stuff on in the background.
We’ve signed every player we planned on signing and we missed out on two players. One didn’t move and the other one went to a club that’s a lot bigger than us.
Sometimes when you’re in that marketplace, you’re relying on bigger clubs further up the food chain maybe not taking the options they have in order to swoop in.
Unluckily for us, we missed out on a left-back because were gazumped by a bigger club. We thought we had that done, so that was disappointing.
We didn’t take another left-back because we didn’t feel there was enough quality in the market to upgrade the group and they weren’t better than what we already had in the building.
We ended up taking Jon Nolan and Elliot. It seemed relatively late in the window, but that was always Plan B should Plan A fail.
For us, we did everything we could bar agree a fee with a selling club for a player. Contracts, everything like that would have been straightforward to get done, but as always you’ve got teams sitting further up the food chain from us and we can get access to their players.
For me, they are really positive signs, firstly that they’re willing to come and join Rovers in the division below and also that we have the financial and infrastructure capability to attract League One and Championship players to our club.
We didn’t manage to execute what we wanted because there were that many moving parts. Sometimes in football you’re not able to do that, but I’m absolutely delighted with the progress we made over the January.
Adding Ryan Loft, Elliot Anderson, James Connolly and Jon Nolan to the squad no doubt improves us and, for me, in January we got stronger not only on the pitch but in that dressing room as well where we’ve added quality to the group.
Elliot Anderson comes with rave reviews from Newcastle. Talk me through that one because there was some talk from journos in the North East that it was your links with the likes of Shola Ameobi that helped convince them to allow the player to drop to League Two after interest from the Championship and League One.
Stevie Harper and Shola up there, I have ex-Newcastle player links with them.
I speak with all the clubs to see what players they have available. When you go watch games, you earmark players and enquire about their availability and the parent clubs are planning on doing with them.
We knew Elliot was really well regarded at Newcastle. Obviously, he’s made his Premier League debut and he’s been in and around first-team training for a long period.
It’s his first loan, so coming from Newcastle to Rovers is a step outside the comfort zone, as it is for all you players, but based on his last 24-48 hours I don’t think he’ll be phased by it at all.
He’s clearly a really talented boy, he’s fit straight in with the group and he’s shown already in this morning’s training the quality he possesses, so we’re delighted to have him in our club.
The fact I’ve played for Newcastle, it’s great for me because if I can help develop young players from the clubs I played for then we’re going to have good players at Bristol Rovers because I played for some good clubs, so long may it continue.
Will Jon Nolan be involved this weekend, or will it be a bit further down the line that we see him after more than a year out?
He played 60 minutes last week in a kind of bounce game.
The natural want for everybody is to get him on the pitch because I think everybody knows what a good player Jon is.
Nobody is in any doubt of his quality. It’s just about getting him into a position where he can have a consistency of performance and that comes via being available to train every day and managing the load so he can play.
The reality of it is if we were able to see into a crystal ball and guarantee 12 months of fitness and training every day then you wouldn’t have a Jon Nolan at your club.
He’d be playing top end of League One, Championship minimum. The fact that he’s had a few niggles is a huge advantage for us and that is the reason I spoke about improving the medical and sport science department because it allows you to find those discrepancies in the marketplace.
I’m not at Ipswich or other clubs, so you don’t know what goes on in those departments, but you always have to work on the adage that maybe there is something they have missed and there is something you can do to create that robustness in players.
For us, we’ve got to be very careful with Jon because he has had such a long period of time where he hasn’t been playing regularly, so we will police that and hopefully we can get him involved in the matchday squads as soon as possible.
This weekend might come a little bit too soon, as might Tuesday, but certainly the Mansfield game we are earmarking to integrating him into the squad, but it will depend on training and everybody’s performance in training merits whether they make the matchday squads or not.
You play Sutton quite close in quick succession. Obviously, the league table has so many moving parts. Some results went for you in the week but you’re always relying on things outside of your control. This is something very much in your control where you can reel in one team and get to within a couple of points of them over the next couple of weeks.
It’s taking each game as it comes for me. There are loads of games left and we’ve seen four games ago we were feeling like we were having to go to stay part of the chasing group.
You take 13 points out 15 and all of a sudden the picture looks different.
For us, it’s all about controlling the controllable and that starts at the weekend against Sutton. We know what a good side they are from the cup game, we know it will be a tough fixture, we know they’re going well in the league.
They also know we’re going well and we’ve turned a bit of a corner.
If we win Saturday, we won’t be promoted and if we lose Saturday, we won’t be promoted.
For us, it’s about turning up and giving the best account of ourselves as we have been doing in the last period. We know if we do that we are more than a match for anybody in the division.
We also know if we don’t do it, this division has got a way of tripping you up and making you look foolish, so we have to focus on us and what we’re about.
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