Joey, I imagine you are a very satisfied manager after that?
Yeah, it was a case of getting minutes into people who maybe haven’t got the minutes they would have liked in recent weeks and it was a chance for them to further their first-team chances and also to progress in the competition.
We’re in it so we might as well try to get to Wembley.
It would be nice and it’s not going to hurt when you’re playing against a couple fewer men. What did you make of the red card decisions in the first half?
It’s a second yellow so I’m not sure. They both looked fouls so you run that risk.
The challenge on Alfie was too far away from me. Unfortunately now in the modern game, if you go off your feet and you’re late, you always run the risk of that. I’m happy their not on our side of the disciplinary problems.
At that point, you’ve just got to find a way of breaking them down and I thought it was a really good finish from Lofty. He looks like a striker full of confidence but I didn’t know he had that in the repertoire, that little dink, so I’m really pleased for him.
It was good for Harry to get a great finish. It was a really good strike and the keeper has got no chance with it, and then it was nice for Macca to get a goal which should go some way to settling him down a little bit.
They were three very good goals in different ways and you showed some real patience without being passive in that second half.
Yeah, and we said to the lads at half time we were smothering our own work by rushing a little bit because they’d had a man sent off. We said about controlling the ball and you’ve got to methodically break down a team that has a numerical disadvantage.
That means passing the ball, switching the play, pulling them one side and then going back across, and playing out from goal kicks, so we’re pleased with the clean sheet and lots of elements of the second half.
Obviously, the lads had really good finishes for the goals, but in the first half there were a lot of lads who can definitely play at a higher level than that.
Looking at the quality from Ryan Loft, it just seems he’s worked really hard in the summer and come back fitter and absolutely ready to make a mark.
Yeah, and a lot of credit goes to Lofty. He had a tough spell at the back end of last season.
He came and did really well against Swindon away from home and I thought he was a really good player. Then the Scunthorpe away game, he had a little bit of an injury and he just lost his momentum from there and other players in the team grabbed it. Aaron Collins went on a scoring run and Elliot Anderson emerged and the rest is history.
Barring that Port Vale moment for him, he didn’t get in the goals, but I remember his contribution when he came on against Rochdale away and if we hadn’t brought Lofty on, I think his presence in that last 10 or 15 minutes certainly gave us a battering ram up front.
He’s come back for pre-season after grafting away in the off-season and he’s a credit to his profession. Credit to him, he’s worked tirelessly.
It’s a strange game, football. If you’re working hard and doing everything right, good things happen for you, so I’m really pleased for the big man.
He, Azza and young Josh Coburn tapped on to John Marquis and Harvey Saunders have given us some nice options up there.
Absolutely, and you added to your squad today with a short-term deal for Scott Sinclair. Just talk me through that.
I just thought he had too much quality for us not to take him. We were in a position because of the back end of the window where we budgeted and we had a bit of surplus because we missed some targets.
For us, it was a case of being able to add real experience with over 500 appearances, and real quality and goals.
And if you are an old romantic, it allows him to start and finish at Rovers. He’s a product of the academy and gone to Chelsea and made a fantastic career for himself in the British game and then, as luck would have it, he’s out of contract, he’s in the right shape in terms of his body and it’s in a position where we think his experience could really add to us and our group.
It works for all parties. It’s short-term to begin with but let’s hope this is an Indian summer for Scott and he can have a number of good years here.
His mum and dad are over in Bath and he has lots of friends and family in the area. Maybe the older Gasheads amongst it can get to see him fulfil his potential in a quartered shirt that he may have done when he was a young teenager in the academy.
That would certainly be lovely if that happens, and if you look at the bench you had today with an experienced team out there. You add that in with a couple of injuries to come back the squad is looking in a pretty good place at the moment.
Yeah, and we’re young and we wanted to have a bit more experience and Scott comes into that category as well. We want some nice options, we want try and have an FA Cup run if we can and we’re in this competition, so we might as well see how far we can get.
I said to the players at half time ‘This is an opportunity to get to Wembley. If you win tonight, you’re four games from Wembley. How many chances do you get to play at Wembley in your career?’
If you get a chance, you should maximise it and this is a legitimate opportunity for us if we can keep playing well to get through. Yeah, the earlier couple of games for us are an opportunity to rotate the squad, but if you get the requisite results to progress then you might as well see how far you can go in the competition.
The league competition will keep the priority but also it’s an opportunity for the lads to maybe go and see a fantastic stadium like Wembley.
Joey, from your first impressions of Scott at The Quarters, how many minutes do you think he has got in his legs for the game on Saturday? Obviously, he’s had a few months out of the game.
I see him running this afternoon with Harvey Saunders, who was suspended, and Glenn Whelan and James Connolly. He’s in fantastic shape and he’s a player who won’t need a lot of time to get into his group.
Would he be able to start against the table-toppers on Saturday? Probably not, but I think if he had to do half an hour or 25 minutes, he’d certainly have his lungs open, but with his game IQ and his nous, I don’t think he’d have a problem.
For us, we’ve got to get him through it safely. Tonight would have been ideal for him, but it just came a bit too soon in terms of when things got finalised.
But he’s someone we’ve taken on a short-term deal and both of us are having a look at each other. Who knows, he could well be two, three or four years here.
If he reaches his level of performance, he’s a fantastic player and I think a really good addition to group.
What a player for Aaron Collins to learn from. They are quite similar in their styles that they can play as a nine or off the left. That is a real role model.
Well, I brought him in case Aaron gets in this World Cup squad. We’ve got to have a contingency plan in case Azza gets his visa for Qatar.
That is part of the thinking with it, but he is also someone the lads can learn from because he’s been an incredible player and we’ve seen that with Whelo, who has moved into the coaching room a bit more.
The experienced players speaking to the younger players, your Luca Hooles and James Connollys and Lewis Gibsons, I just think having that wealth of experience – and still lots of ability, by the way, we haven’t just signed him because he’s and experienced player. He’s still really fit and his finishing is fantastic.
We think if an opportunity presents itself when the chips are stacked quite, you’d want it to fall to a player of Scott’s calibre and experience. We’re delighted to have him in our group and we’re looking forward to this period with him.
James Connolly, you hoped he might play tonight. What was the reason he didn’t?
He wanted to play tonight, but with some of the physical metrics we use, we felt it came a little bit too soon for him, merely by days. Had it been next Tuesday or this Saturday, it might’ve been a different story.
But we felt with him having a stress fracture in his spine, to try to nick five or six days off it now is just idiotic from us, especially when we’ve got lots of competition.
We’re keen to get him back in our group because he is a big player for us, but also we have to do it as safely and securely as we can.
Harvey Saunders, was he suspended?
Yeah, it was for two yellows in the first two games and Whelo was out for the red card in the last game. Harvey is frustrated because he is desperate for games I think tonight, you can him and he knows that would have been an opportunity for him.
Especially when they go down to nine men, he is probably kicking himself that he would have had the opportunity to score goals.
Luke McCormick has been held back by the fact Wimbledon didn’t let him in the building and he didn’t have much fitness coming in, but that was much closer to the real Luke McCormick, he was really dynamic.
Certainly in the second half he improved, and that’s what he’s about. We all know what a quality player Luke is.
The fans didn’t see him live in the stadium but I’m pretty sure they all tuned in on the iFollow and they saw what a big player he was for us in that terrible season.
He’s come into a new group and he’s obviously a little bit lower in confidence because of the two teams he’s been involved in for the previous seasons, but we know he is capable of that in every single game and the longer the game went on, the more he grew into it and it was nice for him to get a good quality goal to finish Swindon off tonight.
What you really want in these games is your fringe players staking claims. You’ve got Alfie Kilgour and Luca Hoole who were neat and tidy, Anssi Jaakkola was authoritative in goal, Sylvester Jasper looks dynamic, Harry Anderson scored and Trevor Clarke got an assist. It’s seems like it ticked a lot of the boxes and competition for places is just growing.
Lots of them you spoke about there, they’ve shown a desire to keep the level of performance. We said it’s not easy to win games of football at any level and when you get that winning feeling, don’t ever let it go.
It’s always rented, so if you can keep it, just keep winning. Don’t ever save it for another day because we all know it can disappear very quickly in our game and the challenge for the whole group is keeping that standard of performance. That is what the quartered shirt and the fans expect.
We’re custodians of the jersey and it’s important, no matter what competition we play in, that we maintain a level of performance for the football club.
Swindon came here last season in our stadium and d***** us 3-1 and everybody thought that was going to be a different story. By the time we got our hands on them in the away game, we turned a bit of a corner and I think tonight and Cheltenham on Saturday showed the progress we’ve made.
If that’s maybe not our strongest XI and maybe not their strongest XI, then I think in terms of a benchmark for the trajectory of the club over the past 18 months, we have to remember who was ahead of us at this stage last season and both of those clubs that we’ve played in the past week were markedly ahead of us and you’d have to say off tonight’s showing we’ve shown we’re ahead of them.
We’ve got to make sure we maintain that position but also try to close the gap on people higher up the football pyramid.
An FA Cup tie against Rochdale would normally be neither here nor there, but that win at Rochdale in the penultimate game of last season means a lot to you. It was a special day and one of the building blocks of what you’re building here.
Yeah and it’s an FA Cup tie, a magical competition, and it’s an opportunity for moments that you will remember for all your life. Last year, we drew Oxford in the first round and they were going well in League One and we had to go away.
There were many turning point moments, but the away game was big in terms of our level and the belief in the group, and obviously the first of many magical nights that happened here with Sion Spence, and Azza scored his first goal, left-footed outside the box and he hasn’t stopped scoring since.
Magical things can happen and I said to the lads at half time ‘This could be your last 45 minutes of football ever. Do you want the first 45 minutes to be your last?’ because at some point for all players, we’ve seen the boy, Enoch Mwepu at Brighton and Nick Anderton, one of our own, very quickly your career is there and then it’s gone.
Every performance, you should be happy to sign it off as a CD and say ‘That’s the best version of me’, regardless of opposition. The greatest compliment you can give opposition players is by absolutely smashing them into the ground, it’s the ultimate respect as a competitor, beating them into the ground, so he comes off and says ‘I do not want to play against that fella again’.
Some of our boys are getting that message and you only have to watch the game on Sunday, Liverpool vs Man City. If you give the ball away or make a mistake in those games, they take the game away from you.
As a professional player, you should have the highest possible standards. I think our boys are slowly but surely getting the message and long may that continue.
Joey, Bobby Thomas is a player who has played in all the competitions. Have you been surprised with how he’s been adaptable to play in multiple systems with different centre-back partners as well?
Yeah, and the boys that come on loan, you have to say to them ‘If you reach a level of performance here and you do really well, that can only stand you in good stead for whatever happens during your career’.
You’re not going to play 4-4-2 all your career, you’re going to play multiple systems because managers change very quickly in our game as we all know. You’ve got to be flexible tactically and I spoke in the build-up to the Cheltenham game, our job as educators is to give the lads as much as we can so they can develop the toolkit to deal with whatever the game throws at them.
Bob has been superb since he came in. He’s given us a real attacking threat from set-plays with a great goal on Saturday, and he probably should’ve had one today if he and Alfie didn’t run into each other, but I’m really pleased with his progress.
Sylvester Jasper put in a good performance as well and he was a bit unlucky not to get on the scoresheet tonight.
I have to disagree with you. In the first half, I thought he was miles off the pace and I told him in no uncertain terms at full time. I only have to point to Scott Sinclair and say ‘Look, this is a fella who will want to get in our team shortly. It’s all good and well doing it against Crystal Palace under-21s, but you need to get in the game more’.
To give him enormous credit, he responded superbly at half time. He’s probably disappointed not to get a goal, but he gets an assist with a really good pass down the channel and he plays the pass that puts Lofty in.
We moved his position in the second half to play closer to the front two and he responded to a bit of a rocket at half time.
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