Joey, I’d imagine you are a pretty happy man with what you’ve seen your team do today.
At this stage, it’s about winning games. So taking maximum points for us is the key. I felt our performance today deserved that. We had a dominant first period. Probably the most control we’ve had in my time here.
We were lacking that final third and maybe a few box entries. We sometimes went for more aggressive passing routes. Something we worked on during the week, we were taking a more aggressive version of that.
I’m never going to pull the lads back in from that but I felt if we used it a little more wisely by maybe passing out to the wide men instead of looking for that through ball all the time we could have created more waves.
I gave the lads lots of praise at half time. Then sod's law (Bradford score). I shouldn’t really do that because it can sometimes lead to a little bit of complacency. Then we find ourselves one down which went against everything.
But again the lads showed enormous character and credit to them for that.
Realistically, six months ago that probably wouldn’t have happened but that never really felt too much doubt that you were at least going to give it a really good go.
Everyone knows what a good side we are now. Everyone who comes to the stadium and pays the entrance fee, they know that these lads are just going to keep going and going. As i say first half I thought that was the best we’d pressed the ball in my time here.
I thought the pressure we got on Bradford, who are a good side. Their league position isn’t a testament to the players they’ve got in the group. As I say with the manager they’ve got as well, they’ll have a right chance to be a force in the division.
But I thought our collective pressure, the way we hustled and harried them. We made them look really poor. They were certainly second best going into half time. They somehow find themselves one-up. They probably couldn’t believe it themselves.
But then normal services resumed. A great goal from Sam Finley to settle us down and give us enough time on the clock to go and get the winner. Nice for the big man to go and get that goal.
He’s been on the end of a few recently. Certainly at Carlisle last week he got free at the near post and was disappointed he didn’t do better. But again, a good ball in from Couttsy and the lads are attacking the ball.
We get that second goal. We were probably a tad unfortunate not to get a third. I thought Clarkey was brilliant when he came on and it was a real group effort.
I thought our lads were more than good enough to win that game today. Anything else would have been a travesty.
You’re right and you can go through the team and pick out lots of good performances. I just wanted to pick out Sam Finley because he almost didn’t put a foot wrong out there defensively and going forward.
He’s been the real epitome of the character of our team. You think back to the early part of the season when we were scratching around and struggling for a bit of form, Sam Finley was one of our standout performers, he really was.
People are forgetting today we were without Nick Anderton, Josh Grant and Antony Evans who were all on the horizon to come back and chip their lot in.
I think Sam’s performance today was a real leadership performance. I thought Couttsy was superb as well. Elliot Anderson was worth the admission fee alone.
I was talking to Sam about using his energy to lead his teammates and I thought today, obviously, the goal puts a big cherry on the top of his performance, but I thought his performance on the second ball, in open play and in transition, I thought he was certainly pushing towards the top of echelons of where he wants to be.
The challenge for Sam is to keep doing that and keep leading in that way and as I say since pretty much the opening gambits of the season he’s been week-in week-out, a very consistent performer for us.
Again today he gets the goal and the man of the match but again he’s putting together a fantastic season. Everyone is talking about player of the year and Belly is a name. But I’m looking at it and thinking if Billy Elliot had been here a little bit earlier he might have had a say but then Sam Finley is there and if you go through consistency of performance, sam has to be right up there.
The challenge now is finishing the season strong. Because I always think if you’re fit and you’re a good side, you get stronger and stronger as you push towards Everest. If you speak about climbing mountains you’re in the death zone now, but the best climbers just get stronger.
Today, I thought we were excellent.
Another game ticked off. Another home win and the top of the table is still looking as congested as it did before you started. How do you approach it? Is it literally just a game at a time trying to get three points and keep pressure on the other teams?
Yeah, there are loads (of games) to go. Six to go. Tranmere next week gets bigger. We’re in the death zone. Every game gets bigger. The stakes get higher and we were laughing today talking about how we were nervous coming in and anticipation was big with the attendance and seeing all the social media. Big expectation and people you’re bouncing into are really positive about the club and the team.
We wanted to give a good performance and send people home happy and I think the lads were superb. I’ve not been here long enough but I’m not sure if you’ve had a Bristol Rovers team play that type of football that consistently.
I don’t think you’ll have a team as good as these lads going forward. This will be the best group Bristol Rovers fans have seen, certainly in recent memory. Listening to Goodnight Irene blaze out. Three sides of the ground are at it.
From where we’ve come from, it’s special. The club is truly united you could see that when we conceded the goal, there was no big let out of energy, there was no negativity. Everyone knew this team would come and get themselves back into the game
For me, it was really pleasing that not only did we get ourselves back into the game but we kicked on and won the game and managed the last period of the game out with relative ease.
I’ve got no more grey hairs than what I had this morning. It was comfortable apart from that minute-or-two-period where they scored, I thought we were competent and we controlled every single aspect of the football match.
Joey, we’ll come on to the final third in a minute, but that was your philosophy in action. You talked a lot about locking in the game down it reminded me of the Shrewsbury game last season shortly after you came in, you had that instant impact. A game where you completely suffocated them and just played in their half for pretty much the entirety.
Yeah, and that’s a full team effort. Because if someone knocks off or someone doesn’t pick up a runner or quite squeeze up the pitch aggressively it can allow the opponent out.
I thought right across the board today the lads followed the work we’ve been doing all week and they really executed that on a matchday. I thought we were superb in terms of pressing. We knew Bradford would try and play. Albeit we knew they wouldn’t really want to try and play if that makes sense.
They were trying to play because they want to show the new manager what they can do. They’ve had 500 passes in recent games but we knew if they were pressurised they would tend to revert to a more direct ball in Andy Cook’s vicinity.
We knew that would be a problem because of the runners they’ve got from midfield. So we made a decision to pick a line of engagement where we would allow some of their players to have the ball in certain parts of the pitch but also knowing we’d get a pressure wave coming behind that.
Again, some of the pressing from Harry Anderson on one side. Elliot Anderson jumping out when we pressed with the wide-men or the eight. That takes coordination or practice and that’s a credit to those players taking on that information. But then being able to execute it out there on matchday. This group is evolving, it’s growing and we’ll just keep getting better and better.
There’ll be some harem-scarem moments between now and the end of the season but again for us, the season's end is just a point. This is just about making the team and players miles better. For me, it’s building a team, building a football club.
The good thing is, you can see in the stands, tickets are sold out, everyone is chomping at the bit to get in here. The Gas are coming.
I know you say you won’t pick up your players on it necessarily because they took aggressive options, but are you at all concerned about final third decision making at times? You’ve been very good but that’s probably one of the themes that when you’re not at your best it has been because, like today, you had 15 shots with none on target, low percentage shots when there’s a pass you can possibly take. Is that something you think you’re going to have to do because cool heads are going to be needed in these final six games?
Yeah, don’t forget you’re always teaching and always trying to learn your players. We were speaking to them about xG models and you guys are all well-versed in this now.
Shot locations and where they’re coming from but it’s hard to talk about shot locations when Antony Evans slams one in the top corner from 35 yards and lads will be like ‘what was that shot location’?
So we’re trying to teach them these things. I saw something doing the rounds today that they think Liverpool are now allowing them to shoot from certain areas because it’s a poor shooting location and they back Allison to save it rather than a defender shooting out to try and block and compromise the unit.
The game as we know it is in an evolutionary stage. If I had VAR, goal-line technology and the ability to go back and watch stuff, I’d probably teach the lines a certain way, but the fact we’re in division four and we don’t have those things, I’ve got to teach the lads to play to the constraints of the league.
For us, final third entries, shot locations stuff like that, we definitely need to improve on them because then if it allows if you do get coordinated pressure the lads chance creation from there is more sustained because they know what they’re trying to do and from better shooting locations should they choose to have a shot, but at this moment in time, to have 15 shots first half and not hit the target we’ve got to be better.
I think we ended up with 30-odd shots and only two goals to show for that, whilst I’m happy we’re having those shots we definitely need to work on it.
As I said about the first half we were peeling out wide and we’re putting in some really good through balls because they excite you as a fan but we should have gone wide because it would have allowed us I think to create a better chance.
We went for the killer ball through and if that comes off, great you get in and it’s a good goal. But it’s so hard to do that. So the team is evolving. We’ve got lots of work still to do. We don’t think we’re anywhere near the finished article.
One of those areas for sure is turning more territory and final third entries into a better quality of chance.
Trevor Clarke is a player who is probably playing for his future because it’s a one-year deal with a one-year option. It’s been a nightmare for him with injuries and he’s only played four league games before today. How did you think he got on as you gave him a chance today?
He’s benefited from people having knocks and niggles. He’s had such a tough season. He started at Mansfield if you remember on the opening day of the season. He’s then had setback after setback and credit to Trev, he’s worked hard, certainly in the last six or seven weeks because he’s been fit and ready to go.
ut obviously, the lads who were playing in front of him were doing superb so he couldn't get an opportunity to get minutes but he kept working and he kept training really well and then Nick picks up an injury.
We had Harry at full-back last Saturday because Nick pulled out the morning of the game which meant we didn’t have time to work on anything and to throw Trev in would be a little bit unfair on him because he hadn’t had that many minutes.
This week we knew Nick would be out, so we had some time to work on that. I felt Trev really gave us a different dimension. Some real legs on the outside and I was pleased with his performance considering how long he’d been out.
As I say, he’s got an opportunity now to showcase what he can do in this last period. His first start in a long time and he got tired towards the end of it, so we took him off as a precaution, but I was really pleased with his overall performance.
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