Set-piece defending, Bristol Rovers propensity at conceding soon after the referee’s opening whistle, a lack of League One nous and know how, possession without penetration, budgetary limits and a flat January window; there were some very obvious flaws and reference points for Joey Barton to highlight as to why the Gas weren’t able to build on their encouraging first half of the 2022/23 season.
Many are linked. The first two (Rovers ranked 23rd for conceding from corners and free-kicks, and 45 per cent of all their goals conceded came between minutes 0-15 and 45-60) are perhaps a symptom of the third, while that, in turn, is a by-product of the fourth aspect. But identifying and moving towards addressing the problems is all well and good, the key for the Gas moving forward is finding the solutions to fix them.
That’s what the next six weeks and pre-season will provide Barton, his coaching staff and recruitment department as while this campaign may have been a necessary one, for the manager it was a deeply forgettable and, at times, frustrating nine months.
That partly speaks to his own character of someone who, for better and for worse, somewhat thrives on embracing chaos, but clearly Rovers can ill-afford to stand still and along with the changes that will need to happen within the group, for all his braggadocio and verbal swagger, Barton is also open to change from within and altering how he and his staff operate.
For one, their recruitment has fundamentally focused on youth, with a few exceptions in the form of Scott Sinclair and John Marquis. Of the 10 players that arrived last summer, nine were under the age of 25. It gives the team energy, it allows them to be coachable and malleable in what you want to do, but can lead to some collective character defects due to the fact the majority - as Barton lists them in full - hadn’t competed in League One before.
That was emphasised by the fact many of their rivals who were in the top half around the turn of the year made rock solid additions - Callum Wright to Plymouth, Randall Williams, Cameron Jerome and Victor Adeboyejo to Bolton and Aden Flint to Sheffield Wednesday, as examples - while the Gas rolled the dice with varying degrees of success around Grant Ward, Jarell Quansah, Lamare Bogarde, Calum Macdonald and Ellery Balcombe.
“Just depth, it really is,” Barton said, as to what has been missing from his squad. “A little bit of experience, a little bit more senior experience in certain departments would have stopped us making mistakes.
“But in terms of depth, Jordan Rossiter, Lewis Gibson going down compounded by the fact that we obviously lost Bobby Thomas, the next people in weren’t ready to hit the ground running. Bolton, Plymouth and Sheffield Wednesday in recent weeks - the next person coming in isn’t a kid learning on the job. If you want to get out of the division you can’t keep asking boys to do men’s jobs.
“Some of the goals against Bolton were boys against men and that’s the way we’ve gone. From our perspective we’ve stayed up, so it’s job done but, again, if we want to kick on and get out of the division we’ve got to be open to maybe changing our recruitment in terms of young players on loan or lads who are not well-versed in League One football.
“Belly never played League One before, Hooley, Flash (Lewis Gordon), James Connolly, Lamare, Antony Evans, played five games on loan at Crewe, Aaron Collins never did. So you’re asking people to do something they’ve never done before.
“It’s all good and well one or two learning on the job but I think seven and eight, you get some Keystone Cop moments which have certainly caused us issues this season.”
It’s not an admission he’s made before, with Barton steadfast in “his way”, something that also extends to the playing style he imposes on his team. Rovers ranked eighth overall for possession (53.8 per cent) and pass completion (73.5 per cent) and 10th for passes per game (406.4).
Previously he’s lambasted Shrewsbury Town, Wycombe Wanderers, Sheffield Wednesday and Derby County for their very obviously direct and overtly physical approach, eschewing the aesthetics of the game he so delights in promoting, having repeatedly declared how many more passes the Gas had made against those sides. But the net result is all those teams - removing the argument around resources for a second - finished above Rovers.
Having studied at the University of Sean Dyche, Barton knows all too well about footballing efficiency at the price of artistry, and while he’s not going fully over to the dark side, he’s indicated he’s willing to welcome so of that into Rovers’ game plan.
“There’s a way you want to coach and you kind of have a pure form of how you see the game in your mind,” he added. “One of my greatest strengths is my adaptability. Sometimes you have a fixation on the way you want to do and I think you’ve got to be candid and go, ‘okay, alright, if we try and do it that way I’m not sure it’s going to be efficient and effective’, and sometimes you’ve got to be open to change.
“Certainly when I talk about us being root and branch, the first port of call for me will be an introspection into myself and how I can improve my processes and maybe even to adjust: 280 passes at Burnley was Sean Dyche’s sweet spot.
"We played too much or not enough depending on that number. There was an emphasis on working hard, so there’d be 110km put on the board across the team and if we didn’t reach those thresholds we’d either not worked hard enough or we’d overplayed or underplayed. It was quite simplistic.
“I taught Dychey a slightly different way about working smartly and control of the ball and manipulation of the flow and the tempo of the game. On the flipside of that there have been lots of times this season where we’ve had 500-600 passes and not really caused any problems.
“So, somewhere in the middle of that, for me will be where the sweet spot is; whether that’s 350, 450, 550 or whatever, there’s an important journey for us to get into.
“We concede so many goals in the first 15 minutes of each half, which is a huge problem. We concede a lot of goals from corners. You start to distil down the issues and you start to go, ‘okay, we need to fix that’. How do we fix that, is it set-up, is it personnel? We’ll find the answers for that.”
Unlike his previous two summer windows, this shouldn’t see a wrecking ball taken to the squad and the blue swing front door of the Quarters temporarily changed to a revolving version as multiple players arrive and leave. He spoke of not wanting to “blow everything up” - a term gleaned from American sports - but, at the same time, is looking to upgrade or seek improvement, where possible, across the board.
“For me, finishing 17th, I’m never going to remember this season,” he said. “This is something that’ll just go meh in the background of your career. Because you only remember the big seasons when you get promoted or the rubbish seasons when you get relegated. That’s the reality.
“You don’t remember these middle of the road seasons but, I think for the football club, the trajectory it’s been on, I think it was important to solidify in the division. The key next season, in the pursuit of better and improving, we’ve got to make sure we don’t regress. So there are lots of players who we may go, ‘okay, they’re not good enough so they’ve got to go’. But also the person coming in has got to be above the level.
“So it isn’t a case of blowing everything up. It’s what worked? What didn’t work? Okay, we need to tweak that there, change that one there. And I think we’ll be a better version of ourselves next season. Is that going to be good enough to get promoted? I don’t know. But if we’re better next season then we were last, we won’t be far away.”
Barton maintains that Rovers are good enough to beat every team in the division in isolation, and has hinted that he feels League One could be slightly weaker next term than the season just past as Plymouth Argyle, Ipswich Town and then one of Sheffield Wednesday, Barnsley, Bolton Wanderers and Peterborough United head for the Championship.
The issue within that claim is games aren’t played in a vacuum and over a 46-match season, squad depth, and reinforcing it when possible, plays a huge part in success and failure.
“When the dust settles, we’ll take a breather and go, ‘it was a step in the right direction’,” he added. “None of us will be getting too carried away by what’s happened this year. We’ve been really under-par since the turn of the year and I put that at the recruitment department; we never really pushed on in January.
“When you look at the teams around us that did push on, I think the league table reflects the second half of the season. The teams that didn’t push on, they’ve all kind of drifted away and, as good a coach as I think I am, it’s about the finances and resources you get at your disposal.
“That isn’t the only way to be successful but certainly it’s a huge help. We’ll be competitive again next year. Ipswich will be leaving the division, hopefully Sheffield Wednesday will be leaving the division, it looks like Derby will stay down so they’ll be a big hitter. Wigan, Blackpool, they’ll be okay but they won’t be £15m like Ipswich. Reading, they’ll be handy but they could be under an embargo or whatever - who knows what Reading will be?
“If Bradford or Stockport get up, they’ll be handy because the fans they pull in. But I think we’ll have an opportunity to progress our team. Hopefully we can have a look into that top 10, top 12 and if you’re in there after the January window closes, you’ve got a chance. We’ve got to make sure we’re ready to turn up and win the first game of pre-season and then we’ll take it from there.
“I think we can beat everybody in this division. But, on the other side of it, everybody can beat everybody else. It’s a competitive division. We’ve got lots of work to do but it’s exciting as well.”
Players and some staff have already departed on their holidays with pre-season scheduled to start on June 26, with Rovers having confirmed their first game of the summer will be against Melksham Town and the Oakfield Stadium on Friday, June 30.
The summer programme will not only be used to refine and try and enhance his squad, whether that be through the transfer market or via improving what’s already in the building, but also to assess certain individuals who he retains an element of doubt of whether they’re capable of performing consistently and effectively at this level.
“Every other player, we should be trying to improve,” Barton said. “Some of those players will organically get worse in the summer, some will get better, some will surprise you in a good way, some will surprise you in a bad way.
“They’ll be told, what you’ve done this year will not be accepted. You need to be better. “Those lads will go away for the summer, they’ll come back for pre-season, we’ll run a battery of tests on them and that’ll tell me all I need to know.
“Some of them are borderline so whether they’re under contract or not. There will be lads in contract who will leave the football club. There will be lads who’ve been great servants here.
“But if we want to progress and move the chains, unfortunately you’ve got to keep refreshing the player personnel. And, as I say, those decisions aren’t taken lightly.
“There are parts of our team that aren’t at the level to get in the top 10, 12 of the division and we have to change that and, unfortunately, people who have done great for the club will have to leave. That’s football.”
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