Joey Barton has revealed Bristol Rovers' heavy defeat to League One strugglers Morecambe on Saturday will have consequences in the transfer market, with players set to leave the club before Tuesday's deadline.
The Gas fell to a 5-1 defeat at the Mazuma Stadium and manager Barton says that performance has confirmed his view that he needs to be "ruthless" and certain unnamed players "need to move on".
Barton intends to be busy bringing players into the club, too. Rovers have made three signings in the shape of Ellery Balcombe, Jarell Quansah and Grant Ward and the manager wants several more deals to be sealed by 11pm on Tuesday.
"A couple I’ve made my mind up on today that we need to move on out of the football club," he admitted after Saturday's defeat. "They are just not going to do what I need them to do.
"I’ve given them ample opportunity. I’ve said to them in there ‘I’ve given you loads of opportunities to have a jersey, keep your jersey and take it’.
"Now I’ve got to be ruthless because I’m looking at next season and what that looks like as well as trying to finish this season strongly. You’ve got to have one mind on the job to come.
"This season was stabilising, keeping the team in the league, being a League One side consistently and trying to build the foundations to kick on. Because we started slow, you would have snapped your hand off for the position in the December period and we got in a bit of rarefied air up in eighth in the table. I think a few of our lads have thought that’s it, job done and we can relax.
"The last two games at Accy and at Morecambe, we’ve been poor."
Before the trip to Morecambe, Barton said he wanted to add a centre-back, left-back, central midfielder and a right winger to his group before the end of the trading window. He reiterated his intentions on Saturday evening.
"No," he replied when asked if there were any imminent arrivals. "But I will definitely be chasing everything up as soon as I get away from this because if anyone was in any doubt, today has been another rude awakening about where the standard of our group’s at, and if we don’t improve it, we will no longer be able to keep pace with the teams that are chasing promotion.
"Three or four days to go in the window and we need to bring in four or five players if we want to try to get promoted."
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