Joey Barton has hinted he has some "barmy" solutions in mind when it comes to Bristol Rovers overcoming the injury and suspension issues that have marred the build-up to Saturday's game against Lincoln City.
The Gas were set to have just one centre-back available for the visit of the Imps to the Mem – Luca Hoole – but Alfie Kilgour's midweek red card being rescinded has eased the shortage of options available to the manager. Still, he is without a number of players in key positions.
But Barton has never been afraid to think outside of the box during his time at Rovers. At Portsmouth earlier this season, he raised eyebrows with an experimental formation featuring a back three without wing-backs, and he later insisted he would continue to persist with some of his unconventional tactical theories, confident his players can master them and create an edge against opponents.
Despite the likes of James Connolly, Bobby Thomas, Jordan Rossiter, Harry Anderson and Lewis Gibson being unavailable against Lincoln, the manager remains optimistic and he is relishing the chance to come up with a creative solution to secure a positive result.
“We’ve got a plan, we’re off-plan that’s for sure… but you have to be. You have to be adaptable, that’s this job,” Barton said.
“Charles Darwin – survival of the fittest, and in some regards football is that way but it’s also survival of the most adaptable. Lincoln won’t give two hoots whether we’ve got players injured or suspended. They’ll be going, chance to get three points on the board, chance to win another game, chance to progress their environment and we’ll have to have a plan to deal with that. We have a plan in the ether and I’ll tell you at half five on Saturday whether it’s worked.
“Weirdly, it can kind of take the pressure off because our fans are coming and they’re not stupid, they’re realistic. They’re going, maybe we should expect to beat Lincoln at home if we had everyone fit. And the fans are going, okay if it doesn’t go to plan they’ll know there are reasons behind it; it won’t be, okay we’ve got our best team on the pitch and we’re abject – because that is the worst thing, when you have your strongest line-up our there and it’s going wrong.
“It gives you salvation but it doesn’t save your job if you keep going, ‘well, I haven’t got my best players out there, we haven’t won in five… if we haven’t won in 55, at some point someone is going to go, that’s your fault and we’re going to remove you from your role.
“But it can work both ways and as I’ve had to point out, I’m just seeing everything as glass half-full. Okay, you can see it half-empty - we’re missing a few players in key areas - or, do you know what, I’m going to try a few barmy things here and we’ll definitely learn something.”
Barton says he feels his game plan for Saturday is not quite as novel as the setup he used at Fratton Park last month, but he feels experimentation is the key to unlocking a team's full potential.
He referenced last season, when it took a Rovers team that had experienced an enormous turnover of players in the summer transfer window several months to find its stride and, from that point, progress was rapid.
With Rovers losing key players in key positions this summer, the manager feels his team needs to follow a similar journey, albeit he is eager to settle on the right style and setup as soon as possible.
“We’re limited," he added. "We have kind of got 14 players available that we’re going to select from. I think you would be able to predict but I’m also seeing that from my worldview. It’s not rocket science.
“Portsmouth game, yeah, that was a little bit different. As ‘mad’ as that one? I don’t think it is but that’s maybe relative to how I see the world. I didn’t think that was that mad. I needed to see that in my head. But I’m also looking at that going, ‘I know how that works and I know how that works’. My belief is, you don’t know something works until you try it. Sometimes to get better, you have to fail. To get a better golf swing, you get lessons and sometimes you get a lot worse before you improve.
“If you look at us last year, we were trying lots of different stuff before we fell on the formula that ultimately got us promoted. I’m hoping we figure it out a lot quicker and I think we have, and through the powers of deduction, we’ve rattled through a lot of different permutations. Certainly in the first eight games of the season and last week, with the game being cancelled, allowed us to do a bit of experimentation, which we possibly wouldn’t have been able to, had the MK Dons game been on.
“And it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we’re at the point where we know our best shape and best system. Now it’s down to the players to embed themselves in that. The problem with that is Tuesday night affected the speed in which we can get there. And that’s what football does, it throws these curveballs at you.
"We’ve got it in our mind now about where we want to be and that didn’t really firm up until September 2 because we tried to get different components in. We’re absolutely clear in what we want to do and it’s different from last year so it brings different challenges but also we’re still trying to get players back from injury or suspension and others up to starting fitness. I do think we’ll grow over the course of the season.”
Lincoln occupy 16th place in League One, two points and places clear of the Gas ahead of kick-off on Saturday and Mark Kennedy's Imps claimed an impressive 2-0 win against Derby County at Sincil Bank on Tuesday.
With Rovers missing several of their prime assets, Barton believes Lincoln will be fancying their chances of taking all three points from BS7, but the manager says the unpredictability surrounding his team selection could present some challenges for the opposition.
He explained: “They’ll see our problems and that will only strengthen them; you’re hunter or hunted. If I was them, I’d be licking my chops and going, okay these are under-manned in a certain area. But, again, that can work against you because they also don’t know what we’re going to do. They know we’re going to be off-plan but they don’t know what that plan is going to be. So, we know what they’re going to do because they beat Derby and they’ll be 4-3-3 and the fact they have lesser problems means they’re going to be predictable.
“The fact we’re backed into a corner… you’re dangerous when you’ve got nothing to lose. We’re in our stadium, our fans will fully understand where our group’s at and they’ve been superb so far. When we’ve had our strongest group, they would expect us to beat Lincoln at home and if we didn’t, we’d be reminded of that frequently over the 90 minutes and after the game.
“But I think they know the best is yet to come from our group. I’m disappointed we haven’t got all the results and resources available to us but also, you have to be adaptable. There are going to be lots of times where you don’t have all the tools you want at your disposal.”
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