Back-to-back wins over the Easter weekend have gone a long way to cementing Bristol Rovers' place in League One for next season, and with the pressure off, Joey Barton is eager to get stuck into a stacked run-in to finish the campaign.
The Gas manager has seen his team rediscover their form and confidence in recent weeks, taking 13 points from their past seven games to break through the 50-point barrier with the best part of a month to spare in the campaign. After Accrington Stanley's defeat on Monday, Rovers moved 13 points clear of the bottom four to all but confirm their status in the third tier for 2023/24.
In their final seven fixtures, they face five of the top seven sides, meaning Rovers – win, lose or draw – will have a defining impact on the final complexion of the League One table and Barton is certainly up for the challenge.
He also sees it as an opportunity for his players to see how they measure up against the promotion contenders with next season in mind, and he believes a reduction in pressure will free his players up for a strong finish to the campaign.
"We want to win every game and we’re going to have a big say in the promotion chase," Barton said after Monday's 2-1 comeback win at Fleetwood Town. "Teams will come and there will be nerves in those sides because they are desperate to get out of the division.
"But we can’t be thinking about anything other than progressing our football team and we have got seven games to go. This time next season, we want to be in a position to challenge, so I think this is fantastic practice for us now going up against four or five of the top boys in the division to see how much work we have got to do.
"Or are we closer than we think or have we got a bit of work to do? It’s a nice part of the season. It will stop me from getting more grey hairs and it will stop the Gasheads from getting grey hears and having heart murmurs.
"We can relax and enjoy our football and with young players in our team, with a little bit of pressure lifting off them I think they will find another gear."
The old cliche of being "on the beach" becomes a big part of the football lexicon at this time of year for midtable sides, but Barton sees plenty of value in the final seven games for 14th-placed Rovers.
The Gas face Derby County (7th) and Sheffield Wednesday (1st) at the Mem on Saturday and Tuesday respectively before away trips to Plymouth Argyle (2nd) and Peterborough United (5th) later in the month. Bolton Wanderers (6th) visit the Gas on the final day of the campaign, with midtable Shrewsbury Town and Port Vale being Rovers' other assignments this term.
Barton joked that he and his players would enjoy denting second-placed Plymouth's promotion chances in particular. Rivalry has stewed between two Liverpudlian coaching staffs over the season and the pulsating 2-2 draw between the sides in October led to an allegation that Gas coach Andy Mangan used homophobic language towards an Argyle member of staff, something the 36-year-old vehemently denies.
The sides also met twice in the EFL Trophy, drawing at Home Park in the group stages before the Pilgrims knocked Rovers out in the quarter-finals in January. They went on to lose the final at Wembley 4-0 to Bolton last week.
"We’ve got our own targets and that 52-point mark was somewhere we wanted to get to just as a benchmark of establishing ourselves as a League One outfit, which I think you have got to go and earn the right to be in a mega competitive division," Barton said.
"But we’ve still got some really big games coming up and I said to the lads it’s important that we can test ourselves now against five of the top seven in the run-in and we’ve got some games coming up where our young players can test themselves against the sides who are thinking of getting themselves out of the division.
"The Gasheads will be relieved they are not looking over their shoulder because of the situation that has been at the football club in recent years, but we’ve got a little bit to do.
"We want to finish strong and we can disrupt a few promotion charges, especially Plymouth. That would be fantastic."
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