Matt Taylor has declared that he’s getting closer to knowing his strongest Bristol Rovers line up while their recent break from action was “needed” ahead of this weekend’s trip to Huddersfield Town.
Rovers put an end to four consecutive defeats in League One with back-to-back wins over Charlton Athletic and Burton Albion earlier this month before then falling to a dismal 4-0 loss away at Swindon Town in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy. The side that faced the League Two side, who had recently been struggling in the fourth tier, was made up of nine changes from the Burton win while Swindon made a host of alterations themselves.
After that defeat, Taylor stated that it highlighted that the Gas’ squad depth isn’t actually as strong as some may perceive and that he would subsequently be working with a smaller group of players. However, the Rovers manager named an unchanged side for the first time this season in the league for the 3-1 victory at Burton and appears to be getting closer to having an idea of what his strongest possible side looks like.
“Getting closer to it,” Taylor responded when asked about knowing his strongest 11. “Always as a manager you’re looking at your immediate 12 to 14 players where you know what you’re going to get. There’s still a bit of unknown in the squad going into every game. We want players that are going to produce but I think there’s a feeling now that we’ve got a dozen or so who have shown more than the others in terms of consistent performance and have a bit more knowhow about them.
“I think you probably saw that in the two league fixtures to finish with. We felt we had a little bit more consistency, a little bit more of a rhythm in our game and a better level of outcome and performance. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick that back up this weekend.
“Some of them needed it,” he added on the recent break. “Some of them more so on the back of the Swindon game where they just needed to take a little bit of time away from the round thing and a bit of grass and just spend time thinking about other things because that put us in a difficult position. So I think it was needed and it seems to have put us in a good place.
“The lads have trained fantastically well. We did what I said after the [Swindon] game with we just shortened up or dropped a few numbers out of the squad. Not carried as many on the exterior or the outside of it and just tried to work on around the 14 to 18 number mark of players who are really going to contribute to the pitch and it seems to have worked, certainly at the start of the week. I will see how that continues.”
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Rovers had been due to host Blackpool last Saturday (October 12) but the Tangerines met the threshold for international call-ups that allowed the game to be postponed with a new date still yet to be confirmed.
Only two League One fixtures survived the international break last weekend with Taylor taking in Shrewsbury Town’s 5-3 win at Crawley Town with Salop set to visit the Mem next Tuesday (October 22). However, the break prior only three games stayed on with the Gas’ trip to Barnsley one of them, meaning that it was the first time this season they got an extended period of time away from action.
Although Rovers’ only international player was Michael Forbes who went away with Northern Ireland Under-21s, starting in a 0-0 draw away against Luxembourg Under-21s, the time off did offer an opportunity to spend time away from each other, something that seems to have benefitted the whole group.
Asked about the time off, Taylor revealed: “Well obviously the lads have trained this week. We had a little reset in terms of rest and a couple of days away from each other back end of last week. The first opportunity to do that really at this point in the season.
“We know it was probably a later opportunity because the Blackpool game was called off relatively late compared to other games but we thought that it was worthwhile to get the players to just have a little moment to themselves. Still physically do their bits and pieces as professionals always do and then come back this week and hit it really hard.
“I was lucky I got to go to a game at the weekend so it wasn’t all just rest and recuperation, there was still a little bit of work going on.”