When a new manager arrives at a football club, it offers players a clean slate. Those who have been playing have to prove why they were consistently getting picked while the ones that have struggled for game time are presented the chance to demonstrate why they should come into the team. For Lino Sousa, that opportunity was presented and taken soon after Inigo Calderon arrived in BS7.
The on-loan Aston Villa left-back made just seven League One appearances under former manager Matt Taylor with a hamstring injury picked up in October seeing the then-19-year-old sidelined for the final two months of Taylor’s tenure at Bristol Rovers.
Sousa made his return to action in Calderon’s first game in charge at Stevenage after Christmas and has started 10 of the 12 matches the Spaniard has taken charge of so far.
One of the first decisions the new head coach made upon his arrival at Rovers in regards to team selection was dropping Clinton Mola whose form had taken a major dip following an outstanding start to life in blue-and-white quarters following the left-back’s summer move. That presented Sousa with an opportunity and the 20-year-old hasn’t looked back since.
“Yeah, that’s a fact to be fair,” the Aston Villa loanee said on playing the vast majority of his minutes at the Gas under Calderon. “Since he’s come in, I haven’t looked back. I think I’ve been given the opportunity, I’ve rightly taken it and I’m just doing what I’m doing and clearly I’m doing something right and that’s all I can keep doing.
“It’s been a happy new year for me in terms of playing and getting minutes and expressing myself on the pitch and stuff. It’s been good.
“I think there’s certainly more to come,” the 20-year-old added. “It’s been a whole lot of mixed emotions. I’ve been in the team. I’ve been out of the team. I’ve been injured. I’ve been away from family so it’s been harder.
“I’ve had to face adversity but I think with young players there’s a tendency of when things aren’t going well, they can sack things off and portray themselves in a certain way. But I’ve just tried to be as levelheaded and as humble as I can be and just absorb it all in because it’s all about learning, especially being on loan.
“It won’t be the first time I’ll be dropped or I won’t be in a team, do you know what I mean? So knowing how to deal with that and how to have certain hard conversations and knock on the door and try to find out why and what not and then it only makes me being on the pitch even better now because I’ve come through all of that in a way. Now, my next challenge is keeping my shirt.”
There’s no doubt that during a run of 12 consecutive appearances, Sousa has made progress with the young left-back getting his first real taste of playing regular men’s football.
After moving to Aston Villa from Arsenal in January 2024, the left-back immediately went out on loan to the Championship to play for Plymouth Argyle during the remainder of the season. However, that spell culminated in just eight appearances, only three of which were starts.
Mistakes, as expected, have been made but there’s no debate regarding the fact that the loanee is making progress and has established himself as a regular fixture in the Rovers backline.
Naturally, the long-term goal for Sousa will be to break into Villa’s first team following the conclusion of his loan spell with the Gas. The left-back has 10 caps for England Under-19s and also spent time training alongside Arsenal’s first team under the watching eye of Mikel Arteta before the former West Brom youth player’s move back to the West Midlands last January.
However, with Rovers just three points above the dreaded dotted line in League One with 14 matches remaining ahead of this weekend’s clash at home to Rotherham, the 20-year-old has one immediate focus on his mind – survival.
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“We’re more than focused, more than on it,” Sousa exclaimed on achieving survival. “We want it for ourselves. We know we can get out of this. We’re more than good enough to get out of the position that we’re in. We just need to fine tune a few things but we can do it.
“When I first came it was a bit hit or miss. We win some, lose some. The gaffer at the time was getting a bit of stick. But I’ve certainly seen it very, very loud and how the fans are.
“All they ask for is just passion and they want to see players run, players that care for the club and that should be a given, to be honest. I think now we’ve definitely nailed that, at home especially.
“If I look at it from their perspective, this has been their club, for a lot of them, for a long, long time. Obviously, I’ve just come in this season but I’ve had to buy into it. I care about the club. Even though I’m here on loan, I still want to help where I can and just to connect with them. It only makes me be at ease and kind of be a bit calmer.”
League One certainly isn’t a straightforward league for any young player to come into, even one who has been at two of the biggest clubs in Europe.
However, Sousa is on course to end up his loan spell with 30 league appearances in the third tier which, based on the stagnant start to his time in blue-and-white quarters, would certainly be no mean feat ahead of returning to Villa in the summer.
“It’s very physical,” the left-back declared on the league. “It’s very tough here. It toughens you up, in a way. But you get your teams that will play and you get your teams that will kick it along and have their own playing style but you just have to learn how to deal with it because you’re going to get that.
“Some teams will be more technically better than others. Some teams will be more direct and in your face and make it a bit of a dirty, gritty game but you’ve got to find the right balance of how to deal with it in a way. I think that’s what I’m learning, especially having a run of games.”