Ruel Sotiriou is only getting better in a Bristol Rovers shirt.
The summer recruit didn’t have to wait too long to get off the mark, scoring in his sixth appearance against Barnsley, which had also been only his third start. A first assist was added to that tally last weekend when the 24-year-old played through Scott Sinclair for his strike against Wycombe Wanderers.
However, it’s been the forward’s pressing and workrate that has earned him plaudits in recent weeks with a far from ideal start to his Rovers career seemingly behind him.
Sotiriou played in the opening pre-season friendly against Melksham Town and then suffered a calf tear, seeing him miss the remainder of pre-season as well as the first competitive game of the campaign against Northampton Town.
Based on his first couple of displays, it was evident that the summer recruit from Leyton Orient still wasn’t up to speed but the way he’s harrassed his defenders and kept on their heels in recent matches suggests that the 24-year-old is getting closer to the standard he wants to show Gasheads he’s capable of
“I first started at Rotherham but I was nowhere near ready to start a game,” the striker reflected. “Probably the last two or three I’ve felt really good. I’ve felt like I can play full 90 minute games.
“Obviously I want to score goals and I want to get assists as well but right now I’m happy with the progress, especially missing a whole chunk of pre-season and then the first few games I felt miles off it. But now I feel really good in a good place.
“My Barnsley goal just came from a run I always make and it just luckily fell to me. Even Scotty’s goal the other day against Wycombe, I just pressed and got back into position and it was an easy goal. It’s a big part of my game.
“I had, not a different position, but I had to press in a different position and then get back into my position but I worked well,” the forward added on his performance against Charlton Athletic on Tuesday night. “Obviously I just want to win games. I want to win. I want to get us far up the table and I said it before, there’s no point aiming for mediocrity. As long as we’re winning everyone’s happy.”
Sotiriou was signing number three of an eventual 16 over the summer, announced at the end of June and was probably the first real statement addition supporters got particularly excited about.
Having played in League One last season with Orient, who went on to finish 11th, while scoring 11 goals and providing five assists in the league, there’s evidence that the 24-year-old can register double digit figures in this division.
At the time, recruitment in the final third was seen as a necessity in order to achieve a more even spread of goals after Chris Martin struck 16 times last term. Of course, that has proven to be vital with the 35-year-old potentially sidelined for around another six weeks having already missed over a month of action with a broken fibula.
Sotiriou spent 10 years at Brisbane Road with a big reason for his move to BS7 being the need for a fresh start but he appears to have settled in quickly, admitting: “The group’s top. I really like the group. There’s a lot of people especially from London area as well. It’s one big group and I’m really happy here.
“I just needed to get out and experience something new. It was a different motivation to go somewhere new and Bristol Rovers was the club I chose.
“When I came to sign, the day I signed I went to look at a place. So I was only in the hotel for a week or two. I got lucky.”
That “top” group are evidently hungry for success at Rovers which is why the recent four-game losing streak was such a low point while Tuesday’s victory over Charlton hopefully has them back on track.
Although he didn’t add to his goal contributions tally, Sotiriou was a menace all evening, closing down his opponents and making life extremely awkward for them, something that seems to be a major attribute of his game.
Now it’s all about ensuring that their performance and result against the Addicks wasn’t a one-off and that they can use it as a platform to build some consistency, starting with a trip to Burton Albion on Saturday.
The Brewers are still winless in League One but have drawn half of their matches so it’s of course not going to be straightforward. However, the Gas are certainly sniffing it out as a good opportunity to make it back-to-back victories as well as picking up a first win on the road this season.
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“Burton is a good game to go into after that win,” Sotiriou said. “They haven’t been great so if we make it two wins on the bounce it’s much better progress than losing four.
“We watched a bit on them today. They’re different to all the Burton teams I’ve played before. They’re trying to get the ball down and play it but we want to go there and win.
“We know winning every week is hard but the least we can do is run out there and give everything. You can get lucky in games and things can fall in the right places and if you work hard, I feel like those things can come more frequently for us.
“It was really good on Tuesday,” the striker added. “The intensity. We had a bit of nastiness to us. I thought Hunty was amazing on and off the pitch. He really brought something different. Honest man, honest player so he really got us up for it. Obviously as a team we were way better.
“It was like, this is getting real. We’ve lost four on the bounce. Not because we’ve got bad players or a bad group or bad staff or anything, it just wasn’t falling for us. I’m not trying to make excuses – we’ve not been good enough. It’s just been that extra bit of something else. You can’t win every game so hopefully we can go on a good streak now and make up for the points we’ve lost.
“I honestly felt Hunty brought that to us on Tuesday but it can’t just be him. We can’t rely on one guy every week to be telling people how it really is. It’s a group thing and hopefully we can keep going well.”