Matt, away from football to start with and just something nice and positive. Taylor Moore was in our studios last week talking about the importance of mental health. He’s doing a walk tonight with some supporters at the SS Great Britain. Credit to Taylor Moore for speaking so openly about mental health and it’s a side of football perhaps that sometimes gets overlooked.
Yes. A topic which I think is coming to the fore more and more. The more we understand it and probably accept it. A topic which needs to be openly discussed. We want people to feel comfortable in doing what’s needed to get through difficult moments in life away from football in society and they need the support networks as much as needed.
Things like tonight with Taylor Moore and the charities involved, just to help that public awareness. People are never on their own whatever they’re feeling and whatever their situation. And people don’t know. Let’s be honest. We sit in front of each other time and time again in this work environment, but people don’t really know how we’re feeling behind the scenes and deep down within.
So certainly any help and support this club and this group of players and this group of staff can do for the local community and the wider community as well and hopefully we’ll be well received.
You’re all professionals in the public eye but sometimes I just wonder how are you? Say six o’clock on Saturday you’ve lost at Huddersfield you’ve got that long journey home, there’s a lot of thinking time.
There is. I’m generally lucky because I’ve got two children, one’s nine months old and the other is just past two years of age, and a fantastic wife. So yeah, I can dissect it and then totally put it to where it needs to be until when it’s needed to be at the forefront of my mind.
But yeah, on a long coach journey back, you get to watch the game back after all the phone calls you have and get a bit of an idea of what happened and why it happened. But yeah, then when you get home it’s changing nappies, cleaning up sick. I can’t tell you what the dog had done on this Saturday night.
But yeah, it’s a dream feeling and another feeling at four in the morning. It’s life as you know it and you love it and I’m so lucky to have that and then when needed you try and get the balance of the work aspect and we felt there was work to do after Saturday and was no different after Tuesday, despite the result and the way you feel it, nothing changes in terms of that.
Yeah, ultimately it’s about the winning and you got three points, but I think by a lot of people’s admission, it was a strange atmosphere, maybe a bit nervous and tense. How do we go about improving that? Is it simply wins or is it more complex than that?
Wins. Type of performance. Pitch personality. This group are together. They’re trying. I’ve said so many times that they’re not perfect. We’re short in certain areas and moments of understanding and execution, X, Y, Z. But they’re giving it everything they’ve got at the moment.
I suppose understanding the context of it, of where we expect to be, as opposed to maybe where the outside world and the wider public and our fans maybe to a certain extent expect us to be.
This is a developing group and in, I’ve said before, 12 months time will be an outstanding group of players and will be fantastic for this football club for many years to come. But before that we might have to go through what we’re going through at the moment which is a little bit of inconsistency, a little bit of pain every now and then but sometimes a performance hurts and hurts for the right reasons.
But I fully believe that this club is in a good position on the back of this group of players and I’m still, no matter what anyone says, so excited about what this group of players can achieve this season, let alone in a year’s time when they’re in a slightly different position to where they are at the moment. And they need help.
I thought we started the game so well on Tuesday and we were bright and energetic and I think that was reflected in a good bit of noise from around and the surrounding areas and our supporters. And then I said to them today, I think Promise [Omochere] clashed heads with their centre-half and then Taylor Moore clashed heads with the wing-back and there was both just a little bit of delay in terms of treatment, naturally where players go down and all of a sudden the game lost its life and energy and everything else did and the 15 minutes before half-time was a bit like a reserve game. It was so quiet and timid and almost waiting for it to go one way or another.
Now, that’s where we’ve got to stand up and be counted, and myself as manager, and say we’re forcing the issue here and we’re trying to get us going in the right direction and we certainly did that after half-time.
Then second half, we started brightly again. We got the goal and then there’s naturally more belief in what the fans are seeing and on the pitch and that connection and the last 10, 15 minutes was what it was but we have to force the issue with energy and endeavour as much as we possibly can.
People who were there will remember it but there was a moment where Taylor Moore made two tackles on the bounce, in the far right hand corner to the right of the dugout and I think we’d been in attacking sense, we actually gave it away and he just went tackle, tackle, and they were forceful tackles, and then we won the ball back and I don’t think the cross came to anything. But those are just moments where on top of skill, I think our fans have got to see those more than anything else.
We sat in this room on the eve of the new season [talking] about formations and tactics and playing three at the back and how, I’m paraphrasing, it was a preference but not the law. You started with a flat back-four on Tuesday. Are you seeing Rovers playing better with one formation than the other or can you be flexible?
We have to be flexible because if you’d have asked me after four games what our formation probably looks like for the next couple of months, it would have been that back-three because we were so strong and solid and three clean sheets out of four and looked like we were in the right direction. But over time and naturally in the course of the last few weeks, we’ve been searching for answers in certain departments and certain provisions, certain units and certain styles and formations within that and we felt our energy levels weren’t quite where they needed to be at Huddersfield.
Obviously the opposition played a part in that but just the way the team felt a little bit deep and disconnected and we certainly felt that going into Tuesday’s game, a home game, we need to get that energy like we just spoke about, energy out there early on in games and we felt having that formation allowed us to do that.
We actually went to a back-three, a back-five, whatever you want to call it, with 25 minutes to go when all of a sudden we lost our legs on the back-four aspect.
You could go into every coaching manual and speak to every coach and manager in the world but it’s all about energy and intent. The execution always comes on top of that substance and that substance is something we’re hammering home every single day and Saturday’s going to be totally different because some players will have two games in their legs, some will be fresh, and we’ve got to find a way of meeting and matching and trumping Reading’s energy.
I’m only asking because it’s his former club but Clinton [Mola] was on the bench for the first time on Tuesday. Does he come back in? Does the fact that it’s his former club have any bearing at all?
There’s potential there. Look, Clinton has not played as much at any club as he has with us. He’s been a mainstay. He’s probably been one of our high-end performers in terms of his contributions on the pitch. But even with Clinton you can sense certain moments in the game where he needs more in terms of his energy and his mind and his brightness and freshness. We just felt it was the right thing to do on Tuesday.
He came on and affected it pretty early on and now we’ve got real competition if we can stick with this formation. We’ve got Lino [Sousa], we’ve got Clinton, we’ve got Bryant [Bilongo]. That’s an array of ones you can do left-back, left wing-back, left-side centre-half. Bryant could probably do left-forward or centre-forward like he did first game of the season. But Clinton in terms of his performances to date, I think as long as he’s got the freshness and the energy, we need him on the pitch.
Is all calm on the team news front? No injuries to report?
Nothing direct. Like I said, a couple of bangs of heads and it was a bruising encounter. I don’t know how it finished 1-0. We should have scored more and they probably might have gotten on the score sheet. But quite an entertaining 1-0 watching it back.
But yeah, some of our numbers were seriously high. We mentioned about Taylor Moore’s tackles and they were quite high and Shaq [Forde] getting the first major minutes, Ruel [Sotiriou] getting closer to that 90 minute mark, Promise backing up minutes and minutes and more minutes.
Some of these players have played more than they’ve ever played previously and that’s part of the narrative. People have to remember that. So, we have to find a way of selecting the right team and then being effective from the bench which we generally have been recently, going to a tough opposition this weekend.
You think of Reading and maybe you think of off-field problems, and yet their results and form have been good. They’re scoring goals. I think Leyton Orient are the only team to get anything from Reading’s home ground this season. How big a challenge is it, for all their problems, they’re a very good team?
That’s one thing that’s been the constant, even in the last couple of seasons where they’ve had the turmoil and unexpected disappointments behind the scenes. They’ve got a good group of players. A lot to admire, whether they were forced into it or not, with their philosophy of giving young players a chance. From their academy, from within, it’s fantastic to see.
But they’ve got some serious talent. They’re a free scoring team. They’re very aggressive in terms of the way they work without the ball and some fantastic attacking players so it’s a hell of a challenge but we’re in a really good position ourselves.
We’ve won three out of the last four games in the league and we go there with the confidence of Tuesday night and with the belief and expectation that we can put on a performance.
I think it’s time, and this is no disrespect to Burton and that Burton game, where we put in a performance against a big opposition, a team in the league who are performing well in a position where we want to try and get to at some stage this season and put down a bit of a marker.
It’s live on Sky, it’s an early kick-off, there’ll be extra watching eyes for more motivation, but the biggest motivation is that they’re three points ahead of us in the play-off positions just below the dotted line. There’s no more motivation needed than we can get to where they are right now with a hell of a performance and it will need everything we’ve got.
I guess the fact that it’s a two week break from league action, you must want to into that on a high?
Yes. In the best position possible. We’ll look forward to those cup games when they come but this is the last of a big week. We weren’t happy with our start of it at Huddersfield. Really pleased on Tuesday in terms of the middle. We’d love to finish this week really well with points and a performance and something more for the confidence and belief aspect of what three wins out of four gives you as a group of players.
I was going to ask if you even look at the table at this stage of the season so how much do you look at it being a quarter of the way through the season?
I don’t really start with. You start to look for patterns and form guides as much as anything else. But in terms of where we are…it’s interesting because, speaking honestly, I think we’re probably three points away from where we should be in terms of, points we should have picked up this season. That’s goals going against us either way or not putting the ball in the back of the net.
I think we’re three points away from where we should be and then I think people would probably class that as a really good start for this group of players, which sounds strange. But we can’t always be a little way away from where we feel we should be or want to be. We’ve got to break through that ceiling pretty early or that barrier pretty quickly and that’s why this weekend’s a massive game for us and one where we can’t wait for.
It seems the job Ruben Selles has done over there, with all of the turmoil off the pitch, one of the more underrated managers in the division, would you say?
Well, I think inside football, he’s got a massive reputation, a huge reputation. Dave Horsman’s actually worked with him at Southampton, speaks so highly of him. But similar to what we spoke about, the one thing as a manager, if you’ve got the players then you’re generally in a good position. Now, the transfer windows or the bans and embargoes and behind the scenes and the ownership and the training ground, I don’t know the full ins and outs of that and how much it’s affected them.
All I can see is a team which we’re playing this weekend and yeah, full credit to Ruben and his staff because understanding a little bit of what they’ve gone through must be difficult. But yeah, fantastic group of players, but so have we.
You mentioned on Tuesday night that Chris [Martin] is getting ever closer. Where’s he at?
Not involved this weekend. I think the next few days might give us an option to say, could he play 15, 20, 30 minutes on Tuesday against Exeter? Which would be probably a few days sooner than what I expected. And then if we get that right, then obviously the FA Cup game after that becomes more in contention.
Look, he’s training. Every time there’s a collision of some sort, you kind of wince for him but he’s not wincing and every day his pain is getting less and less. I say pain, discomfort, and the feeling of it is getting less and less. And even just having him out there, finishing the way he does, setting the standard of that box work makes a massive difference for us.
And on the back of being, I guess, rested on Tuesday, is Jack Hunt available this weekend?
Yeah. He wasn’t rested on Tuesday, he wasn’t quite ready. He could feel his calf the majority of Saturday so we made that decision to give him a few extra days work with the physios. But he’s trained today, so yeah, he’s certainly back in contention and will come back into the fold.
I think you had a few youngsters, the likes of Micah [Anthony] playing in a Gloucestershire Cup game against Bristol City the other day. It must be good to keep giving them minutes.
Yeah, well, I went to that game. So I was there. Jerry [Lawrence] played. Ollie Dewsbury played. Micah played. Matt Hall played. So some who are in around us every day and then there’s some more who we’ve seen bits and pieces of in pre-season and used their bodies as much as where they’re at.
It was just good to assess where the future is and also the ones who are closer to us assessing those. We’re trying to get the right loans for that group of players we’ve mentioned. But, it was a competitive game. Bristol City, naturally, with where their club is and infrastructure is ahead of where we are.
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We’ve not got that Development Squad going as yet in terms of that actual squad of players and you could see that. But yeah, I was quite proud of the way about the business yesterday. The scoreline was what it was. But that could have been more difficult in terms of the actual outcome. They were game and they favoured, Bristol Rovers need to be as game and we can add certain aspects on top of that.
You must be delighted to have Kofi Shaw pinned down to a three-year contract.
That’s the biggest news out of anything this week at this football club. That’s the biggest news. Fantastic news. Credit to George [Friend] and everyone behind the scenes. He’s been working on that for a long time. It fell hand in hand with him going out on loan and getting more exposure to senior football, which is what he needs. But that’s massive news for this football club.
We speak about the future. He’s probably the biggest name on that list of players in relation to the future first-team players at this football club and potentially, if we get it right with Kofi, then he’ll go above and beyond where this club are at, which is an exciting thing for him, his family and everyone associated with this football club.
Was the loan always part the idea or was that more recent?
Probably more recent. We felt with his exposure with us and maybe the cup games that we just want him to get some consistency because it’s natural when you’re in and out and back and forth and you get to training every day but then you can quickly lose focus as a young player when you don’t have that three points or something of real competitive aspect on the weekend.
It would only have to be at a club we trust. In Mark Cooper and the staff there we do that and a good level as well. We’ve sent Dan Ellison out to that level and for a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old respectively to be playing National League, good clubs at that level, that’s close to League football and close to League football is closer to our first-team.
So time will tell how well they do out on these loans but to get them these loans and to get them in a trusted capacity, full credit to them.