Bristol Rovers’ 2-0 home defeat to Blackpool on Tuesday night felt all too familiar, and that’s probably the most alarming thing about it.
This wasn’t the first time that Rovers had started a game well only to go on and lose. This wasn’t the first time that they had offered very little in way of quality attacking moments. It was, however, the first time in any game this season where they couldn’t manage a shot on target.
Rightly, there was an uplift in positivity going into Tuesday night’s match on the back of a morale-boosting success on the road at Mansfield Town. A gritty 1-0 in which everyone chipped in for the cause suggested that this really is a team gelling by the week. However, three days later it was almost as if they hadn’t played with each other before at times.
There’s no precise measurement scale for how strong the chemistry of players in a team is but results and performances tend to give you as close to an accurate reading as possible. The frustration is that with Rovers, the level still seems to fluctuate as inconsistency continues to engulf this team.
Of course, there will still be supporters who have a decent amount of patience remaining for players to gel and pieces of the puzzle to still be put together. However, based on reducing crowds and the mumbles and rumbles of discontent in and around the Mem on Tuesday night, patience for the majority is starting to wear thin.
Sure, League One has very much proven to be a division where anyone can beat anyone but it’s still an impossible task to get a clear idea of which Rovers will show up. The one that knocks the ball around nicely, takes the lead and defends stoically or the one that looks timid and struggles to produce any moments of real quality?
It’s one defeat and it’s certainly not the worst all-round performance of the campaign so far but the familiarity of aspects of it was a major concern, especially considering that Matt Taylor’s side have looked as though they’ve fully turned a corner in recent weeks.
As always, we endeavour to offer as balanced a view as possible but in this instance it’s a taller task. Here are some of the stand out talking points…
A surprising first of the season
As mentioned above, Tuesday night was Bristol Rovers’ first game this season, across all competitions, in which they didn’t register a single shot on target. At home against the team with the worst defensive record in the division, that is a woeful statement.
If you had said after the highs of the Mansfield win that Rovers would go on to lose three days later against Blackpool, the result wouldn’t come to significant surprise with this team’s inconsistencies still prevalent. However, if you had said that but they’d also fail to register a shot on target, that would have certainly raised eyebrows.
Efforts on goal have been at a premium lately and that is also cause for concern. The last four league games have seen them register just five whereas, for comparison, the 1-0 win over Shrewsbury and 1-0 defeat at Reading in the two games before that spell saw them produce a combined nine.
In fairness, the Gas have defended so well of late that their limited chances have still been able to warrant results but that is very much an unsustainable trait. One poorly defended set piece and one questionable penalty decision meant that Rovers lost the game when really, Blackpool were there to be asked real questions of which didn’t happen enough if at all.
Missed home opportunity
Although the defeat itself is a missed opportunity at the Mem, as will every game that they fail to pick up points in at home be, a recent streak of five home games in six matches has certainly been wasted.
It was an outstanding chance to pick up points and gather real momentum on the back of their best performance of the season away at Reading. However, they failed to win a single one of those matches within 90 minutes with the only victory coming in extra-time against Weston-super-Mare in the FA Cup.
Admittedly, few fans would have been bothered about the Exeter City defeat. Not only is the EFL Trophy a competition that attracts limited fuss in its modern-day format but Rovers needed a scenario more unlikely than the 7-0 win over Scunthorpe to progress to the knockout stages.
Then against Weston, they came up against a very impressive National League South outfit who were flying in their own division while being under par themselves. The second half was a tough watch but the Gas got over the line in the end and progressed in the competition. However, in previous years they would’ve had to head down for a replay.
The best performance and result was undoubtedly the 1-1 draw against Lincoln City. A battling, competitive performance against one of the the division’s better sides. It was frustrating that they couldn’t find a second goal but it certainly felt like a point gained as opposed to two dropped.
What did feel like two dropped though was the goalless stalemate with Crawley Town a week later in which good chances were squandered in the first half before Rovers then breathed a sigh of relief at full-time that they had still come away with a result after a poor second half display.
Then you’ve got the Blackpool defeat which meant that two points from a possible nine were taken and, although there was progress in the FA Cup, the manner was slightly disappointing.
A performance that proved to be too predictable
As mentioned before, if you had said going into the game that Rovers would have lost on the back of a solid away win, it wouldn’t have surprised many as inconsistencies have been a problem stretching back to Joey Barton’s time in charge and it’s something that the Gas just can’t quite seem to shake off.
Again, that’s partially a reflection of the strength of the league and the developmental stage this Rovers team is still at but it’s was concerning how familiar the flatness of the performance was at times on Tuesday night.
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Now, the fact that this is something that has been an issue prior to this season certainly makes it a criticism of the manager in parts as most of the players in this squad arrived at the club over the summer.
Taylor said going into the campaign and at the start of the season that his plan was to prioritise the defence and then build upwards after Rovers gave away too many cheap goals last season. They’ve certainly improved defensively with a strong start at the back and then resolidifying in recent weeks after a leaky couple of games in the middle of the campaign so far.
However, it still feels as though that upwards construction is still at its foundations and, as previously mentioned, relying on the defence and winning games 1-0 is not sustainable and will not work.
Isn’t this what we signed up for?
Okay, ranting over. Perhaps playing devil’s advocate a bit, isn’t this what was expected going into this season? If you delve through the archives of posts online fans published during the summer relating to their expectations for the campaign, the vast majority seemed to forecast exactly where Rovers are in the table, if not worse.
This was always going to be a transition season and, yes, although that requires patience which is a rare commodity in football, sitting in the upper end of the bottom half of the table is a fair reflection of where this group are at in comparison with the rest of the league.
I’ll admit, this is my second season covering the Gas so I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of fans with decades of experience supporting Rovers so I’m always keen to engage and learn from supporters. However, history suggests that midtable in League One is extremely normal for this club and that anything better hasn’t been achieved all too often over the club’s 141 year history. Therefore, the suggestion from some that saying this is the worst Rovers team they’ve ever seen feels pretty hyperbolic.
In terms of players gelling together, there’s now very little substance in the argument that they still need time to get to know each other. However, with the squad as young as it is, the vast majority of these players will only get better. Perhaps not as quickly as we’d all like but the hope is that come the end of the season they’ll have another year of League One experience under their belts and will be ready to start pushing towards the higher regions of the division.
There are going to be other games like Blackpool this season. However, there will also be other Mansfield’s, Charlton’s, even Reading’s to some degree in regards to performance which hopefully gets the deserved result. Perhaps that’s uninspiring but in terms of what we expected for this campaign, is what we’re seeing all that different with Rovers sat in 14th place? Not really.