Ben Garner believes his Bristol Rovers players need to play with more “freedom” after the Gas slipped to a 2-0 defeat to Ipswich Town on Saturday.
The Gas held the Tractor Boys for almost 80 minutes at the Mem before Max Ehmer’s own goal opened the door, and Jon Nolan made sure of the result in the dying moments.
For the most part it was a tight game, but as Ipswich turned the screw in the final half hour nerves crept into Rovers’ performance and Garner believes they erred from the gameplan.
“I think we’ve got to be better in terms of what we do,” Garner said. “We went away from that a little bit in the last 25 minutes and I think that’s why the game turned.
“It’s not a million miles away from being a good performance against a very good team, so we’re disappointed not to take anything from the game but at the same time there are enough positives to build on. There’s just lessons we need to put in place quickly.
“I don’t think it’s an effort thing at all. It was possibly a bit of mentality more than anything, that bravery to keep doing what we’re doing and not taking that backward step, to keep passing the ball when you get pressured.
“There’s a lot more to come from this group, some really good players in that dressing room and a really good spirit amongst them. For whatever reason we haven’t quite taken that into the game this week.
“Pre-season we had a bit more freedom because we didn’t have that tension of a league game, and we need a little bit of that freedom in our competitive games to do what we did so well in pre-season.”
While Rovers largely looked solid in their own third, there was cause for concern at the other end of the pitch for Garner.
They snuffed out most of Ipswich’s attacking threat until the own goal, but struggled to create chances of their own.
Garner accepts his team needs to offer more of a threat in front of goal.
He said: “No, I don’t think we did (create enough chances). We had some decent areas first half, we had a good opportunity.
“We had good chances from set-pieces that we should have done better with, and from 65/70 onwards we went away from what we were doing. We didn’t create anything after that.
“We’ve lost Sam Nicholson today and we’re getting Brandon Hanlan up to speed, so there is a little bit of reasoning behind that, but we certainly need to create more than we did today.”
