Joey, three points. What adjectives are we going to use to describe that team performance?
It’s tricky, you can’t single anyone out. I thought it was a really disciplined team performance.
They are a really good side, they are always there or thereabouts come the end of the season for play-offs and they will certainly cause teams lots of problems because they’ve got lots of quality in the group.
After the initial skirmishes, once they settled and we got our collective press and the line of engagement correct, I think we limited them to a header that hit the bar from a corner that was deflected in the first half and a header that the lad has headed over in the second half. Apart from that, I don’t think Belly’s had that much to do.
Pleased with the defensive aspect, pleased that my number nine has got off the mark because it’s always good to get that goal. Azza is firing and I thought Harvey Saunders was outstanding. He didn’t get the goal that his performance deserved but he set the tone for us.
The lads who came into the game maintained the level of performance and showed a real team quality to get the job done.
And you needed them all, didn’t you? It was pretty hot and testing out there for the players. Did you handle it as well as you would have liked?
It would have been nice to get a second goal to make it slightly easier, but we had a strategy coming in and the weather was a factor in that. It’s very rare that you get 35-36C in the UK.
We had to be smart to do and we’re not at 100 per cent. We’ve still got a bit of work to do in the market, which we’ve been vocal about and strength will be added for sure.
But today you’ve seen some of the strength we have in the group. You look at the bench, five substitutes used. I thought there was a real manliness to the group, a lot more physicality came onto the pitch.
And then you look at who wasn’t used, Anssi Jaakkola and Alfie Kilgour, two senior campaigners, two warriors.
We’ve just got to keep building and adding. We’ve got lads who have trained for one or two days his week – Jordan Rossiter, Lewis Gibson, Josh Grant, Paul Coutts – so it didn’t feel right to throw them in from the off and Whelo has come out of the coaching room to roll back the years.
Singling anyone out is tricky because I think everybody grafted for the quarters and that’s why we got a win against one of the league’s good sides.
Where are you with additions, is anything imminent or close at all?
No, it’s going to go down to the last embers of the window. That’s just the way it is, unfortunately. If we can get things done before that, we will.
We thought we were further down the track with something the other day. We’ve decided to completely change tack now because people are taking the mick. We’ve just moved targets.
You try to strike a fair deal with people, but I think some people think they are playing Championship Manager at times. I think they forget what is fair value.
We’ll change course on that and go in a different direction, and as I’ve said, we’ve got a good group. Look at the strength in depth that we’ve got on the bench. We’ve got to get them up to speed and build some robustness into those boys.
We’ll add quality to that when and where we can, but Rovers won’t be getting their pants pulled down by anybody anymore. Those days are gone.
Another big talking point in the game was the yellow card which most people thought was going to be a red card. It was right under your nose, so what is your opinion on the challenge and the hands that appeared to be raised to John Marquis’ face?
I’m surprised. Usually if you make contact with somebody’s face you leave the pitch. The ref has obviously got a better view than me and I don’t want to be talking about the ref too much but they clearly tried to get under our skin.
I thought there were some late challenges, certainly the one on Sam Finley in the first half, and if that isn’t a yellow card I’m not sure what is.
Clearly part of their plan was to get our lads to react and get somebody sent off. They roughed us up and got amongst us, but I think our lads showed incredible discipline. We spoke about it at half-time and said the only chance they had was if we lost our discipline.
From a team structure and compact shape, that was going to be key, but also responding to some of the nonsense from their players.
There’s no problem for us. We’re no shrinking violets. The lad in the middle there has refereed in the Championship and I felt he could have protected our players a little bit more, but it is what is.
He’s refereed the game and I don’t want to see players getting sent off for needless things and I don’t think it was that type of game but also if you do make contact with someone’s face, you do always run that risk and he’s a lucky boy that the referee has deemed it a yellow card and not a red.
Joey, I know you don’t want to single too many people out, but with every other senior midfielder in the squad not at full match fitness, how important was the hour you got out of Glenn Whelan?
Yeah, huge. You hear Eddie Jones talk about it in the rugby and there are five subs now. Subs? There are starters and finishers.
They talk about it because they can make seven or eight changed. We have this in the ether now and we’ve got to build a squad for it. That’s why I’ve been talking about the strength in depth we need because there is a 46-game war of attrition in League One.
There are lots of good teams and if you look at our squad today, our bench is stronger than their bench and I know their budget and their budget is bigger than ours. They’ll be near £5m again, which is where they normally are.
We’ll have a decent budget but you look at some of the players they’ve got: Brannagan, six or seven grand a week. They took (Kyle) Joseph. We were in the market for Joseph and got blown out of the water. They (Swansea) wanted £5,500 a week coverage for him.
They are heavy hitters in terms of the division but look at their bench behind that. I thought ours was stronger.
They are a good side, make no bones about it. Karl always makes a late run and they’ll always be around the top eight in the division. They are a good footballing side, they progress it through the thirds and I think we’ve nullified them.
We’ve taken a very dangerous offensive team and blunt-edged them pretty much, and we are far from 100 per cent. We knew this period up until September 1, we were going to be way below where we want to be but incrementally getting stronger and stronger.
We’ve seen that today. The bench from Tuesday to today is markedly different.
And every step, I talk about Kaizen. It’s on my social media and you know it. That’s how we work and we’ll just get better and better.
The key for us is our fans know that now so they stick with the boys. They stick with team and I’m pleased to get that first home win in League One for them, a clean sheet.
And for Nick Anderton, we wanted to get that first home win for Nick and it’s great that the fans in the 16th minute are still recognising the importance of Nick to our group.
I’m really pleased and now I hopefully get to watch these balloons go up tonight. I’ve been up there two nights and they’ve not taken off.
More so than last week, does that feel like an arrival performance in the division because you’ve beaten a good side 11 vs 11 without an early red card? That is a side tipped for the top six.
Yeah, they’ll be there or thereabouts, but that’s just one game. I think that’s the 18th win in the calendar year. We’ve been talking about that, saying we want to finish the year being the top team because the last year we were the worst team in the calendar year and to go from the worst team to the best team is some shift and that is a credit to the boys.
They have worked tirelessly and they graft every single day, they put it in on the training pitch and you see out there they put it in for each other, blocking tackles, putting their head in where it hurts, Harvey Saunders putting in those hard yards, especially in that heat, John Marquis putting his body on the line, Azza being really brave going in there to beat the keeper to it and set John up.
That’s a team you want as a coach, a team that never gives up and keeps fighting and when I came to Rovers that’s what I said we wanted to give to the Gasheads. We want to give them a team that they know will roll their sleeves up and stand up and be counted in every moment.
I’m really pleased for the whole football club. We’ve got loads of work to do but we want to keep getting better and better and better and take these Gasheads on an incredible journey.
Speaking of the Gasheads, the last time you were in this league you didn’t have them in the ground. There were periods of pressure in that first half that you had to get through, but the effect the crowd had on that game – with the Matty Taylor stuff thrown in – seemed to be tangible.
Matty Taylor, did he play? I saw him in the tunnel…
When you make that move, they aren’t going to like you, are they? You know when you sign a contract they are going to be on you for the rest of your days.
They are with the team now and I remember in the early part of last year the fanbase was broken and it didn’t know whether to come or go or support. It had constantly been let down with false dawns.
I think they know with this group of players, with the journey we went on last year and the away days and even Burton last Saturday. Everyone said about 10 men but we struggled against 10 men multiple times in League Two, so for us to snot Burton with 10 men as efficiently and effectively as we did, knowing we’re way below 100 per cent, fills me with confidence and it should fill the Gasheads with confidence.
I’ve said we’re going to take them on a journey and I think last year we showed what can happen if the club is united. Players feed off that and even today they are just with the boys and you can just smell it. We go 1-0 down to Forest Green but they were with the lads and got us back in the game.
We go away from home and they are there in their numbers. Without them, we are just another football club but with that support and that belief, we can do incredible things here.
We’re a lot bigger city to be having no Premier League side and my goal is to put the blue side ion the Premier League before the red side. They’ve had a right crack of it because of what’s been here before but nobody has conquered the mountain in Bristol.
We speak about it all the time. At the start of the season, we were speaking about it. We were up on the observation tower overlooking the Suspension Bridge saying we want to be the first team on the moon in this city. While it’s still there, we’re going to give everything we can.
We’ve got a lot of work to do and lots of catching up. They’ve got a bigger ground than us, a better training ground than us, but you’ve seen last week Steve (Lansdown) is talking about selling the club. He’s had his fill of it. He’s poured that much money into it and our owner hasn’t.
Our owner has massive ambition and I have to rein it in from him when I'm talking about us getting value for money. It's not for Wael, it is me going 'No, there is a fair price'.
We will pay fair prices for people but we are not going to get our pants pulled down. Too many times in the past that has happened here. We will get value for money and if that's not value for money, we'll go elsewhere. There are loads of targets out there.
You want to play for us. Why would you not want to play for us? We make every player better. If you come in and you want to work hard and get better, we do everything at a ridiculously high level for the level we're playing at. It's Championship and above in every aspect.
If you're a young player and you come here, you get better. If you're an idiot and you don't want to put it in and cut corners and you want to think there is a shortcut, you will get emptied out here because the group just won't have you.
My commitment to the Gasheads is that every person that pulls on that jersey will give everything they've got for the football club because we're custodians, we don't own the club. We will all disappear in a period of time and we want to set a legacy here that sets the benchmark for the blue half of Bristol.
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