Joey Barton believes he has seen enough in his Bristol Rovers team to believe they will be “absolutely fine” at the end of the season, despite suffering a damaging 2-1 defeat to Wigan Athletic on Tuesday.
Barton’s debut in the Mem dugout, 36 hours after his appointment, ended in nightmare fashion as Scott Wooton netted a stoppage-time winner for the visitors to drag Rovers into the League One relegation zone.
Despite the defeat, Barton was delighted by his players’ effort levels and performance off the back of a single training session, and he is confident they will pull clear to safety.
“There were many pleasing aspects,” the 38-year-old said at full time.
“I’m gutted that we lost the game, but if we keep playing like that and the lads take on information as quickly as they did in the one session so far, we’ll be absolutely fine.
“There was energy and enthusiasm when we went a goal behind, which I thought was really positive.
“We’ve got work to do, I think it’s evident for everybody to see, every Rovers fan and everyone who watches the team will know where the work needs to take place.
“We didn’t deserve to lose the game the lads locked in during the game in many regards and if we continue to do that we’ll be OK.”
Barton, however, recognised Rovers must address their flakiness at set pieces.
Callum Lang’s opener came from the second phase of a corner and he was left totally unmarked at the back post, while Wooton was afforded the freedom of BS7 to volley a close range winner from a deep free-kick.
The manager said: “The Achilles heel of the team has been set-plays. I think they’ve got 34 goals conceded from restarts, so that’s from throw-ins, corners and free-kicks and we’ve added another two to that,” Barton said.
“The second phase of the corner for the first goal and obviously a wide free-kick for Wigan’s winner.
“The only way I can solve that is by getting the lads on the training ground, working hard and drilling into it. Myself, Clint (Hill), Mangs (Andy Mangan) and the coaching staff that we’ve inherited will exhaust all avenues before we allow that to happen again.
“Shrewsbury is going to be another physical test for us and there’s no point feeling sorry for yourself.
“The only way out of this is hard work on the training ground and in match performances.
“As I’ve said to the boys in there, we’ve got 54 points to play for and we need 25 to get to the 52-point mark.
“Once we get a bit of work into these boys, we’ll be winning plenty of games of football.”
