Well, Joey, that must have been a lot more fun to watch than some of the recent matches?
Yeah, for us there were lots of positives to take out of the game in terms of our defensive performance - it was proper. It’s what I’ve been looking for and I felt after the game Saturday, in the midst of that battle being lost and the adversity of stuff going against us, I felt some young saplings really started to emerge and certainly seeing the character in those moments is key.
Tonight you’ve seen them grow further, I thought there were some really really good performances. It would be unfair of me to single out an individual because it was a real group and team effort. We haven’t won the game but we’ve managed to stop the bleeding against a very good side.
There are all different kinds of 0-0s but you absolutely deserved that and, in the second half, created the best chance…
We’ve had a couple of chances but we’ve had to go with a slightly different strategy than we normally employ but then when the ball hits the angle of post and crossbar I thought it had gone in, and the rebound come out, and I thought we got the other side of it.
You can only be proud as a coach of the players. In the adversity, to come into the stadium with what’s going on in terms of the results profile against a promotion-chasing team and to stick to the game plan, as a young group, in the manner they did, I’m so pleased for the group and so pleased for the football club.
You did to Ipswich what a couple of teams have done to you recently; you asked them to break you down and they couldn’t and you had some really good chances on the break…
If we open up against them we make ourselves incredibly vulnerable, the state we’re in, so we worked on making it tough for them; we had a couple of triggers that we were looking to press off.
But that’s all coaching theory and is about what I was trying to get them to do, it is over to the lads on a matchday and, to a man, they were superb. And that includes the lads who came into the game, they kept following their instructions, backing each other up and I thought it was a really good team performance. What you would call a proper team performance.
In the midst of that, I think you’ve seen a few young boys turn into men and that will go a long way to settle them into our football club and we have given them what they have come for, which is a foundation to build a fantastic career off.
One thing I really enjoyed, there was a lot of positivity when you had the ball. It wasn’t about shifting it to the side. James Gibbons was one who stands out - he just looked to get forward at every opportunity, put them under pressure and ask them questions…
I thought he had his best game for us tonight, Gibbo. I thought he looked on the front foot, he was trying to make stuff happen and the other side of the defender’s performance is, can you pose that counter-attacking threat and I do think he did that for us.
But, again, for me, when you see Scott Sinclair in the last 5-6 minutes, with the career he’s had, putting that amount of effort in to keep the team going and set the tone, that for me had all the good signs that you want to see in your culture and in your football club.
We’ve got new lads bedding in and a new group but when I look to the seniors there - which is Scotty and Grant Ward in the middle - I thought they really marshalled the team superbly and Harry Anderson, coming back from a lay-off, getting back in - I thought it was a thoroughly enjoyable defensive performance.
We’ve now got to add and build on that when we get back into our stadium on Saturday against Burton.
Now you’ve got something to build on, you’ve got that first clean sheet for a while. That losing run is over…
If you can’t win them, then you make sure you don’t get beat and stay in them, be hard to beat, and we were excellent in that regard. Now, we’ve got to get on that front foot again and get back in that winners’ column. Stopping the bleeding, clean sheet to build on, really good team performance, as I say, it’ll do wonders for the lads who have joined the group because they’ve not tasted anything other than defeat since they’ve been here.
A new, young group is emerging and it's exciting.
I'm not sure if you have cameras down there but was it a goal?
I haven’t seen it back but I thought the officials were outstanding, they’re the best we’ve had in a long time. They were consistent for both teams.
You don’t question officials like that because you know they’re competent, they’re good. I’m quick to criticise them when they're not at their best but the guys there today were top class.
It adds to the spectacle, it lets the game flow, you don’t see players chasing after them or moaning and screaming at them because they’re in control of the situation and hopefully we can have him every week!
Lamare’s full debut as a pro and he looks the part. He fitted in really well and had the better of Sone Aluko in a lot of their duels…
He’s a good player, really good player. You never know until you throw them in. A first league game against the top-end of the division and he didn’t look out of place. We were just concerned about his fitness levels but he actually looked like he was relatively strong there, finishing. So really pleased with Lamare, I think he’s going to have a big future and it’s nice to have the opportunity to get him in our team and see what he can do. He’s got enormous potential.
Quansah as well, you could see what a good player he’s going to be. For me, the boy I’m most pleased for is Ellery Balcombe; he’s had maybe not the best support he could have had, because of how well James Belshaw has done for us in the past, but tonight he was outstanding and really showed why we’ve brought him into the football club with that performance.
I guess you have to make compromises in your tactical plans against teams like Ipswich and it seemed like you focused on clogging up the middle of the pitch, and although you have someone like Leif Davis in a lot of space, you were happy to let them deliver from wide and you filled up the centre spaces…
It's tough because they’ve got so much pace in the wide areas in Leif Davis and Wes Burns and then they have an embarrassment of luxury in the No9 position - two in each position - George Hirst and Ladapo, Kayden Jackson you can argue, then you’ve got Chaplin and Harness. Two changes and Broadhead comes on, who they’ve just paid £1.5m for, so they have an embarrassment of riches and it can be tricky sometimes to keep that many good players happy.
Because, as we’re finding out, there’s only ever 11 happy lads in your team. If you’ve got the amount of players Kieran’s got, it can make it really tricky, Everybody thinks it's each because on Football Manager you just drop them in and out of the team and none of them go away moaning or kicking off. But in reality keeping highly tuned professional footballers all on the same wavelength when they get disappointed, is really tricky.
What’s the situation with James Belshaw, is he injured?
No, no, no. James was disappointed yesterday when we named the team, it then affected his training performance and his attitude wasn't at the level I would expect it to be if you're a Bristol Rovers player.
He's been superb for us, Belly, a really good citizen and a great goalkeeper for us but nobody is bigger than our team and the football club.
We've got a lot of good players here, more than 11 good players, sometimes people are going to be on the bench or not in the starting XI and they have to park that frustration and emotion and support the man in the jersey.
After the game's taken place, come and chat at the manager's door and ask for the reasons but you can't allow that to affect your training performance because you become an energy-sapper and you drag the group down.
So Belly's had the evening off and if his attitude and training performances doesn't change that'll be the last anyone ever sees of him in the quarters jersey.
With that context, that must make you even more pleased with Ellery’s performance because there has been quite a backstory going on, with the supporters signing James’ name…
I had it a couple of minutes in, two guys behind me singing Belly's name. I know what’s at stake. I ride the wave of emotion with the team and you have to have big cojones to make big calls that you think are the right calls for your group.
If I was a manager who listened to what the fans sing, I might as well let them take over the hot seat and do the job and there are going to be many times in my managerial career that people will disagree with my team selections.
I'm one of the few professional men where everybody is an expert at my job. Sometimes I go and read the comments when the starting line-up is announced and everyone has got their bit to chip in, and that's why I love football and it's brilliant.
My job as a custodian of the football club is to keep it moving forwards and in the right direction. Sometimes to do that you've got to upset the apple cart and move away from some people's favourites. We wanted to create competition in the goalkeeper area, we've brought a good goalkeeper in as you can see from Ellery's performance tonight, and we knew that, and we expect everybody to meet the challenge head on.
Belly, he'll be better for it but we can't have sad faces and that affecting our team before we play a massive game and you’ve got to support the man in the jersey; in our culture, it's team over self. If you don't accept that, there's 91 other clubs in the football pyramid you can play for.
Because if we're going to be successful here, it's as a united group that sticks together through the adversity.
I really want to focus now on the lads who did play and the lads who did perform, because they were outstanding.
It has been a noisy few weeks, how’s that experience been for you? Your trajectory has been solely up for a year or so and the last few weeks there have been questions and criticism coming your way, what’s that been like?
Don’t forget I had five months of getting beat pretty much every week after I came in so you talk about rhino skin, I don’t know what mine would be classed at but it’s certainly beyond the weight of that.
You accept it with the job - if you get it right they lift you on their shoulders and blow all the smoke up the backside that you need; if you get it wrong, you understand that you’re going to cop the heat and feel the brunt of it.
I won’t be a manager who ever shies away from making big calls… and it was a big call. (If) Ipswich turn on the afterburners, I’m fully aware of people raising their voices to tell me their opinion.
But when you’ve played the type of poker I’ve played since I left school, which is high stakes in this game, you don’t survive and you’re not still here - as I’m doing - unless you’re more successful than unsuccessful. There’ll be loads of big calls to make during my tenure here, I won’t shy away from them.
And they will always be for the good of our football club and the good of our team. Not everyone’s going to agree with them. Such is life.
On a more positive note can you say what you made of Jarell Quansah’s performance, and also about his potential?
I think you can see, he’s come into a side that’s not allowed him to hit the ground running. But with every performance the only real blemish he’s got is the penalty in the MK game which was trying to do the right thing - trying to win the ball.
The sky’s the limit for him, he can be whatever he wants. Jurgen Klopp doesn’t feel the way he feels about you, training with the first team, unless you’re a good player. They’re the top end of our profession and I’m just so pleased that they trust us with that type of player because they feel so highly of him.
For us, he comes here to a different style of football but I think he’s got anything he wants to be in front of him if he keeps working hard and he stays level-headed.
If you meet the boy, his character, he reminds me so much of Elliot Anderson in terms of nothing phases him. He was a little bit disappointed after the game on Saturday because we’d lost again, because he’s not used to losing. Those academy teams won’t lose four on the spin. Liverpool very rarely do that.
I just love working with top players and we’ve been lucky in the January market, we’ve added good characters to our group - some young characters - but look at Wardy’s (Grant Ward) performance, Ellery’s performance, Jarell’s performance.
It’s unfair to single them out but as new players to our group they showed all the qualities that you want to see in a new addition and that is: fighting for the badge and giving everything for the quartered jersey.
We were in here a few weeks ago and you said Josh Coburn would play for England at full international level. Would you say the same about Quansah?
I’m mindful of not heaping too much on the kids but, why not? He’s as good on the ball that you’ll need to be in terms of building out from the back. He’s going to get bigger, he’s going to get stronger, he’s going to get faster. His anticipation of the game is going to be better because more senior games get you that.
The one concern we had when we brought him in was his heading ability because we knew he could leap, he could score a goal at the back post, but he’s getting well-versed in the physical, aerial contact. But the heading he’s doing from a defensive standpoint is what any senior would be proud of. He has an enormous future in front of him.
It was tough because Bobby (Thomas) had done well for us, we had to absorb that and find someone else but I think we’ve gone a long way to solving that problem with the addition of Jarell.
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