Joey, it’s a brand new season but the same team you played last year in Forest Green.
Yeah, the champions of the division we played in last year. It’s kind of who you want to play, isn’t it? You want to play the sides you competed against last year because you know them a bit better.
We’re at home for the first time (on the opening day) in six or eight seasons, but we’re at home, we’ve got a full house and I’m really looking forward to the League One campaign starting.
We’re back at level par after getting promoted last year. Obviously, we were in situ when the club got relegated so it was important for us to get League One status back and we managed to do that at the first attempt.
We get an opportunity now to build a club the way we want to build it.
I’ve heard a lot of players saying it’s a clean slate. Can you expand on that?
I think it is, and that’s good or bad. It’s a clean slate for everybody, even if they were relatively successful last year because unfortunately this year, what you did last year isn’t going to help you.
It’s in the bank, the history books – your goals, your appearances, your contributions – and you will be judged on what you do this year. The opening bell for the season is going to go at 3pm on Saturday and what you did last year isn’t going to serve us any benefit once the referee starts the encounter.
That’s good for the players who maybe didn’t have the year they wanted or envisaged having. It’s maybe not so good for the players who had really good years last year and have got to pick up from the start point again, but every year is a fresh opportunity to change your standing within the game.
If you don’t do well, your standing in the game drops and your salary usually goes hand in hand with that. If you do well, you get the upsides and the opportunity to increase all those good things that can happen when you do your job relatively successfully.
You’ve had varying experiences at League One level with Fleetwood and Rovers. What can Gasheads expect from the season ahead?
We’ll get better as each game passes. We won’t be the finished article when the bell goes at 3pm on Saturday, but we’ve got more than enough to be competitive.
We will incrementally improve as the window starts to tighten up because the market will flush out, but we’re starting from such a better spot than we were this time last year.
We had so many factors where there were question marks against lots of things last year. There are still question marks, there is still lots of work to do, but also we’ve got lots of people who are verified in terms of we know what they’re likely to do.
I think the foundation the group is built on is a lot more solid than what it was at this point last year and all the structures at the club within all departments are a lot more solid than they were last year and we’ve got a lot of improving to do.
It’s exciting times for the club. By the time 2026 is here and my deal expires, I hope to have the club established in the Championship. To do that, we’ve got to establish ourselves in League One.
We’re a newly-promoted team and the priority for us has got to be 52 points. Historically, that has been enough to stay in the division. Last year I think it was down near 42 points, it was a bit of a freak table last year in League One.
But the priority for us is getting 52 points on the board as quickly as possible. If we get them in December, we’re going to have a good season. If you get them in January or February, you’ve got some live chances going in. If you get them in March and April, you’re looking over your shoulder a bit and if you get them in May you know you’re in a dogfight.
For us, it’s getting those points on the board as quickly as we can. Saturday is three of those that are available to us; we have to try to take maximum points off the board and that is the focus, winning the next game.
Joey, how much of a different experience is it for you this time around? Last year, you start on the back foot with a COVID-hit pre-season and coming off a relegation with an untested squad. You’ve retained the core this time around and it must be a completely different frame of mind you find yourself in?
It is for sure, and also don’t forget what else is here. The Gasheads are engaged now, so they’ve gone from ‘This manager just got us relegated, is he the right guy for the job?’, though all the nonsense that’s gone on off the field in the summer, to delivering a promotion and we were completely united as a football club in the back end of last season.
It was magical. To win 7-0 and 4-3 shows you where the spirituality of our club was at. We’ve emotionally moved the club into a whole different space.
For us to be successful next year, we’ve got to keep that unity between stands and pitch. I think the fans knew every lad who pulled the quarters on in the second half of the season was emptying the tank.
The magical spell we had towards the end of the season went hand in hand with our fans’ belief growing. This time, we start with the fans believing in the group and the team.
Last year, we didn’t have that. There was an anxiousness and nervousness in the stadium, there were the ramifications of a COVID lockdown and people being out of kilter.
This year, we’re going to have a sold-out crowd, definitely for the first game. We play against a rival we competed against last year, so in terms of what’s in League One, they’re one of the teams we know really well.
They have had some structural changes. They’ve lost the manager to Watford and a new manager has come in from Notts County. They’ve lost Ebou Adams, who was a fundamental part of the pressing side of their team.
They’ve also lost Kane Wilson and Nicky Cadden, who were two big players in the way they played. They’ve replaced them, but on the other side of that we’ve lost Elliot Anderson, we’ve lost Connor Taylor. But we have added Jordan Rossiter, James Gibbons and John Marquis to that.
We’re weaker in some areas but have strengthened in others and I think Forest Green will be the same and it’s only when we get in the contact on Saturday that we’ll know what work we’ve got to do.
We feel we’re six or seven players short from our squad. When September 1 is here, I think we’ll have six or seven players in.
I get tweeted, I get Instagrammed – Wael’s tagged into them – from fans who’ve got massive hearts and care deeply, telling me what job I need to do as if I’m not aware of it, and I love that, I love that passion because they care deeply about the club and they care about us getting better.
But as we always do, every team I’ve coached has got better in the second, third, fourth and fifth game than it was in the first game. It’s been better after Christmas, it’s been better at the end of the season when it matters.
It is a marathon, not a sprint. We’ve got two winnable games in our opening two. Two tough games because we’re playing the champion team in our division, Forest Green, at home and then we go to Burton away from home. Two teams who aren’t Real Madrid, but are good teams, established in League One and obviously the team that won our division.
We haven’t got all the pieces of the jigsaw here, but we’ve got enough pieces of the jigsaw to win the opening two games and that is the focus at this moment.
We will improve, we will sign players, there’s no doubt about that, but we unfortunately don’t have the resources to go and pay £1.5million for a full-back from Leeds or £500,000 to pay for a centre-forward from Accrington like some of the clubs who have bigger budgets than us.
Last year, we had one of the biggest budgets and we were a big boy in that division. This year, we’re not. The experts have predicted, the most optimistic had us at 16th I think, and the most pessimistic had us at 21st.
It’s a different focus to last year from ‘They’ve got to get promoted, we’ve got to win every single game’. There is less intensity in the outside world and less expectation, but if anything there’s more intensity and expectation in terms of what we’re looking for.
I’m looking forward to the season. We want to play against big clubs, we want to play against the best opponent we can play against every single week and we’re going to have some big clubs come to our stadium this year and we’re going to go to their stadiums with our big following and we’re going to shock loads of teams this year, make no bones about that.
On the transfer front, are there any details you can share on either incomings or outgoings?
I don’t want to tell you anything until it’s done and I don’t like talking about other players. I just think it’s bad etiquette to do that.
We’ve got a number of irons in the fire but we’ve got to get value for money in the marketplace and value for money in our marketplace, unfortunately, comes at the back end of the window.
Is that because young players and prospects have been on pre-season tours and their clubs have still not made a decision on where those players are going to go or if they’re going to be in the squad?
That’s a factor. What’s also a factor is every agent has got four or five options because the market’s still open and they’re going ‘These might sign you. Do you want to sign for Bristol Rovers? But I’ve got this club in the Champ that might sign you?’
All of a sudden, when squads start tightening up and people start taking options off the board, the bulls*** from agent disappears.
Every player in League One who has done quite well is getting told there is a Championship club interested in them. Every player in the Championship who has done quite well is getting told a Premier League club is after them. Everyone in the Premier League who has done well is getting told there is someone in the top six or eight that’s after them. Everyone in the top six is hearing the Champions League teams are after them, and it’s the same in League Two and the Conference.
You have to go through this dance every year and then the market settles down and you get the business done.
The key thing for us is we’ve got to bring it in on our budget. Last year we could take a few risks because we had a turnover of players. By the end of the two windows, I think it was 20-odd out and 20-odd in. We don’t need the same root-and-branch this year.
Yes, we do need to upskill and replace some of the key players from last year that we’ve lost. It’s difficult to do that. How are we going to replace Elliot Anderson? Unless you give be £10-15million, it’s going to be tricky to take a winger like him and the fact he started for Newcastle against Benfica the other night shows he’s jumped a number of divisions.
So I’m hoping everyone like Chelsea and anyone else who has got any half decent young players who they want to get in their first team, don’t put them in your 23s, send them down here to us. We’ll give them a platform to show how good they are and you’ll get a better player back than what you gave us.
Every player we take on loan gets better. We’re getting more and more trust off bigger clubs because you can imagine if you’re Newcastle or Stoke or one of those bigger sides, if you’ve got good young players you’re likely to lend them to us because we’ve done a good job for you.
The challenge for us is as we go up a level, we narrow the field. Stoke, we just beet Stoke 2-0 at home. How are Stoke going to loan us players? It’s strange because, with the greatest respect to them, we’ve just dusted you in our stadium. It’s a tricky one. When you narrow the gap on teams, you limit your options in terms of who you can take players off.
For us, we’ve got to explore the marketplace. We’ve got permanents that we’re trying to do and we’ve got loans we’re trying to do. When it’s good players, you’re not the only people in for them and if there are people higher up the food chain in for them, they’re naturally going to hold a bit of fire to see as the market flushes out whether they can get those moves or not.
Unfortunately, we have to wait for those divisions to shake out. When you’re a manager of Real Madrid, Barcelona or Man City or Liverpool, one of the major powerhouses, then you become the SAS and you say ‘We want him’ and you get him.
When you’re not and you’re Bristol Rovers manager, unfortunately you have to wait for the teams further up the food chain to shake out what they don’t need and they don’t want, and you just stand there with your catcher’s mitt on waiting for them to drop out and you’ve got to make sure you’re on the right ones.
We have to be patient. Normally, I would be laying eggs at this point. In my first two or three seasons I would be laying eggs.
Is there a sense of frustration in the market and is that mitigated by what you’ve achieved in the past few months?
We’ve taken quality, not quantity. Jordan Rossiter, a real quality addition. John Marquis, proven best striker in League One. That’s proven, that’s not me saying that. At Doncaster Rovers, he was the best striker in League One, his goal return and everything suggests that.
He’s still been a valuable striker in the division and the challenge for John is to come here and be the best striker in the division again. I fundamentally believe he will become the best striker in the division.
There are some good strikers in the division, but we lacked a number nine last year. Leon Clarke came in to do that last year and he suffered with injuries. Brett Pitman came in to do that and suffered with injuries, so Azza had to default into that position and we formulated another plan to get the job done.
It’s so refreshing to have a recognised number nine in the building. Lofty’s not far away from that, but we’ve got to grow Lofty.
He came in January and he’s got all the components he needs. The last bit he needs is confidence and belief. I can’t give that to him, he can only get that on a matchday so he’s got to get starts in the team to access that and then he’s got to execute on a Saturday or a Tuesday night.
But it’s tricky because all the while, I’m communicating to the boys we’re six or seven players away from where we want to be, we haven’t got all the jigsaw pieces in place, and I’m saying to the young kids this is their opportunity. You could get on the pitch on Saturday and they’ve got to take it, otherwise you’re going to be going out on loan because when those signings arrive, your opportunities are going to become less and less.
At this moment, the fact we haven’t got all the jigsaw pieces in place means there are opportunities for people who maybe didn’t have the seasons they wanted to have last year. Maybe this clean slate is going to be activated for them now, but it won’t be there forever because if they can’t do the job we will bring in people who can do the job.
This time last year, Luca Hoole saved you a few quid by making the leap from the academy to the first team. Are there any homegrown players in a similar position this year?
No, the kids aren’t ready. They’ve done alright in pre-season and they’ve progressed, but do I see them coming and being a starting player for us like Luca did last year? Honestly, no, I don’t, not from the crop coming through.
I could be wrong on that and they could be thrown in because of opportunities at this moment and light the place up.
If one is to do that, I would say Jerry Lawrence is probably best positioned out of that group.
Some of them have done fine, but the problem for them is the level has gone up, so whereas last year it’s relatively close for Hooley to close the game on the first team. Once the first team goes up, the jump is bigger for the younger players.
Again, a few of them might surprise us. They might do what Hooley has done. I don’t see that happening again, but there are going to be opportunities in the early stages of the season to show me I’m wrong.
Alex Rodman has not played in pre-season. Can you sum up where he is?
He’s not really trained much, either. He’s had a bit of a back injury from the opening gambit of pre-season. He’s actually back on the grass and moving now, but he’s missed a large part of pre-season.
It’s going to be one of them for Rodders. I think he’s approaching that stage. He kind of defaulted into a contract. He and Anssi did contracts with Martyn Starnes last year and they’ve defaulted into them.
I’m telling you, they’re not fantastic contracts. They’re great for me as a coach because they are relatively low level. We’ve altered Anssi’s because there has been a change of emphasis in terms of what we want to do with him moving forward, moving him into that second goalkeeper/goalkeeper coach position and it’s something we’re exploring.
Rodders on the other side of that is not enjoying how much he is getting paid off us at the minute, but he signed a contract with Martyn. He didn’t negotiate with me and unless he gets on the pitch and plays, that won’t change.
At this moment in time, he hasn’t been able to do that so there is going to become a point where either Alex is not going to be able to get on the pitch and at this stage of his career he’s starting to look at what’s next, rather than ‘Who am I signing for next?’
But also, let’s hope he can get back on the pitch, and if he gets back on the pitch and gets back in the team, then we can have a few conversations with him, but at the minute he is in a bit of a limbo. He’ll want a better deal for sure, but also he won’t get one because he’s not playing games.
For me, I’m scheduling as if he’s not going to play a game for me this season and he’s not going to play a game because a great indicator of future performance is past performance. If he hasn’t been fit all of last year and if he’s struggling to be fit for the start of the pre-season, how am I going to expect him to be fit for the start of this year?
Unluckily for him, he’s getting paid at a level where he won’t affect the budget of our group. Last year he was affecting it because he was on a decent salary, but this year because of his arrangement with Martyn…
Is this a pay-as-you-play arrangement?
No, he’s just signed a mad deal and he will feel the squeeze of that before I will.
He’s not playing and he’s not fit. Yeah, it’s not nice if we’ve got wasted revenue but it’s not going to be life-changing.
It’s a bit harsh me saying this to you, but if he’s not fit, we’re not a charity. It might be the end of his career. If he can’t stay fit and he can’t play footy at his age, you’ve got to hang your boots up.
He’s ducking and diving with that in the summer going ‘What am I doing?’ and he’s thinking ‘Is my body going to hold up?’
At the moment, it’s not good signs for him. The fact he’s only back on the grass in the past 10 days and he’s not with the group means you’re at a disadvantage because if you miss pre-season, you chase your tail for most of the season.
Again, I hope I’m wrong on this, but the ball is in his court at the end of the day.
Do you have to put a deadline on this? He doesn’t seem like the type of character where you feel you need to take him away from the group.
No, absolutely not, but at the end of the day if you’re not playing and we’re paying you as a player and you’re here in a playing capacity and you’re not able to fulfil that, we’re also not a charity.
We will look after our lads and we try to do the right thing by them and there will be a few things coming down the track where we’ve got to do the right thing, but also it’s a meritocracy. You’ve got to work hard to be here, we’re not going to keep you here just because you’re a good person because there are loads of good people.
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