Joey, thanks for your time. Could you relax in the second half with a 4-0 cushion?
Relaxed as you can be. We were wanting to get more goals because you never know when they’re going to be needed.
I would have really liked to see John Marquis (score) and he was unlucky with a couple of attempts, some good defending and the woodwork. I would have liked to have seen Lofty get off the mark as well and Harvey Saunders has had a few chances.
The main thing for us was being professional in the second period and managing the game correctly. We knew Burton would throw the kitchen sink at us to get back in it and the main thing for us is we kept that clean sheet with a young defence and a new defence in many ways.
Lewis Gordon is 21, Luca Hoole is 20, James Connolly is 20 and Gibbo is a veteran in there at 24. A young side across that backline and I thought they handled the game and the concentration levels were superb.
Watching the first 30 seconds from the dugout, what was your hunch when Aaron Collins went to ground?
I think the ref made the right call. They’ve left the pitch really long because of the style of football they want to play and it isn’t conducive to the way we want to play, which is a crisp passing game.
They are entitled to do that, it’s their stadium, but it backfired on them. The ball sat up, the defender hesitated and Aaron’s athleticism and anticipation brought him onto the ball, he’s nudged it in front and he’s possibly going to go through and have a goalscoring opportunity, so the player has left the referee with nowhere to go really and it was the correct call.
It was a double whammy because Antony clipped in the free-kick, their energy levels seemed to drop and your energy levels went through the roof.
When you’re on the run they’re on, we said make a fast start, don’t let them settle in the game. They’ve in that losing habit and we’re in that winning habit, although we’ve been on the other side of that, we’ve been a team with that kind of culture where you concede a goal and heads go down.
Credit to them, they came out in the second half and they had a scrap and a go, testing us a few times. Belly’s had to make a couple saves and a couple have whizzed from set plays and long throws. We’ve had to defend it correctly.
For us, it was about getting out of here with three points no matter how they come and to do with it with a commanding performance, albeit against a team with a man sent off, is really pleasing.
Does that first half set a bar for you for what you want?
I’d take the opposition getting a man sent off after the first minute every week. The reality of it is we’ve come away from home, coming up a division, you want to get that first win on the board as soon as possible because it breeds confidence in the group and the lads know they deserve to be at the level.
For us, whichever way it came, if it was a scrappy 1-0 we would have taken that, but as it was it was a relatively commanding performance due to the opposition losing a man so early.
You scored four, you could have scored more, certainly in the first half.
Yeah, I think the lads are disappointed. At half time, we were asking the lads to push on and it wasn’t for a lack of effort. There was some good defending in there, some really good blocks when it would be easy to throw the towel in. They kept fighting to salvage some pride, but we were always in control.
It was about how many we could get, rather how they could get back in the game.
A brief word on Lewis Gordon for his 70 minutes?
I thought he was outstanding, really good. You have to give credit to our recruitment team in terms of finding him.
He was in at Crystal Palace and we’ve managed to get in and pull him out of there as they were about to sign him, and they were literally at the verge of offering him a contract.
He’s a young player, he’ll improve, he’ll get better for knowing the system and the lads, but he had a fantastic introduction to league football. You wouldn’t have thought that was his first game in the Football League.
Credit to him, hopefully he can keep building with the group.
Do you expect any movement on signings before Crawley?
We’re trying all the time, we’re trying to move things along all the time and they’ll happen when they happen and we have to be patient.
You worry if we weren’t performing or getting results, but I still think we’ve got a bit of work to do in the market which I think everyone is aware of.
We’re a number of players short but we’ve still got some good players and a good foundation as today has shown.
Are there any players where you think you’re in pole position?
I don’t know, you never know who is at the table. You get gazumped left, right and centre in this game.
For us, we like to keep our cards relatively close to the chest. It’s difficult when we clearly have people who leak stuff to the Bristol Post. We just have to find out who it is. It won’t be long and we’ll work out who it is because Sam seems to have a really good read on some our business.
We’re transparent, we want to bring good players to the club and for us it’s about doing that as effectively and efficiently as possible.
In the midst of that, I think it’s disrespectful and rude to talk about other people’s players. That’s the reason we like to keep our cards close to the chest, so we can’t be gazumped and we carry as much respect on a transfer as we possibly can.
On the flipside of that, I do get the media side that you do need to keep the fans aware and the speculation is what drives content. I get that, but we don’t want to talk about things until they’re done and the player has signed. We show that respect to everybody and other football clubs.
The Gordon one is a good example because that’s just popped up and you’ve done it.
Yeah, for us it was a case of we clear the building out on Monday. Four of the lads cleared out were not really players who had a future, but one player did feature last week and I think you’ve seen today the composure in that position was key for us because we want to be a team that handles the ball.
I thought Lewis was outstanding today and showed all the qualities of why we brought him to the football club. He’s 21 and we’re delighted to have him.
Joey, what is it that Lewis can do that you didn’t already have in the building?
A number of things: composure, the ability to pop in the pocket, the ability play in and out of the position and read the game.
He’ll just get better. He joined us on the Thursday and he’s done a Thursday and a Friday session and then come into the inferno of the real stuff.
He is somebody the other players will trust on the ball. You know you can give him the ball and he’ll take care of it. There’s that ability to step inside the pitch.
I said to him when he came in give it 10 or 15 games before we make any adjustments, just show us what you can do and today he’s made a fantastic start.
Where does a signing like that come from? Is it the product of the scouting network you’ve got or contacts in the game because he’s a bit of an under-the-radar player. He’s only made one senior appearance before in the FA Cup. The rest of it’s for Brentford B.
You know we’re good at finding them. James Connolly, nobody knew about him.
There are some players we take that people know about, but also for me I’m about finding people who are hungry to get an opportunity, regardless of age or experience.
If somebody wants to be a player and has a great desire to be a player, we want them at our football club.
You have to give credit to our recruitment arm because when we decide to move the left-back we had on, one of those things was we also knew we had a left-back who could come in and raise the bar.
I felt we’d be short and everybody was like ‘Oh god, two starting players from the XI from Saturday have left the building’, but also today you have to have people in your football team that believe they’ve got a future and believe that the fans are with them and their teammates are with them.
The longer those guys hang around, the less belief they get and that can sometimes act like energy vampires for the rest of the group.
We cleaned house on Monday and I said to you I felt there was an energy change. Today’s performance away from home, I think the boys are on the upward curve.
We’ll keep adding to the squad, we’ll keep adding to the group because I think we’ve still got six or seven to do, but what a great building foundation that is to go into a League Cup tie and then some games against the bigger clubs in the division.
No doubt in the building you felt confident and calm, but for fans it’s been a bit of a noisy week, making decisions like that. That was a great performance and result to change that narrative.
I get there are a few pessimists out there and the world as we know it breeds pessimism. We’re always optimistic we can move the group on and there are people out there who doubt everybody, every manager, Guardiola, Klopp.
That’s just a natural part of the football cycle but the one thing here is I think the fans at this point know we have the best intentions for the football club and we want to move the club on.
Again, massive credit to the fans. We’ve had like 1,500 tickets sold and it felt like more, and what a glorious away day for them. I think they believe in the process and what we’re doing on the whole.
There will be a natural amount of scepticism, but also from us we care deeply and I understand I am a custodian of the football club. It’s not my football club.
We’re here to do the best job we can for the blue half of Bristol and winning 4-0, the first away game in League One, it’s a fantastic foundation to move the next team forward and I can’t wait to watch some of these players develop.
John Marquis didn’t get the goal that his performance probably deserved, but you can see he’s already a fan favourite and they’re singing his name because of that work rate. With Ryan Loft as well, it gives you another option and you can play two workhorses up front when you need to on a day like today.
Yeah, we had a different way of doing it last year and just due to personnel at the minute we’ve got to find different ways of winning, but for a coach that is always exciting.
A one-trick pony is not what you want to be, but when you fall on a system and a team like the back end of last year it’s quite easy, same again, same again.
We played a 4-1-3-2 in the Forest Green game and I felt we were worthy of a point in that. Today, we’ve played a slightly different system, John playing in the 10 just off Lofty and I thought he was outstanding.
Barring some good defending and the woodwork, he would have opened his account for the club, but with performances and the way he’s playing, it won’t be long.
We’ve brought real quality in the building, but to have that number nine. I know Lofty played in the nine today, but to have that focal point, and it’s not just the work he does. His work is exceptional, but it is smart running.
Also, it’s his leadership and communication. He was excellent before the game, he was excellent at half time and we’re really delighted to have him in our group.
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