If the Bristol Rovers squad thought they could breeze through the final three games of the season having successfully achieved their League One status for next season, they were delivered a pretty stark message on Thursday morning at The Quarters.
Gathering his squad after a day off following the 2-0 defeat at Plymouth Argyle, which was on the back of a loss at Port Vale by the same scoreline, with the Gas’ season in danger of petering out, Joey Barton laid out the situation loud and clear.
Rovers are comfortable in League One, in more ways than one; they’ve acquitted themselves at the level, at times exceeded expectations (also, at times, underwhelmed and frustrated) but with a trio of matches remaining over the next nine days, can finish anywhere between 10th and 18th.
Barton has set a “mini-target” of finishing above Exeter City and Vale as the No1 promoted side but for the individuals that make up his senior group, it goes far beyond that. He wants them to feel like they’re playing for their futures.
“I said to the lads this morning that I’m looking at every single player in our starting XI going, ‘okay, I need to get a better player than you’, because that is progress,” Barton said. “The lads don’t want to hear that because they believe they’re the best. But as a manager you’ve constantly got to be looking to improve. That’s not just the playing staff, that’s also the coaching staff.”
Thursday’s pre-match press conference before the trip to Peterborough United took place in a room at The Quarters with a hastily rubbed out whiteboard on the wall, which had mapped out the Rovers squad in positional departments, spelling out depth, quality, where they think they need to improve and some of the players they hope can do just that.
At Home Park, Barton outlined his wish for 12 new players this summer, a relatively modest number compared to previous hauls, but that will also run concurrently with moving players on, and beyond those expected exits such as Rovers’ five loanees and some of the out-of-contract players who have struggled for minutes this term, there could be some surprise names.
“Tuesday night after the game, I couldn’t sleep until about half four in the morning because all I’m thinking about is the team; where we are, progress we’re going to make and how we’re going to build for next season,” Barton added. “Your brain starts wearing: ‘get rid of everybody and we’ll start afresh’. Then you realise, ‘settle down, it’s not that bad’. We’ve been poor over the last couple of weeks because the lads have made poor decisions or been a bit naïve.
“But we’ve got some really good components here, really good people. Not everyone is going to come on the journey because it’s not realistic to think everybody is going to improve at the level necessary to get better. So, some are going to go. Naturally, with the loan cycle, some are going to go. Some are going to go because they’re out of contract or the level has gone up, and we’re going to get new people into our building and that is exciting.
"But also, sometimes in the aim of trying to progress, if you’re not careful, you can regress, so we have to get that balance right and make sure players who leave in the summer window are the correct players to leave, and some of those lads might be fans favourites, that’s the nature of the business.
“But if we’re all truly serious about improving the football club and one day being in a position to get Championship-level football for our team, we’re going to have to make some tough calls and my job as the manager is to make those decisions. If it’s the right decision for the group, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to put your sentiment to one side in the name of progress.”
As to what specifics, whether it be characters and attitudes or attributes, are required to advance Rovers to where they want to be, there may need to be changes in the recruitment policy. At least to the extent where more seasoned League One-ready players are signed.
So far, with a few exceptions, the Gas have tended to sign either veterans or young talent, leading to something of a generational gap in the squad. It makes sense on an economic level, because players in their mid to late 20s, are far enough into their career where they can command the most money before depreciation starts to occur into their 30s.
Rovers’ strategy has been most apparent at the back where they’ve definitely improved over the second half of the season but still possess the 20th-ranked defence in terms of goals conceded (68), 18th with regards to shots against (13.3) and 20th across expected goals against per game (1.53).
To become credible promotion challengers, unless they somehow are able to summon freakish levels of attacking prowess in 2023/24, they simply can’t replicate those numbers.
The factors behind them in this campaign could be considered a mixture of their overtly-offensive tactics in the first half of the season and then having to roll with a backline of which all the members are aged between 20 and 25, with James Gibbons at the upper end of the scale and very much the outlier among his positional peers. That leads to natural inconsistencies and naivety in dealing with certain situations.
Citing the examples of Plymouth Argyle, Ipswich Town and Sheffield Wednesday - the consensus best defensive units in the league and who occupy the top three - they have experience combined with a subconscious knowledge of how to keep clean sheets and win games at this level.
“When you look at some of the goals we’ve conceded, they’ve been naïve,” Barton added. “There can be an individual mistake or whatever but I would say, there are about 20-25 per cent of our goals conceded that are a product of inexperience or naivety.
“If you use the top three as an example. Go through the Plymouth backline from the other night - 32-year-old Joe Edwards, 34-year-old James Wilson, 27 and 26 Dan Scarr and Macaulay Gillesphey, even the keeper was 26 - there’s just a bit of nous in there.
“Now they’ve got their way of doing it and from my perspective we’ve gone a different route into that, it’s a longer to medium term strategy in terms of getting younger players in our group and allowing them that space to develop.
“I spoke to the lads this morning, when you recruit players, you should only recruit people who are better than the people you’ve got or you think could be better than the people you’ve got. Otherwise, it’s much of a muchness.
“So, for me, January wasn’t an ideal window. Jarell Quansah was a prospect but we weren’t going, ‘okay, he’s better than Bobby Thomas and going to hit the ground running’. I think you can make an argument for the others, Grant Ward was a bit more advanced than Zain Westbrooke at the time, and he’s proven that in the games he’s played.
“But on the whole, if you trade five players you want every one of them to be an upgrade. How realistic that is, I’m not 100 per cent sure.
“I was disappointed with January because I don’t think we made a real move forward but when I look back at it now, we definitely improved the group but it didn’t improve our level because we didn’t spend like Plymouth did - we didn’t have those ready-made, experienced bodies to come in.”
Beyond their impact on the field, more established and experienced individuals can help fill a void in the dressing room as Barton is set to lose two big characters from his playing squad this summer in captain Paul Coutts and goalkeeper Anssi Jaakkola.
That duo may still be retained in greater coaching capacities but he still needs some generals in his squad, which number just two for next season in Scott Sinclair and Sam Finley, and both are likely to need help.
“We’ll certainly look into that because losing Couttsy out of the dressing room, losing Glenn Whelan, Anssi, Rodders (Alex Rodman) - those types of senior figures,” Barton said. “There are still a lot of young men in there.
“We’ve got Scottie Sinclair in there and Sam Finley, but they need a hand because you need four or five of those lads. If Scottie and Sam have an off-day and don’t feel like talking so much, we’re at a low ebb. So we do seriously need to look at that but the flipside of that is they cost a premium, to get really good players.”
Planning for the summer began in earnest several weeks ago and head of football operations Eddy Jennings has spent much of the year scouting on matchdays as Rovers’ summer is shaping up to be a decisive one, with the feeling that the Gas now have a greater awareness of where they sit in the market and the types of players they can attract now as an established League One side.
Players are convinced to sign for clubs due to a number of factors, sometimes personal to the individual, sometimes primarily financially-motivated as for all the will in the world, and the wooing of a target, if they can earn more money elsewhere, then they’ll take that opportunity.
But details still matter and Barton can be a convincing figure in delivering a sales pitch, but what also needs to match those words are deeds behind the scene and a sense of Rovers being a club moving forward.
Whether that be through continual developments and improvements at The Quarters - as much of a home for players as anywhere else - and the prospect of a new stadium or, at the very least, the enhancement of the Mem.
That works in not just helping turn the heads of prospective new signings, but also instilling a sense of ambition within those already in the building.
“There are lots of players in the ether now, and you’re going, ‘he’s not playing there, maybe we could get him’ but it’s the motivation to get the boys down to Bristol; we’ve got to improve the training ground, the ground has got to be improved because you’ve got to bring them in and say, ‘this is going to be your home for the next 12 or 24 months’." he said.
“I always think that you have to recruit above the level. If you’re recruiting from below the lads you’re asking lads to do something they’ve not done before. You might take the odd one or two of them but, as teams have found out (it doesn’t always work). If you take lads above the level, and then if you take a couple from below the level, it allows them the time to stabilise and, if they surprise you, great.
“So we’re looking to recruit lads from above our level. So when we were in League Two, we’re recruiting League One; the training ground is lovely, the ground’s okay - that’s fine. Now we’re trying to recruit from the next tier. I know from my Fleetwood days, to show them a really nice training ground is important because that’s where you’re going to be, you spend more time there then you are with your family, so you have to improve your standards there.
“This is great, and it’s been great from league Two to League One but it needs to improve. The players need to come back and go, ‘okay, these are serious. Everything is moving in the direction that we’re getting better’. If you come back and it’s the same, then you get the same.
“So I spoke to the lads really in depth about it. What’s been accepted this year will not be accepted next year, because we want to get better. And it would be stupid to think if we do the same things we won’t get the same result.
"But that’s across the board, we’re incrementally moving towards being a serious football club and it’ll take time. If we keep doing the right things and we keep nudging it, then the rest takes care of itself and eventually you’ll be in a position to progress.”
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