EXPERIENCED ADDITIONS
“We’ve tried to focus on that. There will be one or two arrivals that are at the younger end of their career or at the start of their career, and that will happen. But the immediate aim is still to, when we can, bring in players that really help the group, bring some experience with them, without being old.
“We don’t want old players, we just want good players. We want players to come and embrace playing for Bristol Rovers, and supporters should be thinking ‘that’s helped us, that’s improved us.’ I don’t think there’s any doubt that the couple of boys who we’ve already brought into the building, for sure, Kofi Balmer and Ryan de Havilland, have proved to us for sure.”
He later added, “It’s never about numbers. It’s about the quality of the player. So, we’re obviously looking at the balance of the squad, and you obviously address performance, you address weaknesses that I show you.
“But from that point of view, we’re trying to strengthen the squad in areas that we feel needed. If that means one more player, two more players, three more players, the beautiful thing is what Darrell found and what I found, you know, the three coaches before found is that you get support here.”
PLAYING FOR ROVERS
“There’s pressure playing for Bristol Rovers. Bristol Rovers is a name that, for me, shouldn’t be in League Two. But you are in football, where the pitch decides where you are. It’s about points, isn’t it? Points make prizes for higher levels.
“So, from our point of view, we’ve just got to deal with the here and now. Deal with a real tough game on Saturday, and then look forward to next week to a free week where we can do some work at the training ground because this week’s been good, but it’s been limited because we had the game on Tuesday.
“Most weeks we’ve had games which change the program for players, limiting what we can do. So, we’ve probably put 10 per cent of the work into the players in what we’re trying to achieve, so we need to have two or free weeks, where we can get that extra work in.”
