A message from a Rovers fan

Very articulate and reasoned response. :smile:

It perhaps shows that the team weakened due to the sales of top players. Firstly in January 2017 Matty Taylor, then in January 2018 Billy Bodin, then in July 2018 Ellis Harrison, all it took was for one player who was expected to score goals (Stefan Payne) to fail before we really struggled. Even last season, we weren’t getting dominated every game, we just struggled to score. And the only reason we stayed up was because we signed Jonson Clarke-Harris who had an amazing run of form from January to May. Areas where Clarke was given freedom to improve, i.e. LB, CB and GK we were solid. Signed a great young left-back in Tareiq Holmes-Dennis, despite losing club legend Lee Brown to Portsmouth. Promoted young player Michael Kelly. Had Tom Lockyer (who has since signed for Charlton and has been one of their standout players in the Championship), James Clarke and Tony Craig all great players. He only struggled where most managers would, the board selling all our goalscorers and barely giving him any finance to replace them so he had to take chances.

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The trend is what happens when you sell all of his goalscorers and wonder why the team can’t score anymore!

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And also the first 3 also are affected by successive promotions

Thank you for an insightful guide to what happened during his tenure…

So is DC better spending money or not you reckon? I tried to check Payne fee but it comes back as undisclosed on all the sites, pretty sure I read it was close to 500k considering he scored over 20 goals for Shrewsbury before you picked him up. Tom Nicholls would’ve also cost something from Peterborough.

Vibe on this board is that DC has been given a rubbish budget and so can’t do anything. To me looking at his time at Bristol it appears he produced better teams on shoestring finding guys from non league like Stuart Sinclair and it all started to fall apart when he started spending decent money.

Or that DC decided to totally rebuild them. He could have tried to keep Edwards, Morris, Guthrie and even Dobson and Cook. I’m happy to give him time to get it right but I’m not 100% convinced he will with the current squad.

It’s a tough one to call, I think the general consensus is that DC’s transfer business was generally poor after our second promotion. He did still have a lot of good signings though; Joe Lumley and Ryan Sweeney on loan, Liam Sercombe, Tony Craig, Marc Bola on loan, Tareiq Holmes-Dennis and Jack Bonham were all fantastic signings, but he did have his fair share of absolute flops; Byron Moore, Jonny Burn, Bob Harris, Luke James, Jake Clarke-Salter and Kelle Roos on loans, Sam Slocombe and Adam Smith, Bernard Mensah, Sam Matthews, Gavin Reilly, Stefan Payne were all very poor. His recruitment during his first 2 seasons though was fantastic. Gosling, Mansell, Sincalir, Taylor, Monkhouse, Leadbitter, Balanta, Easter, Lines, Clarke, Montano, Bodin, Gaffney were all key in either one or both promotions. And to answer your question, this may shock you but the fee for Payne was only £200k, we wondered at the time why that was because we thought we’d got a bargain, and in fact Payne wasn’t even our first choice I don’t think, our first choice was a man that I’m sure caused a lot of controversy on this forum in his time; Amadou Bakayoko. But the issue with Payne wasn’t ever his quality, his attitude is appalling, among the first I’ve seen from a player ever. He was lazy, when the fans booed the team he swore at us, he openly admitted after leaving for Shrewsbury on loan in January he didn’t try, and even when he left for Tranmere he said “I can’t wait to actually play for a real fanbase.” The guy was a plonker. Nichols was £300k, and he was also heavily hated by Peterborough fans despite being their top goalscorer. Nichols is a weird one who divides a lot of opinions on Gaschat especially, the guy can do EVERYTHING but score, his general play is fantastic, but his goalscoring record is atrocious. The guy got I believe 7 or 8 assists last season. He’s great in a two up top and in my opinion was a key reason why Clarke-Harris had such a sudden turn around in form. Apologies if this has been a post ranting about Rovers and not your club but I thought you’d want an answer to your question. Some of DC’s signings that were the most successful, were ones that you thought wouldn’t be. Jack Bonham was so heavily slated when he signed, one of the best goalkeepers in the league last season. He’s also pretty good with youth players too, Ollie Clarke, Tom Lockyer, Michael Kelly and Ellis Harrison were all very successful under him.

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Thanks mate, excellent summary.

Great post Gasfan! Thanks for that.

Thanks for taking your time out to give a comprehensive insight into Darrell Clarke. Personally im fed up of all the constant chat about what he did or didn’t do at Bristol Rovers that’s all in the past its what hes doing now and in the future at Walsall Fc. We used to have all this with Dean Keates Wrexham had a solid defence he did this he did that now its Darrell Clarke is a slow starter etc etc so and so was a good signing others weren’t We can talk about managers pasts over and over again this is Walsall 2019 and a totally different scenario im looking into the future not past happenings

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Exactly Ray Graydon was the messiah at Walsall , and at Bristol Rovers he was …?

And O Driscoll did so well at Doncaster!!

Last season we were top of League One at this stage. Look how that played out.

The first 10 games mean as much as pre season friendlies.

I still don’t think we can expect anything more than mid table as there has just been too much upheaval from the chairman all the way down to the tea lady.

I don’t like to call fellow fans names but any football fan in general calling for a managers head after 6 games is a ■■■■■■■ :joy:

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Do they? Points earned at this stage of the season still count at the end.

And, so many points lost early on make it harder to climb up the ladder, even now we have to have a mountain of wins to even climb to just below play off places, top 3/4 are already out of sight!

What I am saying is the first 10 games are as much of a signal of what is to come over the remaining 36 games as pre season friendlies - as you well know. Otherwise based on last seasons start we would be in the Championship now.

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Thank you for taking the time out to give us insight…shame what you have said will be forgotten by a few on this board that seem to think that everything at our club is terrible and we will be in non league next season!

I am sure we will do well under Clarke and given the position we find ourselves in he is the best we can attract.

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Nope, I didn’t know that’s what you meant, because it’s not what you posted.

I also disagree with it. It may be a signal, but it may also not. Bradford & Scunthorpe started cack last season.

Its exactly what I posted :nerd_face: