‘A great stride forward for professionalism’

After a manic few days last week, wasn’t it nice to concentrate on the football again, instead of the ins and outs of transfer dealings and agents?

A 0-0 draw with Rochdale doesn’t seem to the naked eye to be that impressive, but after five defeats in a row away from home, a point against a play-off chasing side is worth drinking to. Unlike the actual game, which, by all accounts, was not. Those who made the long trek to Greater Manchester were not treated to attacking brilliance from either team. 

Pessimistic folk may put our lack of goal threat down to the loss of the man who, when mentioned on this page will, from now on, be referred to as ‘The Former North Leigh Striker’. Whilst no replacement signing was made in the roughly five hours that we had to replace him, Darrell made it clear that he has total faith in the forwards available to him for first team action for the remainder of the season.

As I was saying, glass-half-empty types may see a game free of goalmouth incident as a symptom of not bringing in a new face to play up front. But it just seems that both teams defended stoutly and the pitch wasn’t exactly conducive to free-flowing, passing football.

Also, it’s worth noting that of our last 20 league goals, 16 of them were scored by players still at the club and that Billy Bodin scored seven of them. 

The past ten days or so has seen the club take a great stride forward in terms of professionalism. If using that term sounds as if I’m accusing the club of being less than professional in the past, do forgive me: this isn’t a moan at anyone at all. But it seems strange that an organisation, in football, or indeed anywhere, will pay their employees top dollar but don’t invest in the best facilities for them to ply their trade. 

Happily, with the purchase of the land in Almondsbury as announced by the club, those days appear to be over. The new site is a vital piece of work towards ensuring that Bristol Rovers can be best prepared in the future, from the first team down to the youngest academy sides. It’s pretty odd for this club to own anything, looking at our history, but any football club with ambition to succeed and sustain any success sorts out the infrastructure as soon as they can.

Obviously, many of us are clamouring for news on the stadium, and of course that’s important, but don’t be under any illusions that this is any less imperative to the future of our grand old club.

Moving back to first team matters, we’ve got meetings with two promotion-chasing Yorkshire giants in the next few days. Bradford City come first, heading to BS7 on Saturday. They’ve been looking for promotion for a few years now, finishing fifth, where they currently stand this season, in 2015/16 and seventh the previous year. 

The loss of inspirational coach Phil Parkinson to big-spending Bolton Wanderers hasn’t seemed to hold them back. Bantams legend Stuart McCall’s return to the club he represented with distinction so many times (and managed, during the club’s crisis years) is going very nicely indeed. 

They’ve only lost four league games all season (though all of them were away – possibly a good sign for us given our excellent home form), and while they’re not a free-scoring side – their top scorer has all of seven goals – they can certainly defend. Before last week’s 2-2 home draw with Gillingham they’d gone two-and-a-half months without conceding more than one goal in a league match. My hypothetical fiver, therefore, is placed on a 1-1 draw.

Tuesday sees league leaders Sheffield United visit the Mem.

Chris Wilder’s Blades are in their sixth season at this level, and are finally seemingly going to do what they’ve threatened to since their relegation back in 2011, and get out of this league. They’ve had numerous scrapes in the play-offs and you’ve got to think that if they were to miss out on the top two, their end-of-season hoodoo will start playing on the minds of a few people in S2. 

For now, they sit atop the table, albeit with their automatic promotion rivals having games in hand over them. They reached the summit with a thumping 4-0 victory over AFC Wimbledon at home last week. Billy Sharp, the league’s top scorer, opened the floodgates inside two minutes. He’s averaging over a goal every two games since his return to United for a third spell, and many observers would reckon that he could play at Championship level but the Sheffield-born lad seems happiest at his home-town club.

The other obvious threat is John Fleck. Once rated at Scotland’s next big thing by football journalists and Football Manager players nationwide, the precocious young talent that was playing first-team games for Rangers aged just fifteen is a huge influence on United’s midfield, and ghosted past a few Wimbledon defenders last week to score an impressive goal.

While Wilder’s men seem to conquer almost everyone they play, before the Wimbledon win they’d experienced a dip, losing two matches and drawing one. Given that they have a tough away day at Peterborough coming first on Saturday, and our imperious form on our own patch, I can’t predict anything but another draw. 

Read more: ‘I don’t think anyone saw that coming’