Football / Fan's View
‘The Rovers rumour mill goes on and on’
“Darrell Clarke doesn’t have a clue,” said my mate, a Rovers season ticket holder since the year dot and quite possibly before that too. “He’s all right against part timers in non league football, but put him up against a bunch of hardened pros and he’s out of his depth.”
How soon we forget! One minute you are a hero, the next you are somewhere adjacent to zero. Funny old game, football.
It was even funnier when I saw the same man on Tuesday evening, on a rare visit to my local (I had not been for days). “The Gas were great tonight. It was hard to see which was the Championship side at times.”
“So you don’t want to sack the manager, then?” I mused.
“Not if we keep playing like that.”
Two completely different games, two completely different reactions to defeat and we’re only in the middle of August.
I am guessing that Bristol Rovers are not thrilled to be out of the League Cup, or whatever it’s called this week, given the money it brings in. Although it would be small change for a Premier League player, the sort of money the club could bring in for a plum tie against a Premier League side would pay the entire wage bill, quite probably for many weeks.
Whilst the losing start to the new season is disappointing, it is not, as REM might put it, the end of the world as we know it. But just like winning is a habit, so is losing and a return to winning ways is quite important to both the team and supporters.
Off the field, the rumour mill goes on and on. The latest one is that with Rovers now looking unlikely to get the full £30 million from Sainsbury’s, UWE now want to build their own slightly smaller stadium with Rovers their main tenants. I have no idea whether there is a single grain of truth in the story because, shiny new stadium or not, they would be back in the same place they were in at Eastville. Squatters, living in someone else’s house.
This is all a big what if, but what if Rovers ended up after the Sainsbury’s court case with a couple of million quid in compensation? Could they then sell the Memorial Stadium site to, say, house builders, clear the club’s debts and move in with the UWE?
Stranger things have happened, but one thing you learn from a lifetime of supporting the men in the blue and white quarters is the more unexpected something is likely to happen, the more likely it is that it will.
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