THE GAME
Successive away defeats, at Lincoln and Crawley, prompted Head Coach to make wholesale changes for the visit of Mansfield Town.
There were six in all, but the biggest blow he’s received in the build up was the loss of Chris Martin who, we learned, will not be available again this season following a knee operation.
A crowd of over 9,000 (though it didn’t look that many) inside The Mem saw a goal inside the first minute; trouble was, for the majority of those in attendance, it came at the wrong end. Jed Ward’s clearance was poor and was intercepted by Will Evans out on the right. His cross saw Caylan Vickers net the opener and in an instant Ward, hailed as ‘one of our own’ by Rovers supporters in recent home games, became the villain.
Given that there were still 89 minutes to play, it was reasonable, surely, to expect some sort of reaction from Calderon’s team. It came with an off target long range effort from Kofi Shaw and a James Wilson header that hit the crossbar before the equaliser arrived in the 26th minute of an increasingly scrappy affair. When it came, though, it was worth the wait as Romaine Sawyers, receiving the ball from Shaq Forde, swept the ball past Christy Pym from the edge of the area.
We were undone again, though, by an uncharacteristic error from Connor Taylor whose intended back pass to Ward was intercepted by Keanu Baccus. He squared the ball to Dom Dwyer who couldn’t miss from a yard or so out.
Calderon’s quadruple substitution injected some life into his side but whilst there was more urgency about their play, only Isaac Hutchinson went close to securing a second equaliser of the afternoon, but his effort was saved, on the line, by Christy Pym.
Three consecutive defeats have left Rovers with just four sides below them and the run in promises to be a nervous time for Gasheads with Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers coming in their next two games.
THEY SAID WHAT?
‘I would say it is the cheapest one we have given away in terms of the game. I think it was a good week in the way we trained the whole week, and the way we prepared the whole week was good. All of a sudden, in the first minute the goal happened and after that, I think we did the more difficult thing, which was to come back from that situation.
‘In the second half, it was something similar. I think especially the goals; they killed us in the way they were because you expect to concede goals, but the way they were, it was not our day today. That was tough to take. We have done a lot of good things, but we made our lives so difficult today. It was too cheap for the opposition to get the three points today.
‘We spoke last week that we wanted to play a little bit more because I think in the last game, we lost a little bit of that idea to try to play, but that’s not the idea. Especially at the beginning of the game, we say that we have to be more practical and try to play in their half and then try to play. I don’t want to blame anyone because we are all in the same boat here. We all make mistakes, and I am the first one.’ (Rovers Head Coach Inigo Calderon)
‘I think football can be cruel sometimes and today was one of those days. I think we showed spells of what type of team we want to be and what type of team we can be. I think it’s just a case of we’ve got to take accountability as a whole team. We obviously made two individual errors, but I think we’ve got to kill games off.
‘We showed dominance in spells, and we always give them a foothold in the game if we keep making errors like that and keep giving them a chance to stay in games. We’ve got to start killing teams off. When we look good, we look really good.
‘Jed’s come up for us in many games before. So, it’s an error that he knows, shall we say, got to do better with, but I think we reacted well to get back in the game. I think it almost sparked us. We started a bit slow, and I think that summed it up. We reacted well, which is good. We’ve got to be men about the situation. We got back into the game, and unfortunately, the same thing again. We made an error, and the second time we just couldn’t get back into it.’ (Rovers Goalscorer Romaine Sawyers)
‘It was a magnificent three points, though I wasn’t overly enamoured with the performance and parts of it, but in terms of the result it was as good as we’ve had all season. Both goals were very similar in that they came from mistakes by Rovers which we punished them for. It was an unbelievably good start for us though the next 20 minutes were disappointing from our point of view as we gave the ball away needlessly.
‘We should have been tighter on Romaine Sawyers before he scored for Rovers, but I have to say it was a fantastic strike. We then had good spells either side of half time. We had two or three good opportunities to score and limited Rovers to very few chances. It was a little bit nervy at the end, but we sent on Alfie Kilgour and Aiden Flint to settle things down.
‘We want to keep getting results and we are taking nothing for granted. It’s good that we are 11 points clear of the bottom four and it’s a little more comfortable, but we need to get mathematically safe. I’m not sure 50 points will do it. All of a sudden Scott Lindsey has gone back in at Crawley and they have got two outstanding wins and two clean sheets, and they are the sort of team that can put a run together and win four or five games.’ (Mansfield Manager Nigel Clough)
