THE GAME
Five changes, some because of injury/illness/suspension, others not, were made by Steve Evans for this Tuesday night trip to Boundary Park.
The five to miss out were Taylor Moore, Jack Sparkes, Clinton Mola, Ryan de Havilland and Yusuf Akhamrich while those coming into the side were Joel Senior, Tom Lockyer, Kane Thompson-Sommers, Richie Smallwood and Luke Thomas.
However, Rovers slipped to another defeat on the road and whilst they created a number of goalscoring opportunities and could have taken at least a point, you can’t afford to be so profligate in front of goal and still expect to win matches.
They got off to the worst possible start, conceding after just 40 seconds when Mike Fondop’s knockdown found Kane Drummond and his first time effort from the edge of the area flew into the net, giving Brad Young absolutely no chance of saving.
It took a while for Rovers to respond to that early blow, but they did go on to enjoy a great deal of possession and might well have been ahead at the break.
Joe Quigey, returning to his former club, really should have done better when he latched on to a cross from Kane Thompson-Sommers, but he glanced a header wide when an on target effort might well have proved to be the equalising goal.
Luke Thomas lashed a shot high over the bar after some impressive hold up play by Fabrizio Cavegn, while Thompson-Sommers also hit a shot over the bar when well placed. Tommy Leigh also squandered an opportunity, heading wide when well placed.
There were more chances at the start of the second half but Cavegn’s header lacked power and Thomas again fired over the bar.
The hosts were then awarded a soft penalty after Senior blocked a cross, with his arm according to the appropriately named referee Scott Oldham. The match official was in no doubt that it was a deliberate handball, though and Fondop stepped up to take the spot kick.
Young made a superb save to keep Fondop’s effort out but could only palm the ball back to the striker who slotted the ball home to double his side’s lead.
Home keeper Matthew Hudson then denied Rovers a goal, saving well from Alfie Kilgour’s powerful header. Substitute Yusuf Akhamrich also saw an effort saved by Hudson as Rovers searched for a way back into the game against a well organised home defence.
There might have been a third goal before the end when Kilgour’s misplaced pass found Luke Hannant who went for goal only to see Young pull off a fine save.
The confidence gained from successive wins a little more than two weeks ago seems to have evaporated and now three consecutive defeats have plunged Rovers back into a desperate position and with other results going against them they find themselves dangerously close to a relegation place. Nothing less than a win against Grimsby on Saturday will do.
WHAT WAS SAID
‘I think it’s a very harsh defeat; this isn’t a Cambridge performance where I questioned a lot of individuals and the team. You know, they score inside a minute with a fantastic strike. For five to six minutes, we regroup in the game, and then we dominate. You can’t miss the level of chances, there are three individuals that missed three sitters, simple as that and then it carries on in the second half, we miss a gilt edged chance to equalise, and within seconds, they’ve got a penalty. I’ve looked at it back — is that a penalty? No, it’s not a penalty, but we’re in a situation where we’re not going to get something that’s fair and equal.
‘Goals change games, but I said to the boys in there, if you can’t take those chances, then we worry, because they are gilt edge chances. They’re not shots from the edge of the box; they’re free headers and free strikes from inside the box unmarked, and it’s hard to accept that they’re missed.
‘This is a tough place to come, we knew that going to Cambridge and coming to Oldham would be tough, but we’ve come here and Micky Mellon, the boss here at Oldham, will be really pleased that they got a two nil victory. But Micky’s an honest guy; he’ll reflect on this, and he’ll think we should score three or four goals tonight. I think they had one other chance when there’s a huge mistake with Alfie Kilgour. Other than that, I don’t think they’ve made a chance, and we made, in total in the game, five and a harsh penalty given against us.’ Rovers Head Coach Steve Evans
‘I think it is a really tough result for us to take. At the end of the day, we have come away with no points. Today, I don’t think our performance merited that. We created a lot of chances, but at the end of the day, if you don’t put them away, then you’re not going to win any games in this league. The others and I included have to look at ourselves in terms of when we get in those positions, we have to score, and today I think too many times, we didn’t score and make them pay for letting us have those opportunities.
‘Nine out of ten times tonight we score, but today we didn’t. So, we can’t dwell on it. We have to move past it, and there is another game coming thick and fast this Saturday. So, we’ll look at the positives, we’ll look at what we could have done better because there are things that we could have done better as well at the other end, and we could have created even more chances.
‘I think we were shell shocked from the fact that they scored so early from such an unbelievable strike. After that, I think we reacted well, and we were the better team in the first half, and we’ve had three gilt edged chances that on any other day, we score at least two of those, but today we didn’t. I think that was our downfall, and we conceded as well in the second half. We have to keep clean sheets as well, but I think it was a tough one to take tonight.’ Rovers midfielder Kane Thompson-Sommers
Was the difference just taking chances?
‘My keeper’s had to make a couple of good saves, the defence has put themselves on the line and won headers at important times. They’ve all worked really, really hard. When you’re playing against a back three you’ve got to keep trying to get up to it and that takes a lot of energy and a lot of desire and resilience. You’ve got to keep going, keep going, keep going and they stuck at it and made it very difficult for Bristol Rovers. It was an important victory for us.
‘As disappointed as I was with the first half on Saturday I was pleased with us tonight. You can kind of see when you don’t have the same system as other teams at times it does take an awful lot out of us at times. We could do with keeping the ball a bit more at times and to rest on the ball a bit more. Maybe that’s something you have to develop into. The important thing is we scored a couple of goals, got a clean sheet, got a number of the players on the pitch and we had a lot of good performances all the way through the team and it was a big team effort.
‘I want to push and push and push, but I want to be fair at times and as a team I think we’re growing, we’re getting better. We’re coming into a new league but the boys are giving us everything and we’ll keep pushing and keep pushing and keep trying to get performances and keep trying to tick that scoreboard over at times. I’ll tell you what we won’t be short of is fight and desire, they’re a great bunch of lads and we’ll keep pushing.’ Oldham boss Micky Mellon
