How good it is to see two former Rovers players in the World Cup squad, namely Elliot Anderson and Jarell Quansah.
Anderson joined Rovers, on loan from Newcastle United, in January 2022 and his ability was in evidence from the day he made his debut, at Sutton United, on 5th February that year. He was the 977th player to appear in the league for the club and that day we drew 1-1 at Gander Green Lane.
Thereafter he was a regular in the side, scored the first of his seven goals in a 4-0 win at Stevenage on 19th February and was also on target in the final day demolition of Scunthorpe United which saw us clinch automatic promotion following a 7-0 win.
After his 21 league games for Rovers he returned to his parent club at the end of the season, leaving no one in any doubt that he was destined for a career at the very top of his profession.
After appearing in 34 Premier League games for Newcastle in the two years after leaving The Mem, he moved on to Nottingham Forest in June 2024 for a fee allegedly in the region of £35m and he has since scored six goal in his 74 Forest Premier League games.
He was a teammate of Jarrell Quansah (see below) in the U-21 Euro Final in which England beat Germany 3-2 in 2025 and won the first of his full England caps in a 2-0 win against Andorra, at Villa Park in September 2025 and currently has seven caps to his name.
Accompanying Anderson on the plane to the World Cup will be defender Quansah, who joined Rovers on loan from Liverpool in January 2023, becoming the 989th player top appear for the club in League football. It wasn’t a day to remember, though, as Rovers slipped to a crushing 5-1 defeat at Morecambe.
In all, he appeared in16 league games for Rovers and collected three yellow cards and one of the red variety along the way.
At the end of the season he returned to Anfield and went on to score twice in 30 league games for Liverpool prior to a £30m move to Bayer Leverkusen last July and he’s since scored four goals in 28 league games for the German side.
He has just the one full England cap to his name, earned when he appeared for his country in a 2-0 away win against Albania on 25th November 2025.
We wish both former Rovers players a successful World Cup campaign and take pride in the fact that both made their EFL debuts whilst with Bristol Rovers.
Let’s hope they are more successful that the last two former Rovers players called up together for World Cup duty by England; striker Rickie Lambert and goalkeeper Fraser Forster were both named in the England squad for the 2014 World Cup campaign in Brazil.
Drawn in Group D alongside Costa Rica, Uruguay and Italy, England managed just one point, from a goalless draw against Costa Rica and fell to defeat in their other two matches.
Lambert was an 87th minute substitute in the game against Uruguay and an unused substitute in the other two games, while Forster never got off the bench in any of the three games.
