ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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If, like me, you follow the plethora of statistics that saturate the game, then you will have noticed that we are always the team that stops the rot for most of this Division's other clubs. To evoke a rather unsavoury image, Rovers are like a metaphorical diarrhoea medicine - we serve to end everyone else's bad runs. Just a couple of weeks ago Leyton Orient came to the Mem without an away win all season, and duly returned to London with all three points. Then last Saturday we welcomed Southend United, who had suffered five successive defeats prior to our clash, and you guessed it - we provided the cure. The question is, who is going to end our barren run? A betting man would have plumped for at least a point against the depleted and disheartened Shrimpers, but now we have taken up the baton of five losses, and knowing Rovers like I do, the FA Cup tie with Runcorn is a potential nightmare. To be fair, the performance against the Essex boys was much better than the playground shambles we saw in the first half at Bournemouth and the defence was a lot tighter thanks to the arrival of Chris Plummer from QPR. Adam Barrett was once again exemplary alongside him, and the captain has already had nearly as many partners as Casanova in the back-line this season, having paired up with Kevin Austin and Adrian Coote in the last match at Dean Court. Plummer stamped his authority on the game early on with some brave headers and generally looked a level above Division 3. That is what you want from a loan signing, because the idea is that you get a player for a month or two that improves your side, whom normally you are unable to keep permanently. Plummer won five caps with the England Under-21s in 1996 and played a game in the Premier League with QPR before gaining regular outings in their Division 1 side. Likewise, Adrian Coote made several appearances for Norwich in the same league as well as earning six full caps for Northern Ireland, and so far both players have shown their pedigree. David Lee was a rather more strange signing in my view, because the highest he had ever played was when making just two run-outs from the bench for Brighton in Division 2. Before that, Lee had spent his relatively short career in the bottom flight, and so did not boast that experience at a better standard. Touted as a striker when he arrived, Lee only started up front twice, and with all our injuries at York on his debut, he was quickly moved back into midfield even then. All the reports I read before he came to Rovers described him as a skilful midfielder rather than a front man, and that was where he eventually ended up. With Coote, a proper striker, arriving pretty soon after Lee, this was another sign that the Brighton man was not exactly what it said on the tin. I don't know if the conditions of his loan spell meant that he had to be played if fit, but in his six games with us, we lost five and drew only once. He was out of position on the left wing against Bournemouth, and subsequently Simon Bryant was left isolated in the face of relentless pressure at full-back before Lee was switched to his more accustomed right flank and we tightened up; then on the weekend he was withdrawn after just 45 minutes, and was replaced by a man with a broken hand and a bad back! Lee looked a tidy player with a nice touch, but he was not what we needed in the midst of a scrap at the bottom of the league. The fact that he was sent back to the Withdean before his month was up hints that the management were a bit disappointed with his spell here.
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