ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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Four points from your first two games is all you can really ask for at the start of a new season, especially when you are trying to bed in a new team. A trip to Mansfield was probably the hardest fixture we could have been given to open proceedings because being play-off finalists technically made them the best club left in the division. Despite losing some decent players such as Liam Lawrence and of course Craig Disley, the Stags had replenished their squad well and new arrivals Derek Asamoah up front and Adam Murray in the midfield caused plenty of headaches for Rovers. The home side had a lot of possession but the best football of the afternoon was seen when we went on the counter-attack. A sweeping move from left to right picked out Ali Gibb for the first goal and after being forced wide by the goalkeeper, Gibb slammed the ball across the area and Junior Agogo stuck it in the net. The second was carved out by Stuart Campbell, who was playing in the centre of midfield, and his perfectly-weighted pass set Gibb away again to deliver another pinpoint cross for Agogo. There was nearly a hat-trick of Gibb-Agogo goals soon after but Junior’s header was deflected onto the post and then Paul Trollope poked the rebound onto the bar as he stretched out his left foot instead of perhaps using his right. After the game, I heard a few comments from Mansfield fans suggesting they had been cheated with regards to their two disallowed ‘goals’. The first was correctly given offside when their striker Asamoah did not need to be, while the other was for an aggressive header that looked a bit too forceful for the referee, although the person in control of the tannoy got rather ahead of themselves when they played the celebration music! Aside from the un-Atkins-like beautiful football we saw in patches that afternoon, it was refreshing to see an animated manager in our dugout at last, as Atkins clapped and encouraged his players throughout and even hurried them into the dressing room at half-time to get them out of the blazing hot sun. Tuesday night saw fourth-placed Rovers welcome leaders Bury, so it was nice to be involved in a top-of-the-table clash again after all these years! Bury posed a big threat from dead-ball situations and duly headed in a corner in the opening minutes, while the Rovers defence were also having to get used to the famous long throws of Dave Challinor, who we were linked with ourselves earlier in the summer. We looked decidedly off-the-pace in the first half, only creating the odd half-chance and therefore we were lucky to get a penalty shortly before the break for a tug on Junior that few fans seemed to spot. Jamie Forrester scored his first Rovers goal from twelve yards against Swindon in pre-season when he tucked his kick into the bottom left corner and this time he struck the ball low in the right corner to level. The classy Stuart Campbell then teed up big John Anderson to head us into the lead minutes after the interval and within thirty seconds Forrester had been blatantly chopped down for another spot-kick. In Italy, where there are a lot of penalties awarded, you often see different players take them if a side wins more than one kick in a game. On Tuesday, Jamie stepped up for a second time and chose to go bottom left but so did the goalkeeper, who pushed it away. When Bury had a man sent-off you would have thought the game was over, yet how many times have we seen wonder-goals fly in at the Mem in the last year? Brian Barry-Murphy shot right into the top corner to equalise from way outside the area and our 100% record was gone.
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