When you haven't won in six games, it is difficult to see the positives as your team slides down the bottom half of the Third Division. But despite the fact that we are almost certainly going to get a new manager soon, the players still fought for caretaker boss Phil Bater last week and put two battling draws together, back-to-back. It sounds like there are a few contracts up at the end of the season and some of these squad members are fighting for their futures now. On Saturday, Ian Atkins brought his promotion-chasing Oxford side to the Mem and according to reports, he and his family were given the red carpet treatment by the Rovers directors. Remember that this is the man who ordered the Sixfields pitch to be watered and the ball boys to blatantly favour his home team when he managed Northampton to a play-off semi-final recovery over Rovers back in 1998. With this in mind, there was obviously a motive behind the overly friendly hospitality afforded him last week and unless this is all an elaborate red herring, I will not be surprised if he were unveiled as our next manager. Mention Ian Atkins' name and it brings back bad memories of that dreary night in Northampton, and his reputation for signing brutes and battering rams to suit his direct style of football hardly sends Gasheads into raptures. However, if you look at our situation objectively, perhaps what our problem has been since we tumbled into the basement of the Football League is that we have been too soft, and Atkins' brand of power play is just what is required to get us back up. If we are after a man who knows what is needed to do the business in this division, Atkins must surely be one of the most experienced. He won promotion with Northampton via the play-offs and almost went straight up again to Division 1 the following year, before finding success again now at Oxford, who only missed out on the top seven last season because we won at their place right at the end of the campaign. This year Oxford look like one of the certainties for automatic promotion and boast one of the meanest defences (in more than one sense) in the whole league, having only lost four games so far. Quite how enjoyable the football will be to watch is a different matter, but surely it can't be any worse than the rubbish we have survived during the last couple of years. No doubt the new man will already be casting his eye over what he will have to work with when he arrives, and I expect he will want to bring in a few of his own players too. The notable upturn in Rovers' performances could be due to a sudden sense of urgency amongst the players and if we show the same sort of fight as we did against Oxford and Orient then we shall not be complaining too much in the stands. The weekend game was seemingly transformed by Bater's tactical substitution that saw Lewis Haldane come on as a third striker. For those final ten minutes, Rovers looked much better and Haldane swept home within seconds of coming on to get us a point. Then on Tuesday night away at Leyton Orient, Paul Tait grabbed his first goal since October after being handed a starting place and despite Ijah Anderson's needless words of wisdom to the linesman, which then made us a man short, we battled for nearly a whole half to claim another draw. If the players keep performing like that, then the new boss might let some of them stay after all. © Chris Chappell - Friday 5th March 2004 Back to Index