ROVERS FANZ VIEW COLUMN
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Last Friday’s result at Southend showed us just how much things had changed since our first meeting of the season back in August. While we gloated at going top of the league on the back of our 2-1 victory that night, the Shrimpers found themselves flapping about in the relegation zone; we should have known it was not to last. Gerry Francis, Ray Graydon and current boss Ian Atkins have all enjoyed successful starts to their seasons in the bottom flight and each time we’ve all got carried away in the hope that it was going to be our year to return to the third tier of English football. But as soon as the sun disappears behind the grey winter clouds, so too does our ability to win matches, it seems, and this reverse Vampire-like effect gets harder to take year on year. By stark contrast to our downhill fortunes, Southend’s revenge victory last Friday took them top of League Two for the first time, leaving Rovers mired in mid-table. As we saw in both legs of the LDV Southern Final, Southend are a good footballing side who play the game with pace rather than brute strength and there is no reason not to admire them. My only issue is that two of their regulars used to play for us, namely Adam Barrett and Che Wilson. They had their critics but both Barrett and Wilson gave us good service and they only really left because a new manager came in and wanted a clear-out. This year Barrett has claimed 11 goals, mostly from powerful headers like his one at the Mem, and you wonder what those goals could have done for Rovers had he been utilised properly. At the time of writing, Southend, Yeovil and Swansea fill the top three automatic promotion places in our division and all of them contain Rovers cast-offs. He may have been below par against us but Kevin Gall has undoubtedly been a success for Yeovil and then the Swans boast Kevin Austin and Lee Thorpe in their team. Every time a new manager is appointed, naturally they want to bring in their own men who they know and trust from spells at other clubs, which explains the large contingent of ex-Northampton and Oxford players that Ian Atkins has at his disposal at Rovers. But is Steve Elliott any better than Kevin Austin? Was Danny Boxall an improvement on Carlos Lopez Sanchez or Paul Tait a class above Sergio Ommel? I can already see one of Graydon’s signings Christian Edwards going on to rub our noses in it for some other club and those Gasheads who are calling for yet another new boss to be brought in should realise that constantly changing the manager hasn’t really made much difference to our league position in recent years. Russell Osman is a name that keeps popping up and while he made a decent job of keeping us up at the back end of last season, he did so with players Ian Atkins had instructed the club to bring in. I’m sure Atkins knows what departments need improving and if we stick with what we’ve got for once and make just a few adjustments, we will start to trouble the top half in this league at long last. Next season’s team will be kitted out in a nice new strip from Italian firm Errea and it’s great to have such a well-known manufacturer make our kit for a change. The home outfit contains a lot more blue than in recent years with a dash of yellow giving the quarters a fresh look without ruining the design like the ‘Tesco bag’ shirt did in 1996.
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