Barnsley -home - onwards And upwards?

The new Manager is promoting positivity and it is extremely contagious - if you want it to be .

I make the last point because i am convinced that there are some individuals of the Forums who are chasing their own agendas and simply don’t want to see Rovers win games because it doesnt fit their own self promotion.

Speaking personally however and i genuinely believe for many around me in the stand , i think that we are just desperate for something to cheer about and we are kind of fed up attaending games out of a sense of duty rather than because we expect to enjoy ourselves. it used to be fun supporting Rovers and a good escape on a Saturday afternoon but the fun seems to be in decline lately and we need that to change.

So it’s matchday and we play Barnsley today and I feel a sense of optimism that is simply not justified by any form book or recent performances.

They are storming up the League in the way that Darrell Clarke teams do in the middle to second half of the season. Why is it that his teams always seem to start slowly? - another story completely .

Yet my gut instinct is a victory for the Gas for no other reason than strange things always happen in football - or maybe it’s just a Rovers thing.

Whenever we would look odds on for a victory in the past- which hasn’t been very much recently admittedly - we inevitab;ly appeared to mess up. Under Joey Barton we often seemed to lose against the lower placed teams in the league . They could be devoid of any form when they played us but suddenly they would look world beaters - or at least we made them look that way. In Joey’s last full season in charge we lost against each one of the 3 teams that would end the season up being relegated - crazy really

The other factor and there is perhaps more logic to this in that I feel that we have the makings of a good side except in a couple of areas. Having said that i think that we are still good enough to give any team a good game on our day . If only the players seemed to believe that . The fact that players dont take risks and try things but prefer the safe back pass clearly shows a lack of self belief and that negativity started under JB and has continued through Matt Taylor .

I hope and actually believe that maybe Caldy’s enthusiasm and encouragement is what is needed to repair confidence and a victory today will go a long way towards changing that.

I was watching one of the Barnsley podcasts last night and there were 4 mature guys and every one of them was predicting a Barnsley win- one of the chaps suggested a hammering. Lets hope that they are famous last words !

We will know soon enough!

All opinions are my own- who else would want them   . #UTG