Why I think that Matt Taylor was wrong for BRFC..

With the benefit of hindsight Matt Taylor would not have been appointed Manager of Bristol Rovers Football Club

Its not because he was incapable but purely because he wasnt right for the stated intentions of the Board . I am sure that if the Owners had better advisers at the time then they would probably have known that.

As it was the Owners were new to the job and whilst they were keen to push out the previous regime , their main aim at the time seemed to be to find someone who was decent and hard working

Unlike many I don’t buy into the theory that we had a poor transfer window in the summer.

We may have had one that didnt suit the manager at the time but I believe that we will look back and think that it went well .

Matt Taylor played in a way that recognised effort over skill. He wanted athletic hard working effective players . It had worked in the past and he believed in it. I am sure that he would have signed different players if he had the authority to do so but that is academic now .

George Friend was appointed Director of Football and he did what the Board wanted and signed players who fitted their ambitions even though this was sometimes contrary to the manager’s vision.

if we look at the last day of the previous transfer window for example , the Manager really wanted the hard working athletic Oxford reserve striker. Once O’ Donker had signed Taylor thought that the window was closed and it was the Director of Football who chased the more stylish Shaq Forde.down. Maybe that was telling in its own way.

Theoretically the Manager could have tried to change and indeed in one of his first interviews i remember Matt Taylor saying that as a Manager he had always changed his teams to suit the personnal at his disposal but there was no real sign of that this season. Instead we have perhaps our most skilfull player - Luke Thomas - trying to be a full back and being told that he didnt fit in with the the Managers plans .

Indeed at the Fans forum , Matt was asked why we never left players up when we were defending corners and the Managers response was that we were so bad at defending corners that he made up for in numbers what we lacked in ability. That simple statement seemed to sum us up the negativity of simply throwing bodies between the ball and the goal to stop the opponents sscoring and ignoring the opportunity of mounting our own counter attack.

It is not coincidence that attack minded players who were in great form for their clubs last season have transferred to us and not fulfilled their potential in a Bristol Rovers shirt. They must feel let down by how they were being asked to play.

Indeed Lee Mansell speaking on Radio Bristol frequently said that he didn’t understand our attacking plans and indeed after 3 games it became apparent that our idea of attack was to press the opponents into making a mistake and then capitalising on it.

I believe  that our players are better than what we have seen so far and that is evidenced when we show genuinely skilful passages of play like the recent goals against Orient and Cambridge . They are however too few and far between and maybe those of us who are old enough to remember the management style of Kevin Keegan will live in hope that for the short term at least perhaps it would be nice just seeing us trying to attack our opponents and simply out-scoring them .

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