Darrell Clarke has been pleased with the way his Bristol Rovers team have trained ahead of their Emirates FA Cup clash against Bromley and has stressed the importance of translating their work into a strong performance on Saturday.
The Pirates are looking to put a difficult October behind them with six fixtures across three different competitions in November. After an impressive September, winning three of their four fixtures, Rovers won only one of their five matches last month.
Bromley will be another tough opponent for the Gas, with the Ravens collecting two wins from their previous three outings in Sky Bet League Two, including an impressive 2-1 victory over promotion hopefuls Milton Keynes Dons last weekend.
Speaking to the media ahead of Rovers' upcoming fixture, Clarke reflected on the week of training and the work he has done off the pitch with his players before previewing the next match.
TRAINING THIS WEEK
“It’s been like most weeks, to be honest with you. It’s been good, and I don’t say that lightly, but we’ve got to start seeing the things that I have seen on the training ground in matches.
“There is no getting away from it. October has been an absolutely disastrous month for us. It’s been hard, it’s been tough, the buck will always stop with me with that, but I feel like the only way you get through that is sticking together with a siege mentality. The group has responded well training-wise week on week, and we have to put this month behind us and make sure next month is a lot better.
“The football world is crazy. We have the run in September, and then October has been absolutely disastrous for us, and I take full accountability for that, but I also understand it is very, very early days.
"Like I said at the end of September, nothing is won in September, nothing is won in October. Yes, we’ve got to get miles better. Yes, we’re having to deal with quite a few situations on the injury front, but we’re just getting on with it with a siege mentality, and we’ll try and put smiles on our fans' faces moving forward.”
MENTALITY
“If I were going to go through all of my career and look at the teams where I have achieved success, the mentality of it has been absolutely spot on, and as you can see, I am still trying to build that through the building and through the culture of the place.
“We thought we were getting somewhere up until the end of September, and now it has come crashing down. So, I have done a lot of work psychologically with the players one-on-one and in group collectives and understanding that we have got some good players. We have a group that needs to make sure that at three o’clock, they are at their best in their mindsets.
“We can talk tactics all day long, but I think it’s massively a mentality and psychological point of view that we have to get better at. You see it up and down the country. You see it through the seasons when a club has been relegated; it takes such a long time to turn tides, and sometimes it doesn’t happen. You look at the teams that came down last year, and there are quite a few of those teams that are struggling.
“This was never going to be a quick fix, but it’s also something that I have got to make sure it doesn’t creep in and get worse and you do that by working on the players mindsets, working on the mentality and psychological aspects and having individual meetings with players to see where they are because everybody deals with adversity and stresses and strains in different ways.
“I try to get into my players' heads to find out what is in their heads and what they need to get back to, so they can perform at their highest level. I’ve done a lot of work on that over the last few weeks, and I need to make sure that the players get all of my support getting through it.”
INJURIES IN THE SQUAD
“I don’t want to be using injuries as an excuse. Am I frustrated that for the last 12 or 14 weeks that we’ve had as the season that we have not had anything that has been continuous? There have been injuries and there have been problems, but I don’t want to use that as an excuse because then I think that becomes a weakness, and I think that gives players an excuse, and I don’t want to do that.
“Whoever I put out there, whatever formation or tactics, I believe they are good enough to represent this club in the right way. We haven’t done that in October. So, injuries can’t be an excuse. It means we have to stick together; we have some good players in the squad who have not shown it. So, we have to put that behind us and move forward by working hard on the training pitch, which they have done."
BROMLEY PREVIEW
“I think Andy Woodman has done a fantastic job. They are a team and a club that are on the up, if I am honest with you. They have done really well, and they have massive respect from me. It’s going to be a tough game; they are physically a very big, dominant side that will test you massively on set-pieces, but we have to go there with a game plan. It's the FA Cup, it’s a break from the league, it’s a cup competition I want to do well in.
“So, we have been fully focused on that. I have massive respect for what their strengths are, but also have an understanding that if we can bring to the table what I demand from my players on Saturday, we’ll give them a good game.”
