Ryan de Havilland was disappointed with the way Bristol Rovers started against Salford City in their 1-0 defeat to the Ammies.
The Pirates were punished for a slow start to the contest, with a wayward effort from Kelly N'mai showing Salford's intentions before Ryan Graydon came up with what proved to be the decisive moment, breaking through Rovers' defence to score.
The early goal for the hosts gave the Gas an immediate setback that they struggled to recover from. Rovers found it difficult to test the promotion hopefuls in the final third, with Karl Robinson's men going closer to doubling their advantage than Rovers levelling.
Speaking to BRTV, De Havilland expressed his disappointment at the performance and what went wrong for the team.
“It started terribly, you can’t start games like that, it's just not good enough,” he said. “I thought we picked up a bit in the first half, trying to create some chances, but the final pass wasn’t there. At the end of the day, if you start games like that, you’re giving yourselves no chance.
“You’re giving yourself no chance to really put a stamp on the game when you start a game like that. If it's nil-nil, I think that we’ve got a chance going forward. I mean, we have a chance at 1-0, but we just kill ourselves at the start of the game, and it’s not good enough, and it ruins our momentum.
“I think we battled well [in the second half]. I think the first half we probably played a bit more and created a few more chances, and I think the second half was more, find the strikers and play off them. But we didn’t have a shot on goal, to be honest. It was the same as the last game; it’s not good enough. We’re not creating enough chances, and we’re not causing the keeper a problem.”
Rovers' midfield was made up of De Havilland, Kane Thompson-Sommers and Isaac Hutchinson, with the first two joining in the January transfer window and the latter coming back from his loan spell at Cheltenham Town. De Havilland discussed the new midfield, suggesting they should still put in a strong performance together despite only playing a handful of matches.
“I think there’s some form of that, but it’s no excuse; we’re all good players, and we’ve all played in good enough teams and leagues that we shouldn’t need too much time to click," said the midfielder. "Obviously, there is a settling-in period, but we’re all good enough players, and that’s not an excuse, so we need to be a lot better.”
De Havilland joined Rovers from Peterborough in the January transfer window, where he had only played once in Sky Bet League Two in the 2025/26 season. He has already appeared three times for the Gas in all competitions and is pleased to get time on the pitch, but his main focus is on the results on the pitch.
“Obviously, I’m pleased to be playing. From my past at Peterborough, I wasn’t playing, and to play two games and two 90 minutes in a row, I’m very happy. But at the end of the day, the result is all that matters, and as I said before, it’s not good enough, and we need to really improve and get back on the pitch on Monday and really look back at this game and what we need to improve on and how we can build on something moving forward to get some wins.”
“Incredible support [from the fans], and it’s disappointing again that we couldn’t pull out a performance for them. They’ve travelled a long way, so apologies to them, we weren’t good enough, and we’ll try to be better on Tuesday.”
Another game is on the horizon for Rovers as they travel to Milton Keynes Dons on Tuesday night. De Havilland expressed the importance of bouncing back as a group.
“We need to recover well as a group, obviously a long journey back, and we dust ourselves down, have a look back at this game, see what went wrong, what we can improve on and head into the MK game with a fresh mind.
“It’s probably the best thing for us to have another game, you don’t really want that long period between games to think about what you could’ve done and this and that. You want that next game to really bounce back and improve, and we’ll definitely be back on the training pitch on Monday and be looking to improve on areas that aren’t good enough at the moment and put in a proper performance against MK.”
