Steve Evans will take charge of his first Bristol Rovers fixture when the Gas travel to Crewe Alexandra on Friday night, with the 63-year-old excited to be in the dugout once again.
Rovers' new Head Coach, who has overseen over 700 matches in the EFL, has promotions with Rotherham United, Crawley Town, Stevenage and Boston United under his belt and is back in football after departing the Millers in March 2025.
Evans will be looking to turn the Pirates' form around, with the Gas losing their previous ten fixtures in Sky Bet League Two and are up against a Crewe side pushing towards the top of the table. The Railwaymen are eighth in the table and will have plenty of confidence after beating Tranmere Rovers 4-1 in a dominant away display in their previous fixture.
Speaking to the media before the fixture, Evans previewed the upcoming match against Crewe and spoke about the work he has done on the training pitch so far.
CREWE ALEXANDRA PREVIEW
“Oh, yeah. It's going to be difficult. You know, Crewe are a really good side. I know two or three of their players, Marchy [Josh March] who was at Stevenage. I know Lee Bell, who is a young manager, I’ve had many a time in the office afterwards. I've got great respect actually for Crewe Alexandra as a football club and what they've stood for over the years and their identification of outstanding talent.
“They're a young side, they’re hungry, they're going very well. They've had a couple of recent results, that’s good, but I'm really looking forward to it. You know, it's the first game as a manager for any club, it's always a big one, always a nice one. And we’d love to come back down the road with something added to our points tally and then looking forward to two huge games over Christmas at home, and a local derby up the road at Shrewsbury, so, yeah, I'm looking forward to [it].
THE FUTURE OF BRISTOL ROVERS
“We're excited for the challenge. It is a challenge. We've got to deal with the here and now. We can deal with the here and now. If we can get the here and now sorted, Bristol Rovers has a really great future.
"Steve Evans hasn’t come to Bristol and just here for three or four months at work. Financially, I don't have to come back to work. I wanted to come to work, I didn't have to, or I’d have gone to the SPL a month ago, I’d have gone to League Two in the last month or so. I've come here to join a big football club that can release its potential, which it needs to do.”
BRISTOL ROVERS’ CURRENT FORM
“I think for us to understand the individuals, you know, understand them on the training ground, understand them in the office, when you break it all down, and you have individual chats, because although it's a team game, football will never change, it's a team game, but it's made up by individual performances. Sometimes you’ll have seen it yourself, we've all seen it where a team performance has been poor, but one or two players would be exceptional, and you'd win a game, and you need more than that anomaly to win, but it would be breaking the score down, getting to know them better individually.
“And give everyone an opportunity, and I mean players an opportunity to demonstrate that when I addressed the players this morning, it was that there are absolute minimums and the minimums are effort, professionalism, working hard, running hard, and if you can't do that, I don't care about ability. Because if you don't do those basics, it doesn't matter how much ability you've got, you're going to be a liability for a team in a difficult league.”
FORMATIONS
"I think realistically, I would look at, and I am looking now within the squad as to what I think is best suited to the squad, because when I was doing my pro licence, I spent some time in Barcelona, with Pep [Guardiola]. And the one thing that he addressed the three or four of us that went out there is that systems come from the playing group that you've got. And if you inherit it, if you're building it from the summer, because you'd have one or two systems or maybe three systems, because you need your main system, but then you'd say, if you go down to ten-men, we go to this system or we go to three at the back because we're having a problem with the wide players, whatever it is.
"So, I think it really comes from the squad you build, but we're finding out about the squad now. At Stevenage for the success in the three and a bit years we had, and at Leeds., we did a combination of both systems, but the lads knew both systems inside out. That was one was a three, we were a five and a two and the other one was a four with the diamond that Stevenage still play a lot now to this day because a lot of it is still the same squad, that we left behind, so it'll be a bit when we work with the players further over the next three or four weeks, the current group will identify that, and then we'll get closer to picking our preferred system, and then our preferred style of player to come into the group."
TRAINING SESSIONS WITH THE SQUAD
“There’s three or four things that we interjected into the session today that the players were saying it's the first time they've had it. It doesn't make it rocket science, it just makes it where we're trying to give them ownership on the pitch, rather than looking towards [us] all the time for direction, because the work that you do Monday to Friday should really mean that they have a clear direction, and that's why you'll see me, still at this stage coming off the bench and losing my head a little bit, and I lose my head because we know how we work on things in the week.
"And you hear managers say it all the time, follow the plan, follow the process. And if your planning process Monday to Friday is right, it should more than not, of course, you have bad days, but you should more than not come right on the matchday."
