‘Roos’ talent means he’s more than good for us’

A rare sight was spotted in BS7 last weekend. Not seen for almost a year in these parts, the lesser spotted happy opposition manager was seen by a few thousand souls at around tea-time on Saturday.

Rarely will there be a luckier one to leave north Bristol than Peterborough’s Grant McCann. Rovers had 24 shots against the Posh, and failed to take a host of chances. Football is often unpredictable but one thing that always, always follows a failure to put multiple chances away is the inevitable sucker punch.

Infuriatingly, we were the architects of our own misfortune. A glaring error from Kelle Roos provided an assist for United’s equaliser, and the defending for their winner didn’t cover anyone involved in glory either.

What did raise a smile, however, was the reaction to the loss; the team, who’d be forgiven for shrugging their shoulders and saying “ho-hum, its only one game” were visibly angry at themselves. Darrell Clarke, publicly at least, backed his players – after all, seven of the starting 11 and both substitutes used had played for him in the Conference. He seemed to know this was a blip. By and large, we, the supporters, didn’t overreact either. Most of the social media reaction I saw was incredulity at the odd one or two who did cry out for players to be dropped and so on.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the chief target for this kind of talk was young Roos – goalkeeping mistakes are generally easier to spot and more likely to affect the result, so that’s unsurprising. It appears that Roos may be available to us permanently in January or next summer. While mistakes can’t be glossed over, it’s fair to say he’s earned us more points than he’s cost us with some brilliant displays so far this season. If there’s a deal to be done, Clarke needs to weigh up whether these moments can be eradicated as he matures. The Dutchman is 24, which makes him a baby in goalkeeping terms, and there’s obviously enough raw talent there to suggest that he’s more than good enough for us.

Roos put in his usual shift in our return to winning ways v Fleetwood on Tuesday. He didn’t put a foot wrong. Neither did Dan Leadbitter, who set up both goals from right-back, including a delicious cross for Matty Taylor to glance in for the first.

One number told the story for me on Tuesday: 10,088. Now I now that the club put an offer on tickets for this game, and rightly so, but a five-figure gate at the Mem used to be a rarity; a near sell-out reserved for Bristol derbies (another rarity), big cup games, play-off semi-finals, or promotion deciders (the latter two not being quite so rare in recent years).

They’ve become more common over the last few years, but to achieve it on a cold Tuesday night at home to a fairly unglamourous opposition that didn’t bring much travelling support (with apologies to Fleetwood) is yet another sign that the club is heading in the right direction.

It’s FA Cup time this weekend, and with apologies to another side that plays in red, the prospect of Crawley away doesn’t raise much of a cheer. A long-ish journey, a midday kick-off (which is, in fairness, for safety reasons as the local Police have a large public event to deal with later on), and League Two opposition doesn’t make for a blockbuster.

What I usually want from Round One is a nice tie against far inferior opposition from the depths of non-league. Although maybe it’s a relief given what’s happened in recent seasons that we’ve not been given the chance to revisit the horrors of Bath City and Chesham United.

Finally this week, a quick word about Ray Mabbutt, who sadly passed away this week aged 80.

You’ll read better tributes than this one, as I fall into the category of people who are too young to have witnessed him don the quarters. But only ten men have represented the club more times than Mabbutt, and the tales of him both as a player and person that are regaled by those who do remember that almost unrecognisable era speak for themselves. Plus, of course, he was responsible for another Rovers great in his son Gary, who scaled the heights of the game (not to forget Gary’s brother, Kevin, who represented Bristol City with distinction in a very difficult period of their history). The thoughts of all Gasheads are surely with their family at this time.