Bristol Rovers have taken 13 points from their opening eight games in League Two alongside one draw and defeat in cup competitions
15:00, 18 Sep 2025
Dan Hargraves
Dan Hargraves is the Bristol Rovers reporter for Bristol Live. He joined the title in July 2023 having previously worked for Reach PLC as a freelance football writer in April 2022 while a journalism student at the University of Derby. He has also reported on a number of football matches across European competition, the Premier League and EFL and covered the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022. In his role as covering the Gas, he wants to leave no stone unturned and cover every angle of the football club for Gasheads' enjoyment.
Bristol Rovers players celebrate at Newport County(Image: James Marsh/Shutterstock)
Bristol Rovers are only eight games into their League Two campaign, but already they have experienced a whole range of emotions that teams feel over the course of an entire season.
The first couple of weeks of the campaign felt eerily similar to the back end of the previous season despite changes in the dugout and squad over the summer. Whether something was said behind the scenes that acted as a turning point is yet to be seen, but those four-straight defeats at the start of the campaign feel like they’re now in the distant past.
A goalless draw at home to Oldham Athletic, in which the Gas did more than enough to win the game comfortably on another day, put a first point on the board which has since acted as a platform to build from as Darrell Clarke’s side have gone on a four-game winning streak in the league.
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Very rarely have Rovers ever been fast starters, be that in a promotion season or a midtable League One finish. Despite recent results, the Pirates are yet to win a game by more than a one-goal margin and clearly there is still a great deal of work to do. They are still winning football matches despite not being near 100 per cent of their capabilities; that’s an extremely promising sign.
The season is long and there will certainly be plenty more bumps in the road to come but at long last, Rovers fans have something to shout about at the moment which hasn’t been the case often enough over the past couple of years.
Here are some of the things we have learned so far about this group which has an interesting blend of new faces and familiar ones…
Signings settling in swiftly
With a total of 14 new signings over the course of the summer, there always has to be some degree of patience for the gelling process to take place. However, as was the case last season, there is also a degree of concern towards that process taking more time than is ideal and the overall effect it might have on performances and results.
Bristol Rovers brought in 16 players last summer and they never really ever gelled. So far this season, to their credit, a significant proportion of the summer incomings look right at home.
The likes of Jack Sparkes, Alfie Kilgour, Macauley Southam-Hales, Josh McEachran and Luke Southwood were among the earlier arrivals and immediately appeared set to be part of the core group of players. Sparkes, Kilgour and Southwood were nominated for the club’s August player of the month award while McEachran has found his feet pretty quickly in blue-and-white quarters and Southam-Hales has overcome a slight setback early in the campaign.
Having come through the club’s academy before going on to make well over 100 senior appearances, north Bristol is home for Kilgour but the other four were all brand new to the club. The biggest compliment that can be made is that, particularly in this recent winning run, they look at home already.
Ellis Harrison is another who was previously at the Gas and has started well with three goals already. Meanwhile, if any player was going to be allowed the most amount of patience to settle, it was Harrison’s fellow striker Fabrizio Cavegn who arrived from Lichtenstein, having played in Switzerland’s second division for FC Vaduz. Cavegn too has three goals to his name and will hopefully go on a good scoring run after getting his first league goal last weekend against Barrow.
In regards to the loanees, Kacper Lopata has also looked pretty settled after arriving from Barnsley in mid-August while the four deadline day arrivals haven’t yet had a chance to show what they’re capable of for any sort of sustained period.
Overall, the majority of incomings seem to have bedded in straight away, something that wasn’t the case last year and Rovers subsequently suffered from significantly.
Alfie Kilgour was named Bristol Rovers' August player of the month(Image: Tom Sandberg/PPAUK)
Adaptability gives Darrell Clarke options
His squad may not be the biggest, but versatility is certainly a strength of the squad put together over the summer, as already highlighted by this early handful of matches.
Darrell Clarke has repeatedly said in interviews that he wants his team to be “adaptable”, particularly when quizzed on decisions behind either using a back-three or back-four setup.
Supporters have tended to turn their noses up at the former, seeing a correlation between an improvement in results and performances and the switch to a back-four.
Even when the number of defenders has varied, the Rovers head coach has tweaked the shape plenty of times in game, more recently reaping the rewards of a diamond against Newport County.
Bristol Rovers head coach Darrell Clarke looks on from the touchline(Image: Tom Sandberg/PPAUK)
Fans are back onside
One of the highest ranked points on the priority list going into this season was getting the supporters back onside. The return of Darrell Clarke helped but early defeats proved that alone wasn’t going to solely solve any issues, particularly after an abject 2-0 defeat to Cambridge United in the Carabao Cup which saw Clarke address his players on the pitch post-match in front of the Thatcher’s End.
Fast forward a little over a month and the mood is the most positive it has been for a couple of years. Sure, football fans are always going to find something to moan about. The point is that any rumbles of discontent are much quieter than they have been for a good while.
This was emphasised last weekend when Rovers’ game management in the second half of a 2-1 win over Barrow at the Mem could have been better.
After being good value for a 2-0 lead at half-time, the Gas had a tougher time of it in the second and had to dig deep to ensure they held onto the three points as things got slightly hairy.
In a game like that last season, nerviness from the stands would have spilled onto the pitch and the Pirates may well have found themselves conceding a late goal to cost them a result. Instead, fans recognised that their players were in need of that extra bit of support and sang the team over the line.
They are seeing a team of players who want to play and fight for the badge and have subsequently responded. It is probably the most important point of the lot.
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Game management still needs work
Bristol Rovers aren’t top of the league with maximum points, so there has to be some element of critique in here, right?
It looks as though the goals are starting to flow with 10 goals in the last four games across all competitions following just two from open play in the first six as well as one penalty.
Against Grimsby Town, one moment of quality and some excellent defending saw Rovers over the line but the last two victories over Newport County and Barrow demonstrated both progress and where there is notable room for improvement.
Both matches were the first league games in which the Gas have scored multiple goals, going 3-0 and 2-0 up respectively. Positive. The fact that the conclusions in both games ended up being as tense as they were didn’t feel necessary against, with all due respect, two teams that aren’t expected to set the world alight in League Two this year.
The Pirates have shown that they can win gritty and battle right until the end, but the next step is to ensure that they earn the right to put themselves in comfortable positions and then hold on to said margins.
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Green shoots appearing
The main takeaway should be that there is plenty to be pleased about regarding how the season has gone so far, especially over this past month, while also being wary that there will be obstacles ahead.
A stat that has already been used this season and will surely reappear as the campaign goes on is the fact that only two of the last 12 teams to be relegated from League One have gone on to finish in the top half the following season in League Two. One of those was Port Vale last season who bounced back at the first time of asking.
Momentum is incredibly hard to come by as a relegated side, especially in this division, and one thing that has already been noticeable is that some of last season’s strongest finishers have started the new campaign well. Chesterfield, Grimsby Town, Swindon Town, Gillingham and Walsall are all in that bracket.
In their last promotion season, Rovers didn’t manage to put together a three-game winning streak in the league until February with a four-match streak coming the following month as the Gas went on to catapult themselves up the division that side of Christmas.
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The fact that the Pirates have been able to build some momentum so early is pleasing and hopefully lays a foundation for further progress and improvement as the campaign goes on.
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