Holloway’s the best short-term fix for struggling Rovers

SOMETHING drastic has to happen to save Rovers this season. It is going to be a tough job and it is crying out for someone like Ian Holloway. He has been there, done it and got the contacts.

I would ask him to take it on for six months and see where we go from there if he can keep us up. He loves Rovers and is just the motivator we need at the moment.

Any other time I would I have liked to see a promising young and up-and-coming coach get the job. But in our current situation we need someone who can come in and instantly take the bull by the horns.

I am not surprised, but maybe slightly disappointed, that Darrell Clarke has departed now.

He could not continue on the basis of the sentimental vote that he turned the club around when we lost our place in the Football League.

It has been a terrible season so far. The results and performances have been awful and Darrell’s team selection has been all over the place, plus most of the players he recruited in the summer have not been good enough.

The manager gets the glory when the team wins promotion as Darrell rightly did two years on the bounce, so the buck stops with him when the going gets tough.

Some have blamed the board. But no one complained in the summer when Clarke paid £200,000 for Stefan Payne to play alongside £300,000 Tom Nichols. Those two, in particular, have let the manager down badly. You cannot blame the board for that situation.

Apart from Jack Bonham the new players who were signed in the summer, along with the loan signings, have not been any better than we already had. Darrell recently admitted that and he has not been able to solve the problem, so the board had to do something.

Look at the way we have been playing in the last month, losing home games to teams around us at the bottom of the table and getting dumped out of the FA Cup at home to non-League Barnet after being one up.

If you have been at the Memorial Stadium over the last month then you will be realistic to know that things cannot continue as they have been, or if they do we are certainties for relegation.

Something had to change and at least the new manager will have the January transfer window to hopefully move players in and out.