We have to be better and braver – Joey

JOEY Barton wants Bristol Rovers to be “incredibly brave” and take control of the ball at Portsmouth this afternoon after erring from their usual strengths in defeat at Barnsley on Tuesday evening, writes Sam Frost.

The Rovers boss believes that overcoming the atmosphere and surviving the opening moments – things his team failed to do at Oakwell – will be essential for them to get a positive result at Fratton Park. Pompey have had crowds in excess of 17,000 for both of their games so far this season and Barton has tasted the atmosphere there as a player and as a manager.

Barton called on his players to learn lessons from Tuesday’s 3-0 reverse in South Yorkshire, where they were two goals down inside a quarter of an hour and never mounted a meaningful reply.

At his pre-Portsmouth media briefing he sent a clear message of how he wants his team to approach the game against a Pompey side that has been tipped for promotion this season.

Barton, pictured, wants Rovers to be brave and commit to the possession-based style that earned promotion last season, describing some of his players as “rabbits in the headlights” at Oakwell.

“There are going to be some tough moments where we don’t get it right, like Tuesday night, and that is a challenge, but we’ve got young players in certain areas and we’ve got to learn lessons and come back,” Barton said.

“To do that, we’ve got to play our football that we practice. We’ve got to not get drawn into a game of basketball with other teams because it doesn’t suit our players and it doesn’t suit the way we want to play.

“You don’t win 7-0 and 4-3 the way we do by pumping it long and winning the second phase. That isn’t going to work for us. It might work for loads of teams in the division, but we don’t have the skill-set in our players to do that.

“Our players are footballers, so we need to take the ball on Saturday. We’re going to need to be incredibly brave because we’re going to need to go into their house, take the ball off them and own the ball. After getting beat 3-0 at Barnsley, that isn’t easy to do, but it’s what we’re going to do.

“We’ve got to play our game. I don’t think we played our game on Tuesday night. We got caught up in the conditions and got caught up in playing their game. We didn’t play our game and that is the most frustrating thing.

“We’ve all got to be better and we’ve all got to be braver.”