'The worst group' - Pascal Chimbonda makes frank admission over failed Doncaster Rovers experiment
Pascal Chimbonda has made a frank admission regarding Doncaster Rovers’ failed 2011/12 season experiment.
In a bid to beat the drop in the Championship, the South Yorkshire club tied a raft of high-profile players to short-term deals with the help of agent Willie McKay.
The likes of El Hadji Diouf, Habib Beye and former Tottenham Hotspur defender Chimbonda pitched up at the Eco-Power Stadium, but failed to keep the club afloat.
The project was an abject failure and when the season ended, the club had registered just eight league wins.
Pascal Chimbonda’s frank admission
Speaking to former Doncaster teammates Chris Brown and Jon Parkin on popular podcast Undr The Cosh, Chimbonda said: “On paper, it looked really good - like a Premier League team. But on the pitch...
“On paper, it’s good. But as a group - the worst group. If it had clicked together, we could have done a good thing there.
“When you’re losing every week, you say ‘oh mate’. You go home and they say ‘what happened to you?’. ‘We got beat’. Next week, ‘oh, we got beat’.”
‘Beat a lot’
Prior to his move to Doncaster, Chimbonda had represented the likes of Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers as well as Tottenham.
He also had a France cap on his CV and after years of playing at a high level, the slump at Doncaster came as a shock to the system.
The former Rovers left-back, who was Dean Saunders’ first signing as manager, said: “We got beat a lot man. I don’t think I’d ever been beat like this in my whole career, every week.
“I did sometimes enjoy it because of the changing room. I wasn’t playing long, so I enjoyed being back in a group with good players - on paper.”
Doncaster made an immediate return to the Championship after relegation, only to finish in the bottom three once again and go back down.
They have now been away from the second tier for over a decade, although did manage to clinch the League Two title last term.