Saunders plots new way ahead for Rovers after drop

A Conference outfit in 2003, the last nine years have been a golden era in the club’s history with three promotions, a move to a new home, and trips to both Wembley and the Millennium Stadium.

After an absence of 50 years, Rovers had returned to the second tier of English football and were playing a brand of football admired by the majority of neutral observers.

Over the last 18 months, however, the wheels have come off the bandwagon culminating in relegation to League One.

The club’s success was not even enough to fill a 15,000-capacity stadium and the money started to dry up. The board lost faith in the old manager and, prompted by agent Willie McKay, opted instead for a radical new transfer strategy designed to keep the club in the Championship.

For Dean Saunders, the manager brought in to improve things after the sacking of Sean O’Driscoll, the last six months turned into a rough ride.

More accustomed to highs than lows at some of the biggest clubs in the country, Saunders now has to accept a share of the blame for Rovers’ failure.

Yet the former Welsh international, who had never previously managed in the Football League before getting the job, insists it would be wrong to judge him on the basis of this season’s events.

Saunders, 47, is determined to lead Rovers back to the Championship and makes it clear that he wants ‘younger players’ with a ‘different mentality’ to this season’s short-term signings.

“All of us are still licking our wounds at what has happened to us this season,” he said. “Some people have asked me ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ But I don’t think it has gone wrong. It’s got better but it was just not good enough to stay up.”

Under Saunders, Rovers have won seven out of the last 38 games and, before his arrival, had won only three out of 35 games under O’Driscoll.

“The odds were always stacked against us and you wouldn’t have got a very good price on us staying up when I walked in,” he said, “but we so nearly pulled it off and we were good at times. If we had just converted three draws into wins we would have been safe.

“I don’t want to be judged on this season, I want to be judged once I can sign my own players and get my own team,” he stressed. “You hear people saying all sorts of things when a team gets relegated. ‘The manager’s lost the dressing room, there’s no team spirit, the training is crap, the food’s not the best, the bus is terrible, he’s tactically naive’. It’s all rubbish.

“But when you win, you are Kenny Dalglish again. That’s football.

“You have to take the punches on the chin and, when you win, the pats on the back.”

Considering Liverpool’s inconsistencies this season, Saunders might have chosen a better example to illustrate his point but the sentiment is still clear. Essentially, Saunders believes that a few good results will always change a low opinion of any manager.

With a different approach in the transfer market, he is optimistic about life in League One but also says it could take three years to sort the club out properly.

“I have got a long, hard summer ahead of me because we have lost a lot of TV money and the budget is going to be a lot smaller,” he admitted. “It won’t even be until the following season when you can say ‘Right, who are we signing?’

“It’s not going to be like that this summer because we still have 12 players in contract and, if you add up what we are commited to, that comes to a lot of money.

“Who knows? A lot of clubs might come in for our players. I can’t wait to start building this club from the bottom, getting my own players in, and stamping my own mentality on a fresh season.”

Of the foreign players supplied by McKay, only former Aston Villa defender Habib Beye is under contract beyond the end of the season.

The Senegal international has a get-out clause in his deal, however, and is unlikely to want League One football.

Saunders is also aware that the club cannot afford to keep relying on players with bad injury records. One of the biggest problems for Rovers over the last 18 months has been the number of players sitting on the sidelines.

Against Middlesbrough on Tuesday night, defender Shelton Martis suffered yet another recurrence of a calf injury – joining midfielders Brian Stock, Martin Woods, Paul Keegan and defender Tommy Spurr in the treatment room.

“We have got to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible because Shelton has been injured on and off for two years,” said Saunders. “He’s a really good player – if we can keep him fit – but unfortunately for Shelton, he can’t get himself fit. Going into a season, you need to know that your centre-backs are going to play 35-40 games. If he’s only playing 10 you have got to sign another centre-half to replace him.”

A memorable chapter in the Rovers story is now over but, if Saunders is right, there will be others on the way.