John Buckley: Rovers must take their medicine and come back stronger

The players speak highly of Darren Ferguson as a coach and, like I've said previously, I still tend to think he's the right man for the job.
Andy Williams finished the season with 16 goals.Andy Williams finished the season with 16 goals.
Andy Williams finished the season with 16 goals.

But what he has to do is make sure Doncaster Rovers get off to a fast start in League Two next season.

He’s got quite a task on his hands this summer in terms of re-modelling the squad, and that isn’t made any easier by the fact that most of the players are still under contract.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The fourth tier will present different challenges too - like the state of the pitches and the fact that a lot of the teams in that league will see Rovers as a big scalp.

Sadly no one at Doncaster can say they did not deserve to go down.

There have been too many mistakes over the course of the season and you just cannot go a run like that 17-game sequence without a win.

But it’s so frustrating because I still maintain we’re a decent team on our day and over the last month or so we’ve seen some much better performances.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Even at Crewe, we were playing well when we were 1-0 up. But what that performance showed was the mental fragility of this squad - and that is something that Ferguson will have to address over the next few months.

Ferguson will be expected to bring this team straight back up and by Christmas they need to be up there challenging.

His recruitment will be vital and, for starters, I’d like to see him bring in a new goalkeeper, another centre half and a winger who can get past his man and to the by-line.

The midfield diamond has worked quite well in recent weeks, and Luke McCullough has really shone in that holding role. But that system puts a lot of onus on the full backs getting forward and I’m not sure that is Mitchell Lund’s natural game.

It’ll also be interesting to see whether Andy Williams is still at the club when the new season gets underway. After scoring 16 goals in a struggling team, a few clubs might be tempted to take him.