Author: nathanpottersportsjournalism
In my opinion piece, I will be talking about how I thought my club Bristol Rovers have performed over the course of the season as we reach the halfway point now.
We started the season strong in our first game away to Sunderland which is a tough place to go and salvage a point from a tough game. In that game, I thought we were decent at the back considering we had very little of the ball that game with only 28% possession and struggled to get out of our half. This allowed Sunderland to apply the pressure on our defence and get off a large number of chances at our goal having created 21.
Moving later into the first half of the season we had a decent run going four games unbeaten and only conceding one goal. However, this was soon to come to an end and turned into a poor run of results by picking one point up from a possible four games conceding 10 in the progress.
Under Ben Garner, we had conceded 19 goals, and eight of which came from set-pieces. Since the appointment of Paul Tisdale, we have conceded 14 goals. Seven of which have come from set-pieces in the same amount of games. Defending as a whole there has been a slight improvement conceding five less however there is still an issue with defending set-pieces that need to get addressed. We also have an average of 1.5 goals let in a game. In the most previous game against Peterbourgh United there was a clear improvement from the game on saturday against Oxford United where you could see clearly that the players showed some passion and fought grinding out a 0-0 draw with a team that scores lots of goals.
In our last 5 games since Joey Barton had arrived on 22nd February i would say their has been a slight improvement but the goals are still coming from the same things. Restarts with us losing late on at home to Wigan with Ayunga giving away a cheap free-kick late in added time which proved to be the last kick of the game with Rovers’ dominating the most part of the game. In the next game at home to Shrewsbury the Gas had won 2-1 but that was close to not happening with Rovers’ conceding a corner in the 97th minute but luckily substitute goalkeeper Jordi Van Stappershoef came to the rescue and played a key part in the outcome of the game. over the course of the 5 games in charge Barton’s team have only conceded 2 goals from set-pieces coming in the loss against Wigan and the massive 4-1 over Accrington.
By Nathan Potter
Gregor Macgregor is a sports journalist who works for Bristol City and covers their games, transfer news and sometimes reports on under 23 games for the club. He has also previously worked at FourFourTwo.
The first question that I had asked Gregor was “For your job you work as a sports journalist what do you do exactly?” He then responded with “So essentially I’m a Bristol City reporter so really you have to be on top of all the big Bristol City news everyday of the week really and cheaply that involves reporting from all of their games so the main thing is going to their games and reporting but ahead of those fixtures there are press conferences but it can also be reporting on under 23 games, transfer news, old and former players anything that you think is relevant to Bristol City supporters and what they would be interested in. So a large part of the job is a sense of freedom you can decide what you right about and is carefully monitored and you have to make sure what you cover is important to Bristol City fans and if your doing stuff that’s not popular then you need to answer at some point if that’s relevant or not but that’s mainly the large part of what I do.” How did you become interested in sports journalism? “It’s just a natural interest. I’m really interested in sports, more than just football. It’s been part of my life to be honest. My family were always interested as well, but it was mainly my dad that got me involved. It’s mainly a passion that sort carried me through to it today, really just a passion for sport.”
I then followed up with do you enjoy working in the media? “Yes I do but there are pros and cons and it’s very competitive. It’s going to take a long time to get there and you’ve got to be dedicated and do not underestimate the competition. Most of the time it’s not well paid and it’s long hours so as i say there are definitely cons but the pros are very obvious being able to watch and write about football for a living in my opinion it doesn’t get much better than that.” How much has your job changed since you first started? “Good question it has changed a fair amount and the media workplace is changing all the time for example jobs change companies change so i’ve been made redundant a couple times and in this industries i think that it’s quite common especially on the written side and regarding the future of newspapers which there isn’t so much of there’s been this big transition obviously to the digital side and making online content and that’s changing all the time and i particularly don’t think that anyone has nailed it yet. It will always be changing which you’re going to have to role with as a journalist.”
What do you enjoy most about your job? “I would say it differs from role to role because every job has their pros and cons the job I’m in at the minute covering Bristol City is fast pace which is good because your always getting stories done as quickly as you can, working online, competing against other outlets but at the same time there’s a lot of pressure. For example in a previous job of mine I worked at FourFourTwo the time scales were different there a lot more relaxed but the emphasis was on more quality.” What is one thing you would change about your job? “Currently I would say the workload is very stretched at the moment but I think that due to the pandemic and on the back of that, hopefully that will change within the next few years.” Finally who would be your dream player to interview? “I think everyone would like to the big name players personally I would like to speak to Harry Kane England captain probably the best player so far in the Premier League and some of the managers. One little tip I would say is it’s always easier to speak to more experienced players as they know the score bit more confident open up more and give you better stories. It’s always good to speak to managers as well. I’ve also been lucky enough to have spoken to Jose Mourinho and Steven Gerrard but yeah mine would be Harry Kane.”
Martinez completes a move to Villa Park for a deal in the region of £16m which could rise to £20m with add-ons. Martinez, who had two years remaining on his contract at Arsenal first impressed when he stepped in for Bernd Leno when the German got injured during a 2-1 loss against Brighton after the Premier League’s restart in June.
The Argentine kept nine clean sheets in 23 games last season and also helped Arsenal win the FA Cup, and also started in their Community Shield triumph over Liverpool at the start of the 2020/2021 season. During the 2020/2021 Premier League campaign Martinez played 9 games for Arsenal. During that time the Argentine had conceded 9 goals, saved 34 shots and kept 3 clean sheets.
Emiliano Martinez is Aston Villa’s third major signing of the summer transfer window alongside Matty Cash from Nottingham Forest and Ollie Watkins From Brentford.
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