Joey Barton’s assessment after Bristol Rovers twice come back to draw with Morecambe

The Bristol Rovers manager saw his side come from behind twice against Morecambe to rescue a point in a game they dominated for the majority.

Jensen Weir opened the scoring after ten minutes before Ryan Loft evened the score 20 minutes later, netting his third in his past three games.

Rovers seemed to be the team more likely to take the lead after half time however Kieran Phillips netted eight minutes after the interval however the points were shared when debutant Bobby Thomas poked the ball home with ten minutes left.

“I have to be pleased with the point”, said Barton. “We’ve been behind twice, and Morecambe aren’t a side that you want to go behind against due to the way they set up.

“I don’t think they were as bad at Shrewsbury last game at stinking the game out, but they had a clear strategy to eat the clock and take time off the board

“It is frustrating, you want to have a game of footie, people have paid to see it but from our perspective, we’ve given away two sloppy goals”

The Gas continued their streak of conceding from set pieces for Morecambe’s opener when Joey Barton’s side were too slow to get out to a short corner and Weir punished them.

The on-loan Brighton loanee curled his effort into the top corner. They were then hit on the counter attack for the away side’s second.

On the goals, Barton said: “One is in the transition which shouldn’t happen and the other is a short corner where we took a long time to get to it, so we need to improve in that regard.

“The disappointing thing for us is that we never got in the lead in a game where we had the lion’s share of the territory, huffing and puffing we work some set plays.

“We put a couple of Bobby Thomas headers across goal but didn’t manage to put the ball in the back of the net and take the lead.

“I feel if we had taken the lead at any stage today, we would’ve gone on and won the game relatively comfortably but as it was twice we’ve given ourselves a task to get back into it.

“Credit to the lads they’ve pulled themselves off the canvas twice, it’s disappointing not to beat Morecambe at home but it’s another point gained against somebody who will be in the bottom part of the table.”

The result keeps Bristol Rovers in 16^th place, with eight points from seven games though they are on a winless run.

“We have to be better than four teams this year, I know the Gasheads don’t want to hear that and we want to push as high as we can in the table but the reality is about establishing ourselves as a League One side and then possibly building out from that, we must not get carried away and thinking we can run before we can walk.”