Ricky Martin interview part one: Joining Bristol Rovers, business so far and transfer priorities

Bristol Rovers director of football Ricky Martin sat down with Bristol Live for an extended interview ahead of the new season

Daniel Hargraves Bristol Rovers reporter

17:00, 25 Jul 2025

Bristol Rovers director of football Ricky Martin looks on(Image: Will Cooper/Bristol Rovers)

If there was one way to get stuck into a new job, Ricky Martin’s first couple of months at Bristol Rovers would be the stand out example.

Within four months, the Gas’ director of football has had to helplessly watch his new club get relegated from League One before making a change in the dugout as well as overseeing the departure of 17 players and the addition of seven new faces.

It was announced at the end of March that Martin, who had last been at Championship Stoke City, would replace George Friend who was to resign from the role at Rovers, just 13 months after taking the job on following his retirement from playing.

On the pitch, the Gas had just lost a third consecutive match and would go on to pick up just one more point from the remaining seven games as they plunged into the relegation zone.

Although he expected that the club he was joining would retain its League One credentials for the following season, Martin made the decision to start work straight away as opposed to waiting for the campaign to finish to pick things up.

Unfortunately, the worst possibility became reality and his remit is now to help guide Rovers back into League One.

The director of football kindly spared half an hour of his busy schedule to sit down with Bristol Live for an extended interview ahead of the new season kicking off on August 2, which has been split into two parts.

In this first part, Martin discussed joining Rovers, working with Darrell Clarke, the club’s business so far and work to be done on further incomings…

“So there was a period of time where I was obviously out of work when I left Stoke,” Martin reflected on the process that brought him to BS7. “When you do that in this business, what you need to do is you’re still working, you’re going around gathering information, learning, developing, visiting clubs, doing courses and things like that and all these things were involved in the process of coming to Bristol Rovers, to be honest.

“So it all started by going to watch some League One games. I spent a lot of time in the Championship, so I know that market really well, but I felt I needed to increase my knowledge in the League One, League Two market. So I started to do more games, started to follow League One and funnily enough, I was actually at a game which involved Bristol Rovers. George saw me and we had a conversation and then following that, it became clear that there was going to be an opportunity and he wanted to see whether I would be prepared to have a chat with the ownership group.

Ricky Martin pictured during his time as technical director at Stoke City(Image: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

“It was kindly on George’s recommendation, but it was also recommendation through other people within the game that had said that I was currently available and doing courses.

“I then flew out to Madrid to go to the ECA (European Coaches Association) conference and the ownership group wanted to meet me. So I jumped on a Zoom call that evening and met the owners and had a really, I felt, productive hour and a half, like interview conversation, information gathering, probably from both sides. There’s lots of questions they wanted to ask me, but there’s a hell of a lot of questions I needed to ask them as well.

“So it was more about that, and then following that we then went on to have an opportunity to meet in person at the club and that was prior to a game. So I met them in the morning, had a really good meeting and presentation and then following that they offered me the opportunity to come and join the club.

“The thing that I made really clear that I wanted to come in straight away and I felt to make my role any easier than it could possibly be and although it’s a really complicated role in a complicated position, I felt I needed to come in straight away. So I virtually agreed on the weekend and started on the Monday.

“I could have come in at the end of the season and coming in at the end of the season would have been the easiest thing for me to do. I don’t wash my hands with anything. I’m really clean, whatever happens, stay up, don’t go up, go down, whatever. All those things, that would have been nothing to do with me, kind of, and I’d come in in May, June time and it’d been that.

“I just think I’d have missed four weeks of work, which for me now was absolutely priceless because if I didn’t get that opportunity to have those four weeks, then I wouldn’t have been able to assess the squad, assess the current staff and be able to then judge what’s really available and what I needed to do and what was essential for me to go forward.”

The first major decision Martin oversaw was the replacement of Iñigo Calderón with club legend Darrell Clarke.

Ricky Martin poses with head coach Darrell Clarke following his return to Bristol Rovers(Image: Bristol Rovers FC)

Clarke spent four-and-a-half years in charge at the Mem in his first spell, overseeing back-to-back promotions from the Conference to League One before helping the club establish their position back in the third tier.

He was available after leaving Barnsley in March and emerged as the leading candidate in a process Martin declared he was “proud” of in a previous interview.

It is nearly three months since Rovers announced the return of Clarke and ever since the head coach’s appointment, he and Martin have developed a tight-knit working relationship.

“[We speak] every day,” Martin exclaimed. “When you come into the training ground and when you’re around more and when people see us on a matchday, but also in our day-to-day, you’ll see that we’re really tight. We’ve created a really good bond. We’ve got a real respect for each other. We know what’s probably the most important thing. We know our boundaries so he knows what I need to do and I know what he needs to do so I won’t be stepping in his domain. Likewise, he will allow me to have the freedom to make decisions in my domain.

“So that really gives autonomy, but also gives clarity, and that gives us a real kind of guidance of where we’re going. There’d be something with a tact together, and that’s how a good relationship works. So sometimes, on some of the player deals we’ve done, he might have had a conversation with an agent before me, and then sometimes I’m leading it, and I’m the good cop, or he’s the good cop. That’s how relationships [work], that’s how transactions get done. Very rarely is it just a one-to-one policy. So kind of a collaborative approach.

“You’ll see there’s some players that he’s worked with before, so it’s obvious that he has got that relationship. There’s some players he’s never worked with, but he’s really bought into the data, he’s bought into the recruitment strategy, he has been really open to the recommendations that we’ve had.

“Not every recommendation we’ve signed, but some of them we’ve talked about and we’ve signed what we feel are some really good quality players and we feel they’re going to benefit and have a real impact in the squad going forward.”

Alfie Kilgour and Luke Southwood are the prior mentioned players who have worked with Clarke previously, suggesting that the head coach led those particular processes. Likewise, Martin has tracked others prior to his time at Rovers.

One of those players is Ryan Howley, the Gas’ most recent addition. The 21-year-old midfielder arrived on a free transfer following his departure from boyhood club Coventry City and had a brief trial period with the Pirates before signing a two-year deal earlier this month.

Ryan Howley was Bristol Rovers’ seventh signing of the summer(Image: Bristol Rovers FC)

“I’ve followed his career now for several years and he’s someone that’s been on my radar before so that was quite an easy one for me to pick up and I worked with the recruitment team and the recruitment did some great work.

“We presented it and we just feel for his age, his profile, his ability and his versatility he has in his game style fits us really well.”

The goalkeeping and wing-back departments have also seen notable change with two arrivals in each area.

Southwood is expected to be first choice having established himself in League One at Cheltenham Town and Bolton Wanderers while Brad Young is another highly-rated young English goalkeeper who joined from Leicester City and has had loan spells in the National League and also previously being involved in England youth squads.

Meanwhile, Jack Sparkes and Macauley Southam-Hales have arrived from Peterborough United and Stockport County respectively to offer improvement to both the offensive and defensive output from the flanks.

On the wing-backs, Rovers’ director of football confessed: “That was a big weakness of our team. We weren’t creating and we all can say it’s all down to centre forwards, right? All can say that. It’s a team. We defend as a team, we attack as a team. So, the quality of the service will determine how the expected goal opportunity is. If it’s a high chance or if it is a low chance, and that will go down to the service and demand and the waves and the constant pressure that we’re putting on.

“So that was a key ingredient of what we were looking for and I think you’ve seen already with both of them the quality that we’re going to get from both sides. But let’s also be honest and reference there, we have got some established players in the squad as well that complement that as well. So Joel Senior has played really well in pre-season so it’s not all about the two wing-backs coming in and playing, we’re creating a squad.”

On the goalkeeping department, he added: “We got relegated. We let a lot of goals in. That’s not down to the goalkeeper, it’s down to a collective, right? But we needed to improve areas of the pitch, we need to improve the defensive line, we need to improve the midfield line, we need to improve the attacking line.

“That’s what we’re trying to address and within the defensive one, the goalkeeping department got reviewed and we feel we needed to improve that.

“Luke’s worked with Darrell. He knows his style, he knows the way he wants to play and I think you can see already that we needed that adaptation really quickly and that’s what was a big attraction of bringing in someone like Luke. It’s not just the connection he’s got, it’s the fact that he’s played in League One for a very big club as well and we feel he can make that transition into a big club for ourselves and get us back to where we need to be.”

Luke Southwood is set to be Bristol Rovers’ number one goalkeeper this season(Image: Kieran McManus/Shutterstock)

The goalkeepers’ arrivals has brought question marks around the short-term future of Jed Ward, who has not been included in a matchday squad for a friendly when both Southwood and Young have been named.

After being recalled from National League loan spells midway through the last two seasons, the academy graduate now has a total of 42 first team appearances for his boyhood club.

Although a final decision has not yet been made, Martin confessed that one of the goalkeepers could go on loan this season with Rovers looking to work with a smaller squad.

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“Like any young player, any player at this football club, we always want to develop them all. We want to develop whether they’re 17, 18, 19 or 24, 25, 26. We want to develop all our players, so our strategy is to develop all of them.

“One thing you’ll notice is that we have got a smaller squad than last year. That’s the strategy. We don’t want big numbers. We don’t want excess players that are not available on a matchday or are not needed on a matchday. So we need to ensure that our squad is tight and at the moment our plan is that we’ve got three goalkeepers.

“We may decide that it might be right for one of them to go out on loan and get some exposure. We’re assessing that, we’ve still got several weeks in the window and the season’s not kicked off yet.”

That idea of a smaller squad has been reinforced publicly by Clarke, who told Bristol Live after Rovers’ friendly win at Chippenham three weeks ago that he expected four or five more signings considering that he doesn’t want to work with a bloated roster.

Since, two players have arrived and so, according to Martin, another two or three additions this window before it closes on September 1 is a realistic expectation.

There are no prizes for guessing where Rovers’ priority currently is in the market, with no forwards signed yet this summer and their goal output still looking light.

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“I think two or three is really realistic,” Martin admitted. “We as a squad, as a team, as a club, want to develop a healthy squad and yeah, two or three I feel won’t be excessive, it’s not like we’re putting on top of already a really big squad, and we’ve got availability to go in and do different types of players and different types of positions.

“So if you consider that, for example, as we sit here today, we’ve done no loans, and that’s a strategy as well. So that might be a place where we go near the end of the window, should we need to address that. If we had gone and filled up with three or four loans now, then you top up and top and then you’ve got six loans. That’s not what our strategy is about.

“There’s no secrets here. We want to get in attacking players and we feel the attacking options are probably the last bits where we just need to add to the squad.

“I get that,” he added on impatience regarding a lack of attacking additions. “If we could have done all of them on the first day of pre-season, we would have done that. So we haven’t turned them away. But I want to get a message out there as well that we’re not going to panic and just go and sign a player and just give them the number nine shirt if he’s not the right target for us or the right profile for our football club.

“That’s where Darrell needs that trust from everyone that he’s working through this and he knows he needs to add one or two. He’s openly said that, but he’s not panicking either. He’s got, like I said just a minute ago, it’s going to take more than one window. So we don’t want to go and block everything up and put in players that we then can’t manipulate the window in January or next summer.

“Every player is going to be a big player this year and I can assure you now, and I assure the fans now, Darrell will get the most out of every player and he will maximise and he will then work with them to ensure that we have got the best version of every individual but most importantly then collectively they give the best versions as a team and that’s what Darrell’s strengths are and that’s why we brought him to the football club.”

Ricky Martin interview part one: Joining Bristol Rovers, business so far and transfer priorities

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