Bristol Live brings you a full transcript of what Steve Evans said to local media in his press conference as the new Bristol Rovers head coach
19:09, 17 Dec 2025Updated 19:10, 17 Dec 2025
Steve Evans
Bristol Rovers‘ new head coach Steve Evans has spoken to the local media for the first time since his appointment was announced on Tuesday afternoon.
His first match in charge is a trip to Crewe Alexandra, as the Gas look to end a run of ten consecutive defeats in League Two.
Ahead of the game at Crewe on Friday, Rovers head coach Steve Evans spoke to the local media at The Quarters Training Facility. Here’s a full transcript of everything he said…
Steve, welcome to Bristol Rovers. Why this club?
“I think you’ll know better than I do, the opportunity that this club presents any manager. Any player is playing at a level which is way below where it should be in the football pyramid for me. I’ve thought that for a number of years, and it’s in a position in League Two when again, when you look at the balance of all the sides of the squad, in particular the fan base it shouldn’t be there either, but in football, it dictates where you are on the pitch
“If you’re not winning games and gaining points, you’ve got a problem, so the director of Football at Newcastle, when I took final counsel on whether I should accept the job. I think maybe you’ve read my words, but he said to me, and the jobs you’ve turned down, you’ve told me you’ve not woken up excited and want to get in the car and go.
“And I said, yes, he says, well, I said, I’ve accepted the role at Bristol Rovers. He says, “Call me on your way down – I called him on the way down the M5. He says, “What’s your thoughts? I said “I can’t wait. I’m buzzing.” And he went, “That’s what we feel you should have when you take a new job. And that doesn’t matter whether it’s football management or an electrician, whatever, you should be, you should be looking forward to going to work.”
And on that, obviously, the appointment happened quite quickly, how easy was it to make that decision?
“Post the meeting, it was easy, obviously, I was at a league managers’ mentors course with a number of unemployed managers. But the room was full of good people, you know. Aidy Boothroyd, Stuart Pearce, Steve McLaren, Mike Phelan, Neil Thompson, really good people. And I got a call before I took a call from Ricky Martin. I don’t know Ricky, I know him from football, but I don’t know him as a friend or him like that. So I took the call and he just said that they’d identified me as someone that the board would like to speak to and speak to immediately. So arrangements were set up quite quickly. I was coming out at St. George’s and coming to Bristol.
“So I followed that up later, met the board, met Ricky, had some time with them and then followed up later in the evening with another call and then I was left with a decision to make. So I took some counsel. I spoke to Tony Stewart, my previous owner at Rotherham. It’s still a great club – it didn’t work for me the second time. It’s great people. Spoke to Tony, I spoke to Phil Wallace at Stevenage and then finally I spoke to Darragh MacAnthony of course. Someone I know particularly well from my time at Peterborough. He’s become a friend and they all said one thing, that’s a club for you. That’s because I’d turned down some opportunities. I didn’t think it was, other than the present there wasn’t a future.
“But the one thing I’ve spoken to the board about is why I insisted on a short-term contract: we deal with the here and now, sort the immediate problem out, and then we can think longer term – you can’t think longer term unless you deal with an immediate problem. But when the job was offered in the summary of your questions, when the job was offered, I knew in my heart I wanted to take it because I’ve been here many times.”
READ MORE: ‘We’ll work incredibly hard’ – Steve Evans’ first interview as Bristol Rovers head coachREAD MORE: ‘We’ll be busy in January’ – Steve Evans on transfer window plansYou say you’ve been here many times. Some of the clips of your comments on Bristol Rovers have been doing the rounds on social media, talking about how it’s a huge club, one you massively respect. How much do you know about Bristol Rovers and how much do you know about the area and the city itself?
“No, not a great deal. I know there’s two proud football [clubs]. There’s probably another football club in terms of amateur, semi-pro or whatever, but there’s two proud football clubs in this city. And I’ve always been of the belief. I’ve been slightly biased towards Rovers because Paul Raynor has always spoken so highly of them because he played here as a young man on loan from Nottingham Forest. And I’ve genuinely always had the belief that because I’ve had plenty of stick here, because I’ve done quite well as a manager winning games or whatever it is.
“Paul has always said to me, “Gaffer, one day we could be there. It could be a big, big club.” And so I genuinely look at it and say if you know, Bristol City are a really good club and good owners, I have to say that because I believe it. But the difference in terms of they’re playing in the Championship and we’re playing in League Two shows, you are where you are for a reason. So the first thing we have to do is to be on an equal platform is win some games.”
On that, you do take over the club in a precarious position, in the relegation zone in League Two, the fanbase is divided as well, there is some issues off the pitch currently. What’s your message to the supporters of this football club?
“Yeah, I think from the outside, you know, before there was any threats of Darrell leaving or different things, you look and you see the result upon the result and you understand from reading the press that there’s been criticism towards everyone – the ownership model, the manager, the players, and that happens in football because you have to win football matches.
“But what I factually know, now that I’m part of this, is this club has the third or fourth highest budget in League Two – supporters won’t believe that – I can tell you that’s true. It’s probably a budget, if not more than Stevenage, who are now top end of League One. So the resources are there. The board also gave me complete assurances, we’ll go to work in January.
“But my message to the players that we’ve come in and inherited and we’ve got is what positions have we got to strengthen and supporters will have opinions, they’ll say them every week, home and away, some just at home, but our view is that we have to judge it as we walked in yesterday.
“So obviously, we’ve trained yesterday, we’ve trained today. First day properly on the training with us today. And the next three or four games, we’ll form opinions as to what positions we need to go for in the market and believe me, I know a number of players that I’d like to bring here, but I have to satisfy myself that there’s not equal or better here if there is, or if there is better from outside, I’ll ask Ricky to bring those from outside.”
The reception to your appointment actually has been overwhelmingly positive on social media. Can you sum up what will a Steve Evans team look like and what will the fans have to get behind you?
“I think when you can sometimes say it’s difficult to explain that is it’s not the players that I’ve recruited, it’s the players that Darrell has recruited, because the first thing you realised when you’re manager here, contrary again to what I’ve read and what I hear, is the manager here or the head coach, has final say on who walks into the football club as a player.
“So Darrell’s had final say other than maybe something else he inherited from the year before. My team will evolve over the next three, four weeks, it will evolve through January, because we’ll get a chance to modify some of it. But our style of play has been consistent from Rotherham to Leeds to Stevenage to Peterborough is that we play high-intensity football. We try not to give opposition time on the ball and sometimes we’ve always said to teams what we lack for in terms of natural ability and being able to win a game. There’s nothing [that] beats winning football matches with the greatest desire, because believe me, a team with the greatest desire wins football matches.
Steve Evans is the new Bristol Rovers head coach (Image: Bristol Rovers FC)
“If I looked at the success we had at Stevenage, going to Aston Villa winning the [FA] Cup [tie]. Why did we win that cup tie? Because we had a greater desire to win that cup tie. Players here can play. So let’s see if they’ve got a desire to play on a Steve Evans and Paul Raynor side, and we’ll only know that when we see them under a selection.”
How much are you looking forward to that first match?
“Oh, yeah. It’s going to be difficult. You know, Crewe are a really good side. I know two or three of their players, Marchy [Josh March] who was at Stevenage. I know Lee Bell, who is a young manager, I’ve had many a time in the office afterwards. I’ve got great respect actually for Crewe Alexandra as a football club and what they’ve stood for over the years and their identification of outstanding talent.
“They’re a young side, they’re hungry, they’re going very well. They’ve had a couple of recent results, that’s good, but I’m really looking forward to it. You know, it’s the first game as a manager for any club, it’s always a big one, always a nice one. And we’d love to come back down the road with something added to our points tally and then looking forward to two huge games over Christmas at home, and a local derby up the road at Shrewsbury, so, yeah, I’m looking forward to [it].
“I’m camped in. I’m camped in Bristol for the foreseeable future, and the Maldives at Christmas, Mrs. Evans went off the table on Monday. She’s heartbroken. Instead of being in the Maldives, walking on a beach, she’s going to be coming to the Memorial [Stadium] with my grandkids. But, we make decisions as a family, so we’re all looking forward to it.”
[Are you] going to have to get her an extra special present?
“Yeah, I think I may have to. I don’t even know at this stage if I’m going to see her on Christmas Day, but yeah, like I said, we do things as a family, we’re a tight family, we’re, you know, I’ve assured some of the in-house media, some videos of my grandkids singing Bristol Rovers songs. Yeah, we’re excited for the challenge. It is a challenge.
“We’ve got to deal with the here and now. We can deal with the here and now. If we can get the here and now sorted, Bristol Rovers has a really great future. Steve Evans hasn’t come to Bristol and just here for three or four months at work. Financially, I don’t have to come back to work. I wanted to come to work, I didn’t have to, or I’d have gone to the SPL a month ago, I’d have gone to League Two in the last month or so. I’ve come here to join a big football club that can release its potential, which it needs to do.”
Finally, you mentioned earlier it’s only a short-term contract on a deal with the here and now. On that, how proud actually are you to be adding Bristol Rovers to your resume?
“Oh, very much so. I think the board were thinking longer term for me. My view is, until you work with the squad, you don’t know what you’ve got, and there was assurances to strengthen it, which we will try and do, but players currently here will decide what we do.
“Yeah, from my point of view, it’s just I insisted on short-term. I don’t want to manage in the National League. I don’t think I’m going to go down that road. I may have to in the future, but I don’t want to. And I don’t want to be thinking otherwise other than we have a positive four or five months, we get to the summer and we put a squad and a team in place – Ricky and myself and Paul working really hard.
“Supporters can be rest assured that they can criticise, but I speak as a point. The resources here are, the owners must shake their head. They must cry now because they get undeserved criticism, supporters don’t see that, supporters see results.
“I understand that, but there’s never been a football club on the planet that when results are not good, the board don’t get criticised. If you look at Glasgow Celtic, they won the treble last year, and this year, the owner’s not very good, so there’s nothing to do with the owner last year.
“So just let’s all throw the rope in the same direction, and if we can do that, this proud football club will have some good times ahead. It needs good times, we’re working hard to bring them there.”
Steve Evans and his assistant Paul Raynor(Image: Bristol Rovers FC)You talk about the challenge, how big a challenge is it?
“I think when you’re second bottom of the EFL it’s a significant challenge. When you’ve lost ten league games and a cup tie, in consecutive fashion, it’s, you can look at that and say, well, there’s big problems. Our view is that my view to the board was that part of conversations about what players do they like and what players I didn’t like, I think my experience as a manager tells me, players react and play differently for different managers.
“Look at a good friend of mine, look at Sean Dyche at Nottingham Forest. He’s gone in, those same players that were not performing and are now suddenly performing at the top of the game, and they’re back to the Nottingham Forest that we’d previously seen. So I just think it’s we have to just get the group together, which we’ve done and get them to work hard and it’s one motto. If you don’t run, you don’t work hard, I cannot pick you.
“With my future reputation, my current reputation is on the line because I failed recently at Rotherham. And it’s the only failure I’ve had in my career. I can’t have it all.”
What’s your, obviously, you’ve got a game on Friday, but in terms of what you’ve seen, what’s the priority for you over the coming days to address the here and now that you talk about?
“I think for us to understand the individuals, you know, understand them on the training ground, understand them in the office, when you break it all down, and you have individual chats, because although it’s a team game, football will never change, it’s a team game, but it’s made up by individual performances. Sometimes you’ll have seen it yourself, we’ve all seen it where a team performance has been poor, but one or two players would be exceptional, and you’d win a game, and you need more than that anomaly to win, but it would be breaking the score down, getting to know them better individually.
“And give everyone an opportunity, and I mean players an opportunity to demonstrate that when I addressed the players this morning, it was that there are absolute minimums and the minimums are effort, professionalism, working hard, running hard, and if you can’t do that, I don’t care about ability. Because if you don’t do those basics, it doesn’t matter how much ability you’ve got, you’re going to be a liability for a team in a difficult league.”
And we fast forward to the end of the season, what would success look like to you?
“I think success would mean that we’re winning some matches, home and away. Success would mean that the fans settle down and everyone says, we’re looking forward to the summer. Because I think the one thing that I do know is if we have that ratio towards the end of the season, players want to come to Bristol Rovers. That’s for sure, I’ve spoken to enough players in the last 24 hours.
Steve Evans is the new Bristol Rovers manager(Image: Getty Images)
“Players want to come, sporting directors high up in the pyramid, you know, would be happy, would be okay with their players coming here. Maybe they weren’t in the past, but they would be now. And that’s not about me. That’s a bit of the opportunity that when I speak to us guys or ladies, then I present our cases to why they’re gifted youngsters or players who come here.”
I watched your interview with the club yesterday. You talked about your incredible fitness regime you’ve been on in the last few months. What difference has that made to you just day to day?
“It’s been incredible. I think I’ve been all bar a few weeks, I’ve never been out of football, management for 25 years or whatever it is, and then when I came out of Rotherham, I had the opportunity several occasions to go straight back in, before the end of the season, with people fighting in this position, but much later in the season, but Iike I inherited at Stevenage.
“But I made the decision then that it was an opportunity in my life to – I’m very proud of my grandkids. I’ve got four grandkids and as one consultant said to me, if you want to take him for a beer and he’s 21, you’ve got to pull your life around. And that was enough. So I went through all the base testing models and, you know, I can’t say it to some of these youngsters sitting beside me that eight a half stone lighter, you know.
“It’s incredible, you know, and I feel the benefits, I feel the benefits of swimming every day, baking every day, walking every day, brilliant support of family, and some outstanding league managers association professionals, the best cardiologist, long experts, fitness people, I’ve had them all around me.
“Because I’ve not resorted to maybe taking the injections, some people, oh, I don’t knock it, because if that’s the only way you can not be a beast and I was a beast, and if the only way you cannot do it is to do that, I would do it. I chose the road of swimming and fitness and diet and calorie management and stuff, and it’s worked fantastic for me. My body’s in a natural state, as my consultant says, your body’s naturally in a great position.”
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Given how demanding your job is anyway, I imagine again that moving forward, especially in this role, that also then makes a huge difference.
“It makes a huge difference, even just going around, the supporters will be aware of this, even just walking around the football pitch and running around and looking at different angles and working hard in the early mornings and late nights, it just makes it easier because you’re so much healthier. I don’t profess to be the top of the fitness trees, but I profess to be really fit now when walking or running, you know, 10K and 70, 80 lengths of the pool every day.
“You know, that gets you to a degree of fitness, where you say, I’m really healthy and the team of consultants that look after me two weeks ago said, we’ll see you in 12 months, they want to see that progress continue.”
I’m guessing the new Steve Evans, as we see today, is one that you will want to continue with forever.
“Well, my first night away from home was last night, and I got three phone calls from my two daughters and my wife saying, “What have you had for dinner?” And, where are you now? And if I would have said, Nando’s or any other restaurant in Bristol I’d have been in trouble.
“So, yeah, I think it’s a way forward, I think I have to continue this, and I’ve got two wonderful daughters that remind me every day that I’ve done this for my grandkids, then I’ve got to do it for at least 17 years till he’s 21.”
I just wanted to ask about formations. A back four and a back five has been commonly used by Darrell Clarke this season. So is that flexibility a strength, or are you looking to nail down the system, whether that be a back four or a back five?
“I think realistically, I would look at, and I am looking now within the squad as to what I think is best suited to the squad, because when I was doing my pro licence, I spent some time in Barcelona, with Pep [Guardiola]. And the one thing that he addressed the three or four of us that went out there is that systems come from the playing group that you’ve got. And if you inherit it, if you’re building it from the summer, because you’d have one or two systems or maybe three systems, because you need your main system, but then you’d say, if you go down to ten-men, we go to this system or we go to three at the back because we’re having a problem with the wide players, whatever it is.
“So I think it really comes from the squad you build, but we’re finding out about the squad now. At Stevenage for the success in the three and a bit years we had, and at Leeds., we did a combination of both systems, but the lads knew both systems inside out. That was one was a three, we were a five and a two and the other one was a four with the diamond that Stevenage still play a lot now to this day because a lot of it is still the same squad, that we left behind, so it’ll be a bit when we work with the players further over the next three or four weeks, the current group will identify that, and then we’ll get closer to picking our preferred system, and then our preferred style of player to come into the group.”
And it’s obviously a bit cliché that every club needs a striker in January and the club’s sort of got two types of strikers. You’ve obviously got Promise [Omochere] and Ellis [Harrison], who are that back-to-goal striker, then you’ve got [Fabrizio] Cavegn, who wants to face the goal. So have you lined up a certain profile of striker given the options you have already?
“Yeah, I think in the words of Sir Alex Ferguson, you want a striker that scores a goal, don’t you? That’s what you want. And if they’re not scoring goals, you’ve got to identify the reasons. The reasons could be that they’re playing in a team that doesn’t make enough chances. And that’s a bona fide reason, or you could be a team that makes chances.
“You know, one of the lads I signed from Newcastle Reserves, Ivan Toney, who is now a famous name, and he’s overseas. But when Ivan joined us, he scored goals, but he didn’t score as many goals as he should have scored, because he spent too many times trying to play as the number ten. And we worked really hard, and Paul, in particular, in the training ground is to get him in a position where he could score a goal, because he is a sublime, fantastic goalscorer. You’re meant to get him in the position to score a goal.
“So now we’re working through the group with the strikers – we’ve got to see whether they can score a goal, or whether they’re just we’re not making chances, or whether their positional play to work hard for the team, and that can be a cause, takes them out the position when we win the ball to create a chance for them to be in the position to score. But sometimes a sign of a striker is being between the sticks, because if you’re between the posts, you get more chances of scoring a goal as a striker.”
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And so a wider trend in the game, especially in the Premier League, there has been a move towards physicality [and] set pieces. Do you think that is something that has translated down the [top] four divisions in England?
“Well, I think, you know, I mentioned Pep earlier, but I think he’s wholly responsible for five-a-sides between goalkeepers and centre-backs, isn’t he? In the Premier League. And everyone copied it because Pep had, has to be said, has the best probably nine or ten of the best players in the world playing in that system. So it was very comfortable. He moved Joe Hart out because he didn’t think his feet were technical enough to play around it. But I think if you look at Manchester City now, they didn’t go and sign [Erling] Haaland because they wanted to play into his feet on the halfway line.
“They wanted power and strength to go behind, so they go long and a little bit quicker. And if you look at Arsenal, they’re a fantastic, talented, technical side, but they play a lot into the channels and get up the pitch, and go and support. So, there’s a little bit more direct, but you still have to control the game rather than table tennis, you have to control the game.”
In terms of right back at the minute, there’s a bit of an issue with [Macauley] Southam-Hales and [Joel] Senior injured and I mean, [Tom] Lockyer played there in a back four at the weekend. Is that a position you’re looking to strengthen in, or are you waiting for the lads to come back?
“Yeah, well, it depends on how long they’re going to be out. I mean, I don’t think they’re out very long, so I think they’re back quite quickly. But I think in terms of position, these next three or four games is going to tell us a lot. Of course, I have names that I would bring in, that I believe would help, is it from right-back to centre-back to midfield to strikers. The board and Ricky are aware of who’s on their way, in fact we had a full meeting on it yesterday, but I have to give players that are currently here an opportunity, because I may bring in someone that I’m really respectful and I think highly off, but I may work with a player a year that I think, well, you can do what he can do.
“So what I’m not going to do is bring players in for the sake of bringing them in. I’ve tried not to do that in the past. Not always successfully, because sometimes you have to then say, you bring one or two to in because we’re short. I’m trying to make sure that if what we had in January brings and one of the previous chairman I worked for you used to say, bring me value for money. So someone who’s going to be available for selection, someone who’s going to play, someone who’s going to do what’s on the tin.
“So if you’re right, attributes of a right back, or attributes of a striker or a centre-midfield player, and you write the attributes, are they then producing it, and the way I break it down, I’m going into a bit of detail here but the way I break it down is you actually look at their earnings and then you look at pounds per minute, and that’s the way they do it at the top level.
“So if you’re sporting director, addressing a head coach at Leeds United, say for example, I’ve been there, they would tell you how much it costs to put that player on the pitch per minute. You might be thinking, well, he’s the most expensive, yeah, but it’s Chris Wood. We signed Chris Wood. He was the most expensive, but Chris Wood was top-class, scored goals. So the whole thing is based on that. So I need to make sure that I can myself and Ricky can sit down and say, we’re getting the best of you for money. And that’s the minimum the supporters deserve because I know the owners fund this football club for millions of pounds per year, but without the fans, there is no football club.
Steve Evans is the new Bristol Rovers head coach(Image: Bristol Rovers FC)
“And that doesn’t matter whether it’s, I’ve just said I failed in my second time at Rotherham. I still love the fans because they gave us every chance. And all I’m asking the Gashead fans is just give us every chance to sort this immediate problem out, because it is a problem, but we will sort the problem out. I have no doubts, or I wouldn’t have come. If I thought it was impossible. If I looked at the squad and went hm, I wouldn’t have come. As I said to the players, the players will read this or hear it. I did say to the players that I said to Darrell in August, I thought you’d be promoted when I looked at his squad.
“But there’s no squad ever being promoted on paper, is it? You get promoted on the grass, and you have to have all the attributes other than just ability.”
Steve, do you think this squad needs some detailed coaching or some hard-truths to get them out of this recent form?
“I think Darell was a good manager. I’m personal friends with Darrell, so you wouldn’t hear one bad criticism from me in his direction. He’s a good man, he’s a good guy. He’s a good football manager. And sometimes as a football manager, you can be trying, sounds silly to supporters maybe, but you can try too hard, and maybe you can look for things that are not there, convince yourself they’re there.
“So from my point of view, it’s not a big detail coaching, but there’s three or four things that we interjected into the session today that the players were saying it’s the first time they’ve had it. It doesn’t make it rocket science, it just makes it where we’re trying to give them ownership on the pitch, rather than looking towards [us] all the time for direction, because the work that you do Monday to Friday should really mean that they have a clear direction, and that’s why you’ll see me, still at this stage coming off the bench and losing my head a little bit, and I lose my head because we know how we work on things in the week.
“And you hear managers say it all the time, follow the plan, follow the process. And if your planning process Monday to Friday is right, it should more than not, of course, you have bad days, but you should more than not come right on the matchday.”
I know you’ve only had two training sessions so far, but have you seen any players that have caught your eye?
“I think a number of them. But, you know, if I was a Bristol Rovers supporter and I’ve watched the last ten, 11 games where it was ten, 11 consecutive defeats. I think you’d raise an eyebrow and say, I can’t believe he has said that.
“I think we have to give players the opportunity. There are two or three I didn’t really know. I knew the name, but I didn’t know them. So they’ve done really well, but we’ve had a brilliant response from the skipper, brilliant response from what I would say the leadership group, the older guys in the group, and what we had today was 20 young men on the training ground, trying to earn their shirts at Crewe.
“And I said to them afterwards, if we have that same application every week going forward, if you can get that ability out the locker, which we think you’ve got from not being in here point of view, then we’ll do enough to refrain from some of the recruitment in January, but we’ll be busy in January for sure.”
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