Steve Evans hailed \u201cmaverick\u201d Tommy Leigh after his late goal secured Bristol Rovers a 1-0 win over fellow strugglers Shrewsbury at the Memorial Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Bradford loanee\u2019s third goal in three games after 79 minutes proved enough to settle a tense contest of few chances and sent Pirates fans home celebrating a victory that opened up a 10-point gap over the relegation zone.<\/p>\n
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And Evans was quick to praise the attacking midfielder who has had a huge impact since moving to the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me, Tommy\u2019s a maverick and he always has been, particularly at Bradford when they got over the line last year and got promoted,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019d describe him as a maverick, in that he does special things. And if we all, the older readers, remember the film Top Gun, what have you got? You\u2019ve got a maverick who does magical things but can annoy you.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAnd Tommy does annoy me at times, he does annoy me. And sometimes he annoys players, but not in a bad way, in a humorous way, in a funny way, he\u2019s a bit of a \u2018Jack the Lad\u2019. But he produces magic moments. And even in training, he does some things that you don\u2019t see at this level of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Evans is refusing to take anything for granted despite overseeing a potentially pivotal victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe three points could prove to be very significant come the end of the season,\u201d the Scot added.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe just have to do our work every time we take the pitch and try and accrue points.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou look around the results tonight, Harrogate won 3-0 at Tranmere, that\u2019s a perfect example to me. The league leaders have to go into the last minute to score against Newport.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really tough to get points. I find it easier to get points at the top of the league, because everyone\u2019s scared of you. There\u2019s no one scared of us. But if I\u2019m around next year, they\u2019ll be scared of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Shrewsbury manager Gavin Cowan, whose side remain one point and a place above Rovers in 18th spot, lamented his side\u2019s lack of quality in possession.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe showed a lot of endeavour, great attitude, great application and when we defend like that, we\u2019ll always be in games,\u201d Cowan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem is, when the ball turns over, if we\u2019re not good enough in possession, they\u2019re always going to get a chance. Really, really disappointing.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us to get to the next level, we need to be better with the ball. Constantly screaming from the sidelines, shorting our game up, wanting to pass it a lot more. And when we did it, we actually started to hurt them on a couple of occasions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to sound like a broken record with the referee but we felt like he was particularly poor and we didn\u2019t really get a lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure we can progress again come Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steve Evans hailed \u201cmaverick\u201d Tommy Leigh after his late goal secured Bristol Rovers a 1-0 win over fellow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,37128,748,393,238937,4884,84877,380,160708,238938,238936,16,15],"class_list":["post-833030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bristol","tag-bristol","tag-bristol-rovers","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-gavin-cowan","tag-great-britain","tag-maverick","tag-shrewsbury","tag-steve-evans","tag-the-bradford","tag-tommy-leigh","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116247775344721153","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}