Bristol Rovers manager Joey Barton has explained his post-match apology to his Town counterpart Kieran McKenna following the 0-0 draw between the sides at the Memorial Stadium on Tuesday and says the Blues’ boss is a man under pressure.
McKenna said Barton had "apologised to me straight after the game for not being willing to give us a match tonight and not being willing to play their normal way” in his post-match press conference following the frustrating stalemate.
"I just went to him at the end of the game and said ‘Sorry we couldn’t take you on’,” Barton told BristolLive. "That’s what it meant, I wasn’t apologising for the way we played. I thought we were excellent in our strategy and really got the best opportunity to win the game by going the way we did.
"We were far from parking the bus. It was a mid-to-deep block with some triggers we felt we could catch them on and expose them higher up the field.
"To be fair to Kieran, he’s probably worried about four wins in 15 with a £15 million budget in League One and Sheffield Wednesday and Plymouth pulling away and Derby, Wycombe, Barnsley, Bolton and the group chasing closing in on them.
"He’s a man under pressure. I could smell that on them and I knew that before with the results profile. It was part of the reason we went with the strategy because they were nervy and on a run of drawing a lot of games and finding it hard to break teams down.
"I was apologising and I do apologise to our fans that tune into this. I don’t want to sit and counter teams, I want to be in the middle of the ring, the middle of the pitch, with the ball taking the game to teams.
"But sometimes you have to cut your cloth accordingly. Our budget is three-and-a-bit million, theirs is £15 million. If we take them on — and we went to Portman Road earlier in the season and had a right pop at them and tried to take them on — in the moment we’re in in our stadium, we would have been gifting them points and that is not our football club.
"We had to make a plan for that and I apologised for sitting to counter. I don’t want to be a counter-puncher, I want to be in the middle of the ring trading blows with you, but I guarantee you if the boot was on the other foot, he wouldn’t be attacking me with a £3 million budget if I had a £15 million budget, that’s for sure, and he wouldn’t be drawing 0-0.”
He added: "We had to be [more defensive than usual]. I hope one day to have their budget and if you give me £15 million versus our £3 million, I’d ask Kieran if he would want to stand in the middle and trade blows because I guarantee he wouldn’t.
"For us at that moment, it would have been a kamikaze approach and we had to adjust our strategy and show a different side to our team and me as a coach to nullify our opponent to give ourselves the best opportunity of winning the game.
"They have completed 400 more passes than us, but recent weeks have shown it is not about completing passes and having possession because you have got to have a purpose and an end product to that.
"You could argue on the weight of chances, we had the best chances. We were the only ones that hit the woodwork and I do think Jarell Quansah’s header in the first half from the corner was as good a chance as any in the game.
"To get out of there with a clean sheet and a point was a step in the right direction for us, but I’m not sure Kieran’s well versed in the Mem.
"He said it was a cup final for our fans and they have all turned out, but we have been at capacity since the back end of last season and I just felt that was a little bit of a strange comment.
"Based on my CV and his CV, there is no doubt who is the A side if there was any cup final because he was a civilian until he started coaching.”