Doncaster Rovers fan blog: The football club is lacking ambition, stability and identity

Where other clubs get top dollar for their prized players and replace with suitable alternatives, the Rovers hierarchy don’t seem to have the same desire.

A prime example of a club of a similar stature is Peterborough. They sold Ivan Toney for an estimated £5m and replaced him with Jonson Clarke-Harris for a reported £1m.

This provided £4m income plus a proven striker that helped them win promotion.

That’s compared to Rovers who sold Ben Whiteman for a reported £1.5m which was far below his real worth, especially considering our league position at the time, and to this day still haven’t found a suitable replacement.

The over-reliance on the loan market, which has seen a downward spiral in the overall quality of players at the club, has increasingly hampered consecutive seasons since the Grant McCann era.

You only have to look at the stability over at Rotherham to see what success can be achieved by having a core group of players who are familiar with the style of play wanting to be implemented and enhance this group with a few quality loan additions.

This is an approach that was promised at the start of the current season but was abandoned due to injuries, but also consisted of players coming in who didn’t improve the standard of the squad.

At a time when Rovers are competing in a league where there are much bigger clubs they need to find their own identity, much in the same way as Accrington have done in order to survive.

This is likely to take a few years, but the message from the CEO about ‘substantial funds being made available’ and aiming for the play-offs needs to make way to realism rather than trying to provide a false sense of ambition, especially given the club’s current plight.

The Club Doncaster model should also be questioned in relation to how much of the Rovers income is being utilised to support the Belles and Dons.

In an ideal world the Club Doncaster model is a great brand but not when you are languishing at the foot of League One.

Every penny created by Rovers fans needs to go into creating a squad of players facing a relegation battle this season, and without improvement could face a similar battle in League Two next season.

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