With no recognised strikers available, Robbie Savage has been forced to turn to the loan market, bringing in Bristol Rovers striker Mees Rijks on a three-month deal.
The Dutch striker arrives at The New Lawn with Rovers hamstrung by a knee injury to Ricardo Rees, while forwarda D’Mani Mellor and Kairo Mitchell depart for international duty with Yemen and Grenada respectively after Rovers’ match against Boston United at the weekend. Meanwhile, attacker José Márquez, who missed out with concussion for loan club Worthing on Saturday, is expected to remain with The Rebels until January.
Savage was ecstatic to secure the signing of Mees Rijks from Bristol Rovers and was keen to stress that those outside the club are failing to recognise the reasons behind Forest Green’s recent recruitment activity.
“After Saturday, we’ve had no recognised strikers at the football club,” admitted Savage. “So needs must and we brought in Mees Rijks from Bristol Rovers this morning.
“We’ve worked really quickly. Our relationship with Bristol Rovers, having the bounce game behind closed doors, was behind it. We’ve seen him twice.
“He went from Utrecht to Valeranga, scored goals, went to Bristol Rovers and now he’s 23 years of age. He’s a profile, a striker which we’ve not had. He holds the ball, runs the channels, you know, aggressive.
“We’ve got brilliant centre forwards in D’Mani (Mellor), Kairo (Mitchell) and Ricardo (Rees), but unfortunately they’re not going to be here – Ricardo for five to seven months with his knee and the other two centre forwards away for three games on international duty.
“So as from Saturday, Mees (Rijks) will be our only centre forward at the football club.”
On the changing narrative from outside the club, Savage said: “When the windmill goes out today, people will be saying, ‘Oh yeah, here they go again.’ But if you’re actually knowledgeable and you understand football, we have no choice.
“And the good thing is that there will be an envy and a jealousy that, ‘Oh, they go again signing all these players.’ I think over the last 15 months, we’ve had a complete rebuild, which other teams do, by the way, but never seem to be mentioned.
“You have to be brave in everything you do as a recruitment team. I think we’ve had about 40 players in and about 30-odd out.
“But now we’re in a great place. You see the consistency now in the group. We’ve had virtually the same team for the last three games and probably virtually the same for four games in a row.
“We’re finding a consistency which has taken its time, but that will change. So we’re nearly there. We’ve not clicked yet, but we’ll never get enough credit for what we’ve done from external sources because of us as a club.
“But as long as we know what we’re doing internally, we can be happy because we’ve changed the whole culture, the whole dynamic. The wage structure is massively decreased, the average age, everything we’ve done, and what we’ve done is the players we’ve brought in will protect the future of the football club going forward – we’ve got assets.
“We bring in development players, we bring in young players who can develop, who may not be ready now. We look to have a squad of 25. I think we’ve used 25 players this season.
“In a squad of 28 or 29, there’s young Stevie Walsh, Thomas Conteh, who’s on loan. There’s players who aren’t ready or won’t play. So we look to have a squad of 25.
“If we take those eight players out, and international breaks are on, we’re without 17.”
Savage bemoaned the latest setback for striker Ricardo Rees, who had just started to hit his straps before suffering the injury during Tuesday night’s draw at Carlisle and is set to be sidelined for up to seven months.
“To lose him is a huge blow,” said Savage. “He’s got three goals, three assists. It’s been stop-start for him since he came here.
“When he came here, he started unbelievably well, got sent off – wrongly, something – missed three games, then he came back and he was flying. He did his ankle at Gateshead, was out for six weeks, then he got back for the play-offs, but he wasn’t quite right.
“But his determination and desire to play for us and me was there. He came back with his calf in the summer and missed the start of the season. I think he only played one or two pre-season games.
“Then an innocuous fall on his knee and he’s ruptured the ligament in his knee, so it’s going to be braced up for five months. No operation.
“He’s a strong character. He’ll be back.”
Savage revealed Forest Green have been advised that they can postpone each of their upcoming games individually, rather than having to make a collective decision over the three fixtures.
Filozofe Mabete is set to represent DR Congo U23, he joins Liverpool youngster Kyle Kelly (Saint Kitts and Nevis), Kairo Mitchell (Grenada) and D’Mani Mellor on international duty, while West Ham loanee Preston Fearon is on standby for England U20s after the weekend, Savage admitted the New Lawn top brass will monitor their squad predicament game-by-game with the option of cancelling matches on the table.
“We’ve been guided that if we want to cancel a game, as the away team you have seven days, as the home team you have five,” said Savage.
“You can call off games individually, so you don’t have to do a collective three games. So the games are Sutton away, Wealdstone at home and Scunthorpe away – three huge games.
“So I spoke to Dale (Vince), Asif (Rehmanwala) and Mark (Bowen) as a collective, as we always do, on everything to do with the football club, and we’ll sit down after the game on Saturday.
“We’ll have from after the game until 12 at night to decide whether we cancel the Sutton game. We’ll have to see how we come through Boston.
“And we can call a game off, game by game. If we feel that we haven’t got the capability to go into that game where we believe we can give the best account of ourselves, then we’ll call it off.”
