Barring one 45 minute stint there has been one notable absentee from Bristol Rovers pre-season campaign, Chris Lines. Speculation among fans and the press has been ongoing for weeks but now it seems that these rumours have come to fruition as Rovers homegrown midfielder looks set to leave for pastures new.
The club connected with Lines all summer has been Championship Crystal Palace who have ex-Rovers director of football Lennie Lawrence as assistant manager under Dougie Freedman. It now turns out that Lines has spent the week training with the Eagles on their pre-season camp in Exeter and their Scottish boss likes the look of what he has seen,
telling This Is Croydon Today,
"He hasn't done too badly at all, he's a runner from midfield, a bit like [former Palace midfielder] Neil Danns, and I'm pleased with him so far."
So it seems like the Bristolian may be heading off to London but the big question is 'will he be missed?', on the face of it selling a player who signed a three and a half year contract back in January 2010 to a second tier club would give the impression that, yes, he would be, but it's not quite as simple as that.
When Lines penned that deal a season and a half ago he was on top of the world having had a successful start to the season and he finished it off in much the same vein, last term, however, didn't go quite so well. Although that could be said for much of the squad in what ended up being a relegation season Lines' form tailed off fairly dramatically as he struggled with the role that numerous managers left him fulfilling.
Paul Trollope started playing Lines in a much more reserved guise in central midfield, something that doesn't appear to come naturally to a player who has far more attacking instincts than he has defensive, tackling is not his game and neither does he have any substantial aerial ability, that despite a hefty 6'2" frame. The introduction of Dave Penney did little to turn around fortunes as much of the play began to bypass the midfield who pushed little further up the pitch than they did under Trollope and subsequently Stuart Campbell at the end of the year.
While Paul Buckle has looked to instill an attacking mentality in his charges, possibly suiting Lines better, it begins to look like the 25 year old will not be missed, other options arising under the new manager's stewardship during the pre-season.
Buckle's tactics seem to be based around a 4-2-3-1 formation, the two holding midfield roles not being the places Lines would be at his best, as has already been mentioned, leaving his most productive position being the line of three sat just ahead but there is already a great deal of competition for those spots.
During the half that Lines has played so far this pre-season he looked every bit as anonymous as he did last term, failing to put his stamp on the game against a team who play at the eighth level of English football and since then Rovers have gone on to score ten goals, a number of players taking part in the three attacking midfield places.
Jo Anyinsah has a lot of experience playing in both the wide roles and as a striker, scoring two goals in the two games he has played in, looking threatening throughout, while Chris Zebroski is in much a similar position with the added bonus of being a favourite of Paul Buckle's at Torquay. The former Gulls boss has also shown a lot of faith in Ben Swallow to play across this line with Mustapha Carayol, Charlie Reece and Eliot Richards also having the ability to take up such a task, and that all goes without mentioning Wayne Brown who has by far shown the most promise of all the players to this point and began to overshadow Lines at the back end of the previous season.
It is one of the failings of modern day football, where clubs and their staff have to be looked at in a more business-like manner, but perhaps this is one situation where it makes sense to offload Lines. Palace are thought to be willing to offer a six-figure sum for the midfielder who is likely to be one of the better paid players currently at the club having signed a long term deal while Rovers were still settled in League 1. With chairman Nick Higgs having come out and said that the Gas are no longer big payers it may be that the funds from the sale of Lines would allow Buckle to bring in two or more players to add further depth to his squad.
This isn't all to say that Lines is a bad player, he is a powerful runner who is able to move at pace, has good vision and is one of the cleanest strikers of a football currently in the Rovers squad, making him a specialist from dead ball situations. When given the opportunity to push forward Lines is also a natural goalscorer having put sixteen in the onion bag over the previous two seasons.
He has shown before that he has the talent in League 1, attracting the interest of Southampton in the past, but last season certainly wasn't a vintage year and, perhaps having gone stale with the Pirates, it is time for a new beginning for the Filton College graduate if he is to make the most out of his career.
