Paul Dickov has insisted that patience is a virtue when it comes to the development of midfielder Marc De Val.
The Spaniard has featured sparingly for the Rovers this term – starting only two games – after recovering from a serious injury in pre-season.
“Short term is massive in football, but we’d like to think we look at it both ways and we have a long term vision as well,” said Dickov.
“I hear and read a lot of things about when and where Marc should be playing; I would like to think I’m the best judge of him because I’ve seen him play over three years. The people that are talking about this have only seen him in snippets.”
De Val, who arrived from Real Madrid in the summer of 2013, has been limited to places on the substitute’s bench as he looks to adapt to life in English football.
“As staff, we want to treat Marc very similarly to how we did with Matt Smith at Oldham, we knew it was a big, big culture change from where he came from,” he said.
“Is Marc De Val ready at the minute to get chucked in to the Championship? Who knows? We feel that we’re managing him the right way at the moment. We’ve got Richie Wellens, Paul Keegan and Dean Furman who have all done really well for us. Rather than force the issue, we would rather work with him and benefit next season.”
Rovers injury problems continued on Saturday as James Husband departed with a hamstring injury during the 2-1 defeat to Ipswich and joins Richie Wellens and Lucas Neill on the sidelines (also missing are Ross Turnbull, Rob Jones, Bongani Khumalo, Jamie McCombe and Harry Forrester).
“I’ve got a lot of experience in the team. They can battle with the best of them, and if it needs to be a scrap then we’ll scrap with the best of them and we showed that in the Leeds game where you saw both sides to our play,” Dickov said.
“With Marc, he struggled initially with the fitness work that we gave him, it was something he wasn’t used to. He’d just caught up with that when he got his injury and he’s been playing catch up a lot this year, it’s my job – rightly or wrongly – to manage him and I think I’m doing it the right way.”