{"id":553813,"date":"2020-06-15T08:07:08","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T12:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/?p=553813"},"modified":"2020-12-28T11:28:44","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T16:28:44","slug":"bristol-rovers-announce-11-departures-in-released-and-retained-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2020\/06\/15\/bristol-rovers-announce-11-departures-in-released-and-retained-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristol Rovers Announce 11 Departures in Released and Retained List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bristol Rovers have released 11 players upon the expiry of their contracts. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/2020\/06\/09\/efl-league-one-and-league-two-seasons-ended-early\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">League One season came to an early end<\/a> last week, with Rovers securing a 14th-placed finish.<\/p>\n<h2>Bristol Rovers Release 11 Players<\/h2>\n<h3>Fan Favourite Among Departing Contingent<\/h3>\n<p>Arguably the biggest departure is that of midfielder Liam Sercombe. The 30-year-old joined from Oxford United in 2017 and went on to make just over 100 appearances for the Gas, scoring 13 times in total.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"und\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VcZsENIBAC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/VcZsENIBAC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 liam sercombe (@SercombeLiam) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SercombeLiam\/status\/1272471621056503808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">June 15, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Also leaving the club is veteran defender Tony Craig, who spent two years at the club after joining from Millwall in 2018, and former <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/clubs\/huddersfield-town\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Huddersfield Town<\/a> winger Tareiq Holmes-Dennis, who was limited to just two league appearances this season.<\/p>\n<p>Midfielder Sam Matthews and defender Ben Morgan both leave without having played a first-team game this season, while Tom Nichols and Gavin Reilly, who both spent time this season on loan at League Two club Cheltenham Town, also depart.<\/p>\n<p>The final quartet to not see their deals renewed are Josh Bailey, Lewis Clutton, Rhys Kavanagh and Theo Widdrington.<\/p>\n<p>Four loan players will also return to their parent clubs after their deals came to an end. Jamal Blackman returns to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/clubs\/chelsea\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chelsea<\/a>, Jayden Mitchell-Lawson goes back to Derby County, Josh Ginelly has returned to Preston North End and Timmy Abraham is on his way back to <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonfootball.com\/clubs\/fulham\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Fulham<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h3>Negotiating<\/h3>\n<p>Bristol Rovers are currently in discussions with four players over renewing their contracts at the club. They are:<\/p>\n<p>Ollie Clarke<\/p>\n<p>Liam Armstrong<\/p>\n<p>Lucas Tomlinson<\/p>\n<p>Harry Warwick<\/p>\n<h3>What Was Said?<\/h3>\n<p>Speaking to the club website, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bristolrovers.co.uk\/news\/2020\/june\/bristol-rovers-retained-list\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bristol Rovers manager Ben Garner said of the decisions<\/a>: &#8220;I would like to thank all of those players who are leaving the club for their contribution during their time with us and wish them the very best of luck with their future careers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are pleased to retain a strong nucleus to the squad and to have agreed new contracts with a number of players. We have also begun our recruitment process in order to strengthen the team. Coupled with the development of the new training ground we are all looking forward to the season ahead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"CyeJOi7pTK53exJFyPbvIQ\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/930189968\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'CyeJOi7pTK53exJFyPbvIQ',sig:'jjyB6De0WNTQ6stR8WqJc25X0kWBW2u-aVI_cGfwruk=',w:'594px',h:'361px',items:'930189968',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bristol Rovers have released 11 players upon the expiry of their contracts. The League One season came to an early end last week, with Rovers securing a 14th-placed finish. Bristol Rovers Release 11 Players Fan Favourite Among Departing Contingent Arguably the biggest departure is that of midfielder Liam Sercombe. The 30-year-old joined from Oxford United [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1144,"featured_media":553818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,34,30],"tags":[5648,504,168,188,4138,136],"class_list":["post-553813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league-football","category-league12","category-news","tag-ben-garner","tag-bristol-rovers","tag-efl","tag-league-one","tag-liam-sercombe","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Nat Goodlad, Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}