Matt Taylor has hailed “outstanding” centre-back Elkan Baggott for his performances while at Bristol Rovers on loan from Ipswich Town.
Despite a 2-0 defeat to Peterborough United on Saturday, Baggott put in his third excellent performance in a row, demonstrating a remarkable recovery from the calf injury suffered in March.
Of the defender's own admission, it was a tough start to life at the Gas which coincided with being substituted off after just 25 minutes in Rovers' comeback win at Stevenage back in February but his turnaround has been exceptional.
“He’s been a credit to himself and to his parent club in the time he’s been with us," Taylor said post-Peterborough. "The way he’s conducted himself, the way he’s trained, the way he’s played as well and then his performances on top of that.
“It’s a perfect example of a loan player who has had, inactivity of proper football, competitive football for the first half of the season, he obviously went away with Indonesia in a tournament which is totally different to Stevenage and the rigours of League One.
“He’s a young player, and he will have needed that first six, seven games which were quite painful, we have to be honest, in terms of where he was in terms of game time, and he needed that.”
The 21-year-old Indonesian struggled for minutes at Ipswich in the first half of the season, being limited solely to cup appearances while the towering defender also managed just one appearance on loan at Cheltenham Town last term, whom he scored against in the Gas' 3-1 win earlier this month.
Frustratingly, Baggott and fellow young defender Connor Taylor have had limited time together as a partnership due to injuries for the both of them since January and the Rovers boss marks this as a disappointment.
“It was a shame that Connor went off so early," Taylor added, "because that centre-half partnership, we saw it at Fleetwood, we’ve seen it a couple of times is very mobile, and you can almost go man for man all over the pitch when you’ve got centre-halves like that behind you.
“We can see his quality and we can see his pedigree and we can see signs of him just getting stronger and stronger and as we got more time to work with him, simplifying his game but he’s one of the ones who I think physically can go on and cope and some.”
With just one game remaining this season, Taylor is now building for next campaign with a significant turnover in players expected. Baggott is one of six players currently on loan at the club while 12 permanently contracted players have deals that are set to expire next term.
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It's not unheard of for the Gas to re-sign players that have previously been on loan at the club, be that permanently or on secondary loan deals, with Luke McCormick, James Connolly, Connor Taylor and Lamare Bogarde recent examples.
Naturally, having Baggott back for next year is something Taylor would be open to but he knows that the final call will be up to Ipswich who are currently pushing for promotion to the Premier League.
“Anyone that performs like that you always want to keep as a manager," the Rovers manager exclaimed. "We will have those conversations further down the line but first things first for him is finish the season well, stay fully fit and healthy and then he’ll go back to his parent club whose league will still be going on and see where that takes him.”
