Forest Green Rovers chairman Dale Vince believes that his club will be stronger for the tough period they are enduring in League Two as he gives his full backing to manager Mark Cooper.

Rovers currently prop up the League Two table but remain just a point off safety with half the season remaining.

Having seen Rovers go on an unbeaten run in October which saw Cooper nominated for the League Two player of the month award, Vince is not pressing any panic buttons and remains dedicated to his manager.

“I think we have to be optimistic,” he said.

“We went on a good run a few weeks ago and pulled ourselves off the bottom. We’ve been hit by injuries and suspensions, the usual football story and the transfer window opened on Monday.

“We get the chance to bring some fresh players in and pull ourselves out of the drop zone. I am sure we’ll do it.

“We thought we’d done enough over the summer but we hadn’t and we’ll learn from that.

“I think Mark is the right man.

“We’ve got a long future together as we push up through the leagues.

“This is a minor bump in the road and if it was easy it wouldn’t be so worthwhile would it?

“I quite happily accept this adversity and we’ll come through it and be better for it.”

The transfer window opened on Monday, with Forest Green having already added Alex Whittle and prolific goal scorer Dayle Grubb to their ranks.

Vince has hinted that there could be as many as four more new faces by the time they face Port Vale on Saturday, with a lot of work going on behind the scenes to put things right on the pitch.

“We think we know where we are weak, Mark has identified the positions and alternative players for those positions,” explained Vince.

“We started looking about six weeks ago and have done a lot of work since then and I think by Saturday we’ll have half a dozen fresh faces at the club and hopefully that will be enough.

“We’ve got a lot of young talented players and for us it’s about getting the right balance between experience and youth and if we haven’t got the balance right in first half of the season, we hope to get it right in the second half.

“I feel no harm in consolidating, getting a feel for the league and then pushing on from there; that seems like a fairly logical approach.”

Work also remains ongoing on Forest Green’s new state-of-the-art stadium, with Dale detailing how he envisages that to pan out in the coming months.

“It’s in planning now and we hope to have outlining consent in April this year,” he said.

“If we get that we’ll start first on training ground facilities, some pitches and things like that while we go for detailed consent for the stadium, which will probably take another 12 months and it will take another two years to build.

“We’re talking, roughly, another three-and-a-half years.”