Chris Dickson is a striker who joined Rovers on loan from Charlton Athletic on a three-month deal in September 2009. His arrival was prompted by the departure of Rickie Lambert, who left Rovers to join Southampton just over two weeks earlier. The Rovers management team had been following Dickson's progress for some time, since he had played against Rovers for Gillingham in a League One match in 2007 – a performance which manager Paul Trollope described as 'destroying us' in an interview on the Bristol Rovers official club website, but which Dickson himself described as 'not [his] best'.