Back to the bread and butter of the league tomorrow and Richard Money will have been concentrating on making sure the players haven’t dwelled on Tuesday night’s superb performance against Bolton and are up for getting three point from the visit to the Memorial Ground. The top five teams of Wycombe, Swindon, Lincoln, Franchise and Walsall have already started to open a little gap and, if the promotion places do turn out to be perm any three from five, no one will want to be the first to falter, even at this early stage of the season.

Walsall, of course, have won all five of their home games so far this season, so, if anything does need to be improved, it’s the haul of 5 points from 4 games away.

Fortunately, Dicky Dosh seems to have no new injury worries following Tuesday night, other than Kinsella picking up a slight strain in the reserves, which won’t stop him playing. It’s still too early for Alex Nicholls to be putting in an appearance, I’d have thought, Wrack is still not fit and Gerrard suspended. Constable is still likely to be missing with his ankle injury too.

Picken was left out of the squad on Tuesday so he could play the 90 minutes for the reserves on Wednesday, as was Fangueiro, so I would expect the side to be the same sixteen as the Bolton game, with Picken and Fangueiro added:-

Ince, Gilmartin, Pead, Westwood, Roper, Picken, Dann, Taylor, Wright, Kinsella, Keates, Dobson, Fangueiro, Demontagnac, Fox, Butler, Sam and Bedeau.

Manager Paul Trollope has more problems than Dicky down in Bristol. None of them are revolving around injuries, as the team have a clean bill of health, other than a slight doubt about central defender Steve Elliott, who was struggling to be fit for the last league game at Darlington. They will also be welcoming back skipper James Hunt from suspension.

No, Trollope’s problems all revolve around trying to find a settled side and someone to start scoring the goals that Junior Agogo used to get for them. They did bring in Rickie Lambert (28 goals in 61 league starts for Rochdale) as a replacement, but he has failed to find the net as yet and the whole team has been misfiring in front of goal.

Predictions?

Rovers’ home record is, at present, reasonably dismal and it’s virtually all down to that lack of goals. It reads:-

Played 4 Won 2 Drawn 1 Lost 1 Goals For 3 Against 2 Points 7.

Less than a goal a game doesn’t bode well for their long term prospects and Trollope has been desperately trying to get some extra firepower in on loan.

The key to this game has to be how well DD has motivated his team following their heroics on Tuesday night. Rovers don’t score many goals, but they don’t concede that many either, so this will be close. I’d take our (hopefully) superior class up front to give us a 1 – 0 win.