Match Day Thread Bristol Rovers v Sunderland - Tuesday 10th March - KO 19:45

Bristol Rovers v Sunderland – Skybet League One

Last time out Sunderland drew with Gillingham and Bristol lost to Southend.
Sunderland travel to the Memorial Stadium to face Bristol Rovers on Tuesday night.
The Black Cats will be looking for a valuable 3 points as the race for promotion hots up, and Phil Parkinson will hope to repeat the 3-0 victory at the Stadium of Light last month.
Kyle Lafferty is expected to keep his place in the starting eleven after scoring two goals on his first start at the Stadium of Light.
The Gas suffered a surprise defeat away to Southend on Saturday and will want to put on an improved performance in front of their home fans. Striker Johnson Clarke-Harris is doubtful after missing the last game with a shoulder injury.

Phil Parkinson:
"We've been waiting for someone to produce a bit of magic. Denver has been a massive threat for us, looking at the stats, his crossing is right up there. Today he has produced a moment of real quality, and he deserves to stay in the team."
“We’ve got to block the shot, if we do that we’re talking about three points.”
“Charlie has had a bit of problem with his back, so we decided to get it sorted this week."
“He probably could have carried on through to the Blackpool game but it’s getting to a stage where we felt we should do the injection this week and hopefully he will be OK for the week coming up."
“It’s not a major problem and he has a good chance of being in contention on Tuesday night."
Ben Garner:
“I can’t defend the criticism at the moment. There have been games that we’ve lost and we’ve played well, where we’ve been unfortunate and should have taken our chances, and you can defend that to a certain point, but when we’ve played as we have over the last two weeks, I can’t defend that.”
“I wouldn’t say anything back to the fans. All I can do is say, ‘thank you for your support and I apologise for the performance’ because I know what it means to supporters of this football club.”
He’s (Clarke-Harris) not too bad, I’d say an outside chance for Tuesday, but it was soon for today (against Southend). If not Tuesday, for the Ipswich game I’d expect him to be fit."
Form:

Prutton predicts: meh
Match Appointments:
Referee: CHARLES BREAKSPEAR
Assistant Referees: Darren Wilding and Thomas Harty
Fourth Official: Ravel Cheosiaua

Team Line ups
Sunderland: McLaughlin, O’Nien, Flanagan, Ozturk, Willis, Hume, Power, Dobson, Semenyo, Maguire, Lafferty.

Subs: Burge, McLaughlin, Scowen, Lynch, Grigg, Gooch, Watmore.
Injured: Embleton, Wright

Bristol Rovers: Blackman, Kilgour, Craig, Harries, Hare, Sercombe, Upson, Clarke, Leahy, Daly, Mitchell-Lawson.
Subs: van Stappershoef, Holmes-Dennis, Bennett, Menayese, Abraham, Rodman, Hargreaves
Injured: Ginelly, Clarke-Harris

Betting Odds:
Home 14/5 Away 10/11 Draw 9/4

My two pence:
It seems like just a few weeks since we last played Bristol Rovers
Another important game and one that we really do need to win, especially after the last two results.
Given that Rovers have only won once in 18 games, we need to put them under pressure from the start and get an early goal or two.
My guess is a 2-0 away win.

Ha’way the Lads

 

Great OP again RTB.

2-0 the lads and the return of the sheet

 

Bristol Rovers are a poor team in even worse form. We need to pile on the misery. 0-5 Power, Maguire, Lafferty, Semenyo, Grigg

 

Great thread as usual, it's my 'go to' reference for our games tbh, especially regarding the opposition.

In all honesty anything but a win would be a real choker, and I'm expecting us to go all out for a convincing victory.

It's time to be brave, go for the game and support whatever team is on the pitch.

We'll have good numbers down there and I believe we'll all come back happy ....

.... Haway the Lads, 4-0 and I don't care who scores.

 

Need to start with two up front Lafferty and Semenyo would be my choice with a free ranging role for Maguire, if he is no better that he has been recently I would sub him on 50 mins, we need to win this game, if we don't it could be a struggle to keep up with the pack, our recent three games, especially the last one, have been costly, and PP needs to think hard on why, its tough at the top, no pressure . OaU

 

Great OP

How will we do, a draw probably?

Last 3 games v poor

Parky is likely to keep the same team...unfortunately

 

Great thread as usual marra.

2-1 away win.

Ha’way the Lads

 

Any performance will do for me as long as we get the big 3 points.

 

Three points is all that matters, a good performance is a bonus.

 

Yep, we do not want this bad run of results to continue... just at the business end of the season..... personally I am quite happy not changing a winning side... now however!

 

We need to stop letting poor goals in as well with sloppy defending, get it tight at the back again Parky.
2-0 tomorrow night, hopefully the big lad Laffy gets one again, we need someone to go on a scoring run.

 

I agree with those that say 3 points is a must and it’s not about performance. We really do need the points and the pressure is on. My only real concern is that we don’t score many away from home. If we are serious about promotion we just have to win. Not sure on this one I think we have to score first to get the 3 points. Fingers crossed. Great thread as usual.

 

If we cannot beat a very poor Bristol Rovers team in a terrible run of form we don't deserve to go up. Must win. Need to score more than once as we have stopped keeping clean sheets since Bailey Wright got injured.

 

We need 3 points but we look like we’ve ran out of steam lately and I’m not expecting anything to change here.
1-1

 

TBF we've played three teams in great form, and been beaten once ...

... we'll win tomorrow and go joint second imo.

The six-pointers will take their toll on the other teams, and we'll finish second with a win at Rotherham.

 

I hope we've secured 2nd already by then Smug. I can't take the last game nerves and I worry that the players can't either.

 

We can but hope that your words are prophetic !

 

Just got to put these to the Sword or our season could be over.

I think we will too. 0-2 to the lads!!

Bart

 

It’s not just the results but manner of our performances over last month or so that’s frustrated me.
I just think we look like a side running out of steam at a key time. Playing catch up for so long might actually catch up on us.

 

We've lost one of the last seven games.

We've only lost to the top team away from home.

We've been playing catch up on Rotherham who were 11 points above us a month ago ....

... we can go above them tomorrow, or level.

We've just played three in form teams including Gillingham who've lost fewer games than Rotherham, Oxford, Peterborough and Portsmouth.

We had a terrible start to the season but can still go up automatically and have less six pointers than most of our rivals.