by The Rovers Review

Doncaster Rovers return to action after an extended break to face a Gillingham side who have lost their last three games.

Darren Ferguson is feeling confident ahead of the trip to the Gills, but thinks Rovers need to be wary of a reaction from the opposition,

“Well when the manager Steve went in they went on a hell of a run and did fantastically well, they were probably looking at the play-offs themselves at one point. But then they’ve slipped away a little but, they’ve lost their last three games and a heavy defeat to Southend will have hurt them because they took a lot of fans there.

“What we’ve managed to do is we’ve not suffered too many back-to-back defeats which is important, we’re now on the back-to-back wins after Bradford and Blackpool and we’re going into a game on Saturday that’s winnable but again it’s going to be tough because you would imagine that given what happened to Gillingham last time at Southend, they’ll be a reaction there.

“They’re a good team and they’ve got real threats and real obvious ones that we’ve gone through today on the training ground – it’s a tough place to go and one thing we’ve got at the moment is that we seem to be playing quite well and looking fairly solid and the players are playing with confidence.”

Rovers will be boosted by the return of Andy Butler and Andy Boyle to the side after their recoveries from injury. Tom Anderson will narrowly miss out on the game as he’s scheduled to be fit for action for the MK Dons game next week.

Alex Kiwomya will also be available after his battle with a short illness which meant he missed the victory at Blackpool.

Gillingham’s home form isn’t too strong as they’ve collected 4 wins from 18 home games, while Rovers have only 5 of their 20 away games so far this season. The Gills’ home form is consequently the worst in League One with them picking up 21 points from a possible 54.

Although they have the worst home record it will still be a test for Rovers who haven’t won at MEMs Priestfield stadium since January 2007.

Both sides do boast quite a good defensive record in the league with Rovers fourth best, conceding just 45 goals in 38 games – only Wigan (25), Shrewsbury (33) and Blackburn (36) have shipped less goals. Gillingham have the 7th best defensive record conceding 47 goals in 39 games.

The last time both sides faced each other was on the opening day of the season where it ended goalless. Ady Pennock was in charge for that game but was later sacked and replaced by current manager Steve Lovell.