Bristol Rovers sweating on the availability of three players after Crystal Palace win

Alfie Kilgour, John Marquis and Sylvester Jasper have emerged as injury worries after Bristol Rovers’ Papa John’s Trophy clash against Crystal Palace U21s last night.

The trio all picked up knocks as the Gas beat the young Eagles side 2-0.

Kilgour opened the scoring on the stroke of half-time before Trevor Clarke scored in the second-half.

Midfielder Glenn Whelan was also sent off five minutes before the end after a feisty encounter at the Memorial Ground.

Bristol Rovers injury latest

Barton provided this injury update after the match, as per BBC Radio Bristol:

“We’ve had Alfie Kilgour kicked in the head for a penalty in the first-half. The referee plays on and then tells our players it’s probably a penalty but that’s no good for us. Alf’s now got to go through a concussion protocol from getting kicked in the head by one of their players in the first half.

“We’ve got to assess Sylvester because he’s got a smack in the head. John Marquis is the same. It’s frustrating and I guarantee if we raised the level of physicality, we would have had more sending-offs there tonight.

He added: “You can imagine from me I’m trying to keep the rein on our lads at half-time because they wanted to get stuck into them and meet fire-with-fire. We can’t afford any suspensions or any ill-discipline. My most experienced player has gone in to protect one of his teammates who had not only been horse collared by trampled on by the lad (Killian) Phillips who put a naughty challenge on Jasper.

“I’ve got a clip and I’m going to send it to Mike Jones because the ref can’t miss what he’s missed because he’s a yard away. The boy makes point of contact with his elbow on the neck/head area of our player. If that’s not endangering an opponent, I don’t know what is.”

Bristol Rovers return to league action this weekend at home to Cambridge United and Kilgour, Marquis and Jasper will all now need to be assessed before then.

Barton’s men are currently sat in 21st place in the League One table after two wins from their opening 11 games and have found the step up from League Two to be tough so far.

They can’t afford to be picking up injury blow with some big clashes coming up as they look to start climbing up the division.

The Pirates drew 2-2 away at Exeter City last Saturday and equalised in the last minute through forward Ryan Loft.