Joey Barton lamented a pair of "stupid and needless" red cards for Bristol Rovers on Tuesday that has left the cupboard bare when it comes to defensive options.
The Gas were beaten 2-0 at Ipswich Town and, with the game already beyond them, matters worsened for Rovers in the final 10 minutes with Bobby Thomas dismissed for a pair of yellow cards in quick succession before Alfie Kilgour was shown a straight red card in stoppage time for denying a clear scoring opportunity.
Kilgour appeared to commit the cardinal sin for a defender of following one mistake – losing possession to Conor Chaplin in a dangerous area – with another, bringing him down as he bore down on goal, although the defender protested the decision at the time and has told his manager he made no contact with the Ipswich forward and Rovers will review the footage to see if there are grounds for an appeal.
Either way, Rovers' defensive options are thin at best ahead of Saturday's clash with Lincon City at the Mem. James Connolly and James Gibbons are sidelined with stress fractures while Lewis Gibson has a calf tear. With Thomas and Kilgour both facing a one-match suspension, Luca Hoole is the only recognised first-team centre-back who is set to be available.
"We’ll need to otherwise we’re going to be playing people who aren’t centre-halves at centre-half because we’ve got no available or fit centre-halves as of Tuesday night," Barton replied when asked if Rovers will appeal Kilgour's red card.
"That is effectively game over, 2-0 down here and I’m making a couple of substitutions with one eye on the Lincoln game on Saturday. In the midst of that, the two centre-halves in their infinite wisdom decide to get themselves dismissed from the pitch in two weird and wonderful ways.
"We’ve got to remember what we’re doing this year. The reality is at this moment I wish we could compete with Ipswich and the like, but when they’re dropping £1.5million on a left-back and £800,000 here, they’ve got two teams in effect who are maybe players above the level, players who could get Championship moves.
"It does show the reality of where we are now. We never came to a stadium like this last season in League Two and we’ve got to build blocks of our team. It doesn’t help when we’ve got players who aren’t available via injury and it doesn’t help when I think we get stupid and needless sending-offs via our own stupidity."
Barton added when asked about possible solutions for Saturday's game: "Hooley can do a job there. We’ll figure something out, but it might be difficult for Lincoln to prepare for us, put it that way, but I imagine they’ll be lumping it straight forward from back to front and testing out our backline."
The defeat dropped Rovers to 18th in League One with eight points from as many games to start the season. Ipswich, meanwhile, continued their flying start to the season and are well placed to compete strongly for automatic promotion.
Rovers have been on a learning curve since their return to League One with several big clubs in the mix and some of their harshest lessons yet were delivered at Portman Road on Tuesday. The manager believes Rovers his team would benefit from being "cuter" in games.
"I thought they started really brightly and showed why they are everyone’s tip for promotion," Barton said. "We kind of weathered that early part of the storm and then conceded just as we were getting over it.
"I thought we settled after the first goal and we had a couple of half chances on the counter-attack. I thought Harvey Saunders showed a bit of naivety, he maybe should’ve done what their boy did and flung himself on the floor because Leif Davis at that point was the last man and they might have been reduced to 10 men. He’s tried to stay on his feet and we don’t get rewarded in the modern game.
"You see the boy with Alfie Kilgour. Alf says he doesn’t touch him and he throws himself to the floor and Alf is dismissed. Maybe we’ve got to get a bit cuter and utilise the opportunity to take the opponent down to 10 men.
"I’m not one to advocate diving and cheating, but clearly at this level, you benefit from it. (Sam) Morsy pulls back Antony Evans after 10 minutes. It is probably the most blatant yellow card you’ll ever see and he doesn’t book him. Ten minutes after that, he pulls him back again and he books him for it.
"I said to him at half time the first one was worse than the second one, and the ref accepted it. It doesn’t help us."
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