Andy Butler frustrated as Doncaster Rovers fail to take training ground progress onto pitch

The Rovers boss had been pleased with what he felt was positive progress made at Cantley Park during the week as he sought to spark a change in his side’s fortunes in front of goal.

But he said the specifics of the aspects of play that had been focused on were largely absent as Rovers fell to an eighth defeat in 13 matches.

“There were patterns of play that we worked on that we just didn’t execute properly in the game,” he said.

“There were times when we did but I felt we took one too many touches in the final third and allowed them to get their shape back. We knew they would be expansive and they would press because that is what Nigel [Adkins] does with his side.

“We just didn’t see the spaces on the pitch. We showed them at half time where the spaces were and we nearly got in with Tom Anderson passing to Matt Smith.

“After that one time we never did it again. We’ll look into that.

“We spoke about the positive start which we got but then conceding the goal seemed to knock the stuffing out of us. We’ll look at that because it comes back to a mindset.

“There were still spaces to exploit but we moved the ball too slowly and it became congested.

“Like many things, when it’s not going well you will go away and think about things far too much when it should just come natural."

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