Zain Westbrooke plan outlined as Grant McCann discusses Doncaster Rovers squad depth

The Rovers midfielder has endured a hugely frustrating 2024 on a personal basis. He's played just 15 senior games in the calendar year, with only six of those starts. Westbrooke sat out large portions of last season, with a three-month lay-off in the middle of the campaign owing to another injury.

After initially being involved for the first few weeks of this season, the 28-year-old has not featured since the win over Gillingham way back in early September. He suffered a thigh injury and his return from that has been elongated and complicated even further after his partner recently gave birth to their child. Manager Grant McCann hopes though that the blank midweek between games - Rovers have no midweek matches throughout November - is the perfect chance to reintegrate the former Coventry man. Westbrooke signed a two-year contract extension with Rovers in the summer.

"He's trained the last two or three days," McCann told the Free Press after last Saturday's draw with Notts County. "Now it's just about us getting that intensity into Zain.

"We'll look to try and get a (bounce) game scheduled, not this week but maybe the week after. It'll be a game we can maybe drop a few players into. It's important we get people back. There was some tough decisions again today, who to leave out of the squad but that's where we want to be.

"The boys know that and the lads who weren't on the bench today, they get it. They understand. When I spoke to them all there was no sulking. They understand that the team is in a good place at this moment in time. They'll have to bear with us and wait for their opportunity and you only have to look at the past week we've had: it was a three-game week and we used nearly everybody available. We'll need them all, particularly in December when the games come thick and fast."

Rovers are back on home soil on Saturday, when Salford City visit the Eco-Power Stadium.