Bristol Rovers fan Dennis Payter: Lack of a target-man is costing Rovers

Bristol Rovers fan's view by Dennis Payter: Although we conceded three goals against the Saints I was still surprised to see that Paul Trollope thinks that most of our problems are in defence.

For me it is a lack of a striker to hold the ball up that is causing us major problems. We clear the ball and it is coming straight back into our area and putting too much pressure on our defence.

The writing was on the wall from the start when we lined up with five in midfield and one striker at home in an FA Cup tie, what sort of message does that send out?

I feel sorry for Jo Kuffour who is not the type of player to hit with a long ball out of defence.

A "keep-it-tight" line-up looked comfortable in the first-half but the move that summed it up in the that first period was a build-up that saw Carl Regan overlap down the right and get a great cross into the box. But there was no-one on the end of it because we had five strung across the middle.

After conceding a poor first goal and getting clinically punished on the break it meant we needed to chase the game.

So as we have seen so many times this season, once we had conceded a couple of goals we started to play.

Trolls at least got it right when he took off Dominic Blizzard and Mark Wright. The duo have been disappointing signings, Friday night was crying out for an attacking midfielder in the Craig Disley role and Blizzard has hardly proved a good replacement while Wright might have had a good game at MK Dons last week but he lacks the quality to unlock defences at home.

Trolls may well be worried about the defence although I felt Jeff Hughes again slotted in well at left-back. Are the manager's worries based around the ongoing fitness problems of Danny Coles who is badly missed in this line-up?

We now have two must-win home games if our season is not to fizzle out before the end of November. I see Gillingham have taken a promising striker on loan from Manchester United who could play against us. There must be a striker like that kicking his heels in the higher divisions who could do a job for us … it would help our attack and the defence.