Wayne Rooney sets Plymouth Argyle new challenge ahead of Bristol City clash at Ashton Gate

Wayne Rooney has challenged his Plymouth Argyle side to avoid conceding early on against Bristol City following the Pilgrims' disappointing defeat to Norwich City at Carrow Road last time out.

The Robins welcome Argyle to Ashton Gate on Saturday as Liam Manning's side look to bounce back from back-to-back defeats to Burnley and Watford following the November international break.

Although City were unable to secure all three points at Vicarage Road on Tuesday evening, Liam Manning's side were unfortunate to not at least come away with a point as Ryan Andrews' winner proved to be the Hornets' only shot on target in the game. The same could not be said about Plymouth however as Rooney's side were thrashed 6-1 by the Canaries.

Following the dismal evening at Carrow Road, the former Manchester United star has urged his side to make it difficult for the Robins to get on the scoresheet early on.

"It's important to stay in the game and make sure we don't concede early on," Rooney told our sister title Plymouth Live. "Of course, the previous result has an effect on players, on players' confidence, but we have to go there and be resilient. We have to be hard to play against.

"It was my final message to the players at Norwich before we went out: 'Don't concede early because if we concede early we know it will be a long night against a good team'. We need to make it more difficult for teams to score.

"It's not easy when you see a performance like we saw in the Norwich game - for players, staff, fans. The most important thing now is the reaction to that result."

In their nine games away from Home Park so far this season, Argyle have only managed to score three goals and have conceded on 23 different occasions. So far their campaign has included a 5-0 defeat to Cardiff City, a 4-0 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday, a 3-0 defeat to Leeds United as well as Tuesday night's loss to Norwich City.

But Rooney has shut down suggestions that he could revert to an ultra-defensive style to try and keep the Bristol City frontline quiet by referencing Argyle's trip to Elland Road earlier this season.

"We went to Leeds and did that, and we lost the game," explained the former England international. "We are trying to do different things and it comes down to personnel, an inner fight as individuals but also from players collectively as a team. I think you have to have that pride.

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"Of course, you can lose football games - I have said this before - but when you lose a game in the manner of what we did against Norwich that's not what anyone wants to see. Myself and for the players, we have a lot of responsibility to try to move this club forward. What we saw on Tuesday night was not good enough and was not acceptable - the players know that. The main thing now is we show a real positive reaction."

Plymouth will be without star Morgan Whittaker for Saturday afternoon's clash, while Ibrahim Cissoko, Joe Edwards, Brendan Galloway and Conor Hazard all also remain sidelined through injury.

However, the visitors may be boosted by the return of both Ryan Hardie and Lewis Gibson ahead of their trip to Ashton Gate with Rooney confirming late calls will be made over both players' fitness.

"Hopefully he [Gibson] will be fit but we will assess him again tomorrow," Rooney said on Thursday. "Ryan has stepped up a little bit today. Again, we will assess him. Everyone else is still injured.

"We are trying to get to the bottom of why we are getting these injuries. Morgan's was a kick, Brendan's was when he was away on international duty. We have looked at training, we have looked at how the team trained over the last few years as well, to see if we are doing anything dramatically different to what was happening, which is not the case."