Bristol Rovers team news with fresh concerns ahead of FA Cup second round trip to Barnsley

Bristol Rovers have "one or two" fresh absences to deal with when they travel up to Barnsley this weekend in the FA Cup, according to coach Dave Horseman. However, he refused to give away the players' identities.

Horseman and assistant manager Wayne Carlisle will be taking charge of footballing duties for the rest of this week at the very least with manager Matt Taylor taking a leave of absence to deal with a family emergency. There is currently no set return date.

The former Forest Green Rovers manager took press duties ahead of the Gas' FA Cup second round tie with their League One rivals and admitted that, although Rovers are keen to make as few changes as possible, some players have been ruled out due to high injury risk.

"Nobody is back," Horseman declared. "Unfortunately, we'll have one or two ruled out. I won't tell you too much. You'll find that out on Saturday because I don't want to give too much away.

"I think with the amount of games we've played, the amount of games coming up, there'll be one or two that unfortunately just can't be risked because with the testing they've done with the physios this morning, probably [they're] just so fatigued that actually we're running a high risk of injury.

"So it'll be a really strong squad. We're going to win. It'll be a really strong team. There'll be as minimal changes as possible and I'll be really confident the team we put out is good enough to win the game."

Jack Hunt, Promise Omochere and Lino Sousa are certainly still ruled out while post-match after Tuesday night's 2-0 defeat to Blackpool, Taylor revealed that Joel Senior had a good chance of being involved on Saturday with teams allowed to name nine substitutes.

The right-back was deemed available last week ahead of Rovers' 1-0 win at Mansfield Town but is still yet to feature in a squad since he suffered a serious hamstring injury against Stockport County three months ago.