Sam Allardyce felt that the injury count took their toll on Rovers as they fell to a 4-0 defeat to Arsenal.

Facing Arsenal at the Emirates is never the easiest of tasks, but with a squad depleted by injuries, it was always going to be an uphill task.

But after an Ooijer own goal inside two minutes and then losing Gaël Givet shortly afterwards through injury, it was never going to be Rovers' day.

"From my point of view is that we just didn't have enough of our more experienced players available to select from the beginning," said Allardyce after the game.

"That was always going to make life difficult for us today.

"And then losing the goal after a minute like we did against Fulham was going to make it even more difficult.

"The disappointing thing was how we talked about that, how we talked about not conceding early on and we did that again.

"Then of course, the two injuries to two very key players for us, Givet and Warnock, plus the injuries we already had in Nelsen, Grella, Santa Cruz, Reid, Emerton meant that fifty percent of the side that if fit I probably would have selected to start to this game, didn't contribute today, some never started, some had to come off very quickly.

"So we just didn't have enough to cope with Arsenal in the end."