Doncaster Rovers boss Danny Schofield on the missing ingredient needed to make team genuine promotion contenders

The South Yorkshire club head to Stockport County tomorrow seven points off the play-off places and with just 14 games remaining.

Schofield has a target of 73 points in his head which he believes should be enough to secure his team a top seven spot, although he acknowledges they are going to have to start picking off the teams above them sooner rather than later.

At some point, Rovers need to put together a decent unbeaten run, their best yet this season being back in August when they won three and drew once.

Since then, however, Rovers have only won three games on the bounce once more, the recent wins against Tranmere, Swindon and Barrow, a sequence in which they didn’t concede a goal.

But they followed that promising run with back-to-back defeats - including last Saturday at home to Yorkshire rivals Bradford City - a pattern that has been familiar throughout the 2022-23 campaign.

“We do need to strive for this consistency,” admitted Schofield. “I do try to be as relentless as possible in training sessions.

“But we look to just try and focus on us and how professional we can be, how much we can prepare the team in all the different elements of football - physically, technically, tactically and mentally - just to put them all in a good place to then go and compete.

“We know we can compete, we know we can win football games, we know we can perform really well - but we also know we need to win more games than what we are doing at the minute, that is our key focus.”

One area Schofield knows his team needs to improve on is in front of goal.

“It’s about being more clinical in the moments when we do create chances,” he added, “Barring the Bradford game, in pretty much every other game, we’ve created really good opportunities to score.

“The Sutton game for example, we had a great chance at 1-0 down to score, we’ve just got to be more clinical, ruthless or decisive. We need to make sure that those moments are in our favour.”

Schofield, who this week signed captain Tom Anderson and midfielder Kyle Hurst to new two-and-a-half year deals, said tomorrow’s hosts had shown what could be achieved with consistency, The Hatters sitting fifth in the League Two table with a genuine chance of a top-three finish in their first season back in the Football League after an 11-year absence.

“They are a club who have recruited well in the summer and in January, so we know it is going to be a real challenge,” added Schofield, of a club where he had a short loan spell as a player back in 2013.

“They are very consistent with how they want to play football and with their defensive and attacking shape, so we’re certainly going to have to be at our best in those moments that I speak about.

“They’ve got some really good players and a really good manager, so I’m not surprised at all how well they have done. I had a loan spell there as a player so I know how big that club is.

“It’s an attractive club for owners and investors and they are obviously looking to get promoted this season.”