{"id":286367,"date":"2025-07-23T22:53:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T22:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/286367\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T22:53:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T22:53:21","slug":"report-bristol-rovers-undone-by-championship-quality-in-penultimate-pre-season-friendly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/286367\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Bristol Rovers undone by Championship quality in penultimate pre-season friendly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bristol Rovers were beaten 2-0 by Coventry City at the Mem in their penultimate pre-season friendly<\/p>\n

Daniel Hargraves<\/strong> Bristol Rovers reporter<\/p>\n

21:24, 23 Jul 2025<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers lost 2-0 to Coventry City in their penultimate pre-season friendly(Image: Dan Hargraves\/Bristol Live)<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers fell to a 2-0 defeat in front of an impressive crowd over over 4,000 at the Memorial Stadium against last season’s Championship play-off semi-finalists Coventry City on Wednesday evening in their penultimate pre-season friendly.<\/p>\n

Coventry created the better opportunities in the early stages as Tatsuhiro Sakamoto and Brandon Thomas-Asante went close, forcing good saves from Luke Southwood. The latter then fired an effort over the crossbar as the Sky Blues flexed their Championship muscles.<\/p>\n

Rovers then started to kick into gear, seeing more of the ball and asking Coventry the tougher questions. Their best opportunity fell to Promise Omochere, who headed a cross from Kamil Conteh over the bar.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Bristol Rovers 0-2 Coventry City live: Reaction as Gas are beaten by Championship side<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sky Blues made 10 changes at the break with substitute Ephron Mason Clarke making a swift impact, firing wide of goal after Southwood punched away a free-kick.<\/p>\n

Coventry continued to crank up the pressure, with Alfie Kilgour in particular impressing in defence, before the Gas\u2019 resistance was eventually breached. A venomous cross from Raphael was turned in at the back-post into his own goal by Macauely Southam-Hales, just minutes after coming on.<\/p>\n

Another substitute made a difference at the other end, as Shaq Forde raced up the right flank before putting in a teasing cross towards Ruel Sotiriou, who couldn\u2019t quite get the necessary power on the header.<\/p>\n

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It eventually ended 2-0 as a perfect through ball from Matt Grimes was latched onto by Kaine Kesler-Hayden who then rounded Southwood and fired into an empty net.<\/p>\n

Rovers will conclude their preparations for the upcoming League Two season with another test against Championship opposition in Oxford United at the Kassam Stadium on Saturday afternoon before hosting Harrogate Town the following Saturday in their season opener.<\/p>\n

Bristol Rovers<\/a> starting XI: Luke Southwood; Joel Senior (off for Macauley Southam-Hales 46\u2019), Connor Taylor, Alfie Kilgour, Taylor Moore (off for Bryant Bilongo 46\u2019), Jack Sparkes (off for Ollie Dewsbury 70′; Kamil Conteh, Josh McEachran (off for Kofi Shaw 59\u2019), Isaac Hutchinson (off for Luke Thomas 46\u2019); Ruel Sotiriou, Promise Omochere (off for Shaq Forde 59\u2019 (off for Dan Ellison 74′)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bristol Rovers were beaten 2-0 by Coventry City at the Mem in their penultimate pre-season friendly Daniel Hargraves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,2707,748,393,4884,89503,197,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-286367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-rovers-fc","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-josh-mceachran","14":"tag-sky","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114905009545013823","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}