Everything to play for as Dale go into another big game

With eleven games still to play this season, Rochdale manager Keith Hill is adamant that his team will not become 'also rans' in the League Two promotion race.

Dale slipped out of the automatic promotion places on Saturday following defeat against local rivals Bury, and Bradford, who travel to Spotland tomorrow night, climbed above Dale later in the afternoon thanks to a resounding 5-0 win over Aldershot.

The Bury defeat saw Hill's men beaten twice in as many games for the first time this season, following the midweek loss to Barnet, and the Dale manager knows his side need to get back to winning ways soon if they are to make a fist of the promotion battle.

"There is a lot of football still to play but if I am being perfectly honest I would expect us to possibly have more points on the board than we have got, which would have maybe given us the opportunity to afford to drop points over the next 11 games," said Hill after Saturday's defeat at Bury. "We have not got those points and we are going to have to do something very similar to what we did last season, which was win seven out of our last ten games and that is very hard to do.

"It's going to be a big ask but I do not think we are going to need a massive points haul to get into the play-offs or even into the automatic promotion spots. If you look at the fixtures for all the teams around us, everyone is playing each other so there will be points gained and points dropped.

"We have to get back to winning ways and if we do we will be competing and if we don't we will become also rans but I could never accept that in any way."

Dale's task is made all the more difficult by the absence of captain Gary Jones, whose groin injury is expected to rule the midfielder out for at least another week, which will see him miss another three key games in the end-of-season sprint finish.

"It is especially hard when you have not got Gary Jones in your side," said the Dale manager. "We can bring players in on loan and we have got to evaluate Gary Jones and we will probably know more by the end of next week.

"We can bring somebody in on loan and I am sure the chairman will give the opportunity to do that but we believe in the players that we have got."