Clarets face midweek test at the Keepmoat

It's our fourth visit to Yorkshire this season in what will be our sixth away game. We beat York in the cup and have since gone on to record wins at both Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds in the league.

That Sheffield Wednesday win was our first league win of the season. We'd drawn with Bolton on the previous Saturday and that victory gave us a good start with four points from two games.

Things have certainly moved on since then. A defeat at Brighton and that home draw against Blackburn are the only other points we've dropped so we set off for Donny with 20 points out of the first 27 available.

Scott Arfield, the most important thing is the three points

Ben Watson's late winner for Wigan in last season's FA Cup Final against Manchester City has left us in a position where we can actually go top of the league tonight. That cup win sent Wigan into Europe and so their scheduled league game this week against current leaders QPR has been postponed.

I'm not getting over excited about that prospect just now but it would be nice to sit there at the pinnacle of the league. We've not done that in a while. We were top in August 2006 but that was after only three games and hardly worth counting, so we have to go back to the 2001/02 season since we last held top spot at any significant part of the season.

And that gives us every reason to be cautious. We were top then going into the New Year but it all went wrong in the second half of the season. We won just six of the last 22 games and ultimately didn't even make the play-offs despite holding a 13 point lead over eventual play-off winners Birmingham by mid-December.

What happened in that season, while maybe not relevant, should warn us that we've achieved nothing yet other than a good start, but what a good start it's been and long may it continue.

The football has been enjoyable to watch; we've been scoring goals aplenty and keeping clean sheets too.

Now we go to Doncaster where a win would see us go top and midfielder Scott Arfield was asked if that was an incentive. "I think it is to be fair but as I've said before the most important thing is the three points and if that puts us at the top of the league then great," he said.

"You go into a game to get the three points and if you can't get them you get one point. Keeping it going is the most important thing. It's the hardest thing as well especially when you've got teams coming like Charlton did and it's up to us to break that type of challenge down. I think we did that on Saturday and now it's a different test for Tuesday."

It is a different test and we'll have to go into it without Dean Marney who sits this one out after collecting his fifth yellow card of the season, this despite the club currently reporting that he has only three yellow cards with David Jones the one on five.

Marney does have five. They came in the away games at Sheffield Wednesday and Brighton and the home games against Yeovil, Blackburn and then Charlton, that card bringing us our second suspension of the season following Tom Heaton's one match ban for his red card at Brighton.

The question is who will replace Marney. Manager Sean Dyche will have described it as an opportunity for whoever does come in and, despite the small squad, there are a number of candidates.

David Edgar played ahead of Marney in the Preston game recently and I suspect he's the favourite to come in. But it could be Brian Stock who replaced him in the Forest win last week or Arfield could be moved into central midfield leaving a place for either Junior Stanislas or Keith Treacy.

I do suspect it will be Edgar and if so our team will be: Tom Heaton, Kieran Trippier, Michael Duff, Jason Shackell, Ben Mee, Scott Arfield, David Edgar, David Jones, Michael Kightly, Danny Ings, Sam Vokes. Subs from: Alex Cisak, Luke O'Neill, Kevin Long, Danny Lafferty, Brian Stock, Junior Stanislas, Keith Treacy, Ryan Noble.

Doncaster returned to the Championship last season in dramatic style. They'd been down in League One for just a year after the farcical experiment of bringing in supposed big names on short term deals, under the direction of scout Willie McKay, failed spectacularly.

When manager Dean Saunders left for Wolves the job went to former Claret Brian Flynn who steered them through to the title and promotion with Bournemouth and play-off winners Yeovil.

Flynn stepped down in the summer. He's now the director of football with Paul Dickov the former Oldham manager having taken charge.

Considered to be relegation candidates again they've actually made a decent enough start and currently sit five points above the drop zone. They've won twice, against Blackburn at home and last Saturday at Sheffield Wednesday, drawn three games and lost three.

Their two home defeats have come at the hands of Blackpool, on the opening day of the season, and then Bournemouth at the end of August and their only home game in September ended in a 2-2 draw against Nottingham Forest.

Loan signing Federico Macheda made his debut in that Forest game. He scored both goals and followed that up with the winner at Hillsborough on Saturday. He'll definitely be one to watch tonight.

Those three goals mean he's their leading goalscorer while both Chris Brown and Theo Robinson have bagged two league goals.

Reece Wabara missed the win at Wednesday and was replaced by Paul Quinn who did well. Wabara could be fit for tonight's game but might have to return via the bench with Quinn preferred.

If so, they will line up:  Ross Turnbull, Paul Quinn, Bongani Khumalo, Rob Jones, James Husband, Theo Robinson, Paul Keegan, Richie Wellens, Dean Furman, Chris Brown, Federico Macheda. Subs from: Jon Maxted, Mark Duffy, Luke McCullough, Kyle Bennett, David Cotterill, James Coppinger, Reece Wabara.

Last Time We Were There

Our last visit to the Keepmoat, on Easter Monday 2012, was one of the final nails in Doncaster's relegation coffin. We won 2-1 to record our first ever win at the Keepmoat and our first away league win against Doncaster since the day Andy Marriott and Mark Yates made Burnley debuts early in the 1991/92 season.

It took our total number of away wins for the season to ten against a Doncaster team that showed nine changes from the previous game. The 'All Stars' were left out. That included El Hadji Diouf, Frederic Piquionne, Carl Ikeme, Herita Ilunga, Pascal Chimbonda and Habib Beye.

Manager Saunders included Brian Stock but his afternoon, in what was his last game for Doncaster, was a short lived one.

Marvin Bartley was ruled out of our team and so Eddie Howe went with the team that had played the last hour of the previous game against Brighton three days earlier. Such was the lack of players that the bench was like the Beast and the youth club with three of the youth team players named amongst the five substitutes.

Josh McQuoid scored his only Burnley goal

Doncaster set off like a house on fire. They were much the better team for the first minute and a half but that proved to be their best 90 seconds of the game, and we were the better side for the remainder of the afternoon.

We had chances to go in front, several of them, but failed to take them, that was until nine minutes before half time when Josh McQuoid scored his one and only Burnley goal who scored a sensational goal from some distance.

Incredibly, and against the run of play, Doncaster equalised when one of Sunderland's former film stars Chris Brown headed home.

Eventually it took a penalty to win it for us. Danny Ings was brought down and the only question was as to who would take it given Jay Rodriguez was out injured. The answer was Charlie Austin. He'd made his debut at Doncaster in the previous season, a disappointing one, and he took his first Burnley penalty in this game, making no mistake stroking the ball home into the bottom right hand corner.

There was time for one of the youth club to get on. This time it was Shay McCartan in the 89th minute and he all but got onto a through ball right at the end. Sadly it proved to be his only first team appearance for Burnley.

The teams were;

Doncaster: Gary Woods, James O'Connor, Adam Lockwood, Sam Hird, George Friend, Fabien Robert (John Oster 87), Brian Stock (Giles Barnes 22), Simon Gillett, Kyle Bennett (James Coppinger 45), James Hayter, Chris Brown. Subs not used: Neil Sullivan, Mamadou Bagayoko.

Burnley: Lee Grant, Kieran Trippier, Michael Duff, David Edgar, Ross Wallace, Josh McQuoid, Dean Marney, Chris McCann, Junior Stanislas (Shay McCartan 89), Charlie Austin, Danny Ings. Subs not used: Brian Jensen, Danny Lafferty, Steven Hewitt, Cameron Howieson.

Previous Games against Doncaster

Click HERE to see all previous results against Doncaster