WAYNE Rooney says he wants to see a ‘positive response’ from his Plymouth Argyle side when they return to Sky Bet Championship action at Bristol City on Saturday.

The Pilgrims boss has spent the past few days assessing the full fall-out of his side’s embarrassing 6-1 defeat at Norwich City on Tuesday night – in particular their failure to again start the match at Carrow Road well.

It’s been a sign of the times for Argyle this season, especially away from home, where they have lost seven of their nine league games to date.

Tuesday’s reverse was also another hefty defeat on the road, this coming after a 4-0 drubbing at Sheffield Wednesday on the opening day of the season, as well as a 5-0 reverse at Cardiff City last month.

Rooney has publicly stated ‘it can’t carry on this way’ and has called on his players to summon a response of sorts against Bristol City.

“I spoke to the players before the [Norwich] game about conceding early goals, so it obviously starts there, conceding in the first few minutes,” said Rooney. “I thought throughout the 90 minutes we were nowhere near good enough.

“It’s important to stay in the game and make sure we don’t concede early on. Of course, the previous result has an affect on players, on players’ confidence, but we have to go there and be resilient. We have to be hard to play against.

“It’s not easy when you see a performance like we saw in the Norwich game – for players, staff, fans. What we saw on Tuesday was not good enough and not acceptable. The main thing now is we show a real positive reaction.”

Argyle will assess the fitness of striker Ryan Hardie (groin) and Liam Gibson (thigh) ahead of the short trek up the M5.