Bristol Rovers boss Joey Barton airs concerns ahead of Portsmouth visit

And the head coach has insisted his summer transfer plans could also be hindered should the situation fail to be resolved.

It came following the Pirates’ 2-0 defeat to Wycombe on Tuesday evening, with the former Premier League midfielder laying the blame on the pitch conditions.

Pompey, of course, make the trip to the Memorial Stadium on Saturday as John Mousinho’s men look to follow up on their 3-1 victory against Accrington in midweek.

And while the Blues endured snow and freezing temperatures at the Crown Ground, Barton has sent out a warning over the playing surface at the Memorial Stadium ahead of Saturday’s contest.

He told Bristol Live: ‘I’ve spoken to Tom and the owner about the pitch saying, “look if that pitch doesn’t get fixed, I’m going to have to recruit completely differently to what I want to do”.

‘To the point where I’m like, it almost might be better bringing in another coach in; somebody who doesn’t need grass who just wants to go back to front relatively quickly.

‘Because if the pitch doesn’t get resolved, as you’ve seen tonight, we’ve played a squad pass in there, it’s hit a bobble and it’s put the opposition through one-on-one. I know that does happen from time to time but I want to build a team that controls the ball.

‘Last year, in League Two, we had a better pitch than we have in League One. They tell me there’s problems with the drainage, stuff’s collapsed

‘I don’t know but we’ve got an owner who spends a lot of money on the facilities, we’ve got lots of grounds people but yet our training pitches are better than our matchday pitches and that is not acceptable.

‘You’ll get all the people saying, "oh, what’s his excuse this time? It’s not the ref, it’s the pitch” but you’re asking me a question and I’m giving you an answer: is the pitch the reason we got beat tonight?

‘No, absolutely not. Is it a mitigating circumstance to the first goal and goals change games, yeah, you have to look at that bobble and think it is.’

In fact, Barton insisted his summer transfer plans could be affected should the conditions fail to improve before the end of the season.

He added: ‘I might have to change how I recruit in the summer and the style of football we play because of the surface that we’re going to play on, there’s no point in us playing 23 games.

‘I’m building a team to control the ball. We play 23 on a surface we control that is not conducive to the way we want to play.’