Pears does not take any pressure off the defence at all. To claim a cross or to come to edge of area to claim a ball takes the the pressure off and preserves energy. Multiple times last season the fullbacks had to chase the ball in to our box with pears glued to his line. I don’t think there’s anyway back for him, once you lose the trust of your teammates as a goalkeeper you lose your spot

So to determine if a player is good or not there has to be live and continuous interest in them? Silly take

All keepers make mistakes, all players make mistakes, its always been the quantity with Pears thats been the issue. The last sentence is the sort of lazy shite youd expect Gestede to come out with.

https://rovers.co.uk/news/2025/june/18/rovers-women-and-clitheroe-fc-announce-groundshare-agreement/ Yep on Rovers site too now. Wtf

Rev having a contrarian take?

My main issue with Pears is he seems like an easy target. If a team is good at set pieces and can "stick it on him" he looks absolutely petrified, I think at this level a team having that over you is a risk that isn't worth taking.

I’d suggest Captain Marvel but we don’t play two up front.

He's made mistakes, like pretty much every keeper in the league last season, like a 1m keeper would. Christ Leeds fans were giving Meslier grief on many occasions last season, his valuation is 10 times that of Pears, probably more. Maybe its partly because many fans grew up watching Flowers and Friedel who were a class above, hence expectations are high....

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/gareth-southgate-england-next-manager-35405149 According to the Mirror Southgate has offered his services to Poland. He might do well with a Country which has no real expectation of success.

So of our current options you'd rather have Pears start as our number 1 this season?

You're entitled to that point of view, we'll see who's right this season. We don't exactly appear to be beating the suitors for Tronstad off with a stick this summer though do we? What is it they're not seeing either?

I can't help but feel it's a contrarian take.

At this stage, no idea what you're on about, you're not even talking about the same thing that everyone else is on the thread.

There's plenty to suggest the opposite in fact. That is coming from the same person that thinks Tronstad is shit so grain of salt required.

I don't think there's any evidence at all that Toth is worse than Pears

Don't understand the obsession with shipping Pears out. Pears and Toth are both fairly crap but Toth is clearly the worse of the two imo. Neither are the answer. Have there been any concrete links to Pears leaving or are people simply speculating? Apologies if there have been said links and I've missed them.

I still think that we can't be sure that Toth is the answer for a similar reason. We had 2 spells, the biggest one under Eustace but also one under Ismael where our defence was so strong that the goalkeeper at the time barely had anything to do.

Hos record was good when we had Hyam, Batth/Carter, Brittan and Pickering/Beck running like a well oiled machine.

I’d definitely take Ant-Man, maybe Hulk can be brought out of retirement as well

Going to the NIA to see Pulp tomorrow.

Nobody on the commentary was blaming our keeper for the second goal. When I played any ball played into or around the edge of the six yard box was the keepers ball. Our guy was rooted to the goal line. If he had have got a hand to the ball he would have been “ saving “ it over the line.

Dammit I was preparing for my second calendar appearance after I represented the forum as Mr Testicles that one time

I was thinking about this before I replied to the thread earlier and the two bits in bold are key to this ongoing debate. It’s the word ‘luck’ that is causing part of the issue, as in reality it’s getting softer ties that you probably wouldn’t expect at later stages of the tournament. I certainly think we got that in last years tournament. Whether it’s luck or not is debatable by pure definition of the word. The second point about the expanded tournament is also quite relevant. It may be that due to the increased number of “softer” teams in the competition, that “softer” draws become more of the norm. What Southgate clearly did do was avoid the Iceland’s and the group exits that plagued us under other managers. Games and groups we expected to progress through, we did.

I watched it as well. God it was boring. Safety first every single time. Nobody prepared to take a risk in order to win the game. I can understand defenders playing that way - but midfielders, wide men and strikers?