joey_big_nose

Yes, a real shame he wasted that talent. Could have been a top Championship or even a decent Premiership player. A lot of paralells with Bentley.

Good player for us. Had a few memorable moments but top for me is scoring this frankly unbelievable team goal against Derby. Really need a striker to come in of a similar quality and experience now Edit - only just realised that hes had by far his longest spell with any club with Rovers.

Bloody hell, we just shouldn't be looking at centre mids at all. It's so depressing we are.

Yeah but hardly in the same league as Tugay, Le Tissier, Okocha et al.

I'm not a big one for decrying injustices, but that Tugay was not included in the BBCs "best Premier League players to never play for the big six" (Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Spurs, Man Utd) is up there with best of them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/52440999 Bizarrely David Batty was in there. And ludicrously Shearer wasn't - and he was on the panel! I suppose they thought it would be uncomfortable to have a Shearer love in with him in the room. I wouldn't have swapped Tugay for any of those in there. Though choosing between him and Le Tissier would have been a tough one. Also while being bitchy how can Spurs be in the "big six" when they've not actually won the Prem or FA cup in the whole Premier League era?

Travis improve anyone he plays with. Evans is totally different prospect with him, as Downing, Johnson or whoever. I would say the one area of the pitch we need to sign absolutely nobody is central mid (we currently have 8-10* of them even with Smallwood gone)- whether that be attacking cm or defensive cm or box to box cm or whatever. If we do I will go mental. We do however need to sign players in every single other position. Sadly I am fully expecting Tony to sign 3 centre mids. *8= Travis, Evans, Johnson, Rothwell, Davenport, Dack, Holtby, Buckley. Downing and Bennett who are used there also takes you to 10.

If we really are only shopping for frees we are in serious trouble. I cant see us even barely adequately plugging all our gaps for less than £5m and be able to hold our position mid table, let alone kick on. And If we are spending £0 then we will be likely to be sucked into a Bolton style relegation vortex if (as you would expect) most of the frees turn out to be poor. Armstrong, Dack, Lenihan, Travis will be queuing to leave. So in summary hope this is wide of the mark.

Fantastic listen. Made me go back and catch up on the last few. All really great Also - thought the coffee mug advert for the Terrace Store is absolutely hilarious! Well done to whoever scripted that and did the imitation.

This is totally fair I think. But there is a logic behind it. Nyambe has had a lot more good games than Bell, and Travis and Lenihan have had a lot more good games than Rothwell. It kind of works like a bank account. Players build up their credit by having good performances. Then you can "afford" a few bad ones. When you go deep in the red (like say Brereton) you have a hell of lot to do to recover. It changes over time as well. Look at this forum three years ago and everyone was generally very positive about Bennett. Now he is a pariah increasingly disliked by the fan base for his poor performances. Not really his fault - he's getting on and played absurdly out of his position - but there it is. Such is life.

If you've got a solid basis then you can experiment with young players. If we sort out the defence and keeper I think the likes of Buckley, JRC and Davenport can kick on. Not sure we can really afford to rely on Carter though. We need a top experienced gk, centreback, left back then we can probably accommodate Nyambes development. As it is we are so brittle on the defence.

Our defence is better? We've shipped goals for fun. Not suprising when you have makeshift fullbacks and a keeper who has really struggled. It all goes back to the transfer policy.

Okay fair enough. But he was hardly Tugay though was he? And him and Tugay were never going to play together, just like they didn't at Rangers.

The weird thing was why did we sign Ferguson when we had Tugay? I mean they are very similar types of player - but Tugay is a genius while Ferguson run of the mill. Bringing Ferguson in was only going to out one of put best players of all time on the bench to justify the price.... Just seemed unnecessary. And I was pretty sure we did everything to try and keep Duff but he had a release clause and there was nothing we could do about it.

If we'd used 12m to sign a striker who scored and a decent defender and keeper and we would have been up there. It's really that simple in the last analysis. Most owners wouldn't accept that.

It's frustrating as we do have some good players. But I suppose every club mid table thinks that. I guess the owners will have some thinking to do. If they have learnt anything in the last 10 years they must know the last half a season has all the hall marks of turning into a relegation season next year. I'd be looking at giving Damien Johnson a go with a view to bringing an established manager if it doesn't work out. Has anyone suddenly got promoted after two mediocre season with the same manager?

I think it's pretty rare that championship players are bought by premier League clubs. How many were last summer? Anyone know? My impression is you would need to be really pulling up trees to go the Prem but I don't think any of ours are quite in that category yet. Probably the bigger danger is the club's coming down trying to take them off us. I think we've got a decent chance of holding onto all of them.

Agreed. He looks so poor to me. Can't believe we are now drawing. Mental.

Not looking to take anything away from the lads but reading are unbelievably bad.

Well you can swap round Evans or Johnson for Davenport and Rothwell or Downing for JRC. The point was more that's probably the minimum signings we want.

I think minimum we need to do with the team for next year to kick on : ----------------------New Signing Nyambe-------Lenihan----New Signing----New Signing --------------------Travis------Davenport ---------JRC------------Dack-----------Armstrong -----------------------New Signing Subs : New GK, New CB, New Full Back, Evans, Holtby, Gallagher, New Striker Squad : Williams, Bell, Johnson, Bennett, Downing, Buckley, Samuel, Rothwell, Graham Sold : Brereton, Smallwood, Mulgrew, Bennett By my count that's eights new players. A bit of a stretch but doable. Last few years we've signed about 5-7 first team players each summer. For example last year we got 7 - Holtby, Gallagher, Cunningham, Walton, Johnson, Downing, Tosin. A top gk, centreback, left back and striker would turn us into a top six outfit. Can Mowbray manage that though? Or will he spend all his money on more number 10s, holding midfielders and wide strikers?

That was terrible. Think Millwall watched a few videos of us and knew what to do to nullify our setup. They should have won by another goal on balance of decent chances.

Would be interesting to give him a run of games playing up front with Armstrong I'm a two. Might suit him better. ---------------------Walton Nyambe----Lebihan----Tosin----JRC ------------Travis-----Davenport --Rothwell-----------------------Downing ---------Gallagher------Armstrong

Don't really agree with this. Armstrong has always looked a threat if he could smooth a few kinks out of his game. A bit like Josh King you could see he has the potential. Gallagher and particularly Brereton are just not like that. They struggle to perform on a basic level game after game. I'll be delighted if they do pull it together but both look a lot closer to a Grabbi or a Best than an Armstrong or a King.

It's not the worst thing in the world to keep Mowbray, he's got some plus points. But if we had a decent amount to invest you would look for someone better. The squad is all over the place and we wasted a huge amount of money on Gallagher and Brereton. He's signed some good quality - Armstrong and Dack principally - but his recruitment on the whole hasn't been of the standard to get promotion, and he's been lucky to get a few top players through the academy to help cover some major holes. That said I think we are weeing with the willy we have so we have to hope Tony learns a few lessons and make a better fist of whatever budget is provided next time. If he signs another wide striker, holding midfielder or number 10 I might weep but won't be surprised

The most important thing about today I think is the result - along with Cardiff - have cemented Mowbray in the job. We lost three on the spin before cardiff and if we had gone on to lose the last two games as well Mowbray could have been potted. However 2 good results and there is no doubt he will be here for next season. So question is how do we kick on? We've got to find 5 quality first team players minimum. Principally a goal keeper, a centre back, a left back, a left winger, a striker who actually scores goals. We need to sell Brereton and figure out what to do with Gallagher. We also need to balance the squad out with much better cover. We have 4 number 10s (Dack, Holtby, Rothwell, Buckley) and 5 holding players (Travis, Evans, Johnson, Davenport, Smallwood) in the squad but only 3 centrebacks (2 if you exclude Tosin on loan) and one left and one right back. Which is absolutely crackers. We can't go into next season with wingers playing at full back and strikers on the wing. Big big decisions required.