It will be interesting what happens as the service provider and clubs must know a huge number of fans in the UK will vpn it, plus a flurry of websites will start up and mirror the streams for free. Ultimately they must have decided that its worth the risk. To be honest for circa £10 a month even fans who go to all the home games will probably pay this on top.

Fair point well made.

Well he has experience of saving clubs in our position, and promotion on his CV. Total disaster at Celtic but apart from that he has done okay. Could be worse. What we really need is Venkys out.

Used to be no one left us to be more successful right through to the Hughes era - just Duff I think. Bellamy, Bentley, Samba, Niall etc all went on to the same or lower level. Since then we seem to have let quite a few through our fingertips. Saw Olsson at Swansea have a good game against Liverpool.

Theres no way with either Bowyers squad or the one we have now we should be relegated. Most of the teams in the division would love Evans, Marshall, Conway, certainly Rhodes, Duffy, Hanley now Watt whose come in is coveted. If we get relegated it is managerial incompetence. Its a top half/ mid table unbalanced squad marginally underperforming under Bowyer. PL needs to bring it up two levels.

I think that is the worst contract we have ever handed out. Even worse than Best, Murphy or Grella.33k a week, 4 years, he was thirty and incredibly injury prone. Totally insane.

O'Sullivan is an attacking player but if he's the best of our attacking youth then you can hardly blame Bowyer for not playing them.Since Dunn and Duff came through, fifteen years ago, we've produced three decent attacking players - Derbyshire, Hoilett and Paul Gallagher. Its a really poor return. I suppose you could add Judge to that, not that we made use of him. So four in fifteen years. Not great.

A few points here is 1) Guthrie and Akpan are both new to the club and Evans was coming back from serious injury. To a certain extent Lowe did not have competition for his place. When he returns (which will be a long long time from now) that will have significantly changed. Bowyer signed Guthrie and Evans so he needs to be given credit for finding players who are showing real quality and are a significant improvement over Lowe and Williamson. 2)Olsson was legitimately dropped as he had a poor start to the campaign and previous to this season Spurr has actually been quite good. It was not controversial when he was picked ahead of Olsson. He then played very poorly, arguably should have been dropped before the QPR game then got injured, Olsson came back in 3) Everyone was saying (including me) Hanley should be dropped end of last season. Bowyer stuck by him and he has been very good. It's hardly the most damning set of management decisions is it? You could say Lowe would never get dropped, but if that is the case why have we signed three central mids in the window? That's suggests major changes were forecast in that area. It's a bit of a rubbish argument at the moment. Probably need to wait for Lowe or Spurr to actually come back and be put in the team ahead of better players before really tearing into this one.

Yes, he's playing the best alround football of his time at Rovers in my opinion. Looks stronger back to goal and better in his movement.It really suits him having a physical and mobile striker alongside like Koita. I think Gestede was too stationary for him.

Taylor must have a decent chance of getting in the side ahead of Marshall. How far is he off first team fit?

As phillipl has said goals is the absolute number one problem. No one even looks vaguely like scoring double figures except for Rhodes. Marshall, our second biggest goal threat, has been hopeless. If we do get out of embargo in Jan the owners have to fund enough to get someone who can score around 15 from Jan to May. Or we are sunk. Koita getting a goal would be really really useful.

Yeah I've found them hilarious. Obviously I'm easily pleased but hey...

Yes, it does look the goal posts have moved...

Great post, I agree with it 100%.I saw enough in the Wolves game to think we will be okay this year. Defence is still a total mess but Koita looks a handful, Guthrie is what we need in midfield, while an attacking setup of Rhodes, Conway, Barrow and Marshall in addition to the two names above looks pretty bloody good to be honest. Hardly relegation material. Of course lose Rhodes and take Guthrie out with an injury and its a different story.. If Bowyer pulls it together we will pick up wins. Theres no real reason to doubt he will as he did so the last two years. Certainly not to the point we get relegated. A more likely relegation scenario, in my humble opinion, is if we pot Bowyer and make a really bad appointment as we did with Berg, Ince and Appleton. That's what I worry about. I'd like to know who would pick the replacement.

The appointment of Ince was totally mental, really blotted Williams' copybook.

I can't see us going down unless Rhodes leaves or gets a long term injury. Essentially we have the same squad as last season minus Gestede. His loss isn't enough to put us in the bottom three. I can see us finishing anywhere from 8th to 14th.I do feel a quality manager could get us into the playoffs.

Give Bowyer the perm job so Venkys can focus on selling up and fooking off. if they do stay, god i hope not, then they need to sack shagnew and shabby, find a good football MD and allow him to build a management team.

Wow - surely that has to be some sort of a record?

Quite aside from the appropriateness of Sepp Blatter's comments can we all just pause to give a MASSIVE HI-FIVE to rover_786 for his best sentence yet in grammar, syntax and spelling? ps. Sepp Blatter saying that there is no racism in football is akin to saying there is no sexual harassment in bars and pubs. Just because a tiny moniority of people do it is not a reason to deny it's existence and deny the need for censure. That was his mistake. And frankly the guy is a high class buffoon who should have lost his job years ago. If he was a person of sense and judgement then I imagine he would get a little more leeway.

I sort of agree. But then you do have to ask who would manage the club? The only way that could work is if we had someone lined up who had 100% agreed to take the reigns. Looking at the shambolic corporate adminstration of Rovers that is about 0% likely. After todays game there might be the spark of an inkling to find someone new, but it is going to take weeks to sort it out. The temptation from the boards point of view will be to "see how it works out, maybe it will be okay.....?"

I would severely question Kean playing Dunn in central midfield away at Everton! However I do agree that the side was well setup against Blackpool, Arsenal and Birmingham. You can argue with RSC being included but there was little to suggest anyone else would be better until after the Birmingham game.

In case you haven't seen arguably the best and catchiest parody to grace the internet..... Charlie Sheen - Bi Winning

Yeah, I think Duff is the only one in the 2000s who has gone on to achieve. Maybe Bellamy to a degree at Man City but they have now jettisoned him. After Tugay McCarthy was, imo, the most naturally talented player to turn out for Rovers in recent years. Breathtaking ball skills, excellent finishing and a good footballing brain. If he had tried he could have been one of the best players in the Premiership - but he never had his head on straight. Such a waste.

Christ, what a naked attempt to get a job?! Although to be honest he is no worse than Andrews.

Two ex Rovers have stormers for Liecester:- Bruno Berner (remember him?!) and Gallagher. Gallagher is maturing. Could well come back into the Prem next year either by Liecester's promotion or someone buying him. Leicester v. Notts Forest