Bizarre competition. You'll be telling me next we don't get than much-desired trip to Wembley if we got to the final.

And Burnley. Probably scheduled for 8am on a Monday behind closed doors.

I may be wrong, but I really don’t see the owners being interested in the slightest in watching the highlights of a pre-season friendly in Spain.

Balaji and Co. are currently on the phone to Suhail asking why we could have sold our women’s team to Everton’s parents company.

As Stanley are really struggling, you'd think the very best players from their academy would have moved into the first team squad when they shut the academy. They regularly feature 18 year olds each season to some degree.

As far as I can tell, Sheff Weds hasnt actually moved. Just been selected for TV over Christmas. Preston away will be annyong for many, although we will probaly "make an afternoon of it"

He was hardly injured last season and was in the team or on the bench for Plymouth most of the time so no reason why he wouldn't be fit. The run up to him signing for Rovers is listed below. The longest spell he had last season without making any first team appearances was the 4 game run in March / April whilst he was at Ewood. He was hardly like Dennis who hadn't kicked a ball in a first team for almost a year. Nor had he missed loads of training through injury last season. Therefore I'm not sure how you can say he wasn't fit. He appeared better as the season went on because he wasn't starting. He was generally coming on when we were shutting up shop and had less ground to cover.

If he’d been available and played most of the season for Plymouth, why was he unfit when he came?

The GK is the same then surely? Other than that, I don't disagree much. If we don't lose anyone we will be in a reasonably decent shape for the start of the season. You explanation for AM and CF being stronger is a bit of a stretch.

Are you talking the squad on the 1/9/24 compared to today ? Or the squad on the 28/7/24 compared to 28/7/25 ?

What hope. We all expected a load of underwhelming foreign cheapies that nobody wanted. That’s predominantly what we’ve got. I still expect 2 of the 3 contract expires to depart.

Comfortable in the end but we did seem to get the rub of the green a little bit in the middle part when the game was still in the balance. You could see against a better side that we may have some limitations if we come up against top class opposition. I was screaming “Robinho” at the screen at one point but he only scored 14 goals for City. It must be difficult on the spot, as I’m just watching on the sofa and I’m racking my brain for answers like Kieran Gibbs but missing the obvious like Gazza, Gerrard and Jimmy Greaves.

Good question. I had a look at his Rovers goals to find any other left footed ones that weren’t tap ins. The only one i found from the video below is 9- Wimbledon away (40 seconds into video). Maybe goal number 31 (3mins42) shows why he didn’t use his left as much?

The issue I have is last summer ‘worked’ because we brought in proven experience with Batth, Weimann and Cantwell on potentially higher salaries. Ribeiro was also proven at this level. It was a change in the recruitment philosophy and it worked. So far this year we have 1 ‘proven’ champ player and 3 unproven I suspect on cheaper salaries. Plus if we were forward thinking, we would know which of Travis, Tronstadt and Brittain were likely to leave and would be looking at suitable quality replacements now. That’s how you progress. Trying to replace like for like when they leave is just bad planning.

My favourite Shearer goal was the winner in injury time against Leeds in 1994 that nearly started a riot in the Darwen End with their fans. They deserved the pain of that one after they had sang through the Busby minutes silence. Not the most important (although it was at the time) but so satisfying.

Wade can be deceptive. Last night was Clayton’s highest average in a game at this tournament, but it did feel like he wasn’t playing as well as he had done previous. Historically Wade has always been one of the biggest 140 hitters on tour and one of the best double hitters. He is averaging a ton across the whole tournament. He’s back up to 5th in the world having dropped out of the top 20 a few years back. In this competition, in the four games he has played he has hit more 140s than his opponent in every one. His checkout percentages have been 56%, 42%, 65%, 67%. That’s ridiculously high and as you say is how he nicks the legs. For comparison, Littler has been 35%, 43%, 32%, 53%. Wade just doesn’t hit a barrage of 180s. However if Littler turn up on his A or even B game he’ll still cruise this.

That was some game. Wade tired and looked like he was throwing it away, then just held it together at the end.

As @bluebruce says above, I’m not sure how anyone can have watched last season and say Cantwell is our best player. He’s our best known, but was far from our best. Thats not me criticising him as such, as I feel he’s got an important part to play. But watching him, you can say why he’s ended up here and isn’t on any top clubs radar.

I would expect the FF would generate the minutes, approve them amongst themselves and then forward to the club. I may be wrong, but reading between the lines that appears to be not the way it operates.

I’ve been impressed by him whilst he’s not been particularly great. He’s also not looked particularly out of place and there should be a bags of improvement between 17yo to 20yo. Under 21s or loan would be a good move.

No. Undav proved he was significantly better than anything we had up front. His record since we didnt sign in the Premier League and Bundesliga shows that. I honestly suspect he would have been the best striker to pull on a Rovers shirt since we got relegated, and might have been the difference between us getting in the play-offs and actually winning it.

Don’t worry. Euro Final starts at 5pm. Darts won’t start till 8pm 👍

“You can hate the snake and hate the snake charmer”

Well we know that for our players with 1 year left that he said he wanted new deals for them. Still a bizarre thing to downpost. But then you’ve already posted previous regarding Eustace that you “hate the snake” Hissss 🐍 🐍

Lol. People can go and re-read that exchange if they want context. Hissssss 🐍🐍