Hasta

As he was injured he didn’t go out on loan. Meaning he’s still here. And last week the Rovers website , when stating Baradji was a “longer term” absentee stated that the under 21 game on Friday would come “too soon” for Carter and Garrett.

It's a good job we got Gardner-Hickman done on deadline day. I'm not saying he's been good, but at least it gave us a viable alternative to Tavares who we knew could perform to a certain level (League One / Bottom Championship). Jake Garrett seriously comes under consideration for the bench once he's back, which is something last year you'd have scoffed at.

Martin sacked ☹️ I was enjoying that.

Owen Coyle won away at Newcastle. Steve Kean won away at Old Trafford. Plymouth beat us when we were in the top 6 last year. Relegated sides aren't poor all season. They have good results, just less of them.

Pleased for him to put midweek behind him, although shame he didn’t convert one of the other chances. Best thing today was he kept getting in the box and central, something which the two wide players in the first half rarely did.

Generally, when sides go down they aren’t terrible all the time. The number of sides that get relegated with 45+ points tells you this. There will be times in the season when all those sides will have played well, won games and thought “we might be OK”. My big concern is what happens every year. We get injuries, squad gets stretched and we get worse. It’s just this year we won’t have points in the bank.

I thought for the first half Stoke were very good. Very fluid going forward. However once they got in front they decided to stop coming onto us as much and that led to us getting a foothold in the game, and by the end we looked like we might nick it. Overall probably fair. Toth and Alebiosu good again. Thought De Neve was a game changer. Rather Ohashi than the Gudjohnsen, who was poor. Cantwell is frustrating. Does some good thing (such as the cutback) but then can be too lackadaisical, and also give the ball away very similar to Kargbo last game and similarly didn’t track back.

It hit a high on the 20th against Ipswich of 1.69. It hit 1.1 yesterday. Question is how high covers the outlet? Rivers Darwen Ewood historical levels.

And was techincally wrong that day.. Seems to get a kick in trying to pursuade away fans not to travel. Wierd place twitter.

Currently lashing it down outside.

Do you think John Fleck was a good signing? Only featured for 17 minutes but played well in a game we dominated whilst he was on. If we judge him solely on what he did on the pitch he’s surely an outstanding bit of business.

It’s bonkers. And for all the quotes of “he should return after the international break” which Chaddy kept quoting, it’s suddenly turned to “longer term”. So either they didn’t understand the severity of the injury. Or, get this, they lied to us.

"[this afternoons] clash comes too soon for the likes of Hayden Carter or Jake Garrett, who remain weeks away from returning to match action, whilst Moussa Baradji is a longer-term absentee." So not expected back in the next few weeks. More a longer term absentee. Nice one Rudy.

It started raining against Ipswich at Midday, but it wasn't heavy. It seemed to turn heavy some time around 4pm. I'd say the weather at the moment is far worse than it was before kick off against Ipswich.

Preston, Blackpool and Bolton are all at home. I know it's not the same, but you could always take one of those games that clearly won't be at risk in.

Depends which site you look on. The one thing we know about the weather is you cant accurately forecast it. Regardless of which site you look at, there is a hell of a lot of heavy rain forecast up until kick off. Against Ipswich, the rain didnt start coming down heavy until during the game.

An exhibition game after a serious league game. No-one would be that stupid….

12.30 Kick off you say 🙄🌧️ Imagine the embarrassment if it happened again.

I dont recall many people being excited by his appointment other than the usual 2 or 3 suspects.

I'm not so sure going forwards. Graham, Marshall, Conway and Joao are better forward options than we appear to have, and were technically better. That seasons younger Gallagher was better than the one we ended up with as well. Far more mobile. Mulgrew and Lenihan against whoever we put at the back now ? Both were better on the ball than any option we have. Todays full backs appear better, but not by a wide margin. Williams was player of the year that season V Ribero? Not a lot in that. And Nyambe wasn't perceived a weak link, albeit Abeliosu is clearly much better going forward and wins that one on what we have seen. In midfield you have Tronstad & Whoever against Lowe & Evans. However I always said it was in centre midfield where we failed that season. Smallwood coming in was a breath of fresh air. Tronstadt & Travis was clearly better, but we are scrapping around for a decent partner for him. Then you have a poor morale level and a manager I'm not sure they will respond to. We were 9/2 to go down at the start of the season and 7/1 to go down now, which is simply huge.

I don’t think they will sack him. Pasha wants costs cut, Rudy and Val are implementing it. They’re all “aligned” as they keep telling us.

Yeah. There were about 7500 there I’d say. It was busier than an early league cup game, but not by much. The 4 season ticket holders who sit behind me were all missing, and I’ve never known all of them miss a league game.

This is going to be a long season. For a start we have a failed manager who doesn’t appear to be good enough. The first problem is that under Coyle you felt we had players who should be doing better. However this squad is so poor there is no guarantee a new manager would do much better. The second problem is the person who would remove Val is his mate Rudy who comes across as even more arrogant. He is backed by Suhail, who has stuck around through all incarnations of Venkys rovers, so he is not going anywhere. They’ve devised this low budget policy. And Venkys simply don’t care. Our PPG is currently on course to get us to 39 points. You’ve got to be at least looking to get 47+ to have a chance of staying up, and that seems a hell of a long way away.

At least Yuki got his head on a cross and nearly scored.

Not sure who is worse here.