1-1 now according to the on screen graphic. Blackpool must have used their cheat code.

Both were excellent finishes, and the second qas a good run and touch. However the marking for the first qas shocking by the centre half. ?

In reply to a post on the blackpool forum that this show that their defence isnt good enough:- "our third choice keeper, trialist left back and trialist centre back and second choice right back. Lot of rubbish on here today." Whats with these replays by the way?

Apparantly their left back and centre half are trialists. Blackpool forum reckon this half is their '2nd string'.

I've given him a good roasting on the summer transfers thread all day but that was a peach of a header!!

The problem being looking at the squad some of us don't feel we have an effective senior backup striker any more. As Roverfan99 eludes to, the days of throwing DG on to try and hold it up / flick it on and make something happen have now gone. At least Graham could change the dynamic of the game. Of the strikers we have, there is only Armstrong who could come off the bench and offer something different and effective, but he is surely the first name on the team sheet. You look at the rest of the players in our squad who can offer something different going forward if required from the bench and you struggle to pick one out. Your eyes are drawn to the name Harry Chapman again, but he has been outcast for all of his second spell.

In that case it looks like we aren't getting the 2 goalkeepers and the rest of the defence that we are linked with then.

If it is £6 on Saturday against Doncaster I'd probably pay it but I'll pass on tonight. Cant complain about the clubs trying to raise a bit of cash though. On a normal year you wouldn't be able to watch it at home at all.

How did we / they get on? I imagine if things are going well they can be quite sprightly like most clubs. I went once, for the game when Souness was their manager and MGP bundled one in with his hand late on. They were very quiet during the game and then very loud and anti-Souness outside the ground.

You would be wrong. It is 45 appearances he has actually made. Only 14 of those appearances have come after the 75th minute. Most of those cameos were in his first season. Last season, he only made 4 cameos of 15 minutes or less out of 17 appearances. He has had ample game time to impress and has failed to do so. People said after his first season that next season would be when he finally gets into his groove. Now people are calling out for more game time again. At what point do we draw a line under it? If he starts the first 3 games, doesn't score and is generally poor, do we still persevere in the hope he comes good? At what point do we accept it hasn't worked out and look at replacing?

Thats a very contradictory statement. He had one decent game at home. I think it was the first one back where he rounded the keeper and fell over. He did play well that day. However the rest of the games he looked out of his depth again.

Thats the strange thing. He's been here two years. His contract ends in summer 2022. His career has time on it's side, but I'm not sure Rovers do ! If he went on loan this season he would be in the last year of his contract when he returned. We will probably end up offering him another 2 or 3 years to try and salvage something from our 'investment' - which would be crazy. Mowbray and the club are going to have to be prepared to "write off' this investment for the good of the club and play him on merit alone. And if that means the wilderness a couple of months into this season then so be it.

Maybe that extra months salary money we paid to Smallwood and co. in July could have been spent on said landscaper instead.

44 appearances across 2 years for BB. He has had an opportunity. How long do we risk playing a weakened XI by including him just to try and hope he can repay that ridiculous transfer fee. When you have Armstrong and Gallagger, then Dack to return and hopefully Chapman geting a chance, its hard to see how Brereton gets game time once the season is in full swing. Getting Graham and Samuel out the door helps mowbray justify finding him a place on the bench. However at some point Mowbray will have to accept what he has done, rather than picking a player who simply isnt.up to it just to try and justify that fee. The problem is the squad has.so many problems that a 3rd choice striker isnt priority, and there appears to be no rumblings.from the academy with regards to strikers.

"It has been a really difficult decision but I'm 85 years of age and a diabetic on insulin. Covid has severely restricted my movements as I am classed as high risk, attending race meetings, even with limited attendance, will not be possible. I have also had tough business decisions to take due to Covid. Having had to furlough staff I could not, in all conscience, continue to race the same number of horses "

Probably "wow, we actually spent some money on buying a defensive player and it made us more solid and pushed us closer to promotion"

But if you are prevented from going on your holiday you have booked you get a refund. You don't get a live stream of Benidorm beach instead.

Although it will be a very expensive match day pass for ilfollow if there is a lot of BCD matches. The real carrot here has to be allowing away matches to be streamed as part of the season ticket package (free or reduced cost), bearing in mind there's going to be no away fans this side of Christmas. I know that will be out of Rovers control but the EFL / iFollow need to sort something out. In fact there's a decent money opportunity for ifollow and the clubs on away games here.

IFollow passes per season ticket for all games played behind closed doors. No refunds to be given. (which I suspect is what is coming here)

Back to Marcus Bent, I hardly recall anything of him after he left Ewood. However he went on to score 35 Premier League goals for a number of clubs, as well as making 55 PL appearances for Everton.

I seem to be in the minority, but I didn't thng that much of Cunningham when he was here. If the bar is 'are they better then Bell and Del' then it's a pretty low standard.

I don't think you understood the title of this thread. Donis isn't even in the worst 20 Rovers signings ever.

If we think we can get a fee for him we will be telling Keith Curle he is Beckenbauer.

I'd rather he played next to Berg and formed a solid defensive foundation in defence with some aerial prowess, something we've been lacking in our last 3 seasons in the champnship and which we haven't properly fixed in 7 transfer windows. Its difficult enough with our probably limited budget trying to get players to strengthen our team. To also find ones with unnecessary attributes is even more difficult. Here is a damning statistic. We have known about these defensive issues for a while, and yet at the end of last season whilst we tried to convince ourselves we had a realist I've chance of the play offs we failed to keep a clean sheet in our last 11 games, conceding 2 or more in 8 of those games. Only Hull didn't keep a clean sheet in that period. This isn't a new manager coming into a club. This is a guy who has been here over 3 years, and yet our defending is an utter shambles. Yet he thinks the problem is we aren't passing the ball out of defence enough.

The problem is if what you are saying is true, we are going to turn down the Craig Short's for the Lorenzo Amoruso's.