Hasta

That’s a pretty shocking comment to out in the public domain, whilst backing other players who have looked pretty awful.

BIG VALS FORTRESS EWOOD P11 W2. D3. L6. Win ratio - 18% In the eleven games before he rocked up our win percentage at home was 45%

Disagree. That team had more championship nouse and football intelligence than this lot. Also more fight. Steele, Nyambe, Mulgrew, Lenihan, Williams Emnes, Bennett, Evans, Conway Graham , Gallagher (Young version) Who ‘clearly’ gets in that XI from our starting line up. Alebiosu, Tronstadt, Cantwell. Then maybe Toth.

If you insist on playing 3 at the back you go with Pickering. He’s done it before with some success. He wasn’t on the bench yesterday though so either he’s injured or spoken out against Rudy’s bullying or Big Val’s birthday bash.

Play me and I’d battle well, but I’d still be shit. Gudjohnsen has yet to show he has the ability for this level. See “Telalovic”

Over these next two games, I’d be looking at bringing Gueye back in for one. Yes he’s pretty poor and isn’t some saviour or answer, but he does offer something slightly different and Gudjohnsen hasn’t appeared better

I agree to a point, but also good strikers will get chances due to movement and awareness. When Szmodics was banging 30 goals in, it wasn’t cos we were supremely creative. It was mainly because his movement was top notch and the rest of the players had been coached well enough to look for that movement. Dack got a lot of goals due to his awareness in the box. He knew when to make a run and where to be to have the best chance of picking up the pieces.

You feel Ismael is so entrenched with Rudy that you can’t see him being sacked. It would just be admitting that everything they have got everything drastically wrong.

Wonder who he will try and blame in the post match interview.

0-2 There's not a lack of heart, there's just a lack of quality.

This crops up every year. Growing up in the, 80s 5s and 6s were always centre halves. Now it’s become common in coaching circles to refer to them as defensive midfielders, what I would regard as a four. However every season if you look at Premier League squads, 6 is predominantly still a centre back. This season there are 11 centre backs., 5 defensive mids and 3 full backs.

With the right recruitment team around him recruiting to his philosophy he will do well. However he tries to play the same way with players who aren't suitable. At Rovers, the cheapies we got weren't good enough to play that way. Internationally, again you are limited in your pool of players you can pick from. If everything isn't aligned then his methods will fall down quite badly. And he doesn't want to adapt.

River, pitch whatever. There was an absolute bucketfull of rain at Chorley but the ball kept rolling on a non league pitch. They wanted to lie in the fans forum minutes. The Lancashire Telegraph are saying they lied in their recent statement. Do we really think they wouldn’t get the groundsman to lie about this. You cant believe a word that comes out of the club.

There's another international break on Saturday 15th November. I'd have done something on that Saturday - either two 45 minute games (first team friendly & then legends game) or one single mixed Soccer-Aid style game with current first teamers and past players / legends. Just as with whatever they are planning anyway, it would need the presence of a couple of proper legends to draw interest - Shearer, Tugay, Sutton etc.. Make a day of it. Throw in a couple of unannounced surprises. Do the honour caps we've already been doing on the day. They should have compiled all previous "goal of the season" winners to let fans vote for a 'goal of the millennium' competition (Reidy). Launch the book and you can get it signed. Hell, even rename the Riverside in honour of Tony Parkes on the day like they should have done already. There's all sorts you could have done on a day of celebration. But if you are going to do something do it proper, or don't do it at all. Instead they are bolting something which is still lacking detail onto the end of a league game, when people will have been in the ground already for 2.5 hours. It's like they don't understand that if we lose that game the last thing people will be in the mood for is a 'celebration'. And if it is poorly attended people will question why.

Euros Play the Nations League as Euro qualifying. Top 24 qualify for finals - all group A teams and top two teams in group B’s - no games against outclassed opponents. Nations League becomes more meaningful. It stops running Nations League and Euro qualifiers at the same time. World Cup European Qualifying split into 16 groups of 4 teams, seeded on Nations League divisions. Each group contains a team from league A, B, C and D. Winner qualifies. Only 6 games played per group. 2 games played in November. 4 games played in June. - less internationals overall but a mini tournament feel about June. Less outclassed games ✅ Slightly less international breaks ✅ Nations League made more important ✅

Not at all. If they pay the bills there is nothing any regulator could do to stop bad owners being bad owners, unless any (more serious) legal issues arose. Otherwise you'd end up taking a club off someone just because they employed Russell Martin.

December. That's usually pretty rainy.

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.