Why? If I’m playing and I get booked for tugging someone back, and then another player does it to me later I’m surely allowed to say to the ref “that should be a booking”. But I can’t wave a card? It pisses me off when they run aggressively at the ref doing it. But that’s the aggressive attitude. What that lad did today was nothing. He was sat on his arse (after being fouled and dumped there) and was laughing doing it.

Hugging the crowd after he scored.

The ref was correct but the law is an ass. That shouldn’t be the same punishment as pulling someone back breaking clear down the wing, or scything someone down. If he’d jumped up and ran to the ref aggressively then fine. But not sat laughing on the floor. The first booking is nonsense as well. You can score and run across a stand full of opposition fans goading them, but if you happen to touch one of your own fans in celebration you get booked. It massively saved us today, but it’s bollocks.

We’re 7th, outside the play offs on goal difference 🙄

It might be the new rules but until the soft sending off we were well and truly awful today. Then, like at Huddersfield last season, we were looking like scoring every attack. Frustrating we had 20 minutes to find a winner and missed a sackful of decent opportunities. I’d have snapped your hand off for a point at 2-0 though.

Apart from possibly the penalty and the open net that followed.

So? Arsenal play possession football too. Yet Saka cracked on in from outside the box earlier today. Why does possession football mean you can’t shoot? Also, our attacking players seem to take ages to decide who to pass to in the final third. It’s like we won’t play the quick incisive pass incase we lose it, so find the safer option once it becomes available. And yet in our defensive third we try to play first time, eye-of-a-needle incisive passing.

I know. You can guarantee if we are a goal down this will be the first game this season with the standard 4 or 5 minutes on the board.

2 championship goals conceded so far this season. Two fuck-ups in possession at the back.

No. When there’s a full set of fixturess, Which international media outlet would want to broadcast Rotherham V Blackburn?

https://www.harrogatetownafc.com/news/2023/august/envirovent-stadium-update/

Is a butchers dog actually lean? Fit as a butchers dog (as the actual phrase goes) maybe because it's healthy from not being under-nourished, but it probably carries a bit of timber from all that meat. So maybe he is 'lean as a butchers dog'. Either way, when he's holding the ball up and knocking their defender all over the place tonight we'll see why he's not meant to be a 10 stone waif.

If we had 9 mins yesterday there should be about 18 in this.

You can see why we do it, but the issue for me is when we are at the point where we are running out of options we should then clear it. There’s a couple of times you could see we were be panicked into playing loose balls, and we weren’t fully in control, and eventually we lose it. I’ve not watched their goal in full, but from what I recall it comes from our free kick just near the half way line. We take it short, get closed down immediately and it works its way back to Pears. Pears should hoof it then. If we are playing it sideways and our players are making options that’s fine. But all Pears does is play it to Carter who is almost closed down immediately and has very few options. Markanday should do better then but he’s in trouble from the minute he gets the ball. It’s self inflicted. One goal conceded so far and it’s down to pissing about at the back. If your in trouble and losing control of the situation then get rid.

I didn’t think the second half was that bad for time wasting yesterday. If that warrants 9 minutes there will be games that end up with an extra 20!

Firstly, I really enjoyed that. A lot of opening days have been letdowns, but that was a good, tense game of football. I thought Markanday did ok, He was right infront of us and he was taking up the right positions and trying to be positive. I thought he was clearly better than Dolan first half, but was more anonymous second half and the decision to leave Dolan on was proven correct. Dolan really needs an end product, but for the last half an hour he was pretty sensible in what he did. Wharton was a bit of an enigma. An electric first 10 minutes, followed by being pretty frustrating and lax for the rest of the game. He’s better than his overall performance, but his ball for Leonard was a reminder how good the lad is. Leonard did well. Had he not wasted the two chances we’d be singing his praises higher, but I’ll put it down to nerves for now. Compared to other youth goal scoring machines like Joe Nuttall, he at least does look like he’s a professional footballer at this level. Far better than Vale. And Szmodics has just got better and better since he arrived.

Livesat usually lists them all

On many foreign TV stations.

This but we will somehow force an equaliser. 1-1 Like the end of last season, if we get in front and force them to come at us I'll be confident. It will just be getting that first goal.

Well pre-season games complete. I would expect us with the squad we currently have to be between 11th and 14th. We will dominate the ball for long spells but simply not score enough. With the current squad, if we lose Wharton and Hyam for any long spell we could have a big problem

Has there not been one?

Sorry, you’re right about Brereton mark 1. But the Brereton we had for the second half of the season last year, who was far less effective than in his Diaz patches, still had more presence and influence than Dolan has had in the last 6 months. As I said earlier in the thread, I think Dolan would be better as a more orthodox right sided wide man. He could approach the full back, do a trick to get a yard of space and put a cross in, or he could come inside and lay it off. At the moment he does get a yard of space but can’t cross on his left foot so he ends up coming inside and laying it off all the time. For whatever reason, Dolan looks less effective than the one that played for us during the covid season.

I did. I corrected it later. In this formation Dolan is more suited on the left as he’s ineffective up front and playing him on the right and letting him cross the ball would be pointless with our forwards. His best games have come in that position. However they are few and far between and normally against teams than really come on to us. When he has to help break a team down he is ineffective wherever he plays. On the left Diaz to Dolan is a huge downgrade. Even Brereton to Dolan is regression.

Yeah. Can’t even blame auto correct for that one.

Or as Ennis calls it, a lock-in.