Made me smile

I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of him, but I do remember seeing him in Forest’s FA Cup victory over Arsenal. In that game he played up front on his own - holding the ball up really well allowing Forest to get out and counter-attack. He was tall, strong, quick and gave the Arsenal centre-backs a torrid time. Now, obviously that was just one game and sometimes it’s easier to raise your game against ‘big’ opposition, so there is a question mark as to whether he can fulfill that role week in week out, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous to say categorically that he can’t play that role - especially when you acknowledge that you haven’t really seen him play at all!

Like others have said there’s loads I could put, but a couple that stand out... Back in the summer of 95 I was convinced that Kenny moving to DoF was no big deal and that things would continue pretty much just as they were, with Kenny in overall charge and Harford running training. I was disappointed by the signing of Stephen Warnock - I thought we should be going for more proven players rather than a youngster who’d never really played in the Prem. I was very definitely wrong on that one And, finally, I was delighted when the Dingles got Dyche as manager. I thought he was a terrible manager who would take them down

Whilst Travis has looked impressive in spells, particularly in the Oldham game last season, I don’t think he’s ready yet. He struggled when he came on last week and, by all accounts, he didn’t particularly stand out in midweek against a league 2 side, so I can’t see him starting just yet - nor do I think he should. I agree with most on Smallwood that his lack of composure is an issue, but he does at least give us positional stability - more so than Bennett. Bennett got injured last week by the corner flag having chased down a lost cause - he does that a lot, and it’s great for fans to see him constantly chasing and harrassing players, but it does mean that it leaves the other CM with a large area to cover at times. Evans I think has been better recently - certainly one of our better performers last week - and personally I think he’s done enough to keep his place for now. I’d also love to see Rothwell in there, that’s where he wants to play and is a midfielder who will pick up the ball and look to get forward - something we haven’t had since Dunn used to play in a midfield 2 under Hughes. However, I don’t think Evans (or Smallwood, Bennett or Travis) is capable of doing the amount of defensive covering that would be needed to facilitate that, so for now at least, Evans and Smallwood is probably the right call - certainly away from home.

Disappointing game this afternoon, particularly first half. I thought Conway was probably the bright spot, although Travis did ok - but agree with whoever said earlier that he looked out of position, he definitely looks better in CM whenever I’ve seen him play there. I was disappointed with Rothwell and Davenport, although again agree that Rothwell was the better of the two. I just expected more from both of them, especially against lower league opposition. Tomlinson and Whittingham had mixed afternoons I thought. One moment absolutely awful, but then odd glimpses of what they can do sprinkled in amongst it. Whittingham in pacticular showed for about 10 minutes at the start of the second half that, with time on the ball and players making intelligent runs, he could be an important player for us, but then he faded out of the game again. Williams really struggled - although he apparently was carrying a bit of a knock and was at left cb with Caddis at lb, so maybe there were extenuating circumstances. Which brings me on to Caddis. Looked good for about 5 mins, flying into tackles, getting forward, tracking his runners etc. And then it just all went to pot - presumably he ran out of steam, but I do wonder what the point of playing him was. Surely we have a lb in the u23’s who would have benefited from the experience of playing today? And finally, Nuttall just looked completely out of his depth. I really struggle to see just how he scored so many goals for the u23’s - I can only imagine the rest of the team must do a heck of a lot of work for him. Just underlines the need to get at least 1 more striker in asap.

I think England did incredibly well, albeit they rode their luck at various stages, and it does feel like a golden opportunity missed - I remember in 1990 as an 11-year old thinking that it was just the start and that we would build on the semi-final appearance and, especially with Gazza, that the future was bright. 28 years of misery and underachievement followed, so I'm more than a little cautious about all the talk of coming back stronger in 2020/2022. Also, I'm far from convinced by the 3-5-2 formation going forward. I just don't think it plays to our strengths at all. Our key players don't play that system week in and week out and it seems to force too many of them to play out of their preferred position. I'd like to see us play 4-2-3-1 - Walker is one of the best attacking full-backs in the world and we should play him in his best position, Kane looks far more dangerous for Spurs when he is the focal point up front rather than dropping deep and so we should play him there, Sterling plays week in week out from a deeper position, coming in from the wing and looking a threat, so we should play him there, Dele Ali's biggest asset at Spurs is knowing when to arrive in the box playing as a number 10, so we should play him there. I like Southgate and think he has brought a real integrity back to the national team which was sorely missing under previous managers (and I'd much rather him be in charge than someone like Pardew or Dyche), but I do worry that if he persists with playing so many players out of position and essentially wasting their talents, they might eventually get fed up and turn on him and it might all end in tears.

Not bending over backwards to justify Sterling’s contribution, just suggesting that we’re not playing to his strengths which I think explains, a bit at least, his poor performances up to now. As others have pointed out, watching him at City all season you can see he has the talent, so there must be a reason that he’s not doing it for England beyond just ‘he’s cr@p’ And as for Kane dropping deep - yes maybe we were struggling to get the ball up to him, and maybe other players weren’t doing their job, but imo that’s no reason for him to come deep and try to do their jobs. He’s a striker. Not only that he’s our only striker. So, if he’s in the midfield, no matter how well he’s doing there, it means we’re effectively playing with no striker - which probably explains why we didn’t manage to have a shot on target all night and have actually only managed 1 goal from open play all tournament - and that was a goal out of nothing, a moment of individual brilliance rather than a well-worked chance created by flowing, attacking football. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’ve done ok so far, and Southgate has injected some general positivity into the national team for the first time in a long time, but tactically I don’t really understand what he’s trying to do.

Strange how we can see things differently. Personally, I thought that Kane was playing far too deep and that that was at least part of the reason why we looked so disjointed and unthreatening. On a number of occasions we broke down the wings, or the side of the penalty area, and there was no one in the area for a cross - Kane was ambling around in the centre of the pitch instead for some unknown reason. Yes, it meant that it looked like he personally had a decent game, with some nice touches and a couple of decent through balls, but I think it massively affected the team performance as a whole, in particular Sterling who often looked like he was playing up front on his own, having to try and play with his back to goal, backing into defenders, which definitely isn't his natural game and, when he did get hold of the ball, he had no one to pass to as the rest of the team were too deep. I don't know if it's an intentional tactical decision, but I think we'd look a lot better as a team if Kane was told to stick up front and try and bully the centre backs, and Sterling was allowed to drop a little bit and play just off him, getting the ball facing goal and able to run at defenders.

God I hope not. Dull team, dull manager and the press/Sky need no more encouragement to fawn all over the overhyped Terry. Other than Grealish, Fulham are streets ahead of this Villa team. And as a neutral the last thing the Prem needs is another negative, 10-men-behind-the-ball, defend-at-all-costs team

We're sorting out my sons bedroom and he has a Rovers beanbag that he no longer wants. Normally I would take it to a charity shop, but living in Leeds I imagine that there won't be much call for it, so thought someone on here might be able to make use of it. I'm a season ticket holder so am able to meet up before any home game to pass it on.

Statistics seem to suggest that the DRS has improved the accuracy of umpires decisions pretty dramatically in fact. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/theashes/10192594/Ashes-2013-Chris-Rogers-and-Australia-may-be-struggling-with-DRS-but-the-system-is-good-for-the-game.html

There was lots of talk about how the emotion/occasion etc would affect the players, but the person seemingly most affected by it all was the ref. Too scared to give a penalty against Bolton, or to book any of their players (despite the most blatent 'kicking the ball away' incident you'll ever see). It was almost as though he believed a big decision against them would set back Muamba's recovery or something

Took my 3-year old for his first game at Ewood last night. (He came down to Pompy at the start of the season - maybe he's jinxed or something!!) Anyway, one of his first questions was "What's that banging noise?" So I explained that someone behind the goal had a drum and was banging it. His next question was "Why does he have to keep making that noise?" Funnily enough no-one around us seemed to be able to give an answer to that one!!

Youngest scorer = James (I think) Vaughan from Everton

Yeah we are - supposed to be back at work for 3 - not entirely sure I can see that one happening!!

It's interesting to note that the people who seem to be most vocal in their criticism of rovers' performance today are the ones who didn't manage to see the game at Ewood. As far as I'm concerned today was, as someone has already said, 'one of those days' where the ball just didn't seem to fall kindly for us in and around the box (how many goalmouth scrambles did we have in their box without getting it over the line), and even when it did fall kindly we were either denied by a good save from the keeper or by a mistake from the referee. But I have to say I'd rather play the way we did today and lose, than win playing the way (wim)Bolton did today.

Have to say - it looked a penalty to me too. The defender tried to pull his leg out of the way, but (imo) definately caught the back of the attackers leg, knocking it onto his other leg which made it appear like a dive.

It's kosher, but you don't have to pay £10 for it. You could make your own. Option 3

And I was just pointing out that, since you are now happy to applaud our players cheating, you are in no position to complain when someone does it against us. Do you really think that Ian Wright in the studio, or you at home, will be happy to shrug your shoulders and say 'it's just one of those things' when we get knocked out of the World Cup to a similar incident? No thought not! I abhor cheating, and it would appear others on here feel the same, no matter who does it. I have long called for divers to be punished in retrospect - as I believe most people on here did after spit dived against us the other year - but it does rather weaken the argument if we happily applaud our players when they do the same.

I hope that both you and Mr. Wright will be so calm and matter of fact about it should England get knocked out of the competition to a similar bit of play from an opposition. However, I rather think not. Instead we will get months and months of whinging of how 'we were robbed' and calling for lifetime bans for players who cheat, with no-one able to see that we are unable to take the moral high ground if we condone our players doing the same sort of thing?

No, I only managed to watch the first 40 minutes before being called out to work. When I got home Sky were doing their post match analysis - none of the incidents they showed during that featured a wrong decision by the referee, therefore I'm guessing that none of the ref's wrong decisions (they all make them you know) were what you would call game changing. I said that Arsenal should be down to 9 men, as having already been booked Eboue should have been shown a 2nd yellow for his baltent dive. And as for your justification of what he did - does the phrase "2 wrongs don't make a right" mean anything to you. If Arsenal had managed to hang on for a 1-0 win, then Barca would have been cheated, but I doubt that we would have the hysterical over-reaction on here. As I said, whenever English teams lose it's never because they deserve to - we, as a nation, are incredibly sore losers!

I like to think I have a fair understanding of the laws - I am a qualified referee (although maybe that means I don't understand anything about football at all...) The laws talk of denying the player a goalscoring opportunity - not the team. Lehmann did deny Eto'o a goalscoring opportunity and therefore should have been sent off. I'm also not sure you can debate whether or not he meant to do it - as he actually grabbed his ankle, rather than Eto'o's foot catching a flailing arm. So the ref would have been well within his rights to allow the goal and then produce a red card - however, most refs wouldn't do, as without the aid of the slow motion it would have been difficult to assess the intent in Lehmanns challenge. As I've said before the ref acted to the letter of the law, and not neccessarily in the interests of the game as a spectacle - but then refs aren't told to protect the spectacle, they are told to uphold the laws of the game. IMO football in general would be a lot better if refs were told that, since football is an entertainment business, they should act as such. Whenever I ref games (usually under 15/16's) I always make it clear that, barring a leg breaking challenge or something similar, we will end the game with 11v11 - the lads have come to enjoy a game of football and they don't want it spoiled by the referee - FIFA, UEFA and the FA need to realise that in the same way, thousands of people have paid to enjoy a game of football and don't want it spoiled by the referee. But that's really a debate for another time. Back to Wednesday's game, as I said earlier I only saw the first 40 mins or so, but in that time the only major decision that the ref got wrong was allowing Eboue to con his way to a freekick, instead of recieving a 2nd yellow. So Arsenal, instead of being 1-0 up at half time, should have been down to 9 men. None of the other highlights of the game I have seen feature a wrong decision by the referee in Barca's favour, so I don't see where all the complaining has come from. It's always the same though. Whenever, an English team lose, either in the champions league or in an International competition, it's never their fault. It's always because we were cheated - we are the national equivalent of a 5-year-old, who sulks and crys when things don't go his way. Grow up and learn to lose with dignity!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't see all the game - got called out to work just before half-time, but I did catch the post match stuff. I don't get how Arsenal were cheated out of the game. The sending-off, whilst not necessarily being in the best interests of the game as a spectacle, was the correct decision. The Arsenal goal came from a blatent dive - the lad should have been shown a 2nd yellow and sent off, thus reducing Arsenal correctly to 9 men. Instead they kept 10 men on the pitch and went 1-0 up. During the interview with Lehmann after the game, Geoff Shreeves on Sky seemed to intimate that Barca's 1st goal was offside. This was not the case - even Paul Merson addmitted that he was level and therefore on. There was nothing wrong at all with Barca's 2nd goal - except perhaps the defending. So unless I've missed some game changing incident, which Sky didn't bother putting into their aftermatch analysis, then I can't see how Arsenal can complain. The only big decision that was wrong was in their favour.

Or the one against Fulham when Boa Morte, about 4 yards from goal, had to score, but was foiled by Brad. Or the save against Boro' - Viduka's header from a corner - how he got to it I still don't know. I too was equally frustrated at not seeing at least one of Brad's saves in there - especially when they included Robinson's save when it is, at best, debatable as to whether or not he actually got a touch.

Exactly what I thought. When I started watching footy back in about '86 (I'm only a whippersnapper really!) if someone had told me that one day I would see Liverpool play long-ball, kick and rush, ten-men behind the ball and time wasting for most of the 2nd half, I'd have laughed in their face. Bill Shankly must be turning in his grave!