16 minutes ago, arbitro said:

Give me some examples of the same referees making 'horrendous' errors week after week. I'm not defending any referee here by the way but there is an overreaction to some decisions generally speaking. Having seen every Rovers game this season I'm struggling to think of a match where a referee has unfairly influenced the outcome of the game. I get as frustrated as anybody with decisions sometimes but try and keep a sense of perspective.

 

The standard of refereeing generally in the Championship is poor - perhaps not always massive game changing decisions, but just general inconsistencies, like last night - in the first half two or three times he allowed a quick free-kick from not the exact spot of the foul, but then suddenly just before halftime decided that a free-kick had to be moved 5 yards to the side so that it was taken in the ‘correct’ place - why? - and picking and choosing which rules to enforce and which to ignore (how often are players allowed to dive, time-waste etc without consequence)
Imo, far too often the referee makes himself the centre of attention instead of realising that people aren’t there to watch him. And the frustrating thing, like I said, is that there is seemingly no consequences for turning in a shocker. 
 

And, all other decisions aside, a red card ruins the game and were only ever intended to be given in extreme circumstances - it feels now like they are given out far too easily for the slightest thing. I’d much prefer refs to err on the side of caution and to come away from a game moaning that someone didn’t get sent off than feel like I’ve been short-changed by the game being spoilt as a contest. 

Again imo, it should be the intention of the ref to keep 22 players on the pitch unless he really (and I mean really) has no other option, and is 100% convinced about what he has seen - I reffed for about 20 years (not to your level - just teenagers and the odd bit of Sunday league) and I never once sent a player off

18 minutes ago, arbitro said:

Is that any different than a player making a mistake and giving a goal away or missing an easy chance? As frustrating as it is mistakes happen because they are human.

The difference being that if a player routinely misses sitters or gives goals away they generally find themselves out of the team, whereas the same refs make horrendous errors game after game and yet the next weekend they’re sent out again to ruin someone else’s afternoon

Maybe if they lost a percentage of their match fee for an overturned red card then they’d think twice about dishing them out, and only do so if they were absolutely 100% certain about it (which really ought to be the minimum requirement anyway)

I think a few different things can all be true here:

Was it a stupid thing for Buckley to do? Yes

Should he have done it? No

Was it worthy of a red card? No

Did the referee have to send him off? No

Personally, I tend to go off the reaction of players, managers etc. The fact that, even when it happened, not one of their players complained to the ref about it tells me that it was a nothing incident and, when the red card was produced, their players were just as shocked as ours were. 
 

But, as others have said, I don’t think that incident on its own cost us the game. We were far too slow to react to losing a man and had no shape and were chasing shadows. As soon as the red card came out we needed to shut up shop and try and hold the point. Personally I would have brought Travis and S. Wharton on for Dack & Gallagher, gone 5-3-1 and tried to frustrate them, which might just have meant they left space for us to hit on the break. Instead, we kept 4 attacking players on the pitch, got overrun in the midfield and conceded a second too easily, which then meant we had an uphill battle to get back into the game - how many times does a team with 10 come from behind? I’d wager it is not very often. 

54 minutes ago, scotchrover said:

That was the second home game in a row that I’ve walked out early. The scoreline flattered us.

The midfield was once again major issue. You could have drove a 747 through it today. I honestly believe it’s down to the way we’re set up. We’re far too wide as a unit. We also created very little. 

If things don’t change, we’re in a relegation battle. JDT is increasingly looking like he’s out of his depth. I get the sense he’s trying to play something the squad isn’t capable of. 

45 minutes ago, Sweaty Gussets said:

There are huge gaps where our midfield should be when we don't have the ball. We are so easily overrun. 

Again, that's down to the tactics employed. 

I’ll qualify this by admitting that I’ve only seen 2 games so far this season (the other being WBA) so it’s probably not fair to judge too harshly, but I thought today’s game was very similar to watching us under Ince - trying to play football the ‘right’ way, some fantastic bits of interplay and great to watch on the ball when it clicks (see both of our goals), however no real discipline on team shape, not close enough to the opposition out of possession and not a tackle anywhere in the team - all of which means we are wide open to play against and far to easy to break on.
I can unfortunately see us losing far more than we win this season 

However, listening to Kevin Gallacher on the way home on BBC Lancs, he reckoned it was just a bad day at the office and a poor performance, rather than anything tactically wrong, so hopefully he’s right and my fears are unfounded 

16 hours ago, Mike E said:

Doesn't matter. We can sell sponsorless shirts without a sponsor being in place. They'd sell like hotcakes.

What we'd need is ANY sponsor that is willing to go with that (even at a reduced price). The unique situation would plaster the sponsor's name all over the sports news for a while, and they'd still be on TV every time Rovers are.

The money recouped in extra revenue from virtually every fan buying one (the market research is there, fans prefer a sponsorless look) would be worth a reasonable shortfall.

If we used your estimated figure (which I think is too low, but anyway) then say it’s a case of £200k for the ‘normal’ sponsorship deal, or £100k for your suggestion - we’d have to sell an extra 10,000 sponsorless shirts just to break even.
I don’t know how many shirts we sell per year, but I’d be surprised if it’s much more than that anyway, so effectively you’d be gambling on trying to double your shirt sales 

2 hours ago, Paul Mani said:

I loved being a mid table PL side. But I hated the football. HATED it. It literally made me feel like not wanting to watch.

For the record, there’s no way I would’ve sacked him. Sam, Williams and Finn were Venkys golden ticket. Their decision on that trio has genuinely cost them £200m 🙈

I think this is pretty much exactly how I feel/felt. His football was dreadful to watch - give it to Diouf and let him win a freekick on the halfway line so that we can smash it up to Samba - at times we made Pulis’ Stoke look like Barcelona!!

 I remember one game in particular, I think against Birmingham, where Dunny scored early on - after the initial euphoria of celebrating the goal, we (and everyone around us) gave out a collective groan/sigh because we knew that we were now in for 80+ minutes of sitting back and holding onto the 1-0

My dad and I had already made the decision that we weren’t going to renew our season tickets if Sam was still the manager as it just wasn’t enjoyable anymore (although obviously it hasn’t exactly been too enjoyable over the last 12 years and we’re still there, so maybe we’re just gluttons for punishment and would have changed our minds when it came down to it 🤷‍♂️)

37 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

I’m entertained by 3 points at 5pm.

I’ve seen a lot of people say this over the years, but if it is just purely about the results then you can get the same entertainment by checking the result at 5pm and save yourself £30 a week. 
If people are paying out their hard earned money then, in my opinion at least, there needs to be moments of individual brilliance, and things that genuinely get you out of your seat with excitement 

Just a thought that occurred to me earlier - I’ve seen a lot of comments on here praising the second half performance last night and stuff like “that’s how we should have been playing” etc, however the only real difference between last night and the last few weeks (yesterday’s 1st half excepted) is that we took our chances. For instance, the goals we scored last night, we had almost exactly the same chances on Saturday but didn’t take any of them -
1st goal, Wharton free header from a corner, on Saturday he put it wide
2nd goal - point blank header inside the 6yd box - on Saturday Lenihan put it straight at the keeper
3rd goal - striker arriving on the end of a cross from the left - on Saturday Dack screws it wide

So, whilst it was much improved from the first 45 minutes (let’s be honest it couldn’t have been worse), the performance was very similar to how we’ve been playing lately* - we just got the rewards from it whereas we haven’t previously. 
 

* in fact I’d argue that the performances against Sheff Utd and definitely Millwall were far better than last night - just without the clinical finishing 

55 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

I was feeling elated walking up Livesey Branch Road, as was everybody else bouncing up the hill… then I read this thread. TM ain’t the only ‘odd’ one.

Just how I felt. Tbh I don’t come on here too often anymore as it quite often feels fairly toxic, but this thread has taken it to whole new levels. It genuinely seems like some of you are gutted we won as you’d rather blast Mowbray than celebrate a victory 

1 hour ago, rovers11 said:

Good win and much needed. 

I think it kicked off in the dressing room at ht and TM regrets some of the things he said. That's the impression I get from his post match interview. He's certainly questioning the commitment of some of the more "technical players"  (Rothwell!).

That’s also how I read his (admittedly strange) radio Lancs interview. 
It comes across to me that he’s torn into a few at h/t (along with a couple of the senior players) and he’s feeling that - that’s not his usual man-management style - and a blazing row plays on most peoples’ minds for a while afterwards (even if you’re in the right). 
Certainly throughout the first half he was angrier at the players than I’ve seen him before this season, shouting at Rothwell and Johnson a few times about positioning, and he had a right go at JRC during a break for their lad getting treatment - telling him to stop turning back and to ‘go f***ing forward’. 

We definitely should have signed a centre back that summer - Tony Gale had stopped playing regularly halfway through the title winning season and defence was our weakness in the latter stages of that season - which almost resulted in us missing out on the title. 

I always felt that we should have gone for Teddy Sheringham too. I know Shearer was reported as being keen on us signing Barmby because of the way he linked midfield to attack, but Sheringham was a similar and, imo, much better player and the two knew each other from playing together with England

A couple of weeks ago I read a Portsmouth News article about Hayden Carter and ever since Facebook keeps suggesting other articles for me. 

Anyway, this one about the late postponement of their game at Crewe on Saturday seems like it has many parallels with the situation at Rovers and might be of interest to others:

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/football/portsmouth-fc/a-front-row-seat-at-theatre-of-absurd-what-happened-on-day-of-farce-for-pompey-3576986?fbclid=IwAR0UNZAuTo7t9OUcI0rclgkrsU_p10J9xXOreZJf7uLdQURerUyBFtvuyAs

I watched the second half of Leeds v Man Utd earlier and the pitch at Elland Road seemed to be in a much worse condition than what I saw at Ewood yesterday, with the ball sticking in various parts of the pitch, but there never appeared to be any question of that game being abandoned - I really think that we just had an over-officious / over-cautious ref yesterday (as did Crewe it seems, looking at pictures from Gresty Road)

That said though I’m not overly upset that it was called off (although I wish it had been done before I set off, rather than just after I had paid for a pint in the ground!) - I think that the heavy pitch & conditions would have suited Millwall more than us, plus there’s always a risk of injuries etc ahead of 2 massive games coming up - so, all in all, I really don’t think it’s too bad of an outcome 

I know that it’s disappointing that Rothwell looks like he’s going (and if it were up to me I’d be tempted to keep him) but ultimately, as important as the rest of this season is, it isn’t all there is. 
 

Even if Rothwell could be trusted to give 100% for the rest of the season (and it seems like there might be question marks over that) we know that he’s not going to sign a new contract, and so we could keep a player, who doesn’t really want to be here, for a maximum of 4 months, during which time he could lose form or get injured and be worth literally nothing to us, or we could get some money for him and replace him with one (or maybe two) players who will be with us not just for 5 months, but the next couple of seasons too. 
 

So, whilst in my heart I’d love Rothwell to stay, I can understand why Mowbray is willing to sell

1 hour ago, darrenrover said:

....not to mention sending off Henning Berg at Ewood and awarding a penalty for a perfectly timed tackle! (red 2hat!)

I’m sure that was Gerald Ashby rather than Durkin - I still remember that incident like it was yesterday, and his name has been imprinted on my brain ever since!!

45 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

Decisions like that are made because Waggot is first and foremost a used car salesman 

Embarrassed to have that on my shirt. I was going to buy the yellow one to make up the three but I certainly won’t with “Totally Wiked” plastered on it. Cheap, tacky and not within the brand I want Rovers to be 

They always find a way to annoy you 

The yellow shirts sold out a while ago, so you’d have been struggling anyway 

4 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

The Dingles are coming out with all this now as they are bottom of the table with one win in mid January.

Don’t remember much carping when the same ‘boring type of football’ had them winning plenty and mid table. 

They ‘aren’t entertained’ because they never win, not because a club with one of the league’s lowest budgets aren’t producing this mythical ‘expansive football’.
 

A friend of mine had season tickets over there, along with the rest of his family. They gave them up a couple of years ago as, in his words, ‘there was nothing to get you out of your seat’. 
It’s not that he wants Dyche out, but just refuses to pay when there‘s no/little entertainment.

11 hours ago, USABlue said:

Don't worry Tony will freshen it up and there lies the end of any promotion aspirations.  We have seen his absurd decisions in one game, I fear after that loss he will feel a need to fix it.  Gallagher will be forced in again.  Khadra did more in 3 minutes than Gally did all game.  Dolan defending, give me a break.  Death spiral is going to start and in 10 games we will all be wondering how the hell we managed to get such a lofty perch.

F*** me, what a ridiculous over-reaction. 
Tony made a small number of changes in a game which, in the context of our season, is pretty meaningless (I wanted us to win, because I always want us to win, but I’m not exactly upset that we lost) and, as one of those who spent time and money going to watch the game, I was actually disappointed that he didn’t make more - I expected to see Butterworth start (I also expected to see Davenport and Carter but covid/injury put paid to that), plus I hoped we might see Garrett get at least 30 mins or so. 
 

And other than changing the keeper (and pretty much every championship and prem team played their 2nd keeper this weekend) none of the changes cost us the game. You mention Dolan, his defending was ok for the most part, weirdly it was going forward where he seemed to struggle, but his inclusion at rwb didn’t cost us the game, nor did Ayala, Gallagher or Edun. For 60 minutes we were comfortably in charge of the match and then Pears made a mistake and subsequently lost his head and forgot how to play football for the rest of the game. Barring injury, Kaminski will be back in goal for the remainder of the season and, in the long-run, I suspect losing this game will be more of a blessing than anything else. 

4 hours ago, bluebruce said:

Just seen the LT player ratings.

Pears got a 4, somehow. Dolan, Johnson and Gallagher got 5. Now I'm not saying any of those three had a good game (in Dolan's case he was given an unfair ask) but that they only scored 1 higher than quite possibly the worst goalkeeping performance I've seen for us?

In and of itself, 4 is disgustingly high for how he played. If a goalie ever deserved a 1, it was him. Wigan only had 2 shots on target and scored 3 goals!! The first was very poor from him, the second was an abomination and you can even argue he should have done better for the third (I'll let that one slide, personally). What exactly did he do to earn any marks above the minimum 1 out of 10 ?! You have to do something positive to earn marks ffs, all he did was single handedly cost us the game. Or double handedly in the case of the second goal!

The lad made 3 mistakes, albeit very costly ones, but let’s not pretend that every other player out there didn’t make at least that many… at one point just after the equaliser Johnson gave the ball away 3 times in the space of about 30 seconds, BBD chose to try and go it alone instead of releasing a teammate in a better position 2 or 3 times, Rothwell similarly

I know Pear’s’ mistakes were different in that they led to goals, but that’s the nature of the keeper position, and I know that we’re all frustrated with him (although I imagine he’s just as disappointed/upset with himself as we are - he looked close to tears at the end of the game), but let’s not pretend that everything he did was bad or wrong. 3/10 seems like a fair enough score to me - and plus, I don’t really see what it achieve to give him 1 or 0 - it’s not like he’s going to be thinking he did ok out there because some journo gave him 3 or 4 out of 10 is it?

Like others have said, it’s not even close. Rovers every time. 
Tbh, I’d even put a dingle relegation above an England WC win in terms of enjoyment - but maybe that’s just me 🤔

16 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

We haven't conceded in 500 minutes of football now. I honestly can't remember the last time I read that about any Rovers team.

On this kind of Rovers-trivia theme - the guys behind me today were wondering when the last time we had a striker hit 19 goals before Christmas?

Without looking at the stats I’d have guessed maybe Shearer back in 1992/93 - but I suspect someone on here might know better
 

42 minutes ago, longsiders1882 said:

 

25 shots indeed - only 4 on target. Of course when we go to a club like Chelsea built on billions we ride our luck but, as pointed out, we defended resolutely and in the main successfully. Defending is still part of the game. As for possession, you don’t get bonus goals for it, it’s a meaningless stat - and didn’t Chelsea win the Champions League final with about 20% possession? I’m not claiming we deserved anything from the game but we did work damn hard.

Just on demanding apologies, we expected a thumping. As I said earlier I regarded 2-0 or less as a decent result for us. Our manager is under no pressure - well maybe a few weird fans on the inter web but nothing serious.

Like I said Chelsea were wasteful. Obviously I didn’t see the whole game, and I’ve already said it’s dangerous to judge just from the limited MotD highlights, but from what I did see Chelsea got themselves into some exceptionally good positions and had a number of chances that, on another day, they would expect to take. 
And just to put the stats into perspective, Chelsea created more chances, had more shots and had more possession against you than they did against Norwich, and than Fulham did against us, both of which ended as 7-0 results. 
 

But it wasn’t meant as a dig at Burnley, or to put Dyche or the players down in any way, just an observation really that there is often a very fine line between a good day and a bad day, and whether your luck is in or out can sometimes be the difference between a good result and a hiding 

Football’s a funny old game, eh? I’ve just watched the highlights of the dingles game at Chelsea on MotD and (whilst I know it’s dangerous to judge on 6/7 minutes of highlights) it looked almost as poor a performance from them as ours on Wednesday. Chelsea were absolutely dominant, getting in at will and had numerous clear cut chances to score (25 shots, 70% possession), the only difference was, whereas Fulham were clinical, Chelsea were wasteful in the extreme. And then one chance gets taken and has the fans hailing their team rather than demanding apologies. Like I say, a funny old game!

22 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

What Mowbray has never had is a coherent way of playing and a settled team. He’s too keen to tinker with the team to suit our opponents.
 

I was listening to the Blackpool coach on Radio Lancashire tonight. He said before they played us he’d had Rovers watched. He was expecting us to play in a certain way when they played us but he found on the day that Mowbray had changed our system to try and combat Blackpool’s style.

I heard that too, but he said that we confused them by playing 3 in midfield, which I would say we have done for the majority of the season, so I did begin to question just how closely they had had us watched 😂

He also said that pretty much every team that had visited Blackpool this season had played differently to how they were expecting, which shows that either their scouting really isn’t up to much or that pretty much every manager at every club changes their personnel and/or tactics depending on the opposition 

2 hours ago, Wheelton Blue said:

For me, Davenport was MOM today. Kept it simple and kept the ball moving. 

Why oh why can't Mowbray just stop his needless tinkering and play to our strengths? Bloody infuriating.

I realise that it’s not the done thing on here to defend Mowbray, but I don’t think it’s quite as simple as just stick with the same 11 and stop tinkering - our players just aren’t consistent enough. 
 

Take Poveda for example. He was fantastic today, but up until now he’s been terrible - who’s to say what kind of performance we’ll get out of him next time round. 
And it’s not just him. Brereton was as good today as we was awful on Wednesday; Lenihan, Travis, Buckley, Rothwell, Gallagher, Nyambe- all capable of being brilliant or terrible on any given Saturday. 
We could easily put out the same team, in the same formation, with the same tactics next time out and get thumped - that’s just the nature of having a young team I think