That’s just bollocks Last season we scored 15 goals in the first 15 minutes of games (I don’t know how that stacks up against other teams in the end, but I remember against Brentford the commentator on Sky saying that it the most in the championship at that point) and this season, so far, we have 5 inside the first 15 minutes. So the idea that we only start playing after we go behind is just not backed up by the stats. And the idea that we play for a draw, camped with men behind the ball - do you even watch our games? If anything our problem is that we commit too many players forward and get caught on the break - see the goals conceded yesterday, at Watford, at Bournemouth, against Reading... to name just a few

Nyambe, Johnson and Gallagher were all excellent today, and Rothwell was good first half. But Elliott was really poor all game today - maybe he needs a rest on Wednesday and let Dolan, who looked good when he came on, have a game from the start.

Agree - although I do also wonder if that helped a little with the late handball shout. Certainly, on the first reply they showed I was fairly certain that it was their player that had handled the ball, and it was only on the 3rd viewing that I could tell it was Lenihan. I wonder if the ref, even if he saw the handball, decided not to give it as he couldn't be 100% certain which 'white sleeved player' had actually touched it?

Presumably a knock-on effect of this is that prices for young British players will go through the roof. So it could be a very good time to have a team full of promising young British players (plus others such as Nyambe who have been here long enough to qualify for citizenship). Maybe the £12m spent on Gallagher and Brereton was an inspired investment after all!!

Wharton has done ok, and certainly looks pretty solid defensively, but on the ball has looked incredibly shaky and, in my opinion, would rightly be behind Williams and Ayala for that reason. You could see yesterday, particularly in the first 30 minutes when Barnsley were really pressing us in our half, they stepped off and were happy for Scott to have the ball, knowing that he would either go back to Kaminsky or just punt it forward aimlessly (which he did a number of times and lost possession every time) Compare that to Lenihan (who is not exactly a Tosin himself) who played a few decent balls in behind the Barnsley defence and almost got Armstrong away a couple of times.

I think it depends on what comes most naturally to you. I too played at a fairly decent level and started as a winger, before moving up front where I played for the majority of my time, before then moving back in my final couple of years to DM and then eventually to CB. I definitely found playing up front easier as I had to concentrate on what I was doing less, although obviously I found the deeper positions less physically demanding (hence why I moved back there) Anyway, on BB (as this is his thread) it is great to see him contributing to the team and I do think to an extent that the stats don't really tell the whole story. For instance, I was thinking during Saturday's game that if Armstrong was as unselfish as Ben, then he would probably have more than just the 2 goals - on Saturday alone there were two occasions where Armstrong took the harder option of trying to shoot past (or through) a defender where a relatively simple square pass may have put BB in with a chance on goal. (BTW, I am not criticising AA for his 'selfishness' - good strikers need that, and when I played I was often the most selfish player on the pitch, but it is just worth noting that if BB were to develop that more 'ruthless' side to his game, it may well also result in less chances falling to AA and maybe even less goals for the team as a whole)

That one was Brereton - the player that I keep reading on here offers no goal threat whatsoever It’s not the manager out there missing penalties, or blazing over from 10 yards out, or fluffing 1on1’s, or scoring ridiculous own goals. You could argue that the chances we created showed he set the team up right - he doesn’t tell the players to miss them on purpose you know. Saturday’s performance was poor, devoid of ideas etc. Tonight we had enough good chances to have won 3 games - if you can’t see that, I don’t know what game you’re watching. But then, since we played 4-3-3, and definitely not 3 at the back, maybe you weren’t actually watching the game at all

Lots of criticism on here for Brereton, but he was comfortably the pick of the 3 forwards that started this afternoon. Not saying that he played particularly well, but the other 2 were worse and the fact that Ben is getting pelters and the other 2 aren’t being mentioned says more about the posters on here than it does about him.

Not sure how much truth there is to this since Whiteman played for Donny last night in the EFL Trophy. Surely if he’d already met with Mowbray and ‘everything was signed’ then he wouldn’t still be turning out for them - especially in a fairly meaningless game.

“a masturbatory gesture next to his backside” apparently https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2014/apr/09/colin-kazim-richards-guilty-homophobic-gesture-brighton-fans

Must admit I was thinking something similar myself the other day. I found myself annoyed by the price rise, but then remembered that myself & my dad moved from the DE to the JW Upper when they reduced the prices under John Williams because we decided that £400 for a ST in the JW Upper was decent value - we also got a free under 8’s ticket for my son who was 3 or 4 at the time and who only came to about 5 games or so. We’ve since moved to the JW Lower and to renew for the 3 of us it would be £760 (my dad is now a senior citizen and my son is 17), so although a price rise on last year, in reality £40 cheaper for us as a group than 14 years or so ago.

Whilst technically an 'assist' for the stats, in reality it was a short square ball across the middle of the pitch 35 yards from goal from which Johnson took a long range pot shot, which squirmed under the keeper who really ought to have done much better. Hardly a defence splitting wonder ball which laid the goal on a plate is it? *Edit* - Just noticed that roversfan99 made the same point much more eloquently

As others have said it's all about opinions, but for me Brereton has looked a much better player and has contributed to the team more so far in the opening two games than JRC, yet people are arguing that Brereton needs to be dropped whilst JRC needs to be given a run of games to show what he can do. I'm guessing that's because JRC is seen as a young player, and Brereton as an established one but the reality is that the two are the same age (3 months between them). I know that Brereton cost a considerable amount of money, but the reality is that he is a young player and we need to view him as that - raw and with potential to get better. Yes, he'll have some bad games (hopefully amongst some good ones), and he is not the finished article, but I honestly believe that, as he develops, in a couple of years time we will have a very good player on our hands

Does anyone know if this will be available to watch anywhere?

Plus, my other question still stands. There seems to be a clamour on here for them to be on sale, but who on here is actually wanting to buy one at the moment? If, as I suspect, the number is minuscule, then having them on sale wouldn’t bring in much money anyway

I’m amazed because they’re selling a product which may not exist. And whilst clubs are hard up and season ticket sales provide some immediate cash flow, if there’s a 50% chance you’ll have to refund some or all of that money I’m not sure how prudent it is to spending that. Otherwise you’re just creating problems for yourself down the line.

Fair enough. Like I said I picked the first 4 teams I thought of (I’ve previously lived in both Derby & Sheffield so those are always likely to be among the first I think of) I’m genuinely amazed that teams are selling them at the moment. I’d be interested to know, honestly, who on here would buy a season ticket at the minute given the uncertainty about when/if crowds will be able to attend again? Edit - I didn’t ignore your examples, I replied to your original message which didn’t include any

You may be right - however, out of interest I had a quick look at Derby, Sheff Weds, Preston & Reading (the first 4 teams that came to mind, who were clear that they would be in the Championship next season) and none of them have season tickets on sale. Derby & Wednesday had them on sale, but have stopped sales because of the current uncertainty and neither Reading or Preston had any info about season tickets on their website. I guess I must just have got unlucky given that ‘pretty much every team has them on sale already’?

I realise that Rovers is not always the best run club (understatement!), but I don’t think that we can read too much into season tickets not being on sale yet. What exactly would you be buying? And how much would people be willing to pay? For instance, given that fans definitely won’t be able to attend at the start of the season are the club going to sell IFollow season tickets? And if so, are they able to sell them to cover home & away games or would away games have to be bought separately in the way that away match tickets would be? I’m guessing, from past experience of how they work, that the EFL haven’t even thought about that question yet. Then you have the question of cost. Obviously no one is going to pay £300+ for IFollow, but say they are priced at £150-200 would people buy them anyway given that we might be able to attend games again from October and so the IFollow subscription would no longer be needed. Perhaps they could introduce another option - say £150 for just Ifollow and £250 for Ifollow upgraded to physical tickets when/if we can attend again? But again, are people going to buy those given that we might be back in October, but it’s just as likely to be next Jan/Feb or even next September, so effectively you’re paying £100 for potentially nothing. I know it’s frustrating, but this is not a normal off-season and it really isn’t as simple as just saying ‘get the season tickets on sale’. (I haven’t really the time or inclination to check what other Championship clubs are doing, but I’d be amazed if any have season tickets on sale yet)

If (and I know it’s a big if, but...) if we win our next two, and other results go with form, then we could go into the final game of the season just 1 point off sixth - which I would probably have taken before the season started

As I’ve said I think that the first half at Barnsley was good and had we taken one of our chances we would probably have gone on to win 3 or 4 nil - but ultimately goals change games, we didn’t take our chances, they did. That’s the way it goes, and it’s annoying, frustrating etc, but equally doesn’t completely negate the positive parts of the performance. The performance at Wigan wasn’t good - but also wasn’t abject. It looked like it had 0-0 written all over it from about 10 mins in - and would have been if it weren’t for Walton (whose individual performances since the restart could legitimately be labelled abject imo)

Indeed. And don’t get me wrong, I’m as p***ed off as anyone when we lose - ask my wife, she’ll tell you I was like a bear with a sore head on Tuesday and again last night. But, that doesn’t mean that the performances were abject, or spineless or whatever. Just because we lose doesn’t mean that automatically we’ve played crap - just as winning doesn’t mean that we were brilliant (a point that many on here are usually very quick to point out!)

I know it's disappointing and frustrating to lose three quick games on the bounce, but I do think that some of the reaction has been a bit OTT. Personally I think that we've been more unlucky than abject The game at Wigan - wasn't a great performance by any stretch and tbh it didn't ever look like we were going to do enough to win, but at the same time, until Walton dropped a ricket, it didn't ever look to be a game that we were in danger of losing either. The game at Barnsley - the result doesn't look great, but first half we had over 70% possession, were in complete control of the game and had two or three fairly clear cut chances to score. Had we taken one of those then I think we would have gone on to win fairly comfortably. Having gone behind, Mowbray tried to change things up and within 7 minutes we had Brereton sent off - and whilst I can see why it was given as a red, it was a fairly soft one and 8 or 9 times out 10 that is a yellow at most - and the sending off then affects our ability to get back into the game, especially as it comes so soon after making 4 subs and changing the formation. The game yesterday - lots of teams will lose to Leeds, and tbh I can't imagine many of us saw us getting 3 points here, but that said we did ok - especially in the first half. Again we created 2 or 3 clear cut chances, plus had a goal ruled out for less contact on their defender than there was on Travis for their first. Had we managed to get back to 1-1 or even to get our noses in front then the second half may have been a different game. Like I say it's disappointing/annoying to have lost all 3 games, but I think we were unlucky to lose at least 2 of those and there's a danger of letting the results colour our view of the performances. And on Mowbray generally - obviously he's made some mistakes. The signings of Gallagher and Brereton look worse by the week, and Walton - there's glimpses of a player in there - he had a decent spell of games from mid-Jan to the start of the lockdown, but his form at the beginning of the season and especially since the restart has been atrocious - so that has to be another black mark against the manager. However, when you consider the run of injuries we've had this season, I think he's done a decent enough job to have us up with a chance of the playoffs for so long. For instance, against Barnsley we were missing 4 left backs, our main centre-half, 2 centre-mids, and our best/most creative/most prolific player - and like I said we still dominated the game, in the first half at least. (To put that into perspective, if you took Liverpool - arguably the best team in the world atm - and this afternoon against Villa took away Robertson, Milner + the next two in line for LB, Van Dijk, Henderson & Fabinho plus one of either Mane or Salah - I would probably back them still to win, but it would be much more in the balance than with those players - many on here don't seem to be able accept that missing so many means that it's more likely that we will struggle against teams like Barnsley.) And, I know that's just one game, but we've been missing Cunningham, Evans and Dack for a large chunk of the season. Dack in particular, at the time when he got injured, was such a blow. Our team was built around him, almost everything went through him and he got injured just at the start of a run of games in quick succession, which didn't give us chance to adjust properly and meant we had a poor run in those games around Christmas. When we finally did have time to adjust properly we got back to playing well and went on a good run, which got us within touching distance of the playoffs. And again, for those who don't see the importance of losing just 1 or 2 key men from your team, I have a City supporting mate who is adamant that the reason the gap between them and Liverpool is so big this season is down to Laporte being injured for much of the season. If a team that has spent half a Billion £s on players can be so affected by the loss of just one player, then surely we can accept that losing our best player might just affect Rovers a little bit. I realise that I'm shouting into the void somewhat on here - as many of you made up your minds on Mowbray a long time ago. But for me, I can see progression each season and so I think that he has earned next season to see if we can make a serious, sustained push for the playoffs. If not, then I may well come round to the group mentality on here and call for him to be replaced.

I used to live across the road from Kevin - although not for too long, I moved in just after we'd been relegated and he'd bought the house after his move to Rovers, so then his mum and brother lived there after he left us to go back down to Southampton. I remember the local pub landlord telling me once that Kevin had gone completely off the rails during that first season with us - basically the move to us had made him a millionaire overnight and, at 21, it had just messed with his head and thrown him off kilter. I also think that the fact things hadn't gone well at Rovers must have shattered his confidence - I remember, a couple of days after I had moved in, I was standing at the bus stop and could see him in his garden. He had a set of full size goalposts in his garden he and was standing about 10/12 yards back from them and was flicking the ball up and then volleying it at the goal. In the time I was stood watching he did it 7 times, but only 1 of his shots actually went in! I remember thinking that I would have backed myself to have had a better conversion rate. Another player that comes to mind is Lee Makel - I remember seeing him play in a cup game back in about 94 or 95 (certainly when Kenny was still in charge), and he just ran the game. Both myself and my dad went away that day convinced that he was going to be the next big thing - but then he just disappeared and never really went on to do much as far as I know.

‘Off the line’ may have been a slight exaggeration, but certainly blocked inside the 6-yard box with the keeper looking beat. Here’s how both teams reported it on Twitter (Hull seem to have got confused between Armstrong & Bennett)