Agree with 99 here. The difference for Rhodes is there were a ton of other players who could score regularly- King, Gestede, Cairney and Marshall to name a few and the jigsaw was nearly complete (imo a good keeper and defensive mid and we'd have had the best 11 in the division.) This current Rovers side really struggle for goals. Strikers who look inept, the likes of Armstrong on the wing. Without Dack we really are stuffed for regular goals.

Don't get excited. He said defenders are coming and Gally will be banging them in. What he says and does are two different things. Apart from his treatment of Nayambe and Rothwell. He speaks negatively of them and treats them accordingly. But still I wouldn't listen too much to what he says. He'd be mad to give up his no accountability gig.

We have enough goals in midfield but up front? Granted it might help Gally and co if they actually played there regularly but we don't bar Graham have a striker who either a) would score regularly or b) enables effective link up that maximises the goals the midfield score. So a striker is an issue. That said I agree more of an issue is the defence as if we cut out the 2 conversed per game we wouldn't be reliant on scoring as many goals. I'd also say there's a big question over who sits with Travis in the 2 (Holtby?) As that needs resolving too. At least we have 300 potential options for this though and one might work out if the rest of the team was ok.

In fairness to Gally and Samuel both of whom I also think is pretty useless it can't help being shunted out to the wing on a regular basis. Not seen one attribute Gally has which suggests it's a good idea to play him there. Like with most things TM manages to make things even more complicated than they should be. I do wonder if we did things simply, like players playing in losirion, how much of a difference that would actually make.

Interestingly despite our poor performances we somehow have a 7 point gap on the relegation zone as the relegation scrap is playing our as expected. Stoke looking ok with a new manager but have a lot.of catching up to do, Millwall and Reading scraping points here and there but alongside a poor Barnsley Luton and Wigan are on poor runs. Next season can see as relegation favourites with TM in charge but this year we re very fortunate that 3 teams are in a massively worse shape than us. We're poor at both ends but still ragging points- Luton, Wigan and Barnsley are not. Next year without these three weak teams Rovers will be in even more difficulty as the league grows in competitiveness. Even now if one of the 3 teams.mentions turns it round we are in trouble. The positive is they don't look like they will.

Game summed up our season. We have a few good players of top quality who can grab us a few points. We can rag a few wins to keep our head above water. Other clubs exist that have more issues than us. Overall our performance levels are poor, turgid and uninspiring. We also always leak 2 goals a game and need 3 to win. Our failings are compounded by an unbalanced squad and the clown of a manager playing multiple players who shouldn't be in the team in wrong positions, making us worse than we should be. No wonder fans are getting fed up! The silver lining is the whopping 7 points between us and relegation which means our shambles of a season probably won't end in relegation.

Yes he is such a hypocrite he is very dislikeable. Maybe Ewood has a way of doing that to people.

If you play Gallagher and Armstrong you are asking a lot of the other 9!

And really neither player should be anywhere near full back. Fortunately these are the only outfield players that look horrendously weak. The rest of the team looks decent.

I'd have put Graham up front but with Rothwell, Holtby and Dack behind Gally should get good service and when combined with the opposition quality if he can't score against them he really should give up. Our full backs look weak, very weak and that could cause us some problems. A defensive injury would also cause us a lot of peoblems. Travis has a lot to do as the only defence minded midfielder. That said we're at home verses the divisions weakest team so a fair bit of attacking flair is no bad thing. Still think a home banker. Up the Rovers.

Yes. It's worrying that TM openly admits that it is different criteria for 2 players in the same position. rothwell is about end product - yet Armstrong has none- Armstrong is about qualities. It's an appalling double standard and even worse that he has admitted it. So Bennett is picked by being a good talker rather than ability? Again a crazy admission. Not sure how he drives the team on - conceding penalties and losing his man? Also aside from being gash he also isn't played in his proper/natural position. Madness. The article was just horrible. Horrible, horrible, horrible exposing how deluded TM is. It's almost as bad as Prince Andrew's BBC appearance (albeit on a much less serious topic.) A few other thoughts from the car crash article. 1) Of the 4 players ever present until this game I would happily see the back of 3. Walton isn't fit to be an understudy and Bennett and Williams are very limited squad players whose key attribute is versatility. The fact they have been ever present helps explain where we are. 2) The Dack stuff sounds horrible mismanagement. For a bit of a party boy to be told it doesn't matter about his form as he has goals in him is not going to exact him to higher srandards. Plus it must be a kick in the teeth to many players who are judged on performance - like Rothwell. Hell, it's just bad management to say players can get a free pass regardless of how they play. Can't believe how terrible that is when I paraphrase it! Also it must be bemusing for Graham and Mulgrew who both still had a goal in them but are benchesld and shipped out respectively. 3) The Gallagher part could be entitled "why it's not my fault I spunked £5 million" as TM looks to shift the blame for Gally's inadequacies onto everyone but him. PR to Pune imo. 4) Surprisingly what isn't said is equally damning. Only 4 or 5 likely starters shows how clueless TM is both with his set up and nous as well as his transfer record. Surely for the money spent on them Johnson and the City lad for example should be regular starters although in the case of the former it again looks like another transfer clanger by TM. Overall the interview shows why TM needs to go. Terrible motivation, management and tactical nous all displayed in a speech of waffle and horse manure, and imo some unethical double standards. This guy is a joker and needs to go asap.

Think it was Arsenal in the cup that made me think a bit more favourably of Kean. Perhaps Steele had more experience (hence seeming older) than Kean, although it didn't seem to do him any good. We really are in a bad way to have 2 such bad examples of keeper competing for the title of who is worst within such a short time frame..

Didn't Kean do ok at the start? Can't remember Steele having any run of decent games. Still would go with Steele although perhaps he had more time to show his clangers as you say. Also one was a youth promoted too soon, the other was allegedly an established keeper.

There's a host of issues, even awarding the points to the other team is unfair on any other teams involved/surrounding the team's in question. Let's say in this situation there was a third team involved and they go down as Luton get the 3 points which they haven't earned. It wasn't a guarentee they'd get them if the match had been played so even this isn't representative/fair. The only way to ensure it doesn't happen is to severely punish the team missing the game.

Steele is the worst keeper I have seen for Rovers ever. Certainly the worst to have competed regularly for a number 1 slot. Incidentally the whole keeper argument is which is the least worst option which kidna sums up Rovers issues...

The back then Mulgrew and Graham. I'd take Raya over João and Emnes up front ahead of Gally and Bereton. Also some of them are still in the team - Williams, Bennett, Gally for example - all of whom should be squad players at best. But yes there is improvement as not many would get in. My issue is that there's not been that much improvement and we've still a host of the same problems and imbalances 5 windows and £15 million later!

That's not a squad, that's a horror story! And pretty compelling. That's a nightmare of a squad. Think my point is - or perhaps more clearly stated or ammended to - not so much we're not in a better position but that we've not improved that much given 5 windows and £15 million. The first choice keeper is still appalling, The defence is still threadbare - most bar the City lad are still the same as the ones who got relegated - and the squad is still very unbalanced. In fact I'd suggest the striker options that year are better than now. Most of all both squads have a horrible short termism to them with age and loan returns meaning there is no sustainability or momentum to them. Honestly that previous squad was a joke and utterly appalling. I'm not sure we could have a worse squad. But for us to be marginally better is not much of an achievement. Certainly given the time and money spent to have far too many similarities with this squad is a travesty. Yes there is improvement but not enough to write home about. In fact in the circumstances so little improvement is a sad indictment of TMs reign.

Spot on! And this is the key issue. A decent manager would be getting miles more out of the squad then TM or Coyle did. It really is obvious that if you get in a good manager, the team will do better, yet we only get bargain basement managers. I'll be honest on the vastly better squad I'm undecided. I flip between thinking it is strong if unbalanced and not much different. Perhaps it is better but the situation isn't much different as I would like. We've a patched up defense, a terrible keeper, an unbalanced squad and at the end of the season will need a massive rebuild, with 2 of our promotion asserts reaching the end. Certainly there's not 5 windows and £15 mill worth of tangible improvements. That said with an exciting academy producing decent championship players, the likes of Holtby, Rothwell and Dack there should be more than enough there for a decent manager to get a tune out of that is at least not struggling Vs relegation. As you say, this all comes down to a competent manager.

Sounds ideal for us then. Certainly no worse then the rest of the clowns. As USABlue says an interest from someone in the family would be a step up.

Imagine if (and I know Liverpool won) they decided not to play the City game recently to prevent them catching up on them. This is what the current ruling opens the door to.

What's the far better position? Graham and Mulgrew are years older and fading. A nice collection of midfielders aside the squad still looks unbalanced and weak in places. We've spent £15 million and have no credible replacement for Graham. We have a keeper who is Steele-esque at times (who we don't even own), we have a limited right midfielder as captain and right back, we're woefully short on defenders and in the summer will need to replace 5/6 players just to stand still! Yes we have some very good midfielders - Dack, Holtby and Travis -and I do think a better manager could get us doing much better with the squad we have, but when so many players aren't performing well, the squad is so unbalanced, we've spend £15 million on little return and we leak 2 goals a game I struggle to see massive improvement.

Not too surprising as the talent/potential was there if not the performances. I'm more surprised by a fan giving us a 5/10 for performance and stating it's disappointing. I'd go a 3/10 and flipping depressing...

See this is what annoys me most of all. Is that we spend money replacing our young talent with worse. Caddis for Nayambe (thankfully didn't work out), Walton for Raya, Samuel for Nuttall. I'm not saying ant of the youngsters are world beaters but to replace them with worse at cost seems a really stupid and financially irresponsible thing to do.

Spot on. He hasn't even addressed the areas we have tried to address - still.loiking for a Graham replacement £15 million on! As for the defence the neglect is horrific. Thinking back to that season we had to drop Lenihen and Mulgrew back into there - the latter I'm convinced wasn't intended as a CB at all - making our lack of signings in defence utterly criminal. Fiat kop for TM doing that for a season to try staying up, but not addressing it since has been very negligent - especially given he has had 5 windows to do so.

Spineless by the FA. Opens a can of worms allowing anyone to miss games as they like. Also makes the Boro relegation after missing our game seem totally out of kilter with this ruling.n Also I could be mistaken but I thought deferred meant it becomes actual if they do it again within a set period. So for the first game the penalty of deferment should count if they do within the next 2 years - or say within the next 2 months. The integrity of the competition is destroyed. What if a team doesn't turn up to prevent the opposition getting 3 points to get into playoffs/out of relegation or to avoid a goal.differendr stubbing or the like?