We should expand on the Guardiola formation. When we don't have the ball, JRC plays at right back. When we do have the ball, we play him upfront.

I remember Ian Harte scoring a hat trick of free kicks against Rovers in a friendly. I know he's a left back.

This backs up what you're saying: Over the last 10 seasons – the Champions have been a side that was relegated from the Premier League 50% of the time. The Champions have been a relegated side in each of the last three years – showing the increased influence of parachute payments. Six of the sides achieving automatic promotion in the last 10 years did so after previously being in League One – compared to 14 sides returning to the Premier League. Four of those six sides got promoted as Champions. No side finishing 6th has been promoted in the last 10 years. In fact 80% of the teams promoted via the play-offs finished either 3rd or 4th. Aston Villa are the only side promoted in the last 10 years after achieving less than 80 points. Rovers’ have achieved 69 points for two years running. The average seasons in the championship before promotion for the teams finishing as runners up has been 3.8 seasons over the last 10 years – but the average is 1.8 seasons over the last 5 years. Leeds took 10 seasons in the Championship to get automatic promotion. They’re the only team to achieve automatic promotion in the last 5 years that spent longer than 3 years in the Championship. No side has achieved automatic promotion in the last 3 seasons having previously been promoted from League One. This is compared to 43% of the automatic promotion spots being taken by teams previously promoted from League One (over the first 7 years of the sample). This will be Rovers’ 6th season at this level since being promoted from League One. They would be emulating Brighton in 2016/17 if they managed automatic promotion.

Hyam does strike me as a bit quiet. Szmodics told Hyam to 'F Off' in the first half of the first game on Saturday when they had a bit of a disagreement when Accy won a corner. Hyam didn't give anything back.

Thought I'd give my views from Saturday. I had to leave after the first half of the second game, so potentially missed our best spell. There was definitely an element of at least one of the full-backs tucking inside when we had the ball. Pickering picked the ball up centrally a lot in the first game and JRC a lot in the first half of the second game. Kaminski/Pears. Kaminski made a couple of sharp stops. There was one in the first half where I wasn't sure if he blocked it or the defender did - but the referee gave a goal kick. It was either an excellent save or an excellent block. I'm pretty sure the chance came from us giving the ball away on the edge of our own box - we did that a few times. Pears looked decent in the warm up and his distribution was very accurate (in the warm up). Then he showed what he is capable of when he fumbled one in at his near post. Defensively - no real issues other than giving the ball away in dangerous positions. Phillips looked the best defender on the pitch. Very calm on the ball and a unit for his age. Batty gave the ball away a few times - probably trying a bit hard to impress. We didn't seem to want to shoot for much of the game. Even all the corners were taken short. The amount of times we'd carve a half decent opening on the edge of the box only to try one pass to many - I lost count. It was like we were trying to pass the ball into the net (although this appeared to work later in the 2nd game after I'd left). Tronstad was fine but nothing flashy. I suspect he's a bit short of fitness, coming off as the first sub. He's smaller than I thought he was going to be (don't know why I thought he'd be bigger). Gallagher - Didn't do a lot, but didn't get much service at all. He won't score many at all this season if we play like that. Markandy - I don't think he'll ever make it here. Tried hard and a few nice touches, but looks a bit lightweight and he's not particularly quick over longer distances. I've been wrong about players before though. Szmodics - Looked lively without doing much. It was noticeable he gave Hyam a bit of a telling off in the first half. You'd think Szmodics would be captain material. All in all, hard to read too much into the game, and obviously we were missing Wharton, Sigurdsson and Ennis, but you'd definitely think we need a bit more quality. We started with 8 academy graduates in the 2nd game - but from the bit I watched, you'd have struggled to tell which team was two divisions above the other. I don't mind the passing around at the back if you make use of it. Surely the point is to draw the opposition players out of position and then exploit the space - but we seem to pass it around for passing sake. The style definitely needs a bit of fine tuning. I thought Rosaire Longelo looked decent for Stanley before he went off injured. He played on the right hand side and kept cutting in on his left foot, but he caused us a few problems.

League 2

It was noticeable that the full-backs were tucking inside into midfield roles when we had the ball, a style Man City have previously played, obviously we just weren't as effective. Pickering was picking up the ball centrally in the first game.

I left at half time of the second game, but Batty had been poor

It's the Yorkie players doing the dropping unfortunately.

Or 2, as has been the case in this innings.

In theory - the tail is fairly strong. In theory.

This was on the BBC the other day. Conceding loads more extras, dropping catches and having a non-keeper is hurting. Man for man - there's not many other than Root that you'd probably have in the Australian team. But we're giving them a game, just throwing it away every time. The numerical facts are that England have scored 1260 runs off the bat to Australia's 1245. After Stokes' eight-wickets-down declaration and Australia's two-wicket win at Edgbaston, followed by a 40-wicket second Test (only the fourth Lord's Ashes Test out of 37 in which all possible wickets have fallen), both sides have lost 38 wickets. Thus, England's batting line-up has a collective average of 33.1, Australia's 32.7. England have, however, conceded 60 more extras than Australia (118 to 58), leaving them 45 runs behind in total, accounting for the 43-run margin at Lord's and the two runs by which the Baggy Greensters overtook England at Edgbaston. England are the 274th team in men's Test history to find themselves 2-0 down after two Tests of a series. As you would probably expect, none of the previous 273 had a higher collective batting average after those two Tests than the opposition against whom they have lost consecutive matches (and only a handful have come close).

You wonder what Stokes we need to see here. There's only one player made any decent runs so far - and he went on the attack. Does Stokes play sensible and try and slowly build a score - or does he go for it like Lords?

Root drops one...then catches one the next ball.

I thought the link with Will Collar was going to be the most underwhelming collar of the summer. I was wrong. Looks good other than the collar.

I'd forgotten about the Wigan game. He also scored the winning goal in the game after Cardiff (his last game for the club) in extra time. Presumably he hadn't noticed they'd switched ends at full time.

Are you talking about Adam Armstrong here?

Was this not all around the same time he rejected a new contract and put in a transfer request?

You must get minimal benefit from seeing the line ups in advance though? You get your money back if the first goal is scored before your player is on the pitch if he's a substitute.

Fair enough. The charges relate to 2017 - so either the 2nd half our our league one season, or the first half of a Championship season. I could understand an advantage on a market where you'd expect a lot of bets to take place (For example if Liverpool were playing Arsenal in the cup and you had information that Liverpool were fielding a team of teenagers before it was common knowledge), but I'm not sure how much money is being won/lost based on leaked Rovers' team news. It might be a much bigger market than I realise.

Who would pay for our line-up 10 minutes before it was released? Just interested into what benefit someone gain from the information.

West Brom at home to start.

Well I obviously want England to win. I've also put a tenner on the draw at 8/1 in case the rain comes back. So the only outcome can be an Australia win.

Bohinen was one of my favourites. Unplayable on his day.

The fact Aguero tended to bob around the 28-33 goal mark for 6 seasons would suggest not.