I imagine Downing will get the benefit of the doubt with it being his first game for the club. Fair enough I suppose. Bennett and Mulgrew though... what do they have to do to get benched? A Shane Duffy? It was so, so obvious last season that neither of them were up to the required standard and yet here they are, starting another season as if nothing is wrong. "Defensively we're alright"... no, Tony, you were right the first time way back in April. We aren't alright.

Bell and Williams as our main left back options... truly frightening. We'd be better off putting a dustbin on the pitch - more likelihood of stopping an attacker at least. Wouldn't surprise me if Downing ends up at LB with Rothwell playing ahead of him.

Forest's keeper is having an absolute nightmare. Badly at fault for two goals in the first 25 minutes.

You got 1/2 right, although to be fair most of us predicted Mowbray wouldn't start Rothwell. It seemed like an inevitability that the one player the fans were most excited about would sit on his arse for 70 minutes watching the manager's favourites labour through yet another unimpressive performance. There was no excuse for him to be on the bench today, but going forward he simply must start. If he's still being used as backup/rotation by the time January rolls round he needs to be looking for a move, because he will be wasting his time here.

Judging by the stats Bolton got absolutely hammered today. Score reads 2-0 but 25 shots to 3 against Wycombe... ouch. Surely no hope for them this season.

"It's embarrassing to go 10 games without a win. I'm an honourable guy." Last season between Feb 2 and April 6 we won one match out of eleven and lost nine of them. Embarrassing indeed.

I was willing to give him this window to see if he had learned from last season's mistakes and had something new for us, a bit of courage and bravery. But no. Same old shit. I don't necessarily think we'll go down under TM but we will never, ever crack the top six with him in charge. I'm 100% sure of that. We'll be lucky to get into the top ten, frankly. His recruitment is questionable at best, his team selections make me want to slam my head against a wall and his tactics are incredibly uninspiring. He has his good points - he's a good bloke, he's brought unity and togetherness to the club, he pulled us out of the pit when we were at arguably our lowest ebb in the last decade, he's the only manager in the last decade who has had a vision for the club that goes beyond the immediate future (although he shouldn't be the person doing that). Full respect for those things, but if we want to progress Mowbray is just not the man for the job. Realistically though he is going nowhere any time soon - and to be honest even if he did I am sure our owners would get in somebody worse. It's not just that we aren't going anywhere under Mowbray, we aren't going anywhere under these owners until they realise how important the managerial position is and what the manager's responsiblities should actually be - hint: not running 80% of the club. They don't appear to have learnt this with nearly a decade of experience though so I'm not exactly hopeful anything is going to change in the near future.

Problem is Dack has been inconsistent for some time now. We just can't rely on him to be consistently good every game. Sometimes others need to step up and take charge when Dack is having a stinker. They never do though. When Dack is off form the entire team is off form. It's just not good enough when we've spent a combined £12m on attacking players in the last two windows. The only player who has shown a glimpse of being able to pull the team up when Dack is misfiring is Rothwell, and lo and behold he's back on the bench.

Tony Mowbray chose those attackers though. He decided to put 35 year old Downing on the wing ahead of Rothwell who was on fire at the end of last season. He chose to put Gallagher ahead of Graham despite the latter being our most consistent goalscorer for three or four seasons now. Stupid decisions which have once again cost us.

A draw would have been a poor result, a loss is absolutely pathetic. Mowbray should be ashamed of that starting line up, particularly the omission of Rothwell which IMO is absolutely disgraceful. Just shows Mowbray is the same cowardly manager he was throughout most of last season. Hilarious (not really) that he managed to crush optimism an hour before the match started with his team selection. I'm sure we'll get the usual defence of "it was the first game, weird results happen", etc, but this isn't a weird result. This is just typical Rovers under Tony Mowbray. Overcautious, turgid, bumbling, and defensively shambolic. 90 minutes in and we're already at our 2 goals a game average conceded. Excellent job. Defenders are coming. Would appreciate a timeframe on that Tony as judging by today's efforts by the usual suspects at the back reinforcements are needed ASAP, not at some time in the distant future after we're done overloading midfield and attack to the point where players like Rothwell, Graham and Brereton are on the subs bench. It's what I expected but I'm still fuming. Not sure if it's obvious or not.

I'm glad I didn't!

Not sure how motivated he's going to be at this point. Seems like he's going to have to score five goals and assist another five in the next 20 minutes to convince Tony he's a first teamer. Even then he'd probably be back on the bench next week.

Now that Charlton have generously helped us get back into the game let's bring Rothwell and Nyambe on and get going.

The posted team/formation looked very similar to me. The same old turgid 4-2-3-1 with a few new names.

Well at least it's not a HT 0-0 at Ewood. 45 minutes into the new season and we've already conceded a goal, against a newly promoted side at home no less. When are the defenders coming again? Good thing for Charlton Downing is in the team ahead of Rothwell, otherwise we might have actually scored a goal at home in the first half. Might want to bring the lad on in the second half Tony, he can actually play. I would say haul Bennett off as well but we know that is never happening. He won Jason Lowe's immunity card in the 2017 summer raffle so he's golden.

I bet Tony has had more sleepless nights thinking about about dropping Evans than dropping Rothwell. In his mind that's probably the biggest gamble he's taken today.

Well it won't be Leutwiler, Evans or DG so take your pick from the remainder of the bench... probably Buckley if I had to guess.

I doubt it. Imo Boro knew that too which is why they let him go. His natural talent is obvious but if he can only play once in a blue moon it just doesn't matter.

That's exactly was it was unfortunately. I assume Chapman is still injured or unfit?

Gutted for Rothwell, he deserves to be starting. Unfortunately his manager is a coward. "More defensive cover" against Charlton at home ffs. Still a good chance of winning today but if that's our preferred 11 we can forget top six. That defence is an abomination.

Seems inevitable at this point that it's going to be swept under the rug. EFL will probably justify it as something like a goodwill gesture to get the new owners in and keep the club going. Even though FV are coming in well aware that Bolton are highly likely to be relegated again anyway.

Yep, after Kean Venky's have repeatedly gone for the cheap, easy option and it has cost us. In fact I'd wager we've lost more financially than we would have if we'd hired a decent, proven manager, especially considering our relegation to League 1 in 16/17. Lambert is the exception to the rule but he wasn't around for very long. I get the feeling it might have been the same with Warnock tbh, but I doubt we would have been relegated if he had been at the helm during the 16/17 season.

Bury are claiming they have funds in place and technically they seem to have more senior players available than Bolton, so I wonder what the sticking point is there?

ROH are in a dire state at the moment. It's pretty sad to see. They banked their future on the Elite/NJPW connection, and now obviously the Elite have started AEW and brought in a ton of indy talent to fill their roster, whilst NJPW are realising they can book and promote their own events in the States without ROH and still make the same if not more money. It seriously wouldn't surprise me to see ROH out of business in a couple of years, especially considering competition from the likes of AEW, MLW, NJPW's american expansion and obviously WWE's regular sweeps of independent talent to compete in NXT. It's going to be a tough time coming up for them.

I can forgive a penalty when it's saved, generally, but there's no excuse for a striker to miss the target from 12 yards imo. Especially one on the type of wage Assombalonga is on!