5PM tomorrow is the deadline, same as Bury. They will then receive a 14 day notice. That isn't the major issue though. The problem is that the administrators have said there is no money left and they will begin shutting the club down on Wednesday if there is no progress. Bolton could well be gone before the EFL's 14 day notice even expires.

The atgames system is kind of notorious for being poor quality to be honest, but yeah it's just a flash chip essentially so the type of mods you'd do on a normal MD wouldn't work on that. There's a Mega Drive mini coming out in October which will blow the atgames system out of the water. I've got it (secretly) on pre-order, but it's £70 so not exactly cheap. I think most non-Japanese asian consoles are also PAL, but the cartridge shape is different so you need to alter any non-Asian MD to accept the slightly wider cartridge shape. The Mega Drive 2 itself was produced in both NTSC and PAL variants, but it has a totally different motherboard to the MD1 (and is generally considered inferior). Modding a MD2 is totally different to a MD1 as it doesn't have the JP1/2/3/4 jumpers. Most of the mods I've seen use the reset button to switch region, and a new LED light which changes colour depending on the region you've selected. I definitely prefer the MD1 method!

Not too dissimilar to the Rothwell situation. A player he signed and who could have absolutely huge resale value with a good run in the side, showing TM in a very good light as far as player recruitment goes, but instead he's relegated to the bench whilst we try to shoehorn a striker on the right and a 35 year old on the left who, despite clearly still being a very talented player, has no resale or long-term value for the club. I don't think any of Mowbray's decisions are down to appeasing the fans. He's just a manager who lacks courage a lot of the time and sticks to his guns even when things blatantly are not working (Bennet at RB, Evans/Smallwood, strikers out wide, Mulgrew at CB). Any changes he makes are usually because his hand is forced or it becomes so obvious and the mistakes go on for so long that the pressure becomes too much. It took until March last season to drop a clearly underperforming Mulgrew and he still started our first game of this season. Travis was only introduced after Smallwood was suspended and results immediately improved with him in the side. Similarly Rothwell only got into the starting line up right at the end of the season when results were so bad that there was little to lose from throwing him in. Now he's back on the bench. History unfortunately shows that Mowbray is not a manager who learns from his mistakes. He seems absolutely convinced his vision is the way to go, despite that vision ultimately costing him his job at WBA, Celtic, Boro and Coventry. I believe history will ultimately repeat itself here at some point, and it's a real shame as I do believe Mowbray has a lot of good points as a manager. He's just too rigid and unable to adapt to change things that aren't working.

The brinksmanship may have gone too far. Even if all parties get back to the table the clock is now ticking and from tomorrow Bolton will be on notice as being expelled from the league. It sounds like both the EFL and the administrators have run out of patience and unless something is sorted out by Wednesday the club will begin to shut down. Once that process starts it will make things far more difficult for any prospective owner coming in.

Nope never played that one - is it similar to Streets of Rage?

I definitely want to acquire a Japanese MD one of these days, but I'm already on thin ice having ordered two more of "those damn machines" from eBay ("why the hell do you need four of the same console?" - not placated by my explanations of different motherboard revisions) so I'll probably have to wait a while the Japanese MD is definitely the best looking of the lot imo, although I also really like the design of the Mega Drive 1. I can't really remember how region locking works with US/European systems and Japanese games, but you're right in that if you just file the corners of the opening port it will allow the cartridge to fit. I actually don't think Japanese games had any region coding so unless the system itself locked the game out it wouldn't be an issue. There was a Monster Hunter game on the MD - Monster Hunter IV I believe, and I think I read it's being included on the Sega Mega Drive mini that's coming out (translated of course). The construction worker game sounds like Hammerin' Harry but that was an NES release rather than a MD release, so probably not.

It's really looking bleak now. Administrators saying there's no money left to keep trading, so the club will begin to be wound up on Wednesday unless somebody budges before then. It's almost certain that the EFL will serve Bolton their 14 day notice tomorrow at this point.

IMV it's Rovers who have been found out, not Dack. Even the best players can be man marked out of a game if surrounded by team mates who aren't doing anything useful. By the looks of things our closest attempt yesterday was from Derrick Williams (again). Says it all really.

I imagine almost every manager in this division would love to have Dack in their team. I've always been 100% against selling or dropping him as he has proven time and time again that he is a difference maker, and we have very few of those in our team. His form has undoubtedly declined in the past eight months or so but for the most part that has coincided with the entire team losing form so I'm not going to point the finger squarely at him. It shouldn't be up to one player to carry the team, but all too often it has been him who we've looked to when we need to score a goal, whether that's through an assist (usually to Graham) or getting on the scoresheet himself. He's working hard but he's ending up in positions where he can't be as effective as he should be. Mowbray needs to find a way to keep Dack closer to the opponent's penalty box rather than the centre circle, whilst maintaining our defensive solidity.

Rowett seems to be a bit like Eddie Howe where he was very effective at one club but not so much at others. I think he could potentially still do a decent job somewhere but no doubt his stock has fallen in recent times.

That should be well enough to get a very nice sounding soundbar tbh, I'd keep an eye on hotukdeals as soundbars often come up on there for good prices. I'm guessing you're talking about the atgames mini MD? That's just a 'system on a chip' so even if you did open it I don't think there would be much you could do to it. I think some of the asian MD's were region free by default so would play any games, however I'm guessing it would still default to 50hz for PAL games so a 50/60hz switch would still need to be modded onto it for full affect, Not 100% on that though as I've never owned one!

He's an athlete so could probably do a job for a lower to mid table L1 club. We've already seen in Smallwood what a decent top six level L1 midfielder looks like and he was streets ahead of Lowe in every respect.

That will essentially be Mowbray's epitaph when he eventually departs. There's a decent manager in there but he needs to take a trip to Oz to find his courage.

Can't remember now, but it always stuck with me due to the sheer absurdity of it. I also recall his England u21 caps & captaincy being brought up regularly in defence of him, although that side included the likes of Jason Steele and Nathan Delfouneso... Lowe was often referred to as "a scapegoat" by many, but as is usually the case - it was more that he was just rubbish and if you took your blue-and-white specs off that was painfully obvious.

Been some downfall for Jason since he left us. A final day one year contract at Birmingham where he barely played, followed by relegation with Bolton and now captaining a team of u18 players who get destroyed every week in League 1. I remember when some said he'd end up in the Premier League when he left us not quite.

Bolton u18's getting hammered every week is hardly maintaining the integrity of the league any more than Bury's fixtures being postponed. It's an embarrassment either way.

We've had 61 shots so far this season but only 13 on target. It's not that we're failing to get shots at the opposition's goal, but they are clearly largely poor efforts as we've only scored three goals and none from open play. The idea that we have too much attacking talent to not score more is flawed imo. One of our most creative players in Rothwell is regularly on the bench. Our £5m striker is shoehorned onto the right where he's apparently an aerial duel specialist but it's evidently bringing nothing in terms of goals or assists. Our £7m striker is injured but even when he is available is another bench regular and when he does come on is played ineffectively out wide. Downing is obviously a very talented player but only managed two goals and one assist last season, and has one assist and no goals thus far this season. Armstrong is notoriously inconsistent and not a regular goalscorer. Chapman is in limbo in the u23's. The only two players who play regularly and have historically performed consistently are a 34 year old Danny Graham who's got 1 goal in 5 appearances so far, and Bradley Dack whose form has been gradually worsening since Christmas last season and no goals or assists so far this season suggests he's still struggling for reasons we can only speculate on. When one or two players are failing to produce you can point the finger at them, but when the entire attacking unit is failing to produce then it's something wrong with the game plan and the way the team is set up. It's obviously great that we've stopped shipping goals (at the moment) and that has led to us gaining a lot more points. We will go through a period where we start conceding, though, as all teams do - and if we still haven't sorted our ineptness in attack then we'll start dropping rapidly.

I'd start him ahead of Gallagher, not Downing. But obviously age has something to do with it. We have Rothwell ready and waiting, needing regular first team football to progress as a player and integrate into the team, and he watches as the manager brings in a 35 year old to take one of those spots instead. That kind of short-term planning suggests Mowbray still has little confidence in Rothwell right now, which is strange considering how good he was at the end of the previous season. But yeah, he had one bad match in his only league start against one of the best teams in the division so is obviously not worth a place in the team.

They definitely need a new manager in there asap. The Jones experiment just hasn't worked. Not sure if the likes of Hughton would go there, but they need to push the boat out for a very good manager or they're looking at potentially being in major trouble.

After a brilliant end to last season he's been dropped for a 35 year old and/or a striker who doesn't even play very well out wide. So I imagine much like Nyambe his confidence isn't exactly sky high at the moment.

Stoke smashed again, this time 3-0 at home to Leeds. They're in big trouble.

Generally speaking with soundbars you get what you pay for. What's your budget?

Only scoring 3 goals in 5 games is obviously not good, and none of them were from open play (technically the own goal was, I suppose, but still). We once again only had 2 shots on target today and if we keep that up then we aren't going to get anywhere. Need Rothwell in for Gallagher to give us proper shape along the attacking midfield, at the very least, but I get the feeling Mowbray can't drop Gallagher so he's going to be in there no matter what. So far it's 5 games no goals no assists for our talisman, Dack. The same for Gallagher. No goals and one assist for Downing. One goal no assists for Graham. Early days but our attacking unit hasn't hit the ground running, to say the least.

Mostly because he has an obsession with playing them on the wing tbf.

Another clean sheet is great, but it seems like we're really going to struggle to score this season so we had better hope our defence stays solid.