DE.

Yeah, you very rarely hear decent managers criticising their own players in the media. Usually it's a sign of desperation when things have already gone south and have little hope of turning around.

I agree, he's been a great player for us over the years and his consistent record of assists speaks for itself. For whatever reason it just hasn't worked out for him this season, which is a shame as I still think he has the means to be effective even if we aren't playing with wide players. Entirely possible it is just a confidence thing, but it's a shame either way as along with Evans he's one of the bigger earners who I would have expected more out of this season. I imagine he'll end up back in Scotland if he continues playing as I can't imagine we'll be offering him an extension whether we go up or not.

Fairly sure Mulgrew and Graham would definitely be two of the players who felt like they should be playing in a higher division and weren't part of the bigger problem. In Charlie's case fair enough, Graham less so. Seems like it was only around December time that Graham finally stopped sulking and started getting on with it, maybe after realising nobody else was interested in him and his best chance of keeping his current wage would be for us to renew his contract if we got promoted and he played a big part in it. Mulgrew his been superb from day one so credit to him. We all know he's too good for this division but he's taken on the challenge and been a game changer for us on numerous occasions. Wouldn't surprise me if Conway was one of those wanting out. Has been poor this season. Could just be that his legs have gone, but he's never been a pacy player so I'm not convinced. Seems more like he's just not there mentally this season.

It's no coincidence that the degradation of the club's structure - from the boardroom to everything surrounding it - coincided with our plummet from the PL to our current position. Managers have come and gone but very few of them have been able to successfully work with the skeleton structure we have in place. Bowyer nearly made it work but once the funding stopped it was game over. Mowbray is doing an OK job at present, but when you're able to buy the best players in the division your team is going to be competitive. We won't be able to do the same if we get promoted unless Venky's pump in significantly more money. I remember how dismissive certain people on here were when the likes of Williams and Finn left. Losing those kinds of people was just as if not more damaging than sacking Sam Allardyce. Once we had Agnew, Babu, Shaw, etc running the show it was curtains for us as a club with any serious ambitions. We're not really any better off in that department now, so once funds dry up I imagine we will begin to struggle again.

It's working pretty well for Watford though. The big difference being they've set their club up with frequent managerial changes in mind, and considering the nature of football these days you could say they're well ahead of the curve.

Leeds started off really well but their form started getting patchy in October and it's never really recovered. Losing 4-1 at home to Cardiff comes on the back of a winless January and 2 points from a possible 15. They had a decent December but if their goal is the playoffs then they're well off the pace. Six months seems harsh but that's football these days, especially at clubs like Leeds. Speaking of Cardiff, what a job Warnock's done there. A shame he wasn't the "outstanding candidate" here...

If that's the type of player they think has the attitude to help them avoid the drop then they really do have problems.

Way too good to be in League 1, one of very few players good enough to be in the Championship in our squad last season. Probably Coyle's only positive contribution to the club. Credit to our physio department for keeping him on the pitch for most of the season, too. Whatever they're doing has been working so far.

Seems like a typical foreign owner coming in with a trigger happy mentality. Losing to Sunderland at home is pretty disgraceful but Sheffield Utd lost to Bolton at home on the same day which is equally embarrassing if not more so. It happens. Considering Forest only stayed up on GD last season this seems like a harsh sacking.

That's the type of match real promotion contenders win. A bit concerned we conceded two again, but a really good result overall. Well done Rovers.

Beautiful. Mowbray obviously had the right things to say at HT!

Well he was pretty poor last season so you can make a fair judgement on that. Leon Best had a good pre season before he got injured, if memory serves, and look how that turned out.

Just to note I wasn't criticising Samuel, just saying either Mowbray is to blame or Graham/Nuttall aren't doing enough to warrant a first team spot.

The fact he starts ahead of Graham and Nuttall suggests either Mowbray is a poor judge of talent or the other two aren't working hard enough to earn a first team spot.

Yeah Conway is pretty much done, but doubt we could have dumped him even on a free considering his wage. Similar situation with Graham. Not too worried yet as I think we can come back into it, but we can't keep conceding two goals and expect to win, so that really needs to be their only goal of the afternoon.

I think this could be where our winning run comes to an end. Would take a point.

Unfortunately Lenihan starts this game off injured and is out for months, Wharton also starts off injured I think. Actually Rovers start off with a lot of injuries! Fortunately there's a lot of bargains to be had in the free transfer market that are capable of doing a job in League 1 My last FM was FM15, so I can't say whether 18 is a worthy upgrade for last year's game, but it's definitely added a lot of interesting features since 15. The Social Media feed is a nice touch, squad dynamics adds good depth, and the 3D match engine is much improved. As a heads up you might want to check eBay for this one. I got mine for £20 (strangely directly from Tamworth FC ) and it literally arrived within a day of ordering. Obviously if price doesn't bother you the fastest way is via Steam!

I've spent a few hours on FM18 so far and it's pretty good. Interface and general layout is very similar to FM15, which is nice. There was a period between FM07-FM11 where they were constantly changing the layout and it was frustrating to have to re-learn every year. Nice to see the interface remains in tact. UI is a bit more crowded but that's to be expected. This game really does reinforce that Rovers are in League 1. Some of our players are just terrible. After starting the game a few times with different tactics, I ended up dumping Graham and Conyway at the beginning of my final run. I couldn't get either of them to adapt properly to any of my tactics. Graham in particular was useless. Getting rid of those two on a free saves roughly £22k pw in wages which gives you some more room in the budget. Rovers start off with about £200k transfer budget and around £150k pw left to spend in wages, which is actually quite generous for League 1. For me, best players from the original squad have been Ward (!), Mulgrew (best player in the team by some distance), Evans, Bennett and Dack. Meanwhile Smallwood, Caddis, Williams, Conway, Graham and Samuel have all been disappointing. The rest I either haven't used or are good enough without being outstanding.

The controls on games for older hardware (particularly during the 8 and 16 bit eras) are very rigid. Because a true 3D landscape isn't being rendered on games like FIFA, your players are essentially locked to a grid and there is very specific collision detection. It's possible to adjust but probably not worth the effort. I loved FIFA 95, 96 and 97 when I was a kid (Mega Drive versions) but I didn't know any better. It's tough going back to those games now, they seem so much more primitive than the platformers, shooters and RPGs from that era.

Just bought FM18, having squeezed pretty much everything I could out of FM15.

Hah no, we would have just been told to get behind the lads, ffs.

https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/sarcastic-cheers-aimed-at-steele.1399488/

Indies are doing well in the VR market at the moment as well. It's a good time to be an indie developer. Upped my SNES Classic games from 21 to 115. Should be enough to work through. The latest hacking software allows you to load an additional emulator called retroarch onto the console, so anything that doesn't play on the native Canoe emulator will play through retroarch instead. Adds compatibility for games like Terranigma and Star Ocean.

At the time the vast majority thought Murphy and Etuhu were great signings, the only issue with Etuhu (which was brought up by people at the time) was a four year contract for a 30 year old. As it turned out, we just loved handing out long contracts to poor players and then terminating them half way through. Why pay somebody under contract when you can pay them for literally nothing?

I don't think it was a massive issue. Our main problem was Shorts McDonut on the touchline. Regardless, Smallwood is giving us exactly what we wanted from the likes of Lowe. He'll need better players around him if we get promoted (very unlikely) but for this league he's a solid professional who knows exactly what he should and shouldn't do.