JHRover

Saturday will be interesting. Huddersfield will be one of the teams we need to be finishing above this season if we want to avoid a relegation scrap. So if we get beat or outplayed on Saturday then the alarm bells will be well and truly ringing. I just can't see us winning these sort of away games. I wouldn't mind a lack of creativity if we got a goal ahead and then deployed a defensive plan to defend the lead and win a game 1-0, but we can't do that. If we manage to go ahead against Huddersfield I expect it will be the usual story of us camped in our own half hanging on to the lead through a combination of last ditch defending and them spurning opportunities rather than us calmly and professionally executing a plan to see the game out. Likewise I could put up with some of our comical defending if it was a result of us going gung ho and throwing everything we have at the opposition, yet we don't get that. We seem to be in the middle ground, where we can't defend properly for 90 minutes, can't keep regular clean sheets, yet at the other end create very little and cause the opposition few, if any problems. Both Wolves and Shrewsbury were no doubt anticipating a bombardment of their goals as they looked to protect their leads, yet in the end both were able to hold on comfortably, with only Koita making any kind of threat towards their goals.

The next 2 games in particular should be an opportunity to get 6 points on the board. With all respect to Huddersfield and Cardiff they will be bottom half this season, and if we want to avoid a relegation fight we need to be beating those teams. Shrewsbury gave us a lesson last night in how to get ahead in a game away from home, protect a lead and comfortably see the game out to victory. How many times have Rovers been able to do that in recent times? On the rare occasions we do win away from home it is usually the case that we race into an early lead then spend the whole second half hanging on for dear life.

Its a shame Rovers appointed Kinder as Under 21s manager. Imagine if they had appointed the 'best candidate' for the job, as so many on here wanted. We might have beat Southampton last night, rather than only reaching the final, pushing a side with Premier League experience all the way and finishing the game with 8 players under the age of 18.