These are my overriding memories of him, played well 1 in 4 or 5, usually on telly. Rest of the time was a passenger with terrible decision making. Always got the feeling he had ideas way above his station and thought being at Rovers was beneath him.

No doubt or argument that some ex players have gone on to play and have some success (fleeting in most cases) at higher levels but there are some heavily rose tinted specs being worn too. Josh King for instance was a waste of a shirt 3 games out of 4.

When we had JRC, Hedges and Dolan fit his system makes sense as their are the players needed to rotate on the pitch (JRC and Hedges are great at it) with those injuries he needed to recognise what he’s got and adjust the way we play. It’s what good managers do, they still stick to their underlying principles but make slight tweaks to get the best of what they’ve got at the time. JDT appears to have pig headed lay tried to (unsuccessfully) ram square pegs in round holes for 6 weeks and learnt nothing

I’ve been a big admirer of JDT and his style of play until recently when his total Unwillingness to be flexible and make tweaks to a system that clearly isn’t fit for the players we’ve got has cost us 15 points. Fans can just about forgive a poor run of festive fixtures, but back that up with losing at home to a league 1 team. No chance.

Hill has been absolutely terrible the last few weeks, I’ve still not forgiven him for the horror show against Watford. Which if Tronstad hadn’t saved him he’d have been responsible for 2 huge opportunities down to basics like not checking his shoulder and getting played behind

No red button tonight?

Didn’t mention earlier but huge congratulations to all involved in organising todays fan takeover. It was brilliant looking round each stand to see them heavily populated, hopefully those in power have taken notice

Can’t complain about the first 75 minutes, they looked absolutely shattered after that and I thought Hill contributed to us playing deeper and deeper by constantly playing backward when he could play forward. He also had the ball played behind and turned really easily on 2 occasions. Also, played the ball into marked players when they clearly didnt have the energy to turn or nip in front. Largely been impressed by him but thought he was very poor when he came on.

There was a booming north lancs(Lancaster & morecambe) rovers supporters club in the Prem days, filled a coach most weeks. Still a lot of fans but attendance at games has dwindled due to ownership and ticket prices. That and I suppose lads getting older, habits changing and there being no younger lads to take their place

Waggot dropped an absolute clanger with the pricing of ST’s of that there is no doubt. Bolton fans are as fickle as any but a team with a good chance of promotion and an ST at £229 almost sells itself. If only our hierarchy understood basic marketing and sales strategy. At £250 for BBE we’d sell 15k, nailed on, 25 quid a month (10 months), it’s cheaper than a 4 man round and a couple of bags of crisps!

There was a really good example with maybe 10 mins to go of the potential effect of hoofing it in to the corner to compare against playing out. (this example is caveated with our side being knackered and several tactical changes having been made) Wahlstedt sent one over the top of everyone, giving possession right back to them. they then had space to drive at pace into our half unopposed; this drew our players in, creating space for them to play into and ended up drawing a brilliant save from Wahlstedt. Now I'm not saying that the high risk stuff we play at times is always the best decision however there were a couple of occasions last night (not just this) where playing the ball long for it to come straight back at you has greater risk of creating chances than playing out from the back. More often than not when playing out you're doing so with an overload position, against largely static opposition. Surrendering the ball by playing long often means you're defending against more players, at higher speed and with runners beyond the ball.

Moran was absolutely having one tonight, very young lad in his first run of men’s football so he’s going to have them. Important thing is he looks at what didn’t work, be at it in training and forget about tonight’s performance next game

He’s probably been out most consistent player all season, never below 6/10 and often a 7 or 8. There were genuinely people on here giving it that he wasn’t good enough at the start of the season. He’s in the top few RB’s in the league. Fantastic signing, massive shame he spent so much of last season (uncharacteristically) injured.

I said to my little lad before the game yesterday that it had loss written all over it. Having such a young side, that’s paper thin and whalloped by injuries doesn’t help. But two good wins and losing away to a team who can barely buy a point is text book Rovers. As we’ve said many times most the young lads have played more games this season than they’ve played in their careers to date. It’s always going to be a couple of steps forward and one back this season. If we can keep in an around the play offs they and JDT will have done a phenomenal job.

Depends what you mean by unreserved, I know at Celtic Park they have absolute murder keeping those without tickets for the standing section out. I am all for them but one of the main considerations is around access to the section and effectively fencing it off so you don't end up with 100 people standing in an area designated for 50. Whilst standing sections are unreserved once you get in there you do get allocated a seat.

I take it all back, 20% off both home and away kits over will have boosted the coffers with them selling out.

Let’s see at the end of the season, I think you sell more if you offer incentives. You also increase the number of casual buyers and on the fencers. The more Rovers shirts on kids the better. A kid kit costs best part of £100 quid, kid gets a choice of that or say the new FIFA, a lot choose fifa and we have less rovers shirts on kids. There are differing pricing strategies of course but I just think they’ve missed a trick of directing loads of traffic and business to the site today who might make secondary purchases that they wouldn’t normally make. Whereas I bet there will be plenty like me who looked on and thought what a joke and bought nowt.

The Black Friday Rovers Roulette is pathetic, I imagine many rovers fans like me looked this morning to check for discounts on kit and training kit as other clubs have done. I should have known better. Missed a massive opportunity to swell the coffers there IMO. A single junior shirt with printing costs the same as I paid yesterday for a full Celtic kit with league badges, printing and postage. Our commercial operation is so out of step with the rest of the sector and it’s much to our detriment

Been a disappointment so far, first few games I thought he looked miles ahead of the league quality wise but has looked pretty run of the mill since then. Possibly struggling with fitness but I’d thought his overall talent would make him stand out like a sore thumb. Sadly not thus far

Agree on AW for certain, I should caveat the 30-40 games marker as being at first team level for anyone in champ and above.

One of the problems of having so many academy graduates progressing to the first team means we have a season where we have majority under 18 players. I seem to remember this happening 5 or 6 years ago, could be longer though. It will be really interesting to look back in 18 months time and sew how many of those who have been involved in the first xi so far have 30 - 40 or so appearances, I'm going to wager on 3. Wharton, Gilsenan and possibly O'Grady-Macken or Michalski the keeper.

Not sure Rowett going is as big a spanner in the works as other sackings, I listened to a 20 minute long interview with him on TalkShite the following day where he was very open about it being a genuinely mutual agreement. Seemed like he was leaving a fairly settled operation rather than the usual heart being ripped from a dressing room. That said with our formation and personnel tweaks in the last 2 games we seemed to have been able to cut out some of the defensive errors that cost us games and capitalise on attacking opportunities where we'd previously let them go begging and I can see a 2-1, Rovers take a 2-0 lead before a 70th minute or so rally from Millwall leaving us with a nervy last 20

looking at those positional reports, that is a busy midfield against Coventry and Leicester. Interesting to see how we set up wider more structured back 5 against QPR. Signs that JDT has learnt from the high risk formations in other games, admittedly we were unfortunate against Coventry.

The difference with Evans and Travis is that they're water carriers, moving the ball for moving its sake with little to no reasoning. A 'pivot' player who is someone who moves the ball to open space in other areas to utilise 3rd man runs, etc. Evans and Travis are players who pad out their stats by making 4 or 5 yard passes with little to no thought IMO.

Yeah but numbers are a good reference point to highlight changes in the way the game is played and to explain specific roles. A double pivot is very different to 2 central midfielders. Historically most teams played 4-4-2 where a 6 would be the more conservative and the 8 would be up and down. A double pivot is neither. The idea of a double pivot is that the ball is constantly moving, with the pivots being responsible for that linkage plus adding a screen to the back 4. It's a really difficult position to play and requires a great deal of maturity. I'm not sure Wharton is best placed in one of those roles as he is more of a classic deep lying playmaker a la Tugay, Pirlo, he doesn't offer much protection for the back 4 and his passes are much more progressive than a pivot. I'm not sure who goes in there alongside Sonny to be honest as Travis is more water carrier than someone who can constantly rotate possession.