Admiral Nelsen

To be fair, that's exactly what he's trying to do. It just so happens that instead of having a team full of generational talents, he has a squad full of average second division players. It must be so frustrating for their fans seeing their team dominate the ball every game without doing anything with it.

Happy to echo the praise for Gally over the recent weeks, but we shouldn't forget that lots of his very forgettable performances this year have come as a centre forward. He has real strengths which he has showcased well over the last few games, but he also has two or three serious flaws which hamper him as a centre forward as much as they did when he was playing further wide. It has been good to see him be more of a handful for defenders though. If he can keep that up and chip in with another 5 goals before the end of the season, he'll have contributed very well.

Yes, certainly since the 3-2 win there in the first year after promotion. Absolutely mad game which summed up the good and the bad of a Mowbray team in 90 minutes. 3-0 up and cruising and by the end of the game we were seriously lucky to come away with the three points. On reflection, we've actually got a decent record there over recent years. 3 wins out of the last 4.

Crackers indeed. I think one thing which is an important factor is that we take a very old-school Italian approach to protecting a one goal lead. Scoring the first goal then shutting up shop is something we've done plenty of this season, but that's always going to harm the number of chances you create per 90 compared to teams who don't do that. Having said that, I think the position that we were in just before the World Cup did flatter us pretty significantly. Equally, our form over recent weeks I think shows more that we're capable of being one of the better sides in the division when it all clicks, so hopefully we can cash in on our slightly fortunate first few months!

Tends to give the ball away trying things though, which you can accept if a decent number of them come off. I was concerned that he would be a bit of a flat track bully, scoring and creating against the lower teams when we're on top, but not the sort of player who you can rely upon if you want to get promoted. Let's wait and see, but the last couple of performances have really impressed me with his quality as much as his work rate.

Agree with that. It should be pretty extreme circumstances that we ever take a point before kick off in this league. Maybe once or twice a season at a push. Having said that, we probably need 4/5 wins plus a draw or two to secure a top 6 finish. A tricky looking away fixture as one of the draws is a decent result.

Im never confident playing Stoke for some reason, especially at their place. If we have aspirations of top 2 (I don't think we do, realistically) then 6 points from the next two games are probably needed to keep us in touch going into the quarter final. For the top 6, four points will put us in a very strong position going into March, so I'd not be overly disappointed with an away point here so long as we back it up with beating Reading.

We have so many games in April, we will definitely need them both before the end of the season. Having said that, if we are going into a must win game towards the back end and they're both fit, I don't think you can drop Szmodics on current form.

His performances since coming back has gone a long way to convince me that he will be money well spent. His early performances showed the could be useful enough and create/score the odd goal, but they tended to be against the poorer sides and he wasn't that great in general play. Against a Premier league team and a team that will probably be there soon, he has been brilliant. The spell yesterday before he hit the bar he was looking imperious. If he can keep those levels then we have a very good player on our hands.

If we get United at OT or Spurs away, it will literally be millions once TV money is added into the equation. Not trivial. Obviously Fleetwood at home would be nicer though!

I criticised him a couple of pages ago, but I wish I didn't now because his 15 minutes (where we barely had a kick) was such a minor part of what has been a magnificent evening. For what it's worth, I think it was probably more a lack of agility rather than a lack of application. I'm not having that a young player in his position trying to get in the side and make a name for himself wouldn't put the effort in for the final 15 mins.

You can't. We have so many games in April though that we'll be glad to have the options!

Not in the league!

Definitely need another option there. He might end up having a decent career but as things stand, we can't be having him as our only out-and-out striker after Gally.

I think it'll be interesting to see how he wants to replace BBD. Signing Thomas has really highlighted that Mowbray left us with literally zero 'proper' wingers, so I wonder if we will look to get a more creative player to start on the left alongside a goalscoring number 9? In any case, two new forwards are easily the most pressing issues. If getting the right option there takes 90% of whatever budget we have, that'd do me. Our starting options elsewhere can be good enough (albeit with more consistency needed in a few cases) so any improvement there (beyond needing extra legs to replace Morton/Ayala) is a bonus.

The injuries we're carrying means that (unlike the West Ham game) we don't have a huge amount of scope to make changes, even if we wanted to. I'd expect maybe 2 or 3 changes from QPR. Hedges & Morton could well be in for a start. Possibly bring in Pickering for JRC too. It's great to see him finally stay fit for a decent spell, but I wouldn't want to push our luck too much before the run in.

I didn't really buy this until last season, but increasingly it's hard to ignore the trend. I remember an old head of department of mine was a Cov fan. He said not long after we began our L1 season something like 'I hope you enjoy being top at Christmas and not winning a game after', or something to that effect. Took me about 4 years to realise that he was on to something!

Game of opinions! For me, his ability is definitely there. Not anywhere near the Elliot level if we're comparing him to other loans, but enough that he's already Championship standard. He has made some bad errors though, and now that Trav and Buckley are looking more like themselves then I'm glad they're in the team. The thing that winds me up the most about him will probably do him good in the long run. I remember when his error lost us the game away at Wigan, there was some talk from the club about how he is mentally strong enough to not dwell on it and carry on playing his natural game, taking risks. That's all well and good for Liverpool, but if he carries on giving chances away by overplaying (as he has done) I struggle to shake the impression that he's playing more for himself and his development and less about making sure that Rovers pick up as many points as possible. That's probably no different to lots of other youngsters who go out on loan in fairness, so it probably shows how selective you need to be when signing these sorts of players more than anything else.

I think that hits the nail on the head. I'm all for saying that defenders should be there to defend first and foremost, but all decent fullbacks have to bring something offensively too these days. He just wasn't developing in that side of his game. He only played there a couple of times for us, but I think he could potentially be great on the right side of a back three. Wigan's problem now I suppose.

To be fair, if Morton was one of ours then we wouldn't shut up about him. The trouble is that he's cutting his teeth and making his youthful mistakes on our time, whilst we've already put in the hard yards to develop Buckley into a good Championship player. Really pleased that him (and Trav) are back in the team and playing well. They were always good enough to compete at the higher end of this division. Their time out of the side seems to have done them the world of good.

Or hopefully that he's just got back fit. I'd guess that there's a better than average chance that he gets on the bench tomorrow if he came through the midweek friendly that supposedly he was involved in.

I've just had a look to jog my memory - we finished one place below them but we were still in the top half and finished with a better goal difference. To be fair to them, we had a ridiculously good last few months and still finished below them, so I can half understand why they wouldn't rate us too highly when we were still firmly in a relegation battle & on shocking league form. Other than maybe Cole and Berg, a lot of them wouldn't have had the faintest notion of how good some of our players actually were, especially seeing as some of them were a part of a relegated team a couple of years earlier. There would've been some sour grapes after the game with Brad being on such inspired form that day, but they would've finally recognised how good we were 12 months later when we secured a top 6 finish by pumping them 4-0 at White Hart Lane.

Agree. I'm pleased that he's actually managed to show what he can do a bit after his disaster of a first season, but it's not enough if he is still missing about half of our games. If we were otherwise struggling for centre halves then I would've been tempted to see if he would re-sign on a reduced deal, but we're pretty well stocked in that department now. We'll need at least one forward for the first XI for next season, so the money we'd save on his contract is much better spent there.

Ayala out for 8 weeks, according to JDT. Not inconceivable that we've seen the last of him in a Rovers shirt.

We should've won against Swansea too. Created some sublime chances that we conspired to miss. I don't think we'll tail off as badly as we did last year, but equally we still need to show play-off form between now and the season's end to reach the 70-odd points that we'll need. It'll probably be too much for us.