When you think that Birmingham (who signed Wright) spent well into eight figures for one player, that is an appalling return for five players.

I still can't really work Baker out, but the one thing he clearly isn't a natural at is bringing lots of energy off the ball. Definitely not a like-for-like Travis replacement. He might still play, but I'd be tempted to give JRC a go. As @Tyrone Shoelaces says, he's in stinking form, but there's less pressure on his mistakes leading directly to chances than when he's in the back four, he's the one who is most similar to Travis, and it might even be a chance for him to see a lot of the ball and play himself into some form. This is the sort of fixture which screams soft Rovers loss. Even pre-Venkys we used to routinely lose these sorts of games! I'd be pretty happy if we end up with three points after this and Sheff Wednesday. Any more and I'd be over the moon.

You could well be right about that. The one thing that stood out above everything else vs Sheffield United though was just how physically dominant they were. Not just that of course, but when a team is so much quicker and stronger then you really have to go some to outplay them. I'm not sure whether Leeds have quite the same physical edge. I think they've had some issues with players being unavailable in midfield. Rothwell's been a mainstay in there, and we know better than anyone that as good as he can be going forward, he has his flaws. Their away from has been slightly dodgy too, so I don't think a result is out of the question at all.

The Swansea game shouldn't be much of a barometer of how tonight should go. After last night's 0-0 draw, that's now seven out of their eleven games this season which saw a maximum of one goal. Definitely puts our struggles with the ball into consideration. I think more of a football match should break out tonight. Whether that suits us not remains to be seen.

Agree about Carter. It's not that he doesn't have decent ability on the ball, maybe 20 years ago he would've been brought through as a right back rather than a centre half. He hasn't let anyone down there at all, but there too many times you can tell he isn't natural in that position. Should be an emergency measure only going forward. On Brittain vs JRC, I think when he's on form JRC has to get in the team somewhere. Sadly though he hasn't shown anything like so far this year for whatever reason, whereas Brittain has set up two goals already despite missing half our games. Brittain starts for me.

Yes, pretty productive. Wouldn't go any further than that, but 13 goals/assists since the start of last season (which he missed a decent chunk of through injury) is decent. Not brilliant, but if we had another one or two with those sorts of contributions then we wouldn't have relied on Szmodics as much as we did. And I think his decision making is miles better too. When he first arrived he was a bundle of energy who would run at players, but his final ball was like rolling a dice and he'd regularly run himself into blind alleys. Now he takes fewer touches and when he gets the ball in the right areas (not often enough) looks to pick a pass more. You could never see him providing the sort of assist like did at Leeds away a few years ago, for instance. I'm not saying he's a world beater and he'll always be up against it being as small as he is, but I think he's developing pretty well all things considered. Definitely agree with your second point. It seems like we've had rocks or diamonds up front for a long while. Or in Brereton's case, rocks that turn into diamonds!

To be fair I think all of our attacking midfield/wide players who've been here for any length of time get a bit of stick. Hedges gets plenty of criticism on here (including from me) and Sigurdsson and Markanday are only dodging it because they're out of the team. Having said that I agree that he's a decent Championship player. I don't know what sort of contract we would need to offer to keep him, but it would be disappointing to see him go for nothing.

Of the three behind Gueye, I thought he was better than Hedges (who was totally anonymous going forward) and behind Cantwell, but that's only because Cantwell grew into the game a bit more in the second half. Dolan's big problem is his lack of physicality, and his lack of pace over longer distances. In games like yesterday where we have hardly any ball, we don't have much pace and the whole team is a bit off with their passing, Dolan just doesn't have the tools to impose himself on the game. Having said all that, he had a few decent moments and scored (set up?) the winner, so he deserves credit for that. I actually quite like the way that he's developing. He's pretty productive with goals/assists and his decision making is streets ahead of where it was when he first joined. Still only 22 as well. But he's never going to get bigger or quicker, and so I think he's always going to be a player that struggles to get into certain types of games, yesterday being a perfect example.

Looking at Swansea's results this season puts yesterday in a slightly different light, I think. All of their games are low scoring affairs apart from a single 3-0 win against PNE. Nobody's put more than one goal past them all year, and they've dominated the ball every time they've played bar one. Taking that into account, yesterday was always going to be a tough watch. But it's also a game that we could've very easily lost, and 100% would've lost last season. A very good three points where we were great off the ball, even if we were poor going forward. I think part of how bad we looked with the ball of our feet was linked to our lack of pace. I lost count of the number of times we gave the ball away by playing passes in front of Dolan/Cantwell/Hedges but they were beaten to it by a Swansea defender.

I've thought for a while that home advantage seems to count for a lot more during midweek games, but that's unbelievable. I wonder if other clubs have got a similar pattern.

The failure of David Moyes there made me reassess what you need to be a manager of a club like Man United. Ten years of relative success at one of the bigger clubs in England and he was totally unprepared. If anything the length of time at a "normal" club seemed to be a hindrance to getting to grips with what is a totally different job. There's such a small pool of people genuinely prepared to take on those sorts of clubs, in not surprising that the likes of Ancelotti keep getting hired over and over again. I'm not sure if Southgate will ever manage again to be honest. After being England manager does he have the hunger to slum it at a lower-Prem team or below, and I think Man United are the only club significantly above that level who would be stupid enough to hire him. He wouldn't last a season if they did, but it would be seriously funny in the meantime.

Definitely. An absolute classic of the genre. Especially since it's against Coventry who I have literally never seen us beat, with my first ever game at Ewood being the 2-1 FA cup loss in 97. On Hedges, I think a big reason why Eustace keeps him in the team is his physicality. On the ball I think he's a bit of a plodder, but he has the size and engine to get up and down the pitch a lot easier than our other options there who are all well under six foot. I think when Cantwell gets up to speed then he'll start on the left and drift inside, with Hedges struggling to start.

Constant disrespect is a bit much. I appreciate that not everyone agrees with me on this, but I think football fans generally are far, far too thin skinned for a group of people who give players and managers absolute pelters. You can get situations like Kean when what they say in the media is an obviously calculated attempt to pull the wool over people's eyes, and that's a bit different, but generally I think we care far too much about what managers say when a microphone is shoved under their nose in what is often a seriously high-stress situation. As for where he left the club, I think with the benefit of a few years hindsight we can say that Mowbray brought in some very good players at this level and his last season was chalk and cheese compared to what he inherited. He didn't make the most of a couple of pretty good squads and the club did a poor job of keeping those assets, but he did a lot of things right. Certainly compares favourably to most others we've had in the last 15 years.

Nothing gives that away more than when they talk about how big their crowds *would be* if they were in the top flight. Conveniently ignoring that one feature of being a big club is playing in the top division at least once in the last sixty years. In fairness, if another club had form for advertising season tickets in my town centre then I'd probably be quite bitter about it too.

I have PNE grouped together in with Bolton and Wigan as places we inexplicably always tank, so seeing those results written down surprises me a bit. Blowing leads and conceding last minute equalisers probably doesn't help. One of those fixtures too where Gally could look like a world beater. Four goals in those games (if you include the 3-2, annoyingly) and I seem to remember he properly rinsed their full back in the covid season.

I don't think they did - but they've both looked so dangerous since that we need to think about how to best get them both on the pitch at the same time. Gueye's really impressed me on the ball. In the Stockport friendly and the Derby game I thought his touch looked decent but that he was keeping it very simple. Some of his passing since then though has been much better than I was expecting.

I remember 'watching' the 3-4 game on teletext. Nothing to go off apart from the scores updating every five minutes or so. Genuinely more exciting than most live games I've seen over the last 10 years!

It would be great if I'm wrong about this, but I'm sceptical about putting Ohashi at 10. His main outstanding features that we've seen so far are his finishing and his movement in making runs behind the defence. And the one side of his game which looks slightly ropey is his first touch. If we're starting Gueye, I'd have Ohashi out wide. It might still not work, but we know from Saturday that he's not scared of running at full backs! Something like the below: Ohashi Dolan Hedges Gueye It's a shame that hardly anyone plays with two strikers these days, as they're a perfect big man/little man combination.

Nobody's saying it is. But when you sign a player, don't play him, don't even register him in your 25 man squad in January, and then only allow him to go to another club on the last day (or two?) of the window, then you probably shouldn't be taking the moral high ground about how the player has been mistreated by another club. Obviously that doesn't excuse our amateurism.

That's the frustration. I get where the players are coming from entirely but you just know that any reduction in games is going to be at the expense of domestic competitions first and foremost. Anything which stops the top clubs getting even richer will be resisted.

It's the nature of the injuries too. All you need to do is look back at a game from the 70s or 80s (let alone before then) and compare the speed and athleticism. Like a totally different sport. I watch a lot of rugby league and it's the same there too. Injuries once upon a time were the consequences of hard collisions or a tackle going wrong. Muscle injuries are far more prevalent now, and at least one or two season ending ligament injuries are the price of doing business. The number of games has already been massively reduced over the years but there are calls there to reduce them even further. Midweek games are already a thing of the past in all but the most extreme circumstances.

Rovers seriously let the lad down. But the whining from Forest (not the lad himself) didn't sit well with me at the time. As I understand it they signed him along with about 90 other players in the summer and didn't give him any game time whatsoever. And then it comes to the last day or so of the January window and only at the last moment would they let him go to another club. It then falls through and obviously that was amateur hour at our end, but the way Cooper was talking at the time you would have thought that Forest were bothered about his best interests and not just treating him as a commodity.

I'm really not convinced. I think we're underestimating what it takes for a Championship manager without a promotion on his CV to get interest from higher up, either in the prem or for clubs who are spending to get promoted. I'm sure there will be a fair few clubs lower down casting jealous glances but, that doesn't mean we should be worried about them trying to poach him.

Think we're a long long way from that personally. You don't get many 'sideways' moves in the Championship, and he's not the type that parachute payments clubs usually go for. If he performs miracles this season without getting us up, then it could be different.

I thought this at the weekend after Beck did so well. On reflection I'd be pretty happy having him on the left hand side of a three. In a back four though I think he'd only do as emergency cover.