Bournemouth have had their game against Swansea called off because of stadium damage! They'll be playing three games a week until May at this rate!

I wrote him off by the end of the Bowyer era, but he came close to winning me round a couple of times in the years since. Never fully though, and I wasn't remotely sad to see him go last year, which speaks volumes for a player who was here so long. One thing I'd say in his defence for the first few years at least is that we were completely mad to sign him and then play him in a 442. He never had anything like the mobility to thrive in that role properly, which should have been obvious before we signed him. When he played deeper in the L1 season and after, he had spells of being quite a lot better in my view, admittedly without ever being brilliant.

Think you're right about Leicester's performance flattering them, although to be fair Forest were still very good. It'll be a challenge for them to get up to the same level for this one, and we're typically a very tough prospect at home. I fancy us to win this one.

I think for the automatics that might be undershooting what we need, slightly. Say if we need 87 points to go up, which I think is the average, 7 from the next 7 games leaves us needing 27 from the last 10 games. There's a decent chance that we'll need slightly less than that this season, but still a big ask. I think you're right that we need to look at this run as staying in contact though. If after the Fulham game we're within two results of second I'd be pretty happy. I'd guess that probably means something like 12 points, which really highlights how important today's game and Millwall at home are.

A curious development with modern football I suspect, although maybe it's always happened to a degree. I definitely don't think it's just a Rovers thing - media performance seems like another thing which a manager gets judged on which to be honest, I really don't get. Even taking an ultra-extreme example of K**n and the nonsense he came out with, I would've been fine with him calling Ribero Dennis Irwin if he was even semi-competent at managing the club.

I blame Coyle almost entirely (and I suppose those responsible for appointing him). The after that I blame Shane Duffy and Anthony Stokes. I know some disagree, but I don't really blame Huddersfield at all. We had 46 games to get to the level needed, and I think managers' concerns has got to be on the club that pays them. Put it this way, if we go into the final game having secured third spot but with no chance of coming second, I'd be pretty furious with Mowbray if any of our key players got injured when they needn't have played.

I think this is completely right. The pessimistic view though is that for all our struggles against solid, well drilled teams last year, there were occasions when we got it right and were genuinely very difficult to get to grips with. Especially when we scored first. I think we'll win, but there is an element of danger with this one. Teams that are capable of dominating the ball like they do can cause good teams problems, they took a point off QPR at their place only a week or two ago and could've nicked three.

I don't think many would go as far as to call him a 1 in 2 striker - Rhodes and Rudy only just made that ratio when they were here. But if you look at the number of minutes that's played in the league, it's a smidgen over 15 games (let's not forget that he's been brought off injured in those starts). So 6 in 15 is better than 1 in 3 and a pretty decent strike rate. Could be better, but it's a lot better than crap. I'm convinced that if we signed Gally this season, the only gripe we would have (apart from his first touch) would be that he hasn't been fit enough to play more games.

Straightforward selection for me. And immeasurably stronger than the team that started against Luton, let alone the one that finished it.

At least one of the wide forward spots - but ideally he'll be able to cover Rothwell's role in the centre. Not certain if he can, though I think he played centrally for Cardiff a bit.

Writing them off certainly is ridiculous. Today is more likely to be a big help to their promotion chances then hindering it. Equally, signing so many apparently first team players on January deadline day is not the sign of team who think that they only need some fine tuning. Their form has been way short of promotion standard for quite some time now (after an admittedly very impressive start, results wise) and the manager has already shown signs of not being able to get the most out the resources he has, both there & at Fulham. Deep down my money would still be on them to go up in second, but there's still a good case for them falling short. Today arguably even highlights it.

I know it sounds odd seeing as we were ultra stretched up front vs Luton, but the likelihood of being anywhere near that position again is tiny. Brereton won't be going to play for Chile again, Hedges has been brought in, Khadra and Dolan are going to be back in the next week or two. Gally might be a little longer depending on his injury, but there's no way that Butterworth gets in front of any of them and we'll be bang unlucky to have any less than 3 of them fit and ready to play at any one time until the end of the season.

Butterworth going makes sense for me. If he's ever going to useful to us, he needs to progress from the odd promising cameo and actually show that he can start games and score goals. No point staying here for 20-30 minutes here and there. Also, assuming we play the same system from here onwards, we have BBD, Khadra, Hedges, Gally and Dolan fighting for two spots upfront. Several options to play in the Buckley role too. I would've liked reinforcements, but in the absence of that it's still right to get him playing and seeing if he can progress.

Certainly looks that way, but it has serious potential to backfire. There's no guarantee that they'll be able to integrate their new signings overnight, and If Rothwell has anything about him he should be even more motivated to prove people wrong after the way his move has broken down.

Decent, yes. And I agree that there's a tendency to ignore that we've got some good business done early this window. That said, we're still one more player short of it being a really good window.

£1.5 million loan fee for Nat Phillips, apparently. Absolutely extraordinary for 6 months. It would be so funny if Bournemouth didn't go up from here.

I assumed he meant that Trav might have seen the news this morning and regretted liking the post. Happy to be corrected though if something else has gone on.

I can definitely envisage that. I think Giles and a forward of the right quality (assuming Rothwell stays) would actually be pretty good business to be honest. That would mean four players being brought in to compete for the first team - five if you include Markanday - with no genuine first teamers leaving. I know we're stretched at the moment, but it's easy to see us about a month down the line a scenario with Pickering, Brereton, Dolan, Dack, Gally, maybe Edun and Khadra all being available. All of a sudden our problem could be having too many options rather than too few, which if last season is anything to go by is not necessarily a good thing!

Liked a social media post which finished by saying 'Tell Rothwell to f*ck off'. Since been deleted though, and to be charitable most of the post was just praising Trav/Rovers, so there's a chance he liked it without reading to the end!

On paper he's a near perfect (realistic) loan signing. Can slot in at LWB which short term is a real issue for us, and then gives us loads of options elsewhere once we get a couple of troops back.

He's had a contract offer on the table for ages which is widely accepted to be a pay rise of some description. My point though is that you said that Rovers could've saved themselves this bother if we offered him a contract which recognises his value. Fine, but we don't know what we offered and what he would've accepted (or if he always intended to let his contract run anyway) so we can't be overly confident that this was a situation that we could have avoided.

Same as my last post, can we really say things like this with any certainty? Bournemouth's offer will make him a higher earner than anyone at Ewood. Our offer has clearly fallen short of that, but that doesn't mean that it as derisory or that he's been mucked about.

The trouble with statements like this is that we don't know what Rothwell's demands were, or whether he would ever have accepted an offer that we could have realistically made. Without knowing the specifics of demands and offers, it's impossible to know how much of the blame the club takes in finding themselves in this dilemma.

Very close to my views, although I'm not optimistic that that we'll find that player who will improve us overall. I definitely think that the defence carrying on as they are will be more important to getting out of this league than Rothwell would have been. I think you're right that whilst on one level this is very good business from Bournemouth, there is a risk that they're accumulating so many attacking/midfield options that it'll be a challenge to produce a system which suits them all.

It's not a perfect logic, but if we supposedly rejected Bournemouth's offers of £2million + and Mowbray's said that we've knocked back offers of around double that, then a £5-£6million fee maybe isn't that unrealistic?