Admiral Nelsen

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?

I agree that he should be scoring more, but I don't think we should pretend that he's not been vital to us going forward this season. He might not register as many assists as others, but that is largely because he's contributing earlier in moves.

I know there'll be plenty who agree with that, and that it's feasible that Joe Rothwell is one of them! My view though is that is that he had chances to make the shirt his own and didn't take them in years 1 and 2. Last year he was a starter in his favoured position too. Very talented, but not productive enough until this season. Anyway, like I say it's possible that Rothwell agrees with you and that's led to him wanting out, but personally I'm looking at his behaviour at Oxford and I'm thinking that he's looking after number one.

Until this season, Rothwell hasn't played well enough, consistently enough to justify feeling messed about. We've seen that he was more than happy to run his contract down at his last club to join a club higher un the pyramid and earn more cash. All the evidence points to him just doing the same to Rovers, which notwithstanding how he's gone about asking for a move, is fair enough. Agree that given where we are now though, we should take the £6million assuming we can spend that on replacement(s).

True. Flipside of that is that there's no chance that we'll have another weekend like this with such easy games for all of our rivals, and at least we got it out of the way whilst picking up a very decent away point under the circumstances. We're still second, just need to get our troops back!

Buckley off for Ayala!

I keep reading that he's a winger - does anyone who has seen him play more have a handle on how he would be likely to fit into our system?

Me neither. On the one hand he's capable of banging them in at this level if he's remotely fit. On the other, the whole point of Ismael's style of play (supposedly) is a really aggressive press, which you'd assume is well beyond Carroll at this stage in his career.

I don't think you can ignore this season when looking at that question. Equally, it would be wrong to totally ignore the previous two (especially the run last year). I think, assuming that there is no death spiral and we miss out on the play offs, a one year rolling deal is entirely fair. If we go up he deserves the financial security of knowing he'll get some pay off if we sack him during a tough prem season, seeing as he would have made us over a hundred million or whatever it is these days. If we finish in the play offs but don't go up, he deserves another go after massively overachieving this year. I think that's fair, but also doesn't mean we'll go handing out a 3 or 4 year deal off the strength of one brilliant season.

I'd be very happy with four points from this and the Swansea game. Both tough in their own ways, but this one looks the more challenging on paper, so a point wouldn't be the end of the world.

Putting the L1 season aside, we've been too easy to score against since Sam left. Some managers have had spells of taking conservative, defensive minded decisions such as Bowyer at times, but they never really solved the problem of us being a bit soft at the back. Such a refreshing change this year. Eight clean sheets in ten is outstanding at any level, and as you say, all three centre backs have been absolutely immense.

That would seemingly have come from nowhere. Apparently they couldn't get the funds together to sign the Aussie midfielder who was on loan there and just went to Boro instead. Suggests the price has come down dramatically if true.

Had we been judging Gally purely on this season's output, we'd still have been frustrated with certain aspects of his game but they would be secondary to his very decent goal record. Obviously the signing gets judged for previous seasons too, so I wouldn't want to go overboard and say that it was £5million well spent, but he definitely deserves credit for this season and the decision to buy him in the first place looks much better than it did this time last year.

Funny you should mention... https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/17409886/bournemouth-andy-carroll-reading-burnley-transfer/

I briefly made them favourites to grab second once I saw they signed him. That really is a blow - happily means that he'll be missing for when we play them too.

I guess if West Brom are serious then we'd struggle to match their offer. Would be a quality signing at this level though (arguably a good one even if we went up).

If mentally he's in a decent place, Gallagher. I've no illusions about the negative aspects of his game, but for me it's his first touch and game awareness that holds him back. He has the tools to be a good penalty taker in my view.

Agree - the one thing that you'd say I suppose is that his injury problems were genuinely horrendous. I don't blame Mowbray for bringing in players who he could rely upon in the short term, but he's been fit for a year or two now. He should've had a run last year in my view, especially in that awful run after Christmas. I know others on here disagree, but I think the 'Mowbray has been unfair to Nyambe/Rothwell and that's why they're leaving' is a total red herring. Davenport on the other hand has every right to feel aggrieved.