Pretty important that we start putting that to bed over the next few weeks!

This sums up pretty much exactly where I am with the signing. Very excited about the potential, but you have to acknowledge that a 20 year old with next to no top-level experience may at the very least need some time to adjust.

Not the most fair indicator of the quality of the league, but there is some sub-optimal defending going on there (along with some nice finishes too).

I think we rate Johnson slightly differently. I'm no massive fan & I'd start Davenport over him, but when he's on his game he doesn't tend to get bypassed that much in my view. He has been maddeningly inconsistent though, and when he's not on form his lack of mobility stands out like a sore thumb. Luckily most teams at this level don't have the players to exploit that too often - so I think his power and crafty game management makes him a useful option to sure things up, especially if we're protecting a lead. He has his moments with the ball at his feet too, but obviously these are few and far between. That said, I agree that if we lost Travis for any length of time and we couldn't play Edun there because he's on the left, I'd definitely rather see Davenport as his replacement.

Really surprised by that! I know he plays pretty deep, but I still would've thought he would've managed far more than 13. That's the record of an average centre back. Charlie Mulgrew almost beat that in one year! Always one of those players who looks better on highlights reels.

For all the talk of Mowbray having favourites and not treating others equally (Nyambe, Rothwell, the idea that Travis was kept out of the team for too long, etc.) Davenport is the one who can feel genuinely hard done by in my opinion. Injuries have been horrible, but he's been fit for a while now and has never been given a half decent run in the team. Makes sense now that the Rothwell/Travis/Buckley midfield is so nicely balanced, but there's no reason at all why he didn't get more game time last season for me. I'll be sad to see him go at the end of the year (assuming he will, of course) and I think he would be a very shrewd signing for someone. Having said that, I can understand why Johnson has come on for 20 minutes here and there to see games out. We all know that his passing can be very hit and miss, but his physicality can be a real asset.

Yes - we were hard done to with the circumstances of the first game being called off, but we probably couldn't have picked a better date for the rearranged fixture. Extra day's prep on Hull and and then the best part of a week to prepare for our next game on Monday.

Completely. If they were half as clinical as we have been, let alone Fulham, then they would at least be up there at the top along with us and the other two, if not a little in front of us. Dike delivering the same as he did for Ismael at Barnsley and they could easily still challenge the automatics.

What a result

Not that I'm in favour of rushing players in before they're ready, but what would you guess his chances of coping in the first team would be if we go a game or two without being able to play Pickering or Edun there? Just seen that he turns 17 in a couple of months, so obviously still very young, but at the same time we're clearly short of senior players who can slot in there should those two not be available.

No Keiffer Moore for Cardiff on Saturday. He's not been on the best of form and I'd have been fairly confident that our new system would keep him quiet anyway, but still big shoes to fill for them.

Agree with this. It's a bit of a risk, but one worth taking for his development. 12 months without football at his age when he's good enough for L1 isn't acceptable if we see him as a prospect.

Thanks, didn't realise that there was a difference between home and away games - although obviously that makes sense with loss of revenue. Sounds like we'll obviously lose a little with lost ticket prices, along with the Fisher sell on we could be due an extra roughly £500k this month which we didn't expect. Chicken feed in the context of our debt - but still pretty welcome given given how much comes into the coffers these days.

Talk about feast and famine. That's about 2 years worth of televised fixtures in less than 2 months! Hope our good form and sensible ticket pricing means our home attendances don't suffer too much. Does anyone have a handle on how much extra cash the club will see for each game?

One of Nixon's more insightful comments when he was still on here was that 3 clubs in a story is often a sign of an agent at work. I'd guess that this is just that if the Dutch lad ends up signing in the next day or so, although he did look decent when Barnsley were at Ewood a few weeks back.

If there was one benefit of the FA cup game, it's that it reinforced that the team that's been picking up points in the league needs to stay. Assuming Nyambe & Lenihan can play, the team picks itself. I feel that this is quite an important game after the last two. Not at our best against a resilient Huddersfield, but a decent enough point in the context of our recent form. Wigan was a freak occurrence with their goals and was a cup game when all is said and done. Even so, a loss (or maybe even a draw) here and suddenly there's danger of seeing clouds in our otherwise clear blue sky. Cardiff don't impress me one bit, but then again every away in the Championship has the potential to be tough. They'll also remember being put to the sword earlier in the campaign, so will want to get some pride back from then. Hopefully we open the scoring and then I'd be pretty confident of us seeing it out.

Not much to add to the above, other than he impressed in a season where other defenders found it pretty difficult to. I think this has just as much to do with how we set up as it does the ability of the players, but even so he put one or two more established players to shame a bit last season. I can see where @S8 & Blue is coming from though if there's no chance of getting him beyond the end of the season. His potential is fantastic, but for the window we had him he was a good level Championship defender.

Hopefully more like that and less like when we actually signed Duncan Shearer!

Annoyingly, he tends to be pretty reliable and isn't just Twitter clickbait. £1million is neither use nor ornament to us for Rothwell if we're serious about going up. The fact that it's Bournemouth just underscores how dreadful it would be to accept that sort of deal (or any deal from them).

Same! Not quite the same point, but it made me think of the Bulgarian player we were once linked with (Domovchiyski?) under Hughes? I seem to remember someone on here made up that he could run the hundred meters in under 10 seconds, and later that day Sky Sports news were running that Rovers were linked with lightning-quick striker, much to the bemusement of anyone who had ever seen him play.

Yes, to be clear I'd be delighted if Nyambe signs on. The rumours seem to be a loan with the option to buy though, so if Nyambe is to leave, then at least it seems as though we're getting his replacement in beforehand which you have to say hasn't always been our strong point in recent years.

Apparently he was very closely linked with Fulham in the summer - didn't materialise in the end.

A quick bit of research on him - he is apparently absolutely rapid. If this is true then I expect this means that Nyambe is off. A real shame, but at least we seem to have done our homework into a replacement.

Unless I missed something, we sold out the initial 3,500 a day or two ago and the rest are onsale on the day. So I'd expect 4000+

Tricky one with Wigan. They obviously are in a similar position to us promotion wise, and with their COVID cancellations their schedule from here onwards is potentially ridiculous, so there's definitely a good case for them to rotate. At the same time they played a strong team in the mickey mouse cup midweek, and even though they spent a few quid in the summer they don't have a particularly big squad. That, coupled with the fact that they didn't play over Christmas makes it really hard to predict how they're going to approach this.