Admiral Nelsen

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.

I agree if badly weakened means players who otherwise wouldn't get anywhere near the first team. I think playing the 5-6 fringe players that are near enough certain to be needed in the league at some point is sensible - gives them game-time and they should still have enough to see off a L1 team. I wouldn't be in favour of playing kids who aren't already knocking down the door. I think the circumstances of our season calls for us to be pragmatic, but I don't think that means we need to throw the game.

I was thinking along the same lines, but the cheap tickets will stop this making much of a difference I think. Say average tickets are around £12 considering concessions, a crowd of 10k will get us around £60k. Plus the prize money it's welcome, but I can't see it making any difference to the budget. A win on Saturday, then an away draw against a United/Spurs/Arsenal, then maybe that could make a difference.

Been very up and down even within games. Thought he was great in the first half against Coventry, but then faded badly in the second, giving the ball away in some really poor areas. He looks like he has the raw materials to be a decent player though. I suspect the change in system will help him too, with the three centre backs giving him more room to get forward.

Fair enough. Rovers twitter is saying 4-6, so fingers crossed it's closer to the lower end of that. Four weeks from last weekend wouldn't be the end of the world with bearing in mind one of the games he'll be missing is in the cup, but if it gets towards the end of February then he'll be missing a concerning number of games.

Thought TM said 4-6? Still a massive blow though. Need Edun to step up!

100%. We might now find ourselves in the incredible position of Ayala being our 4th choice centre back, but we'll almost certainly need him at some point before the season's done. Won't do us or him any good if he hasn't played in months.

I get that approach, even if there are one or two more changes than my liking. Even so, Edun starting at left back is a no-brainer. He needs to get more time on the pitch even if Pickering is out for a while. I also seriously doubt that we'll see JRC as being able to start, but then again it's a dilemma because nobody else can really slot in there apart from Nyambe, and he is arguably the player who needs protecting the most. I think the best compromises would either be: i) Play Nyambe from the start but take him off for JRC after an hour, irrespective of how the game's going, or ii) Play Magloire on the right, and play one of the senior centre backs. Van Hecke in particular hasn't really played that much recently once you factor in his ban, and we don't play for a week anyway, so I don't see that a being a massive issue for him.

That should make a difference. With >3000 already sold it should be a decent turn out.