Admiral Nelsen

Definitely. For now though I'm going to enjoy doing to other teams what seemed to happen to us all the time last year - have 20 shots and still throw points away via a set piece! Staying fit for two games doesn't absolve us from the poor decision to sign him last year, but his performances so far underline why they found it so tempting to take the gamble on signing him in the first place. Been a long time that we've seen a centre back dominate in the air and look so assured doing the basics of defending. Even the one-on-one chance that Swansea had in the first half which looked to be his fault was fairly clearly offside, so I'll give him the benefit on looking flat-footed on that one. Swallows, summers etc. If he plays 30 games this year though he will make a massive difference.

(Tenuously) Fitting that our first signing was made on the same page as Tony's newly preferred formation.

They'll be well up for this after losing the first two, but still might be a decent time to play them with their injuries at the back. Going for an optimistic 1-2 Rovers, Brereton Diaz putting us top at his former stomping ground.

I think that's a good argument to not go mad with filling the squad with loans, which if certain reports are to be believed, we might end up doing sadly. Buckley in particular needs be starting more games, and it doesn't make sense to send Carter down to L1 if whoever is playing at Ewood is as raw as Branthwaite was last year. That being said, we can't lose the number of players that we have (even if we weren't sorry to see lots of them go) without bringing at least a few extra bodies in. Like you I'm encouraged that we already have the ability to stay clear of trouble, but the depth that we've had on the bench is a real cause for concern. That's why this one makes perfect sense to me - we start three midfielders every game, and of the five options we currently have, only one (Buckley) hasn't had significant fitness issues recently. I think it just comes down to being selective. 2 or 3 players with the ability of Harwood-Bellis/Elliott is ideal. 5 or 6, with a couple of Jack Brynes, Martin Samuelsens or Stephen Hendries thrown in, then serious questions need to be asked.

Purely guesswork, but the interest of two obviously more monied, southern based clubs smacks me a little of an agent trying to squeeze a better contract out of Rovers. Especially considering there were rumours that he had already rejected us which seem now to be premature. Obviously if there are genuine offers from either Fulham or Bournemouth, then I'd expect that he'd be off there in a shot.

If he was coming through now, they'd never think about keeping him as a centre forward. Not surprising that he ended up playing his best football in his later years as he moved deeper and deeper.

So he is! Not sure where I got that from. In any case, I think we were a body short so I'm happy with this one. Interesting that we're still after Doyle from City, apparently. All of a sudden we might look slightly overloaded with midfielders if everyone stays fit, although if last season is anything to go by we'll usually have at least one or two in the treatment room.

To be fair, Garrett's only going to be 17 by the time Clarkson has gone back to Liverpool. I don't think this is going to have a particularly meaningful impact on his development. If this goes through, we'll have 6 first teamers (Travis, Rothwell, Clarkson, Johnson, Buckley and Davenport) going after three positions in our midfield. You could argue maybe 7 depending on how we play Dack when he comes back, but we're going to be using all of these players if they can stay fit.

I guess with his injury record no team would pay more than a tiny fraction of those wages. I'd be a bit surprised and disappointed if we're risking as much as 30% given our financial position, even if he is a really talented player. From City's perspective, their best option with him now is to not worry about wage contributions, and just get him playing regularly at the best level possible for a season and hope he can stay fit. If he does well, then they can offer him a new deal then maybe sell him for a few quid like they did with Tosin.

And with fit striker Jon Macken still sat on the bench! Quite an easily forgotten episode considering just how bizarre it was.

I'm pretty sympathetic to this, the only worry I have is that even if we don't sign anyone, we could end up in the position in a month or two where he's behind Lenihan, Ayala & Wharton and suddenly he's on the bench every week and not playing for weeks on end. Flip side of that is obviously that all three of those mentioned have poor fitness records, so he probably would play his fair share if he stayed at Rovers, especially if we continue switching with three at the back. I can see the logic in bringing in a cheapish prem loan and sending Carter away for another season just to make sure that he gets on the pitch.

I'm expecting improvement from Pickering, but I'm satisfied enough with what I've seen. Certainly an upgrade defensively, and let's not forget that last year was his first in L1. Very good point today, even if the performance wasn't good. After last year I'll take a few more days like today.

I know there were meant to be pretty massive engineering works taking place at Euston today - might be unrelated, but I'd bet it's had a non-trivial impact on our following. We were planning on going to the first away whoever it was, but decided against when we couldn't get train tickets a few weeks ago.

Delay due to train issues, apparently.

Believe that Graham was a Lambert/Coyle signing. Got a feeling that we're forgetting another though.

To be honest, as bad as last season was and as much as I think Mowbray should have gone, I don't think there is a debate to be had. That might change if it turns out there was something underhand in his role in the potential training ground sell-off, but without knowing much more on that front and judging them for what we can see on & off the pitch, Kean is lightyears worse than anything else we have had, including Coyle.

Pretty decent one from us around Christmas/New Year when K**n first got the job. Around 3k in bad weather if memory serves for a promising 3-1 win with 10 men. Talk about a false dawn!

Couldn't agree more with this. One of the few silver linings of the great big cloud that is the current state of the football club is that it provides the opportunity for our younger players to get more minutes on the pitch to improve and hopefully grow into valuable players for the first team. Buckley I suppose has already had his fair share of minutes, but he hasn't really had the run of starts needed to get the consistency in his game that has escaped him so far. His ability is clearly there, so I'd look to start him as much as possible until Dack comes back into the reckoning, then reassess from there. Hopefully by that time he will have properly established himself.

Millwall should prove to be a much sterner test than Swansea, they certainly won't be as self-destructive at the back. Will be interesting to see if we look to dominate the ball in this sort of fixture like we did last year, or if the Swansea game was a sign of Tony being less dogmatic when it comes to playing that way this season. Same side and shape as last week for me.

Agree - good reasons for pessimism for next season but there are plenty of other clubs in a not completely dissimilar position, and who would swap our starting XI for theirs. I'm hoping one silver lining from our situation this year is that it forces Mowbray to be 1. more consistent in his selection and 2. more pragmatic in how we play. Correcting these flaws (his biggest by some distance in my view) would make me very confident about staying up, even if the season as a whole won't be anything to write home about.

Good start to a bad season, 2-0 Rovers.

I think you're basically right, only thing I take issue with is that I think our 'floor' is a bit higher than that. Certainly agree that it's a season that's difficult to predict the league (when is the Championship not, I suppose?) and Rovers more so than most other teams. My view is that even if most of the question-marks all over our squad (which I agree with) don't come back with the answers we like, so to speak, I'd still be surprised if we aren't some way ahead of at least three clubs. It seems as though most of the Championship has gone backwards since last year, probably not the worst season to be relegated from the Prem in terms of those clubs' chances of bouncing back.

Not basing on this on last night, but I agree in that I'm confident that we won't be overly worried when it comes to going down (caveated on not having a total disaster of the rest of the transfer window). Equally, I can't see us being anywhere near the top 6 equation either, which is obviously where we all want to be. I think generally we are all (as will fans of other clubs) be slightly guilty of not really appreciating the state of plenty of other clubs at this moment in time. We're struggling, and we can only put a certain amount of that down to covid, but some other clubs are absolutely in the mire. I expect bottom half, but I doubt that there'll be much between a big clump of teams in the middle this season. I expect us to be in that conversation rather than scrapping to stay in the division.

I haven't gone back and read everyone's comments, so I could be wrong, but I haven't seen much which I'd describe as final. I wasn't able to go yesterday, so I can't judge either way, but I agree broadly that early games can be great or dreadful and don't necessarily mean much in the long run. Remember Andre Ooijer having an absolute horror show of a debut against Chelsea, and he turned out to be a really excellent player for us. Everything we've read/heard about Pickering so far means that we should stay optimistic for a good while longer I think.

He wasn't an £11 million better player. Scored fewer goals in a much better team at this level. Take your point about the contract situation though. Agree that keeping him into the last 12 months of his contract (assuming he won't re-sign) is a massive call which could backfire, but there's still plenty of time to go until the end of the window. There seem to be a healthy number of clubs sniffing round too, so I think playing a bit more hardball to get a few more million quid (or 60% of a few more million quid!) isn't overly risky at this point.