Admiral Nelsen

I think that's only true if it's considered a frivolous one. Not sure how they arrive at judgement, but if anyone can look at our case and call it frivolous then the game has gone!

Miracle point. So proud of the effort today

Big call. This is probably the game that on paper would have suited Williams the most since he's been injured. Toney's big and strong, but it's not really his physicality that should worry us. Out of the two we have available, Wharton is obviously the most mobile but he won't have been exposed to too many attacks like Brentford's before today. Plenty of managers would have gone with Ayala's experience, so let's see how it pans out.

To be fair, Middlesbrough have improved plenty since Colin has showed up there. Still well in the hunt for a top 6 place and it wouldn't shock me if they're competing for the automatics in the spring. Have to admit I'm surprised that Hughton hasn't had more of an obvious impact. He does seem to have tightened up their defence, but points haven't followed. Might be different once they get Grabban back.

Would be good to get both Dack and Travis ready to start the F.A. cup game. Any significant contribution before then is a bonus.

One of those players where you would not be confident of replacing even with a massive budget, so I wouldn't be happy selling him at any price, really. In terms of what we should be accepting, I agree that something like 25 million is what should be required to start a conversation. If we're still in the hunt come the end of January, I wouldn't even consider that.

I know that controversial or underperforming players attract more discussion than players who do the business consistently, but I'm amazed that we've reached a total of 16 pages on Arma in just over two years. By himself he's managed to at least equal the number of goals scored by a third of all the clubs in the league. He's scored double the number of goals of Derby County. Amazing given about 12 months ago there was a decent argument that he'd struggle to start as a number 9 with no strike partner.

Agree with that to a point, whilst we can look at the last two games and feel a bit lucky to have picked up 6 points, we weren't outplayed by any of the top sides we've come up against this season with the exception of Reading. Even so if we were taking a Hughes-like approach of targeting a certain number of points from the next few games, a return of 5-6 points would be very decent in keeping the optimism going. Norwich will be weakened with injuries, so three points there and 1 win/2 draws from the other games keeps us well in touch with the top.

For a boy of 12, Harvey Elliott is very good at football

With the possible exception of Armstrong, I think Mowbray will be looking to rotate our entire midfield and attack before the new year. Think having Rothwell on the bench for this one if anything recognises how much of a key player he's been for us this year, given our tough week coming up.

No Cooper for them - big loss

Last minute equaliser for Cov against Wayne Rooney's Derby.

Game is tailor made for Johnson and Ayala, although I wouldn't advocate dropping Wharton if he's made a complete recovery. Mowbray seems to be hinting that Douglas will probably be fit, but I'd be very comfortable playing Bell for this game. With the schedule coming up and a couple of little question marks over Douglas' ability to play so many games back to back, Bell's going to get into the team at some points during the season. Might as well play him now and give Douglas a few more days to recover.

Strangely - given how relentless our December is, there's a full week before and after the third round - two weeks between league fixtures like an international break. Obviously it's risky to make wholesale changes - but we should be able to give some of our over-flogged players a decent rest.

Boring draw, but a good one.

Apparently Jake Cooper played 15 minutes with a dislocated shoulder too. Would have thought he would miss out on Wednesday.

Think that's completely fair. I think he would have struggled to avoid criticism will be online. It might well be a minority and a bit echo-chambery, but the torrent of abuse and derision underperforming footballers get online is absolutely unreal. Doesn't make Rovers fans any different to any other club of our size, but I'd be surprised if it didn't affect him at times. Agree that on the whole, fans at Ewood have been very patient with him, and now that patience seems to be paying off.

Let's see what the future holds, but I'm hopeful for the back end of the season. Sufficient proportion of the population will be vaccinated by April that football may return to something like normal. At the very least I hope they'll let us in to Wembley in May.

I'd argue that missing both our starting number 8s for the Forest game was quite bad, but that's splitting hairs a bit I guess. We should've played better in those games, even if a points return of 1 point was a little less than we deserved. Even so, we're not in December yet & we've played multiple games with a third-choice out of position left back, our back up keeper, our fourth choice centre half and without arguably our four first choice centre midfielders in Dack/Travis/Holtby & Rothwell. We'll all have it bad at some point this season, but so far I'd say we've had it a bit worse than most & hopefully it'll have evened out by the end of the season. Anyway, all in all I think we're slightly unfortunate not to have a few more points than we do, and I think we've definitely played well enough to not be scared of anyone in this league. In previous years we might be looking at a Brentford/Bristol City/Norwich week as damage limitation. This season I hope we're looking at it as a chance to make a statement.

We're still looking at a small-ish sample of results. At this point last season Brentford were only just getting going, but their quality showed as the season went on. All teams have been influenced by injuries and covid, but I'm not sure how many teams have had as many first teamers out for individual games as we had before the international break. Even yesterday we finished the game with a fifth choice centre back, and we're in miles better health than we were a few weeks ago. I'm not saying that we do have a better squad than those teams by the way! But if we're judging our league position, selection issues alongside some reasonably unfortunate results earlier in the season could easily have us a bit higher up.

Agree, I was impressed with his debut but the way we play doesn't offer too much in the way of protection for the centre halves. Not fair to ask him to play too much before he's ready to do so consistently. He's got the perfect example to follow in Scott Wharton. The years he's spent getting nearly 100 appearances in men's football has obviously done them the world of good.

Only following it on twitter, but as far as I can tell they're both still on the bench.

Chorley had a penalty saved which would have made it 3-1! Really hope they hang on.

Width of a post away from losing at the death to Wycome today. Start of the season they had plenty of injuries up front, but they've had close to a full team for weeks now. Inexplicable.

Three points is the main thing, but he deserved the clean sheet today. Actually I thought Lenihan and Wharton did too for their defending, even if it wasn't ideal that they saw so much of the ball. Compared to what we've had, Kaminski is different gravy.