His performances since coming back has gone a long way to convince me that he will be money well spent. His early performances showed the could be useful enough and create/score the odd goal, but they tended to be against the poorer sides and he wasn't that great in general play. Against a Premier league team and a team that will probably be there soon, he has been brilliant. The spell yesterday before he hit the bar he was looking imperious. If he can keep those levels then we have a very good player on our hands.

If we get United at OT or Spurs away, it will literally be millions once TV money is added into the equation. Not trivial. Obviously Fleetwood at home would be nicer though!

I criticised him a couple of pages ago, but I wish I didn't now because his 15 minutes (where we barely had a kick) was such a minor part of what has been a magnificent evening. For what it's worth, I think it was probably more a lack of agility rather than a lack of application. I'm not having that a young player in his position trying to get in the side and make a name for himself wouldn't put the effort in for the final 15 mins.

You can't. We have so many games in April though that we'll be glad to have the options!

Not in the league!

Definitely need another option there. He might end up having a decent career but as things stand, we can't be having him as our only out-and-out striker after Gally.

I think it'll be interesting to see how he wants to replace BBD. Signing Thomas has really highlighted that Mowbray left us with literally zero 'proper' wingers, so I wonder if we will look to get a more creative player to start on the left alongside a goalscoring number 9? In any case, two new forwards are easily the most pressing issues. If getting the right option there takes 90% of whatever budget we have, that'd do me. Our starting options elsewhere can be good enough (albeit with more consistency needed in a few cases) so any improvement there (beyond needing extra legs to replace Morton/Ayala) is a bonus.

The injuries we're carrying means that (unlike the West Ham game) we don't have a huge amount of scope to make changes, even if we wanted to. I'd expect maybe 2 or 3 changes from QPR. Hedges & Morton could well be in for a start. Possibly bring in Pickering for JRC too. It's great to see him finally stay fit for a decent spell, but I wouldn't want to push our luck too much before the run in.

I didn't really buy this until last season, but increasingly it's hard to ignore the trend. I remember an old head of department of mine was a Cov fan. He said not long after we began our L1 season something like 'I hope you enjoy being top at Christmas and not winning a game after', or something to that effect. Took me about 4 years to realise that he was on to something!

Game of opinions! For me, his ability is definitely there. Not anywhere near the Elliot level if we're comparing him to other loans, but enough that he's already Championship standard. He has made some bad errors though, and now that Trav and Buckley are looking more like themselves then I'm glad they're in the team. The thing that winds me up the most about him will probably do him good in the long run. I remember when his error lost us the game away at Wigan, there was some talk from the club about how he is mentally strong enough to not dwell on it and carry on playing his natural game, taking risks. That's all well and good for Liverpool, but if he carries on giving chances away by overplaying (as he has done) I struggle to shake the impression that he's playing more for himself and his development and less about making sure that Rovers pick up as many points as possible. That's probably no different to lots of other youngsters who go out on loan in fairness, so it probably shows how selective you need to be when signing these sorts of players more than anything else.

I think that hits the nail on the head. I'm all for saying that defenders should be there to defend first and foremost, but all decent fullbacks have to bring something offensively too these days. He just wasn't developing in that side of his game. He only played there a couple of times for us, but I think he could potentially be great on the right side of a back three. Wigan's problem now I suppose.

To be fair, if Morton was one of ours then we wouldn't shut up about him. The trouble is that he's cutting his teeth and making his youthful mistakes on our time, whilst we've already put in the hard yards to develop Buckley into a good Championship player. Really pleased that him (and Trav) are back in the team and playing well. They were always good enough to compete at the higher end of this division. Their time out of the side seems to have done them the world of good.

Or hopefully that he's just got back fit. I'd guess that there's a better than average chance that he gets on the bench tomorrow if he came through the midweek friendly that supposedly he was involved in.

I've just had a look to jog my memory - we finished one place below them but we were still in the top half and finished with a better goal difference. To be fair to them, we had a ridiculously good last few months and still finished below them, so I can half understand why they wouldn't rate us too highly when we were still firmly in a relegation battle & on shocking league form. Other than maybe Cole and Berg, a lot of them wouldn't have had the faintest notion of how good some of our players actually were, especially seeing as some of them were a part of a relegated team a couple of years earlier. There would've been some sour grapes after the game with Brad being on such inspired form that day, but they would've finally recognised how good we were 12 months later when we secured a top 6 finish by pumping them 4-0 at White Hart Lane.

Agree. I'm pleased that he's actually managed to show what he can do a bit after his disaster of a first season, but it's not enough if he is still missing about half of our games. If we were otherwise struggling for centre halves then I would've been tempted to see if he would re-sign on a reduced deal, but we're pretty well stocked in that department now. We'll need at least one forward for the first XI for next season, so the money we'd save on his contract is much better spent there.

Ayala out for 8 weeks, according to JDT. Not inconceivable that we've seen the last of him in a Rovers shirt.

We should've won against Swansea too. Created some sublime chances that we conspired to miss. I don't think we'll tail off as badly as we did last year, but equally we still need to show play-off form between now and the season's end to reach the 70-odd points that we'll need. It'll probably be too much for us.

That's what I thought in real time, but looking at the replay I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as that. Vale's in a bit of space but he has four defenders who aren't that far away when Morton takes the shot. He didn't have too much room for error with the cut-back, so I don't blame him for taking the shot on. Missing the chance was worse than the decision making for me.

As bad as our injuries are just now, they seem to be in the same boat. Arguably even worse. Chris Willock, Clarke-Salter, Tyler Roberts, Dykes and Ethan Laird all out last weekend. Most of those are key players too. They'll be well up for this one with the new manager, but their squad isn't great and they'll still be fragile after being on such poor form. Going for a rare second goal for the Rovers in a 0-2 win.

All happened a bit quickly, but in real time I thought that he ran slightly past the ball by the time it reached him so would've needed to take another touch before getting the shot away. Could be wrong though.

I think it's just poor anticipation rather than lack of effort. I think he visibly puts a shift in, but he's no good at all at finding space in the box. Couple that with his often poor first touch, he is never going to be getting a hatful of chances. I think season shows that it was never going to be a case of 'play him centrally - problem solved', with Gallagher. He is a better player than he has shown recently, but at the same time he just has some fundamental flaws to his game that are always going to hold him back.

They might've beat Stoke at the weekend, but it looks like they got out of jail a bit. One shot on target and 31% of the ball. I'd bring in JRC for this one. Harsh in the extreme on either Carter, Hyam or Ayala, depending who would make way for him. I'd keep Gally in the team too given our lack of other options. Hopefully he'll have far better service tonight than he did at the weekend. Think this will be chalk and cheese compared to the Swansea game, but I can see the same result. Pears JRC Ayala Hyam Pickering Travis Buckley Thomas Szmodic Dolan Gallagher

He's sharp over 10-15 yards, but over a longer distance he tends to get caught by more athletic players. It speaks to the main problem he has to overcome if he wants to reach his potential, his size. Players as small as Dolan really have to go some to make up for that with serious ability and intelligence. I actually think he's making pretty good progress this season and I'm glad he's a Rovers player, but it's an uphill task for him.

Motherwell might not be the worst idea for 6 months. People tend to (slightly) underrate the SPL for me, but quality wise he should be getting regular game time and crucially, he'll get a steep learning curve in terms of what's required from physical, first team football.

Was meant to be about 8-10 weeks I think - so still at least about a month away.