51 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

 A very busy and enthusiastic little player but he gives the ball away a lot for me. He was playing at Peterborough for a reason.

Should he be starting for Rovers at the movement - definitely, his work rate is important to the way we play.

Tends to give the ball away trying things though, which you can accept if a decent number of them come off. 

I was concerned that he would be a bit of a flat track bully, scoring and creating against the lower teams when we're on top, but not the sort of player who you can rely upon if you want to get promoted. Let's wait and see, but the last couple of performances have really impressed me with his quality as much as his work rate. 

50 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

We are in the thick of a top 6 push, having won 5 on the bounce.

Stoke away especially in reasonable form won't be easy but I wouldn't "take a draw" now, even though that may well turn into a decent one should it materialise.

Agree with that. It should be pretty extreme circumstances that we ever take a point before kick off in this league. Maybe once or twice a season at a push.

Having said that, we probably need 4/5 wins plus a draw or two to secure a top 6 finish. A tricky looking away fixture as one of the draws is a decent result. 

Im never confident playing Stoke for some reason, especially at their place. If we have aspirations of top 2 (I don't think we do, realistically) then 6 points from the next two games are probably needed to keep us in touch going into the quarter final.

For the top 6, four points will put us in a very strong position going into March, so I'd not be overly disappointed with an away point here so long as we back it up with beating Reading.

We have so many games in April, we will definitely need them both before the end of the season.

Having said that, if we are going into a must win game towards the back end and they're both fit, I don't think you can drop Szmodics on current form.

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.

6 minutes ago, The Gull said:

Fantastic to see the effort and application the players put in tonight, hopefully gives them belief in a few big league games coming up. 
 

As a side note, that’s probably worth another 0.5m just for getting through, so at least 1m more than we probably budgeted for by getting this far. That’s massive for a club like us trying to manage FFP. 
 

Onwards and upwards. 

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!

Just now, AspRover said:

Not sure I see anything in Vale that suggests he's going to turn out good, but then a month or two ago I would have said the same about JRC. And Pears. Not going to worry about it right now. This is shaping up to be a much better season than I hoped all round.

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. 

1 minute ago, BankEnd Rover said:

If Sammie keeps this up, how can you drop him?? 

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

Just now, Cherry Blue said:

So we wont play Burnley 19th March.

Not in the league!

1 minute ago, bluebruce said:

Don't remember his name being mentioned after he came on. Anonymous. JDT is doing a great job overall, but I've no idea what he sees in Vale. And only a bit of an idea what he sees in Morton.

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.

11 hours ago, J*B said:

New left back, new centre back, new central midfielder, BBD replacement, number 9. In priority order:

BBD replacement

Number 9

Central Midfielder

New left back

New centre back

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. 

3 minutes ago, DE. said:

Doesn't necessarily account for the multiple other miserable post-January runs Mowbray embarked on with us and other teams. Think it's something systemic in how he prepares and motivates his teams. The pattern is too consistent for it to be coincidence.

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!

9 hours ago, SBlue said:

Hate to be a negative Nelly, but everything positive has been covered in the thread already…

But if Morton was “one of ours”, we would never have heard of him.

Comfortably the worst midfielder in the senior squad for me, don’t know what you see in the lad.

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.

9 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

Which is why they made minimal effort to re-sign him.

He'd be lovely to have on the books as cover for RB and CB, but he doesn't bring enough to the table going forward to be considered an excellent modern FB. 

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. 

1 hour ago, yankfan said:

20 x the player Morton is. 

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. 

31 minutes ago, roverinmontreal said:

So JDT talks about Ayala’s injury, Dack’s as well. Also mentions Pickering, Kaminski, Scott Wharton, BBD. Also Jake Batty and Sam Barnes. But nothing about Adam Wharton. It’s been like this for the last few ‘injury updates’ on the rovers site. Something’s going on!

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. 

27 minutes ago, matt83 said:

A couple of our mates went to Cardiff uni so they knew the city inside out so a load of us went down for the weekend. They’d allocated all the shit pubs to rovers fans and all the decent pubs to spurs fans (typical and mildly irritating). So the night before we exclusively spent time with spurs fans and you’re right the arrogance was astounding. Like we were there for a day out and they were there to win.

League form was iffy and few injuries but I was adamant we were the better side and we were going to win (even as a pessimist) but they were acting as though it was the equivalent of the citeh of today playing Chorley. Weird. Can’t recall but we may well have finished above them in the league that season, either way it was far closer than any one that I spoke to would admit. 

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. 

1 minute ago, Gavlar Somerset Rover! said:

We simply must not offer him a new deal. Great defender on his day, but he can’t ever stay fit. I really hope we don’t do anything silly - it’s time to let him head back to his homeland. 

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. 

4 minutes ago, Gav said:

We should have won at Sheff Utd, played well on the night, but injuries and fatigue started to kick in around that time and we didn't have the squad to handle it.  

I think the same will happen again, I hope not, but you can see it coming.

QPR 1 Rovers 1

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. 

2 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

A pass to the unmarked Vale for a tap in was the right finish.

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.

2 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

On an unrelated note -  I'd love to see a replay of Hedges' flick late in the game. What was he thinking then? Thomas crossed into the box and he tried to flick it back to Morton (I think) rather than just taking the shot on. Was he blocked from having a clear shot on goal?

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. 

2 hours ago, booth said:

People say he puts in the effort but I don't see it. When he was here on loan he was playing for a contract but since he got signed he gets a decent wedge every week and simply lacks desire and passion for the game. Earlier in the season someone pissed him off and he put in a decent performance, probably his only one.

I've seen bad strikers and they try but just can't hit the net. He rarely gets the opportunity because he doesn't seem interested most of the time.

He looked visibly pissed off at himself over that miss last night 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.