Admiral Nelsen

I don't disagree, but you could argue that Henley had his best spell when he first found himself in the team! Certainly after Liverpool away, I thought he would end up being a brilliant player. Sadly the contract he was given off the back of those few weeks (I was told about 12k a week, not sure on the truth of it) ended up being a problem for us and the lad further down the line, but he was worth his place in the side after the club binned off the senior right-backs.

Can't argue with that, really kicked on this season. Hope he can still be at least as productive next year with a fully fit Dack. Having the two of them on top form really does give another dimension to our attack.

Sure it will have been mentioned on here before, but there's a great interview with Mark Noble where he was asked about the best player he ever came up against & he waxed lyrical about Tugay. I think he said that Scholes/Lampard/Gerrard were the best, but when he played against Rovers as a young player he took one look at Tugay and thought he could dominate this ageing 40-a-day smoker. In the end Tugay had him on a string for 45 minutes then he was dragged off at half time.

And he passes forward too, not scared to give the ball away trying something.

I'm looking at it in terms of who are looking like the easiest to take points from next season - hard to see any of them being in a position to really kick on to be honest, but it looks as though Birmingham will be scaling back, even after getting the big fee for Bellingham

Don't! I'd rather have Walton back on an 8 year deal.

Joking aside, will be interesting who has that sort of money to throw around at Championship level.

The Cowleys have been sacked by Huddersfield. Not paid enough attention to see if their sacking was justified or not, but amazing how quickly you can throw away a hard earned reputation. Sure they'll be able to get a good job in L1, but less clear that another Championship club would take a risk.

There are legitimate criticisms, and I accept that not everyone is going to have the same positive view of the manager as I do. I was pointing out that even if were to accept those similarities to be true (clearly not objective, but putting that aside) there's a world of difference between whatever degree of under-performance that we might arguably be going through presently and the unmitigated catastrophe of the Kean years. If I have shares in a company and they lose value, it's very easy for me to complain and apportion blame without comparing it to the Wall Street Crash.

Quite hard to reconcile those statements with looking at it objectively when there's plenty of room to disagree. Even if we were to accept the basic principle of those statements as true, the difference in scale between the two is enormous. There's plenty of room to criticise Mowbray and even want shut of him without throwing around ridiculous comparisons to Kean.

If yesterday is anything to go by, this could be any score in either direction. Luton won't be as open and won't let us create at will like we seemed to against Reading. Equally, they don't have the likes of Swift who will can pick out the bottom corner from 25 yards with their first shot. I'd back both teams to score, other than that, no idea.

A rare player and character is Vardy. He doesn't have the same backstory but you could put Ings in a similar bracket, albeit not quite as good. I don't expect that Amra will ever get the top flight career that those have had (or certainly that Ings would have had bar injuries) but equally I don't think he's too far away from being able to score a decent number of goals at that level, albeit in the right set-up.

Try half an inch! That aside your post is exactly how I saw today. Can't over interpret an end-of-season dead rubber, but it was an enjoyable game nevertheless, and there were promising cameos from young players, some of whom will need to step up next year.

I was thinking similar at times early last season to be honest. Looked at his goals record for Bolton and Barnsley and heard some of their fans talk about how he might as well not be on the pitch when they played him out wide. Suspected that he might never have the intelligence, all round game (or in our case, service!) to make the most of his goal-scoring talents. Perhaps wouldn't go as far to say that he looked like a L1 player, but certainly one dimensional in a way that is chalk and cheese to his contributions of late. Take the point about the massive step up, but equally there are plenty of examples of forwards taking to the step up like a duck to water. I suppose a common theme is that they often have physicality which Arma doesn't, but this isn't always the case. Another year of improvement at the rate of the last 12 months, we might be having a different conversation.

Come on now, Davenport's injury record at Rovers has been horrendous, most of those two years he was on the treatment table! Travis, Nyambe and Raya are all examples of players who became first team regulars in their v. early 20s under TM. Loads of others have played significant numbers of games at a similar age. Not saying there aren't legitimate gripes with his selection policy (I'd like to see more of Chapman, probably like most others on here) but I don't think the aversion to young players thing stands up at all to be honest.

You could be right about that, but I'm really surprised how his all round game has come on this year. 12 months ago I was worrying whether he was a luxury at this level, pace and a good finish but not much else. Now he's just an excellent all round attacker, capable of running at players, scoring from both feet from anywhere, setting goals up. Might need to keep up the progress to get to the top flight as a starter, but I wouldn't write him off at his age.

Hotlby is one of several players that we have who has the ability to contribute to a successful team at this level, but to a certain extent relies on having the right players around him. Don't think he quite has the rounded game to be the main man consistently, but I can still see him having a better year next time round (and that's not to say that he hasn't had some good games this season). I feel similarly about Rothwell, although his season has obviously been more disappointing. I hope we have the budget to keep Downing, as having creative midfield options of a fully fit Dack, Holtby, Downing, Rothwell all competing for shirts with Buckley, JRC and hopefully Chapman, it will mean that this is the one area of the park where we won't need to worry about recruitment!

That's an incredibly choice way of looking at it. You could just as easily say that he's given at least 8 debuts to academy players in his just over three seasons and our oldest player finishing the game today was 26. Neither account gives a proper reflection.

I'm not worried about any of our lads being looked at by Prem clubs for next season (maybe Trav at a push). I am worried about wealthy Championship clubs with money burning holes in their pockets looking at a few of them though, If there's interest in Armstrong, I hope we're brave enough to recognise his value. Young English forward who scores bags of goals, sets a few up and scares teams to death with his pace. Needs to be 8 figures to start the conversation.

Wigan have put together some good form in recent months, but Cook is the same manager who had them at right at the bottom after the first half of the season. I'm not sure we'd be as forgiving about their utterly dismal away form that they've had for the vast majority of their time in this division. Perfectly decent manager, but there's no way that I'd either i) swap him for Mowbray or ii) want him if TM was to go for whatever reason.

Good shout, although he was available last summer and we didn't go for him, so I assume that won't be one we'll be looking at (although I hope I'm wrong)

Whilst I basically agree, I think before the lockdown (or at least before the Derby game!) we were close to cracking it. Mid-season we were racking up a very respectable number of clean sheets, and I think we definitely looked much more solid since last season, where soft goals and late goals dogged us. Since then we've obviously been far too easy to score against, and we can put a quite a lot of that on Walton's shoulders but blame needs to be shared around too. Not just with the back four either, as impressive as Travis is, we would have conceded two less had he not lost the ball cheaply against Leeds and this afternoon.

Obviously can't be reading too much into games like this, but Buckley showed that he has talent. Big progress from the little boy in his couple of showings.

What an absolutely ridiculous game

Assume it's a fitness thing, went off at the weekend and he's had a propensity to pick up injuries