That game has finished 2-2 so it is now back in our own hands.

Sadly Sunderland have equalised so now we need to beat Luton.

2-1 now

Sunderland losing 2-0

No - if Sunderland fail to win it is back in our own hands.

Sunderland losing

I can't see JDT tolerating a player like that.

Er no - but if players are kept on by management despite people here not rating them, maybe worth bearing in mind that they are maybe showing something which makes keeping them on to the age of 23 or so worthwhile.

I think with Vale that the management might be impressed with his finishing. He has scored a lot at Under 21 level for us and for Wales, and the goals he scored in the Cups against West Ham and Norwich were what I would describe as assured finishes. It may be that in training that finishing ability really comes over.

Substitute "JRC" for "Vale" and that comment could have been on here this time last year - and probably was.

He was on loan last season at Scunthorpe - admittedly a poor side - but made little impression.

You know that's not true - so why say it ?

Getting it right - but the poster I responded to was blaming the referee. He was not to blame.

No - a statement of fact.

The ref had 5 or 6 players between him and Barnes - he had no chance of seeing it.

He took over Sunderland at the end of August when they had only played 5 games whereas he took over Rovers when there were only 15 games left. What, as mentioned on another thread, I think is known as Mowbray Derangement Syndrome. To describe 5 games in as "mid season" must be an acute state of that condition.

Superb finish by Sammy

Coventry back in front.

Reading equalise at Coventry

Doesn't VAR only operate to call a red card but not a yellow, second or otherwise ?

Sure - but clearly it was very difficult for those at the club charged with the responsibility for taking those sorts of decisions to know whether or not to offer the player another contract.

You would have taken a million then ?

Even though he "struggled with the basics" ? There are a number of other posters - I won't say who so as to spare their blushes - who thought he was not up to much. It wasn't unreasonable in the summer of 2021 to think that signing him was a mistake because he had delivered relatively little. But a new contract then ? At what sort of salary ?

Yet the fans on this forum are demanding that at least one particular player should not be in the starting line up, and that another player should be, even though the experts who are employed to make these decisions seem to think otherwise.

The point I am really making is that so much of the discussion about this player - and some others as well - is people being wise after the event but then berating people employed at the club because they weren't clairvoyants. Things just aren't as simple as they can be represented on this messageboard.