I watch semi professional football here in Northern Ireland a lot more regularly than I'm able to watch Rovers, and I can genuinely say there are more reliable and competent goalkeepers than him working full time jobs around their football.  I don't understand what anyone has ever seen in him.

I'd chuck Brentford, Bournemouth, Wolves, Burnley and Fulham into that bracket too - as well as all three relegated clubs from last season currently in the championship (at least two of which seem. Decent punt for promotion, possibly in place of the more 'robust' football of Sheffield United and Luton Town).

18 minutes ago, tomphil said:

So time for a debate....

1 win in how many ?

Yet another player who has been a steady performer and often a rock at time despite his topsy turver form is now out the door because he doesn't fit JDTs 'style'.

Kaminsky a great goal keeper for us and now starring for Luton suddenly looked ropey under JDT's 'style'.

Buckley, showing green shoots under Mowbray and becoming a decent 1st team squad member struggles with JDT's 'style' and is loaned out, only coming back through injury.

Hirst a goal scoring prospect from league 1 now banging them in and getting assists as a cnetre fwd at 2nd placed Ipswich clearly couldn't hack this style here.

Ennis , poor signing but now fit doesn't appear to fit the style.

There are many more and although iv'e been mostly a defender of him i'm now very skeptical that he isn't really a big part of the issues here now. We just don't have the money to rebuild the team in how he wants to play yet persist with it and instead start to replace everyone in it with a younger cheaper downgrade and try and coach them into this style so they are supposedly worth more money.

Must say i'm not feeling it anymore and when he fires off what is he going to leave us with ?

You fundamentally misunderstand JDT's brief.

He has been given the job to manufacture saleable assets and avoid relegation, not necessarily to win football matches.  It is clear he has little say in transfers, responsibility there appears to lie with the director of football who appears to be in a similar position in that the club has directed him to reduce the wage budget as far as possible and maintain a playing staff that can be sold for profit.

The "style" is a direct result of this as Premier League clubs want to be paying for technically proficient prospects rather than seasoned championship battlers.

Perhaps this is a reaction to the money hemorrhaged on Rothwell, Brereton-Díaz, Lenihan - even Dack.  Perhaps it's necessitated by Venkys financial position.  Perhaps it's both.  But it's clear that the thinking at the club currently is that promotion is too unlikely to bet the farm, and so this is the model for long term sustainability.

I'm not convinced it is going to work (and certainly doesn't seem to be working currently) but it seems pretty clear JDT is working with a player development focus rather than a "win at all costs" mentality.

19 hours ago, Ulrich said:

So you can critique football on here but not their fitness. I ain't no guru but I train often and I'm in much better shape than most of our 1st team at 49. I'll leave it there.

Is there a message board hall of fame?

This should be in it.

5 hours ago, Miller11 said:

Silly concept kit season is even worse than silly transfer rumour season. Saw this absolute abomination the other day…

One supposed Rovers fan said it was nice, but “the dinosaurs” among us wouldn’t like it. Well, I for one am a massive T Rex in that case. You really ought to have some mandatory education in your clubs history and traditions before being allowed to call yourself a supporter.

On a more serious note, the sooner the Macron deal is up the better. It’s massively restrictive in terms of order numbers and lead times. Our own willingness to be treated like a poor relation is certainly a contributing factor too, but their inflexibility and the frankly terrible deal we (Fielder) have agreed is the reason nobody could buy a shirt since October.

Silly kit concept season eh?

It's been a while since a light blue offering (2014 and 2018 previously), so I suspect we might see that again.

Impressively useless

Morton's pretty pathetic rolling around aside, can't fault anyone for that today. And to be fair even that's a screamer you can't really legislate for.

Hedges so unlucky off the post, Foderingham made a tremendous double save to deny Brereton Díaz, Gallagher an stretch of the leg away.  Great game, unfortunately someone has to be on the losing side.  This team could find themselves at Wembley this season still.

6 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

Josh Maja. Free transfer as his contract is up this summer and he has scored goals at this level before. 

He has indeed scored goals at this level.  2 goals in 32 championship appearances.

Granted he also had a semi productive premier league spell at Fulham but there's no way he could be classed as a definitive like for like replacement for Díaz.

6 minutes ago, Mellor Rover said:

Giving Brereton a one year deal of 30k a week is madness. Unless it's purely to make sure we can sell him... Pay the guy another 1.5 million quid and let him leave for free... again.

If we kept that £1.5m, would we be able to adequately replace him for that outlay alone ?

Would be hilarious if it was anyone else

1 hour ago, AllRoverAsia said:

DJT, JDT or even Donald Duck could manage and get success at Malmö in the SSL, Swedish Sunday League, and get into the CL by UEFA granting easy access to minnows.

Sorry but this is myopic, Anglo-centric foolishness.  Just because a league system isn't full of clubs owned by nation states and venture capitalists doesn't immediately make it a pub league.  The better teams in the Swedish would likely be competitive in the Championship.

You can't have it both ways, either Malmo are minnows or they have an easy path to qualification. As it was, they had to through four rounds, seeing off Rangers and Ludogorets.

The current Chelsea manager built his reputation in the Swedish league, which suggests not many of the dugouts are manned by waterfowl.

Deservedly thumped 

Admfreeittedly haven't seen todays game but some of the criticism of the manager seems harsh.  I'm sure he knows there are things he knows can be improved yet if a few loses turn to draws we are showing automatic promotion form.  No one was expecting much at the start of the season with this rather ragged squad.

Frantic but not in an entertaining way this game. Both teams showing absolutely no composure and have the whiff of headless chickens about them. Whoever settles down a bit and tries to dictate tempo wins.

If we can turn a few losses into draws and keep winning the wins, crazy things could happen

Well deserved for Cardiff.

No idea what the tactical plan has been.  Constantly knocking the ball around inviting pressure at the back with the rest of the team stood as far away as possible making them totally isolated.  Naive at best, incompetent at worst.

Far too much passing for passings sake in our own defensive third going on

This manager has been found out as a clear fraud.  We need new blood in the dugout.

22 minutes ago, tomphil said:

It started at Matchroom boxing shows over here about 6 years ago at least, i suppose they pinched it from somewhere probably the US.

So for that reason i'm sick of it now 😅

Northern Ireland have been using it for at least 20 years - as far as I know that was the first instance of it being used in a sporting context in Europe.  I believe we stole it off the Boston Red Sox baseball team.

As a result of it being co-opted by England a lot of us reckon it's time for something new 😅

Why does it appear as though there is a white panel dividing the blue front and back running down the ribs on the left, but no corresponding blue panel on the right? Makes it look unbalanced 

12 minutes ago, Rovers150 said:

Im actuality happy Mowbray has gone. Missing the playoffs this year was criminal. He ran out of ideas and the shape of the team wasn’t good. My choices of managers. Would take Curbishley or Chris Houghton. They play decent football and have very good track records in the Championship 

Alan Curbishley who last held a managerial position in 2008 and hasn't been in charge in this division for 22 years?

I have serious doubts you can translate that track record to the modern day. The level of physical fitness and conditioning required in the professional game now is vastly different to what it was then.

Tragic stuff

Had been coming, this Sheffield united side are quite thuggish. Nasty little things like shoving off the ball, little kicks and stamps. Cowardly stuff. A shower of shite.