We could do worse, even though he's 47! 😉

Funnily enough, I hope for at least one point - and, possibly, all three - from this game. For me, it's a bit like the game at Watford the other Sunday: a good way away from home; playing a team whom you'd expect to be favourites to win; and a b'stard of a journey to get there and back. A 'Home' banker - and a possible tonking for us - on the face of things, then. And yet, this is Rovers we're talking about; and not just our Rovers; but JDT's Rovers! Who can, as they proved at Rotherham last season, fail to pick up any of the three points that the form book said we only had to turn up to collect. But, similar to this season when we're: away to a team who are already: one of the favourites to pass straight through the Championship from League One to the Promised Land; and coached by a youngish coach who seems to have succeeded Michael Carrick as The Latest Great New Thing in Coaching Football In England, I just have a hunch that we'll bring all three points back. Which is doubtless the kiss of death!!

Although he never knew it, he actually got me some free drinks! The close season after his departure, I was on holiday in New Zealand and visiting an old school pal of @bazza's and mine who, unfortunately, is of the Burnley persuasion. Because it was in what passes for winter Down Under, I'd taken a couple of Rovers sweaters to wear and had gone on a coach tour of the South Island before visiting the old schoolmate and his Missus on the North Island. One the hotels where our coach stopped for a night was a watering hole for quite a few of the local lads. One noticed the Arte et Labore badge on the sweater I was wearing and asked if I followed us. (You know what I mean!) When I said I did, I was immediately asked about Nelsen and his departure. When I said how good he was, and how popular, I don't remember buying another drink that evening!

One of my neighbours, Jack Airey, couldn't become a first team Regular in the late 1950s because of the presence of the likes of Duggie, Peter Dobing and Noddy McLeod; and it was 7 or 8 years before the Football League allowed teams to play even one substitute. As a result of that, he only played a handful of games for the first team in the 1958/59 season; the first one back in Division One. He made his debut early in March 1959 in a 4-1 League drubbing of Burnley at Ewood and scored the third goal.

Can I object in the strongest possible way to the offensive nature of the word I've crossed through? As a lifelong Rovers fan who was born with a physical disability - spina bifida - in the immediate post-World War 2 era, I can't hope to convey how offensive it is to find some people still using it as such a term of abuse 70-odd years further on. It was bad enough for me when I was in my teenage years to have it thrown at me as a term of abuse. It would interest me to know why you still use it in that context, @Shirley Crabtree Wrestler It isn't big; and it certainly isn't funny.

Does that make him a kind-of "Reverse Fred Pickering"? Sign him as a Striker, only for his greatest use to us turns out as a defender! 😉

And apparently speaks excellent English!

I'm sure there’d still be at least one or two of us who, when we're chanting, actually mean, God help us, "I'm Rovers till I die." Without having cleared it with him first - so apologies to @chaddyrovers if I'm overstepping the mark - I'd be prepared to bet he'd be another of them!😉

But with a positive publicity-focussed Chairman/owner/whatever, who knows how English football works. In fact, pretty well everything our owners aren't/don't!

Come on, @Shirley Crabtree Wrestler ; apart from an opinion of him included in its name, what have Scunthorpe done to deserve him?!😉 If it weren't bad enough going from League Two to the National League North in record speed, they've got the threat of being evicted from their ground hanging over them. If he went there, there'd be nowt for him to sell off!

That takes me back, @47er, to a game at Bramall Lane in the late 1960s, which were the days when stands were unsegregated. An old schoolmate of mine had joined the police in - I seem to remember - the West Riding; but lived not too far from Sheffield and had invited me to stay with him & his Missus for the weekend. He'd got tickets for him and me from Sheffield United. Connelly was having one of those games which showed why he'd earned that, erm, "affectionate" nickname. There was a minister of religion - to judge by his collar - sitting in the seat in front of mine and asked the person sitting next to him, "Why do they call him that?" I leant forward and explained that it was because we perceived him as being a bit soft. On a slightly different tack, I'm as sure as I can be that he was also President of the Brierfield Fish-fryers Association on account of owning a chippy in that part of the world. Excuse an old fogey commenting on the changes we've seen in my lifetime but I can't imagine, say, Jack Grealish opening a chippy to augment what he earned from football!

Apologies to @TheRovers1994 for what he - and others - may think of as hijacking his post. But I've just been watching Match of the Day on the iplayer (the actual broadcast goes on well beyond this elderly viewer's bedtime!); and I wanted to make a point that I don't think had been made before - and probably won't need to be again - now that Thomas Kempinski has joined Amari Bell in what seems like it will be Luton Town's battle against relegation. In the Kempinski vs. Pears debate (which may well now become the Pears vs. Waldstedt debate), I was always a Kempinski fan. I'm not saying that TK was necessarily the better goalkeeper in all facets of the role; I'm not sufficiently qualified/experienced enough to express an opinion on the technicalities of "being a goalkeeper." It was just that I felt more comfortable when I saw his name as the goalkeeper in our League games. However, having watched the highlights of yesterday's Fulham vs. Luton Town game; and in particular, the only goal of the game, it looked to me to have been a real howler by TK. What you - I - saw on MotD was that, even though TK didn’t seem to have been under any particular pressure from the Fulham attack, he just didn't get hold of the ball properly, but let it run free to be put into an empty net by the Fulham player. I don't remember him making similar blunders when he was in goal for us. And that makes me wonder if the bid from Luton for him might have come just at the right time to solve a problem for the club's management. It may be too soon but are TK's best days beginning to be behind him? As I say, that's no longer a problem for us; so there didn't seem to me to be any point in starting a new thread on that subject. These are just some thoughts about how, for once, we seem to have sold a player whose best days may be beginning to be over; rather than, as it has often seemed, having bought one. Yes, Danny Murphy; I was looking at you on MotD, too! 😉

Don't take no crab from those Devonians, @DeeCee! 😉

What a game that was!! Good to see the front page of the Pink from that day. I'd forgotten about the missed penalty but was absolutely euphoric about the result. So much so that I turned up, uninvited, at the house of an older work colleague - he was as Rovers mad as I was! - just as he & his wife were about start eating their Saturday tea! I just had to talk to someone else who'd been there about what I'd seen! The one thing that bugged me was that, although the BBC at the time were contracted to feature - I think - 4 games every season from Divisions 3 and/or 4 on Match of the Day, that game clashed with the 5th Round of the F.A. Cup, which took priority. I'd like to think that Rovers will end a week of three away games with three wins and without conceding a goal. So I'm going for a 1-0 win.🤞

Thanks, @Sweaty Gussets .

Anybody know if the 0 - 8 scoreline's a League Cup record for any team?

Boxing Day '62, I think. Two days later, for the return game at Ewood, the Daily Mail - blame my parents! - had a cartoon on its back page showing a programme seller at Ewood selling Scorecards. Of course - typical bloody Rovers! - we lost 1 - 3!

Both of the above. By the way, shouldn't magic be in inverted commas in this context?!

Don't think so; Everton's a poisoned chalice. Besides, which self-respecting manager would want them on his CV?

Cheeky, @Mars Rover!!

If they haven't gone broke, that is!

Thanks for that, @Sweaty Gussets. I don't have Sky & didn't realise that. If I'd stopped to think, the penny would, hopefully, have dropped! Eventually!

Same here, only that I'm listening to Radio 5. But then, I'm younger than you, @bazza !!😉😁

Don't make a spectacle of yourself, @CambridgeRover !😉

Pity they aren't playing us, @sverrehh ; you could have joined in all the chants about Shearer's "successes"😉 while he was with them, while enjoying a terrific view over the city from the Leazes End! 😉😅