Exiled in Toronto Mk2

Not even in goal? Pears played 40 games!

I’m mildly optimistic, not least because by far the biggest upgrade in my eyes is the defence. Credit to VI who didn’t fanny about on dumping Pears, there’s 10 soft goals not conceded straight away. But equally important is how much Pears’s indecision with the ball stunted our play. Add in, hopefully, a season of Carter and Wharton (I don’t buy the “made of glass” mantra, they have 300+ appearances between them) a beast of a RB and an extra half season of Ribeiro vs Pickering and I think we are miles better at the back. As to all these thousands of championship appearances we sold, not one of them achieved anything. Cantwell’s experience at this level is far more valuable imo. Not all 10 signings will succeed, they never do, but finding out will at least be more interesting than another season of highly predictable nothingness.

The BRFCS Law of Entropy: every thread, over time, descends into posters arguing with Chaddy. While the budget has clearly been cut, I’m struggling to believe that our road to the promised land was going to be paved with improved 4-year contracts for Travis, Dolan and Hyam, plus Ba’ath and Weiman creaking another season out.

I’ll take that back 5 over last season’s every time. Toth - huge upgrade on Calamity Alebiosu - Love child of Nyambe and Brittain Carter - great to see him back. Helped by not once getting dragged out of position to cover an AWOL RB Wharton - best I’ve can remember from him. Easily MoM. Ribeiro - better than Picks Tavares - I’m not as down on him as most: missed pre-season, new country, living out of a suitcase. I’m in the JDT camp on Travis. Sonny - more solid than Trav Morishita - good debut. Cool finish and his crossbar rattler reminded me of Simon Garner. Cantwell - really is like a new signing. Hedges - LWB might be his best option Yuki - gonna have to up his game. His assist was assisted by a deflection but good idea to try it. Gudjonnsan - best opening cameo from a forward I can recall. Him and Cantwell could be a top pairing.

And yet we won the game.

Trondstad signalled he needed to come off

Despite selling all our good players, replacing them with cheap foreign nobodies making us certainties for consecutive relegations to League 2, we had the better of that half.

Average is somewhat meaningless in a division so heavily skewed by a handful of clubs on parachute payments paying whopping salaries. Vs median would be a better measure.

C’mon, no-one should answer that, it’s like saying which of your kids you prefer! Like it or not, the views prevalent on here are not held by the majority of Rovers fans: the Facebook crowd are at the other end of the spectrum and the majority are neither, but they are all Rovers fans. Following live commentary on an Indian court case can hardly be described as mainstream. The questions were always going to be middle of the road.

I think it crucial as part of a tier 1 academy to be able to demonstrate that we are good for everyone’s career that signs for us, no matter what turns out to be their ultimate potential.

The thing with an academy is, at best we can hope for one player a year coming through into the first team, but that one player still needed 16 teammates around him who aren’t going to make it. The task with them is to get them to their potential and move them on. It’s not the Adam Wharton’s or Hayden Carter’s going to Chorley, it’s the other 16. Great contributions to this thread btw.

Kean out! Senior out! Shagnew out! Shebby out! Mogadon out! Gregghead out! Swag out! I have no doubt that we just need to get Rudi out! and all will be well.

I certainly don’t think the difference between Hyam and whoever fills his slot will be the difference between relegation or not - the difference-making will be at the other end of the pitch. He looked like he never wanted to be here from the off. Given he wanted to go, keeping an even more demotivated Hyam wouldn’t have ended well. I’m far more upset we are relying on one young Icelandic striker.

Leaving aside everything we know of the last 15 years, the absence of any interest/desire of the owners, the revolving door of nonentities in the C-suite, the parade of managers, the most notable feature of the window for me is the number of established players who wanted to go elsewhere. The Lemon Drizzle club atmosphere is now clearly a thing of the past (it’s demise being initiated by a demanding JDT) I am perhaps in a small minority in not seeing the loss of Dom Fucking Hyam as a catastrophe (or at least as a bigger one than anything that preceded it). The Preston og, the shrinking violet needing his dad alongside him, the Turf Moor 0-3 pussy, the “calm down”. I’ll not miss him no matter who has to fill in for him.

Despite the no-shows from Tavares and Kargbo, the six offsides from Yuki and Papi, the complete inability to shackle Sargent, we still had a higher xg than they did! Got to credit the spirit in the second half but boy are we missing a goal scorer.

A rare match I saw in the flesh was vs Norwich when Dacky came back from his first injury as sub, Sargent was unplayable, at least by our lot.

Did he not score MOTDs goal of the season at Sheffield, beating about six players and rounding the goalie?

The Furphy comparison is a good one I think. As well as moving on some stiffs, he sold what I thought were pretty much our three best players in Hunter, Wilson and Rogers (swapped for Barry Dumptruck Endean), dropped the Don into the ressies, promoted two youth players we’d pretty much never heard of in Bradford and McDonald, and promptly saw us hovering just above the bottom 4 until the aforesaid Fergie Frightener single-handedly turned things around. We just need to sign the next Tony Field, whose track record till that point would have seen him condemned as utterly useless had we had a messageboard then.

Two things I’ve liked about VI has been his reactions to Brittain’s and Travis’s self-serving toy-throwing. Like JDT, he comes across as someone you can’t fuck around with. Both of them intense, fit as fleas, played for clubs Trav can’t even dream of. His managerial career also reminds me of Souness, ie extremely checkered before landing here. I’m hoping it’s another case of right man, right time. As you say, let’s find out. And if the place is so toxic, why was 20-year Bucko sobbing his heart out? I can’t imagine the new signings are giving any thought to how Trav felt: they’d never heard of him, he’s won nowt, move on old man, I’m having your shirt.

I, for one, am not particularly sorry to see Travis go, nor indeed almost the entire “leadership” group of players, none of whom struck me as leaders. 9 goals in 250 games is chronic for a central midfielder who allegedly has box-to-box tendencies - Super Atko got 34 in an almost identical number of games and at a higher level - and I tired of his pound shop Savage antics years ago. The fact is that all these senior players effing off were part of one or more of our annual collapses, used to falling short. A bit like a couple of other posters, I’m intrigued to see a new style under a manager who is growing on me by the day.

I wonder if Leonard having always had Adam Wharton playing him perfect through balls did him some favours coming up the ranks? Buckley I got the impression is thick as pig shit and fell under the influence of Dacky/Bezza, who both could piss around but still do the business on the pitch.

On the basis of today, not only aren’t we missing any of the Old Guard shipped out, we are looking better in several areas: much better keeper, overall better back 4, more forward drive in midfield, Cantwell playing like Bercovic, more physical, more height. If only we had a prolific striker.

This is the Cantwell I thought we were signing, oozes quality. Terrific free kick routine then made a difficult finish look simple.

VI not pulling his punches, didn’t even mention the ref, all our fault he said.

A last ten minutes to forget for Tavares: left a leg dangling for the pen, tired corner, let the cross come in, but he must’ve been out on his feet. We can’t keep going with swapping between Ohashi and Papi, they demand completely different styles of play. If I were VI, I’d go 5 at the back with Miller on the right of the three CBs - a team who create so few chances can’t not have his throw (I’d also narrow the pitch a yard on either side), and have both Papi/Yuki as the front two.