With worse players.

" ? " used to be the lead singer in " The Mysterians ". He'll be getting on a bit now. " 96 Tears " was a great record though.

It occurred to me the other day that given the speed the Chicken Chokers move at Mowbray's successor won't have left school yet.

Well we've got plenty we can move on if only somebody will take them off our hands.

It happens all the time these days, and lots of the times it's a pen. If I could do one thing in football I'd clamp down on divers. Review the incident later and if it's a dive or even looks like a dive - 3 match suspension. You'd stop it in a month.

My wife has set our remote up for finger print ID I think. I just get to watch whatever she fancies. I'm surprised you're not an avid " Spiral " fan. It's been great right from the first series. She had me watch the recent chess film, " Queens Gambit ? " That's worth watching.

But he didn't give them what could have been a pen just before our first goal.

As usual we'd left it to late by then. Considering you always play with two centre halves, sometimes three, just having four starters on the books is rarely enough. In my book if you don't get suspended at least once a season you aren't doing the job properly. Then we compound the mistake by sending Magloire out on loan when he looked the part, and a better bet, than Carter, in the game at Leicester. But it's ok to have a full teams worth of mid field players ? Crazy.

But two of the three, Lenihan and Williams, had a long history of missing games through injury and Lenihan has a history of missing game because of suspensions. We got lucky that Wharton stepped up to the plate. Signing another centre half with a long history of keeping the physios on overtime was a mistake. Anybody can get injured at any time, that's part of football, but signing injury prone players and expecting them not to continue to be injury prone isn't too smart.

" Spiral " starts in 10 minutes on BBC4. The last in a series of French police crime thrillers. There are subtitles for us plebs who hated French at school. The guy who taught me used to send me into town to buy midget gems for him in our lessons. He knew I was a hopeless case. I bet Gumboots will tuning in though.

If they defend on the half way line like Big Club did today we'll do them, no problem. Trouble is they probably won't.

I don't think it was peanuts for Rovers at the time. We could have got a seriously good championship standard centre half and a left back for that sort of dosh.

We got a bit lucky with the run of the ball for the Dack goal but you've got to be up there to get the run of the ball and have the technique to dispatch a first time shot into the far corner. Two really good goals today made to look easy by the scorers and a points winning save from the keeper at the death. He made a really difficult save look easy as well.

That was then and you could still see the flaws in his game - lack of heading ability for a big guy, poor first touch, clumsy running with the ball, not physical enough. Then he goes to Big Club and he plays like he's playing for us at the moment. They don't want him so he ends up back at Southampton were he can't get a sniff of a game. I wouldn't have had him back and I said so at the time. There must have been better players out there for the big money we paid.

Mm, for a big guy he's not the best header of the ball I've ever seen. However heading defensively isn't as critical as heading for goal. If I was the manager I'd be giving him a whirl in a practice match, see how he does. Nothing to lose is there.

He's out for a month according to the radio.

I think he was hinting at " A Road To Nowhere ". Could have been " Psycho Killer "though.

I think you'll get good odds on it not ending 0-0. When did we last keep a clean sheet ?

Big - yes, burly - no.

I'm not knocking Ainsworth but how much passion for Rovers did Kenny have when he stepped through the door, or Mark Hughes, or Big Sam ? I'm not bothered how much of a fan they are as long as they can get the buggers to get their fingers out and start winning some games.

There is speculation at the moment that Trybull may be going back to Norwich, Mowbray seems to have gone cold on him. Is he better than Evans ? He's certainly not better than Travis. Douglas can't replace Bell, the Bell who is not a championship level player in most fans eyes. So far Ayala has missed more games than he's played and not pulled any trees up in the games he has played. Elliot's done OK , especially for a kid, but that's what he is, a kid of 17. Kaminski has improved the team.

Mowbray's main failing is he's always signing players to back up the ones we've already got. How about signing some that are actually better. As far as I can see only the goalkeeper is better than what we've already got ( that was nobody at the time he was signed ) plus the lad from Liverpool and he's not a massive improvement or ours.

Who signed him twice ?

He looks to be carrying a bit of excess timber to me.

Yes, good manager in his day. I went to his book launch at Waterstones in Manchester. There was a Q and A after and somebody asked why he'd let Denis Law leave and go to City. Basically his knees were so bad it took him two days to get out of bed after a game and he could only train on the Thursday before a Saturday match. Somebody else asked him who he regretted not signing. He said he'd tapped Peter Shilton up when Alex Stepney was on the way out and Shilton had agreed to come to Utd for £400 a week. When he asked Matt Busby about the signing Busby said - " Nobody is getting more than me at this club Tommy, tell him no ".