Cantwell can’t do the job the Travis does, anymore than Travis can do the job the Cantwell does. As for Hedges , he’s a bench filler not a starter.

It couldn’t have the same ball because Pears passed it directly to Gnonto earlier.

Yeah, Harry Leyland was on the PFA committee. It didn’t do Harry any good. He was transferred to Tranmere shortly after. His best days were behind him to be fair.

He started out as a young centre half at Manchester City. I remember seeing him play. He was only a kid in a poor team so they let him go. When he was at Shrewsbury somebody had the bright idea of playing him up front and he never looked back. He was a pretty regular scorer everywhere he played. I see he died in 2020 after suffering from dementia for a long while. Who says heading the old balls never hurt ? He wouldn’t have gone near Jones if big Mac had have been playing. That would have been a really bad life style choice. That was the difference Mac made.

Leonard ? He’d have to be 100 % better than he has been whenever I’ve seen him play. He’s a slightly better Jack Vale.

I was thinking JRC for Travis. Either him or Baker.

Tronstad was a bit on his heels but Pears should have seen that.

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark

I thought yesterday’s game was exciting and I’m usually a critic. You must be hard to please.

The one yesterday - he didn’t put any pace on the ball. He just rolled it out in Tronstad’s general direction.

He had to thread the ball through a tight space. There was a player closing him down and the centre half was trying to get close to Dolan. The pass had just the right weight on it, the centre half was kidded into thinking he might be able to cut it out, giving Dolan the upper hand to beat him on the inside. He gave Dolan another great pass in the “ Boro “ game. He received a pass from Hedges on the half turn in centre field and immediately re-directed the ball out to Dolan on the left hand side. Great vision and execution. I like the lad, he works his socks of for the team and he must be a pain to play against. I could see him being a real threat if he had a partner to play off.

Anybody receiving the ball without being aware of opponents immediately behind them is in big trouble. Pears could see the situation clearly yet he still played a suicide pass. We were really lucky not to go 1 down there.

Villa want to recall Louie Barry from Stockport and send him out to a Championship side in January. Other teams are sniffing around already.

There’s a case for letting the players decide on the spur of the moment. Especially if you haven’t got a regular penalty taker in the team. You go to whoever feels confident. Dolan obviously fancied it because at that time he was on the top of his form and had just won the pen. Ohashi wanted it because he’s a striker and wants to score goals. Cantwell obviously wanted it to open his account. Trav gave it to him because he’s experienced in high pressure situations and he’s possibly our best striker of a dead ball. On the subject of Ohashi, the lad is a better player than a lot of people give him credit for. It was his crisp, early ball out to Dolan that started the move for the pen. He was unlucky with the header. 2” lower and that would have gone in off the bar.

We can shut this when we get to 50 points.

Richie Barrett - Some Other Guy

That particular pass was never on though.

Good to see three players wanted to take it though. I think Travis made the right call. Cantwell has the job now. Looking at those highlights again his delivery of free kicks and corners is much better. He was regularly getting the ball in the danger areas. On another point that chance Beck missed from the rebounding header looks worse. The classic case of a predominantly left footed player trying to make what should have been a right footed shot into a left foot shot. I like Beck a lot though, he’s aggressive at all times. He gave Gnonto a good quietener when he introduced him to the advertising boards.

The way we play that striker would have to be top class. One playing up front against two is a arse kicking job if ever I saw one. I did a bit of that as a player and to give you Blairism, what you need is “ Service, Service, Service “ and whoever plays up front at the moment is going to struggle a bit.

On another day that pass Pears gave to Gnonto ends up in the back of the net and we’d have been really up against it then. I still haven’t seen him make a save that was out of the ordinary.

We’ve got a pretty tight unit at the moment. No big egos. I’d like it to stay that way.

I think we have now.

Just got back from the pub. What a great day to be a Rovers fan. As long as we can out enthuse opponents I’ll be happy. We out enthused a better team today. That’s what got us the three points - desire and will to win. I’ll give them all an 8, nobody got carried and every player contributed at some point. Eustace has made us hard to beat and hard to play against. All the spaces are filled and there are hardly any gaps to be exploited . The back 4-5 were great especially the centre halves. We should have scored more than 1 to be honest. If I could have picked one player to be on the end of the Cantwell chance it would have been Cantwell. Shame he put it wide. Having said that he put a great penalty away. They don’t stop the ones that hit the side netting even if they guess right.

Back in the day I used to bang on about our opponents constantly having free shots at our goal from around our “ D” . It doesn’t happen now and I think I know why. Could it be that little guy wearing No 6?

I wouldn’t say nothing but it’s not a lot. Interesting to see Leeds attacking the Brittain - Dolan flank constantly in the second half. They knew the other flank was sewn up.