I can only speak for myself but race had nothing to do with it. It was the fact that they knew absolutely nothing about football that had me worried right from the off. When they fired Big Sam the alarm bells started ringing loud and long. In the words of Homer Simpson when he puts his credit details into the machine - " Is that a good flashing red light ? ~

I hope that dickhead hoaxer is there with him.

Some good Rovers goals there. If that penalty had have been a bit better Brad would have saved it.

Given the fact he's an experienced international I think he's under achieved in his time at Rovers. Even when we were playing the likes of Rochdale and Oldham etc a few seasons ago he never dominated the opposition midfield. I always had the impression he was playing within himself.

That looked a lively game. You didn't see two players getting carded in the same game very often back then. Two of the most obvious pens you'll ever see.

I think that'd leave us a bit light in the defending stakes in central midfield.

I think signing Downing has closed that door, for this season anyway. That was a pointless signing for me.

A pal of mine was a scout at 'City. He'd only ever watch players when they were playing away. Like you say- it's what they play like when they're up against it. Do they step up or do they go into their shell ? Do they rally the troops or do they start sulking and feeling sorry for themselves ?

You need more than one player who can put a tackle in beyond the back four. If you don't the opposition can easily isolate them and get them an early card. Then you have problems.

If we didn't have Buckley, who I suspect we are hoping will turn out to be a very similar player, I would agree with you. He offers something we haven't got at the moment apart from the odd cameo from Buckley.

Well there's a few out there - Cook ? Pearson ?

That's the first thing that went through my mind - " Who's going to get us the ball " ?

The problem for me is we have a lot of players but no really outstanding first 11. Nyambe might have an indifferent game in the next match and it'll be let's play JRC there. JRC gets a chasing and it's let's get Nyambe back. Douglas has a bad game or two and we'll be hankering for Bell. Ditto with the centre halves. Williams might get back in, have a bad game, and it'll be let's give Wharton another go. Central midfield is the same now Travis is injured. We have Evans, Johnson, Buckley, Trybull , none of those is really established. Rothwell is thought to be integral to our way of playing but give him two poor games and it'll be lets try Elliot out there and give Dolan a go on the right. Teams that get promotion pick themselves every week apart from a couple of positions. If you have an injury you bring in a player to do exactly the same role as the player that is missing.

When I started reading your first sentence I thought you were still talking about sex !

One will be joining the walking stick brigade any day now and the other has another ten years in front of him. One is on the way down and the other is on the way up. If we were going to sign another central midfield player, I'm not sure we need to by the way, Whiteman was the obvious choice. Downing will have absolutely no sell on value, Whiteman just might. Dack had never done anything at a higher level than Whiteman and until his injury he was by far our most valuable player.

Downing or Whiteman ? It's no-brainer for me.

Me too, playing is the next best thing to sex.

I played in every position as a young player, including goal, and I found playing up front ,leading the line, was by far the hardest position to play. That's why centre forwards go for the biggest fees.

As far as I can see he's back playing where he was playing in those videos of his time at Forest. It's taken whilst now to get him into a position were he can make a contribution. Up until Dack's injury he was never going to play there anyway. Maybe he was brought with a view to replacing Dack when he was sold ?

If we'd have spent that £7million on an established goalscorer at the time we might not still be bumping around the middle of the championship hoping one day we might get our money back.

That's a tough ask. That puts their achievement on a higher level.

For games like that do they travel down on the day ?

I was just thinking of Metcalfe last night when I was watching the Donny game. How many times did you see opponents have him going round in circles trying to keep the ball on his right foot ? He usually still came away with the ball but he wasn't always going in the right direction with it ! Metcalfe liked to run with ball, Whiteman prefers to make the ball do the work.

I expected Luton to be in and around the bottom third of of the league.

I'd like to see him do it when we're up against good teams who are on top in the game. He strikes me as another one of these players who can cause problems when the team he's playing in is on top but will never get you on top. I'm waiting to see him being the best player in a losing team, not just the best player in a winning team. When we've lost games previously he's been more or less anonymous. He's not the only one though.