Or in Spanish football.

Why not play the two wingers on their natural side ? I can't be doing with these players who keep having to cut in field to get on their strongest foot. Apart from Travis who's going to get the ball for us ? Not many tackles in that line up.

How much do you think he ought to have in the bank by now ? it's a wonder he can out of bed before dinner time.

We lacked leaders, the experienced guys we have aren't leaders.

I think it might be heading back to nowhere as well. As for Jack Payne - Why Tony ? Who next - Marcus Antonsson for the strikers job?

I watched him as closely as you can in that play off on TV given we were supposed to be interested in signing him. He didn't look anything special to me either. I was expecting to see a dominating presence and all I saw was a " Steady Eddie " type centre half who wasn't particularly outstanding at anything in any facet of the game. All I could see was a bit of an up grade on Downing and not a starting centre half in the Championship. That was only one game and he might have had off day. Maybe he'll be a colossus at Preston, if he is I'll be surprised but it's amazing what a good coach can do with average players. I'm a bit puzzled how you can say " Mowbray knows what hes doing, trust him " in one breath after you've described a player he's been chasing for 12 months as " Terrible " in another breath. I trust very few people in football, that way you don't get made a fool of.

Like you I'm a bit concerned that Hanley could be a bit rusty. He's not the sort of player physically to benefit from being on the shelf for too long. I'd like to think he'd be an improvement on Williams but to be honest I wouldn't be heartbroken if we didn't sign him.

You can still be " a rated Rovers target " and a " League 1 plodder " I'm afraid.

I didn't see much of Bauer but what I did see wasn't better than the way Williams was playing at the end of last season. I was hoping for a really good centre half signing that would be a defensive stalwart and an organiser to bring on our younger defenders, I can't say Bauer looked like that player to me.

Anybody thinking of making the trip over to Rochdale in two weeks ? A ITK pal of mine tells me there are problems with the newly re-laid pitch and the game will possibly have to be moved to another venue.

I think Strachan didn't rate Rhodes as a lone striker just in the same way some Rovers fans, me for one, didn't. When your central midfield is poor you can't play two up front which was the ideal situation for Rhodes.

You could have said " rarely gives the ball away " about Whittingham. That's because he rarely strayed over the half way line, almost always passed short and medium distances and never made anything happen.

Harper played like he didn't want to be at Rovers, I would have thought that was obvious. Mowbray must have thought the same thing because he sent him back in mid season. Maybe the lad thought he'd dropped a clanger coming and he was really unhappy, that can happen, but he showed nothing in his short stay that led me to think he was good enough for this level of football never mind the big time.

Well at the end of the day judgement will have be reserved until he plays but I'm uneasy about this one. If his days as a winger are behind him and he's going to play in midfield who's place will he be taking ? Travis -and lose his energetic running or Evans- and have two midfield players who both like to go forward ? Or will we revert to the old 5 in midfield plan that had Whittingham's name written on it ?

Tell me I'm lying .

I like Nyambe and I think there's definitely a player in there. Just to prove that I'm not negative about everything at Rovers. However I don't think the coaching at Rovers is all it should be, if it was he'd be putting right the weaknesses in his game by now.

I'm pretty sure we had Cardiff fans saying similar things about Whittingham and Fulham fans regarding Danny Murphy. Mowbray's plan was to have Whittingham playing in a similar role to the one you have pencilled Downing in for. That plan lasted a handful of games until he realised that Whittingham could no longer get into anything more than a leisurely jog and as a result we looked awful as a team. After that " experiment " we reverted to a more conventional formation and looked 100% better for it. The smart managers know when a player is approaching the wall and know when to move them on.

In our current situation it's a player who gets the ball, doesn't know what to do with the ball, so gives it to somebody else 10 or 15 yards away who also probably doesn't know what to do with it. Lowe was a good example of a " Possession Recycler "

Yeah and all of those worse than Mowbray with the exception of Ince are in the Venkies era.

I agree and if you rolled them both together you wouldn't have a Danny Graham.

I also thought the ref had a game to forget all in all. Missed the elbow in the boat race early on, allowed herself to be barged over by a player ( you'd get about 12 games for that in Rugby League ) , bottled the pen near the end as well as the red card for the quitener out by the touchline in time added on. She should be on the plane home tonight.

I remember Aarie Haan scoring a similar free kick for Holland against Italy in the World Cup Finals.. He was just inside the Italy half out on the wing but he hit a lovely flat free kick right into the far top corner.

It kicked off before that with the back pass decision and then the " offside " England goal. Both decisions were correct, the England player was just on side and the Cameroons goalie should have walloped the back pass instead of picking the ball up. After the goal it was mayhem for about 5 minutes at least, I thought for a while that the Cameroons were going to walk off completely.

England were poor today. I know the circumstances weren't ideal but our decision making was terrible. How many times did we persist in playing little complicated triangles when a simple pass out wide was on. Why do we insist on trying to walk the ball into the goal instead of having a shot ? If Cameroon's goal would have stood I could see us really struggling, we allowed Cameroons to out muscle us at times. We'll need to be 100 % better to beat Norway. I watched the USA women the other night against Sweden and they're 4 goals better than England on current form.

I saw him play and he was deeply average even taking his youth in account. That report says a lot about modern football in my opinion. Having said that weren't Real Madrid supposed to be watching Henley when he first got into our first team.