Regarding skin colour Viv Anderson is generally accepted as being the first black player to play for England. However I think if Paul Reaney of Leeds were playing today he would have been in the BAME category. He was no lighter skinned that Curle or Powell If my memory serves me well. I didn't mean to quote myself ! Bloody Laptop, it's time I got a new one !

According to today's " Guardian " the BAME managers are Chris Hughton, Nuno Santo ( Wolves ), Darren Moore, Jos Luhukay ( Sheff Wed ), Chris Powell ( Southend ), Dino Maamria ( Stevenage ), Keith Curle ( Northampton ) and now Campbell. I don't think 8 out of 92 represents the number of BAME players that have been in the game in say the last 20 years.

Got to agree with that. We've 3 left backs on the books and none of them deserves to wear the shirt at the moment.

Thanks for that Tony, reading it was bad enough, it makes me feel sorry for the poor fans actually went !

I was reading an article at the weekend about the wages the top clubs are paying their players. The wages the Yanks are paying are right up there with the best so he'll have been on big bucks.

Relegation is only " unthinkable " when you get to 50 points in my book. I've seen plenty of teams go down who were " safe " 3/4 of the way through the season. Staying up this season would do me fine. The Play offs are a distant dream unless something dramatic happens in January.

What are we running here Tom ? A football club or an investment bank ?

That's how you build teams. You may start off with average players but you gradually replace them with good players. Then you replace the good players with excellent players. if you have the dosh you eventually replace the excellent players with the cream of the game. You have to be constantly evolving, your two least effective players have to be replaced every close season. I don't mean bringing in players that might be as good, I mean players who are in a definite class above and are the first names on the team sheet. As far as I can see we haven't done that, we're still playing the team that we had last season with the exception of Reed. We made the same mistake of thinking everything was rosy when we won the Prem. We should have gone out to get a top class centre half to replace Peace and a top class left winger to replace Wilcox. I'd have been considering along term replacement for Sherwood also but two at a time is enough, For one thing it stops the rest getting complacent ! City will probably walk the Prem again this season but you can bet your life they'll strengthen their squad again in Summer.

I agree. If only we had £7million to spend on rest of the team.

I've been reading about Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea in todays paper. After they lost their FIRST competitive match of the season he had all the players in on an individual basis, 10 minutes at a time, to find out what went wrong. He said -" I had to think about everything because we played very badly, a match without determination. That's not normal. We have to understand why, especially from the mental point of view. It's difficult for me to understand why we played without determination in such an important match. If you don't have determination, you have no motivation, maybe you don't have clear targets in mind." Maybe our lot don't have clear targets in mind.

One of the best left backs I've ever seen. He could keep Ronaldo quiet, not many can say that.

Football is a simple game. One thing I was taught we seem to have forgotten - " When you have the ball make the pitch as big as you can, when the opposition have the ball make the pitch as small as you can ". That means working hard off and on the ball, press like your life depends on it, always show for the bloke in possession of the ball. in other words do the bloody basics and play like you actually want to be out there.

It's not the losing that should be bothering us. It's the manner of the losing. I never bought into the " pushing for promotion " story and I predicted a finish of around 6th from the bottom. I'd be delighted with a mid table finish this season.

One thing all relegated teams have in common - they keep making the same " Individual Errors ".

I was very tempted to use the Laughter button for Chaddy's " Vultures coming out of the woodwork " simile. The mental image really cracked me up.

Baffling team selections that the players aren't buying into would be my starting point.

I said a couple of weeks ago that if you combined Bell and Williams together you wouldn't have a good left back. If you added Hart, who's still on our books I believe, to the mixture you still wouldn't either. Maybe Mowbray isn't sure of what a left back should look like.

Team spirit comes cheap when you're winning most of the time. It's when you're up against it that the real attitude of the players is on show.

Sounds like Evans will be back to me.

I get the feeling that might happen. If he doesn't start a few heads will be scratched. Anybody else heard the rumour that the deal was he isn't allowed to start a game until we sign him permanently ?

I think Armstrong was signed with a view to being a regular starter, he's just not come up to scratch so far. Other than that I can't argue too much.

Henderson got another one also. Top goal scorer in that division.

I see Ian Henderson got another one for Rochdale tonight. Top goal scorer in that division with 12 goals and 3 assists. Top of the shots to goals ratio in that league also with a ratio of 65% shots on target. Are you listening Chaddy ?

I used to watch Rochdale when Rovers were away. I went to see them play Leyton Orient one day in the old Third Division. Rochdale had a brilliant right winger in those days along the lines of Stuart Metcalfe and Noel Brotherston. He was running full backs ragged most weeks. Orient had a young lad playing left back called Dennis Rofe. He played the 'Dale winger completely out of the game, the winger never got a kick. To cap it all after about 80 minutes Rofe went on a length of the wing run to set up an Orient goal. I thought this kid can't fail, he's got it all, he was as quick as lightening and really hard in the tackle. So I wrote to the Rovers chief scout telling about what I'd seen. I got a reply back thanking me for my comments but telling me that Rofe was already signed to the Leyton Orient club ! Well we all knew that, everybody's signed to a club, that's why we have transfer bids. It was just a brush off letter. After that I never bothered writing to the club. About 15 months later Rofe signed for Leicester City for what was a record fee for a full back in British football.

Do you think every player at Rovers is on the same money ?