Tyrone Shoelaces

The game in this country is fast becoming a tackle free zone. I was surprised to see foreign referees in the recent World Cup letting a lot more go. How many Red Cards were there in a competition of such intensity ? This isn't for one minute excusing Smallwood diving in yesterday. When you have an advantage over the opposition you do your level best to maintain it. The lack of spirit and determination in adversity has been a problem since the Kean days. Last season only papered over the cracks. We didn't need to put our bodies on the line very often, our superior ability usually got us over the line. At the moment we have a massive problem with morale. We look like a team that make excuses to each other and feel sorry for our selves when things go wrong. Team spirit doesn't consist solely of going out on the piss with each other and group selfies ! In my opinion this attitude comes from the lack of interest right at the top. At most Clubs the Chairman would have told Mowbray after this latest debacle - " We need to have a talk about this Tony, I'll see you in my office on Monday morning ". I used to know the Chairman of my Rugby League club pretty well and he defined his duties as " Moving heaven and earth so the buggers don't have an excuse for losing ". Best kit, best physio, best coach for long journeys, good hotel for over night stays etc. At Rovers nothing will happen tomorrow morning and everything will carry on as thought this Christmas never happened. This policy of signing 19 year old Yoof is all well and good but they won't get us out of this mess. We need some experienced guys who aren't used to losing without a fight and we desperately need some leaders on the field.

One thing I would do I'd have them all in for training twice a day until the WBA game. No more Mr Nice Guy.

We should have replaced 3 players at least by better players. The only real plus so far is Reed and he's on loan.

Yeah - " Make The Pitch As Big As You Can ".

He's just Brereton MK2.

Will they be better than what we already have though ?

WE need a change of coaching staff. Promote Johnno and ditch the other two.

The first thing in your head when the opposition has a player sent off at home should be - " The referee will be looking for an opportunity to even this up now if he can, don't give him that chance ".

Exactly what I texted to my son at 2-30.

Why does losing our first choice right back necessitate a return to the dreaded three at the back ? We have replacement right backs on the books. Is Conway injured again ? He seems to have gone missing.

The Lenihan of this season won't go for anything like that sort of money, indeed I'd argue his value hasn't gone up since Sheff Utd were interested in him 18 months ago. I think both Raya and Nyambe will go on to have good careers at a decent level in the future but I wouldn't be paying that sort of money for them at this moment in time.

I agree with a lot of that. Of course you're less likely to conceded a goal if you're playing in your opponents half.

Wolves kept his registration for about 10 years after he left. They were hoping he'd change his mind but he never did. Him and Dougan were a great combination up front.

I don't buy this " team spirit " guff. Teams with a good team ethos don't fold in the last 15 minutes on a regular basis like we do.

That's the thing - we bring Bell in for Williams, he plays like a drain and next match it's lets bring back Williams, If you rolled them both together you wouldn't have a Billy Wilson or an Alan Wright. Same goes for the midfield, lets swap Evans for Rodwell, Rodwell doesn't play well and lets bring back Evans. Rothwell or Smallwood, Palmer or Conway, Bennett or Smallwood. The manager sees them in training, he must know who's the best.

After a game you can see wether they've got the basics or not. I only had to watch Rhodes once to see he was never going to be fast or like knocking centre halves about.

The problem is at the moment we have all the classic ingredients of a relegation bound team. We find it hard to score goals from open play. The goals, when they do come, aren't shared around the team. We leak goals like a sieve, usually by means of that old chestnut " individual errors ". We don't know what are best team is and we don't really have more than one way of playing. Any manager of our opponents will be able say " What ever the score is in the last 15 minutes keep going lads because this lot are bottlers ". The sooner we get to 50 points the better for me because at this moment it's hard to see where a win will be coming from.

40k plus at home to Bradford the other day.

Peter Knowles packed in football at the height of his career with Wolves to join the JW's. Think of a tall, slimmer version of Dack with pace.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the games last season were we played well for more than 45 minutes. And that was in a crap division.

I agree about the away kit, it's bloody awful. They play in red and white, why can't we play in our usual strip ?

Even if Graham was playing out of his skin why hasn't Brererton been coming on to play in his position when Graham goes off ?

I got a bit of grief for suggesting that we seemed to be building a team of midfield players at the expense of the other ends of the team.

Yeah Jimmy Greaves in his prime was a tremendous finisher. Put him through on goal and you could walk back into your own half and wait to kick off again.

Didn't Tony Field, Terry Garbett and David Bradford follow Ken Furphy over the hill to Sheffield ? Regarding the game we've regressed to the point were we don't know our best 11again and we have no really noticeable method of getting the ball from our box to their box on a regular basis. I think we'll struggle but I'll consider it a success if we manage to play out the last ten minutes or so with the ball more in their half than ours. When you have all your players back in the last third you'll struggle no matter what level you're playing at. It's as simple as that really.