My point is Shankly suspected that Francis would be prone to these sorts of injuries throughout his career and he was right.

Players like Chapman that rely on bursts of pure pace are always liable to that sort of injury. I remember when Trevor Francis, a similarly quick wide player, signed for Forest for a British transfer record somebody asked Bill Shankly why Liverpool weren't interested in signing him. He said " Because he'll spend as much time on the treatment bench as he will playing ". He wasn't far wrong, Francis was plagued with similar injuries all his career.

Boo Hoo. That's a massive blow to Rovers and the player.

Let's hope we can hold onto him. His efforts won't have gone un noticed in the football world.

I'd vote for that as long as I can bring my shotgun with me.

There'll be a reason why no other club does it. See if you can guess what it is. April the 1st is next year now.

Sorry to keep banging on about times past but we threw the 17 year old John Byrom into the old First Division team when we were struggling for goals. He came up with the goods. When you're that age you play without fear.

Downing only played in the first place when Champagne Charlie was injured playing for Scotland.

The game's not over for us at 2-0 up because we can't defend a lead.

I remember waiting at that bus stop near Bill Eckersley's shop to get autographs on match days. Fred Pickering, Keith Newton and Mike England all got off the bus together and I got all three autographs. No Ferrari's or Bentley's for them, just a seat on a Corporation bus if they were lucky, I supposed they had to pay as well ! At that time only Ronnie and Bryan had cars.

Rigger has it right. Forget all the fancy systems, when you cross that white line the thought uppermost in your mind should be that the player you're directly playing against will be wishing he'd never bothered getting changed. Win the individual battles all over the pitch and you'll win the game.

Trying too hard to impress ?

He made a very good double save at the end that saved us going further behind.

He did OK, one or two decent saves. He couldn't do much about the goal. His kicking is shambolic though.

I didn't say " worst signing " I said " wrong signing for this league " . He's not mobile enough and he plays too deep. Graham came on for an ineffectual Antonsson after about 55 minutes. To be honest I didn't notice a difference. Having said that the service the strikers got was really poor today. Nobody played well all over the pitch.

I thought that Whittingham did OK doing what he's good at. Moving the ball about . The trouble he can't do the other things that are essential for a midfield player in this league. Running, tackling, closing down, challenging for headers etc. The wrong signing for this league. We needed a player to do what Jack Byrne did today and carry the ball into the last third at pace. He killed us today, especially in the second half.

Both. Poor team selection today. No way in the World can you expect lots of goals with Smallwood and Wittingham in central midfield and Samuel and Antonnson up front.

You did a good job, the programme was excellent then.

He needs to get a better phone.

I agree, I didn't have a problem watching Berkovic, J Jones etc.

Don't Jim.

We've certainly got a ready made caretaker management team in place if something happens to Mowbray.

There's appointing nonentities like Kean and Lowe from inside the Club and then there's appointing somebody with a proven record of success playing entertaining football. I'd have had Johnno and Dunny over Coyle any day of the week.

That's my worry about Johnno, he's not going to hang around with the kids for ever. The likes of Oldham will be sniffing around before too long.

He's got the team playing in his image. He always gave 100% and played with a smile on his face.