Christ - I still have you down as a young kid Tom!

Bournemouth in two weeks surely lads?

Where we are after the Birmingham game will be instructive as we will then have played everyone once and be half way through the season.

Clearly I'm crazy then.

No - infoman has definitely done it before! Having a wife from Bristol and two brothers-in-law still there (one of them a ciderhead ST holder), this would normally be a banker away game for me. But my wife planned a craft fair for the charity we are both trustees of for this Saturday before the fixtures came out and anyway both brothers-in-law have gone separately to the US to see daughters. Hopefully Alan will make it up for the reverse fixture and I can do a preview for that.

I very much doubt that he was one of the Chile delegates at COP26, given that he lives in Milwaukee.

You all need to bear in mind that the actual take is way below the figure you get by multiplying the adult ticket price by a number. You need to bear in mind that there are huge numbers of concessionary tickets being sold - seniors, kids and young adults. That 4.5K extra tickets last Saturday would have grossed an average of well less than £10 I would imagine.

I think I read that the break for the World Cup would only be for the group stages for the Championship. I guess it's quite likely that if Chile get there that they won't get beyond that anyway but who knows.

Still tight but Liam Livingstone taking two key wickets will help a lot.

I don’t think there are too many hoops at the moment into Chile Tyrone, especially for someone like Ben. A test before and when he arrives and a form to fill in (which I suspect he might have done for him). Then another form to come back and a test back here. The pretty constant media attention in Chile would I think be more hassle.

Buckley's passing and vision is well ahead of Rothwell. Joe can make great long runs into the opponents (although he still hasn't worked out when to pass from them) and he is capable of some great passes but he rarely seems to be heavily involved. He can disappear from games for long periods. Buckley always seems to be involved and playing a range of passing from simple to ambitious. Whilst he's clearly not physically dominant he still frequently wins the ball, an example of his visio.

That's why I said he wasn't entirely innocent Gav. But it sounds like he has tried to hold the club's managers responsible, failed and then resigned.

Whilst I don't think Roger Hutton is entirely innocent it does sound like he is not the root cause. He only became chairman 18 months ago well after the event and it sounds like all the non-exec directors have been trying to get the exec directors to take some responsibility and have been stonewalled. It sounds like Martyn Moxon and Mark Arthur are at the core of the problem.

I thought the complaints that Rovers were making was about the two qualifiers that are scheduled for late January/ early February 2022 and not the November games? These games are not in a recognised international break and will mean that BBD will miss two league games (unless he’s already moved on by then of course!).

Is that Abdul-Nasir Oluwatosin Oluwadoyinsolami Adarabioyo you mean?! Anyway, he's suspended tonight.

That seems pretty clear. I would have thought that there would have been enough demand for it to be worthwhile opening but clearly not.

Unless Blackpool beat Stoke……..

For routine games there isn't a full police presence at Ewood these days - only if the game is deemed to need it. Maybe selling the Upper Tier would have been enough for the SAG to insist on one.

As a wild guess maybe the police have told the club that if more away tickets are sold they will need a or a bigger police presence which the club will have to pay for?

I'd add Michael Palin to the list of famous Blades fans, although he's a bit unusual in having a soft spot for Wednesday as well. Ah Tony Field - a man I saw playing for 4 different teams. Southport (my second team aa a teenager), Rovers, Sheffield United (while at university) and New York Cosmos (while visiting my brother-in-law).

There might not be great loyalty but do you have an example of a club not paying up a manager's contract on sacking them?

I have a rather longer memory of Bruce which tempers any positive feelings I might have. Was it three times early in his career that he walked out on clubs and contracts to take another job? And there was the small matter of his comments about Rovers fans in our attitude to Steve Kean.

There's one important fact you have missed out there - last season he was playing alongside Adam Armstrong who was scoring for fun. Who knows how many he would have scored last year if Armstrong had not been there. My view is that Ben has been showing gradual but continuous improvement for 18 months now. Last year his improvement was masked a bit by playing second fiddle to armstrong, hence it looks like there has been a great leap forward this season. I can't be bothered to look back 12 months on this thread but there was a growing consensus that he was improving then.

There’s a certain amount of selective memory going on here. Whilst I am quite happy to believe that he has learnt from his exploits with Chile he was clearly improving his game with Rovers last season well before his international days.

We are as near as damn it 1/3rd of the way through the season. Extrapolating our current points would give us 70-71 points for the season. That would probably leave us short of a play-off position, in some seasons a long way short (although it would have been enough in 2019-20). Right now it looks like there are 3 teams standing out and a large number of others any of whom could take 3 play-off places. If this carries on then the points total needed for 6th is likely to be lower than usual. We can all recite games in the first 15 where we could have got more points, but I guess most fans of other clubs can also say the same. Where we might be more positive is that I don't think there are a lot of games so far where we have won points we didn't deserve.