We are terrible at that holding the ball up in the corner business, we just shouldn't bother.

Miss of the season so far

Did you bet against Blackpool at home when we went there?

If I was trying to kick that half chance as high as Gally just did I would struggle.

Hope that isn't Ayala back on the injury train, he has been important for us.

Sounds like a good time to play him anyway and see if he can get injured.

Back to 4-3-3, thank fuck

It might have left Venkys unmoved, but fan pressure is why Kean resigned.

So sick of this guy. He really is risking Kean levels now with this shit. I really struggle to rack my brain for a time where he took responsibility rather than just talking about how he would if the time came, or blaming players, referees, covid, the schedule, injuries, or fan expectations. Nothing is ever Tony's fault. Even on the very rare occasion he implies the tactics weren't right, he just brushes it off as 'that's hindsight though' as if he isn't paid handsomely to have foresight. He even has the cheek to get defensive when asked any tough questions, even though any normal club would have fired him an eon ago.

It's often said that the LT doesn't criticise the manager or the club for fear of losing its direct contacts and interviews at Rovers. I agree but I've come to realise there's a secondary reason though - they don't want to lose some of their readers. This is one of the comments under the article about how they're going to start charging to read the Premium articles: 'I'll not be subscribing again whilst Rich Sharpe writes his garbage and incessant criticism of an extremely young and club team facing a mammoth task with their hands tied due to having a really poor support base to draw financially from.'

It seems to be getting missed that the 85k rumour didn't just pertain to the flight anyway, but to the rented accommodation, rented private car and 'security' (whatever the fuck that means, it makes no sense so I've assumed it means the security of covid precautions in the car and maybe training ground). Of course, it's just a rumour. If it's true though it's frankly scandalous when we are pleading poverty.

Van Hecke may have some experience of playing LB, not that I've heard of though, but he's definitely primarily a CB. Agreed, its deja vu time. We had started the season pretty well with a system that was working for us. So Tony conspired to piss it away with another experiment and we haven't won since. He won't realise what's wrong either. Just hard luck I bet. Or blame some young, confused players.

Aye I was thinking that, the back 5 is reducing our success rate when we have less possession. It's less well suited for counter attacking. Ah well at least Tony will be able to justify returning to possession football because this counter attacking malarkey isn't working....

You part of Mowbray's press team? Is that why we haven't seen you for a while?

Anybody understand why Clarkson has been our go-to free kick guy? They've been shit and I thought Pickering was meant to be a set piece specialist?

Shots on target for us: 0.

Gally with an idiotic foul in a dangerous position that we are extremely lucky didn't result in a goal. Glad he's been brought on...

Ok so, turns out this is the opposite of how it works...even in explaining how their new system works they're demonstrating their incompetent writing. From the 'premium' article when you click it: 'This is a premium article that you can read for free. Get access to all our articles, with 80% less advertising, for just £2 for 2 months.' To me this implied you can read premium articles for free, but turns out they meant this is a premium article but is free for now to give you a taste. From the article explaining what is happening now: 'If you haven’t already noticed, you will do from now going forward, that a blue ‘premium’ tag will appear at the top of some of our articles. Those will soon become subscriber-only content, accessible to those who have signed up to the Lancashire Telegraph.' Then talks about how the majority of articles are still free and they're 'not disappearing behind a paywall'. I assume this means they're getting rid of the X amount of articles a month, for those free ones. Which I guess will make my reading experience simpler - skip all premium articles and don't have to switch between private browsing and different browsers if I run out. But if the actual news starts being behind a paywall I'll probably migrate to Lancs Live entirely, eventually.

Never any excuse for that when you can have 7 subs on the bench. Big and unnecessary risk. Instead of a defender let's have 3 midfielders and 3 attackers even though there's no way we will need to bring 3 attackers nor 3 midfielders. Stupid, again. Eh, on second thoughts, maybe he is thinking he already has 5 at the back and another in midfield who can play there, so he can switch to 4 at the back if need be.

My initial reaction was fuck off, he's just smashed it at him from a couple of yards away and I'm never a fan of those being given, even though they are. But on the replay he did have his hands up a bit too much.

Great header from Ayala a couple of minutes ago btw, thought that was going to drop for the QPR lad.

Three? Edun, Pickering.......?

Travis hitting the ground with his hand there after going down, suggests it might be bad...

I'm actually flabbergasted that Diaz and Butterworth up front in a two does appear to be the plan tonight. It's weird how this manager had stopped even bringing him off the bench then suddenly starts him. Shame there is zero creativity in that midfield behind them, so if Butterworth ends up having no service it will be easy to justify dropping him again...I doubt TM would do something so cynical, but it's odd and I can see it ending that way whether intentionally or not.

They have started marking articles as 'Premium'. At first I thought this meant all the Premium articles (only one so far) would be behind a paywall. But after opening it, it suggests the Premium articles are free and the others cost money, I think. Premium also reduces advertising by 80% (so presumably their end improved profit can't be much even on the people who take it up, as those will be the ones who read tons anyway and generate more ad revenue). But I'm at work so will have to read the full article about how it works later.