bluebruce

They do. I think he could cope in the Prem though, for the right team with the right expectations. I also think his weapon of charging near the byline and cutting it across can work up there, as well as his ability to carry the ball from deep (which he seems to do less this season for some reason), so he wouldn't be completely impotent attacking wise.

I don't know if Butterworth has 90 minutes in him yet. Like others have said, he wasn't looking fully fit at the end of his cameo. Not too surprising as he hasn't been getting u23 games or much time for our first team, but like I said before I also suspect from the way he was moving that he was feeling his back a bit. I'd start Khadra and bring Butterworth on at around 60 minutes as an impact sub, until he has more sustained running in him.

Hull manager moaning that their disallowed goal shouldn't have been. I wasn't convinced by any of the offside calls made against either side up until that point tbh, but I didn't get a replay or a clear angle. Did anybody get a good look at it?

With Butterworth, my concern isn't so much that he looked knackered, more the way he was carrying himself in that phase. From his posture it looked to me like his back might have been acting up a bit. Hope I'm wrong as despite not being on for even a full half, he was one of the most impactful players on the pitch. Regarding our league position, and the tidal wave of optimism some fans are on (not so much on here) because of our unexpected good start...absolutely we would have all taken that before the season. But notes of caution, that I probably don't need to tell most on this forum: We have been here before, and most of us know a good run is frequently followed by a death spiral under this manager. We have ridden our luck at times and I wouldn't say we deserve the points haul we have. That said, I don't care about that, but results, it's just unlikely to last all season and we probably need to improve performances. I don't mean in TM's tippy tappy terms of keeping more possession. Apart from WBA, who thoroughly outplayed us, the highest any of the teams we have played is placed, is 12th. The rest are 17th or lower. So they're almost exclusively teams who have had a bad start to the season (even if part of that is due to us). For me, the squad is still too thin, the manager too shit and our midfield too easily overrun. I still expect us to be more likely to finish bottom half than top half. The good start might give us enough of a comfort blanket to not get drawn seriously into a relegation scrap though hopefully, especially if we can keep grinding out results a bit longer.

Tbh we looked just as vulnerable as the last half hour against Luton. Just fortunately this time the opposition couldn't put it away.

I'm amazed to see Tony trusting having Dolan, Butterworth and Khadra all on the same pitch. Credit where it's due, his subs on Saturday were idiotic and disastrous, but these ones have transformed the game and been spot on. Question marks over whether they should have been starting, but an injection of pace is more effective later in the game than at the start. We need to stop letting Hull in though to avoid a repeat outcome.

I'm not sure we can call Clarkson and Buckley off for Khadra and Butterworth 'like for like'. Very different players. Agree good to see them knowing what they're doing though.

He saw them, bragged about them before the Luton game, then kept them sat on the bench so Gally could silly-bollocks around.

Did the commentator just say TM is considering bringing an extra defender on again? Better fucking not be.

Pretty much everyone's first half performance was unacceptable. BB's wasn't worse than Gally's 98 minutes on Saturday.

Do you need to ask? We always have that in our locker. Let's hope the locker key is lost tonight.

You sure about that? Slag off some more players please 😉

Butterworth absolutely has to get more game time. Good effort Travis

Seems a little early for a double sub, though we have been poor. Best not be bringing Dolan off, only player who has presented some kind of threat.

As much as Gally isn't a winger, he is better suited to it than Buckley is. At least he's fairly quick. However he did have an atrocious game on Saturday and had to be dropped (but not as much as he had to be taken off whilst playing terrible, which didn't happen). But I really hope the plan isn't Buckley wide.

Might not be. The LT saying so doesn't make it so. Let's hope not because his attributes are not suited to that role. Maybe it will be Rothwell there (slightly more palatable) or a different formation from Tinker Tony.

Yeh. Sky Arena I think someone said, not the red button.

So tonight we have the Rovers defence, no clean sheets for 16 games is it? Versus Hull's attack, no goals in their last 5 games. It really is the easily stoppable force meets the highly moveable object.

So this summer we signed: Edun, already injured Van Hecke, already injured Khadra, already injured Poveda, wasn't injured but is now Clarkson, fit. Good stuff. That's how you replace 12 players. And 4 of this lot are loans so will definitely need replacing again next year even if they get over their injuries.

You may have a point there. Ah well, Ayala to start and probably get injured it is.

Hmm should be back roughly in time to get in Wharton's way then. Cool.

I don't think it's ever even his fault in his own head. Therein lies the problem, he doesn't see what he's fucking up, so he keeps repeating the same mistakes. A shame. If he had the capacity to learn from them he might be a good manager.

It was a dive, cheating, yes, agree. And I've always hated it, it's a scourge on the game. But... I've, only in the last couple of years or so I think, become one of those fans who has come to accept it as part of the game. Not because I want to, but it's been around so long now and the authorities have done next to nothing about it. At this point, if other sides are going to do it - and they are - I'd hate for us to lose out to their cheating...so, with gritted teeth, I don't exactly want us to do it but I'm willing to take what comes our way. Especially with how many legit penalties we don't get. But again, I really don't like it being part of the game. I've said this for years, but all games should be watched back after, and ALL dives that weren't caught during the game be mandatorily punished with a yellow card. Any resulting in a penalty, punished with a red. The amount of diving would drastically reduce, quickly, as the suspensions totted up.

Gallagher was absolutely wet in the air on Saturday. You could have swapped him with Tom Thumb and the number of headers won wouldn't have changed.

Balaji has his own money, but I'd be beyond amazed if he has 'spunk 20 million up the wall every year and it not be an issue' kind of money. It's clear that the additional financing for the club comes from the ultimate parent company, Venkys, as well as the other companies they own and their land deals. Balaji isn't getting his hands on that money without the agreement of the others, in particular Mrs Desai. I can fully believe that Balaji has been tasked with the majority of the 'management' (for want of a better word) of the project. He will be the one most expected to put in time and keep an eye on things (again, only insomuch as any of them bother to do that), feed back to the others when relevant, and will get the most blame from the others when things go wrong, or credit when it goes well (hah). It's always been his pet project. But I'm in no doubt that major decisions and in particular, large funding decisions, will have to be approved by all of them as we have always heard before. Even if they give what he says extra weight. They're not going to let him siphon this 200 million they've put in, from a major company, without weighing in on those decisions.