Weren't we linked with Wheater last summer?

Team of the week or team of the season? It's irrelevant who makes team of the week.

Nah his worst cameo was the one in December I think it was, at Ewood, but I forget the opposition. He barely even ran. Graham had been on the pitch for about 70 or 80 minutes already, and was still chasing down the ball as the opposition defenders passed it between them. Moments later, Brereton got the chance to do the same, and pretty much just sauntered towards the ball despite being younger, faster, and in dire need of impressing. I thought he was pretty poor against Forest, but I feel I've seen him be worse on a few occasions. Shame as he has been a bit better lately when I've seen him, though still no great shakes. Pressure probably got to him against his old team - he seems to have a pretty thin skin I think. Which isn't very promising in itself.

Glad I'm not a Forest fan. It's a terrible song.

Haha same! I'm sure Pickering was a fantastic player, but was he ever considered the third best player in the whole of world football? Because Big Al was.

Good point. If you asked TM who our 5 most important players were, I reckon he would answer something like (in no order): Bennett, Dack, Graham, Mulgrew, Evans. The fans would agree on D&G but none of the rest. If we pushed it to say, 8, he'd likely add Raya, Smallwood and Lenihan.

I don't care what order the positions are filled, to be honest. So long as we don't spunk our budget on the striker at the cost of getting the right defenders.

I don't care what order the positions are filled, to be honest. So long as we don't spunk our budget on the striker at the cost of getting the right defenders.

Thanks, that settles my internal debate over whether Mulgrew's goals and set pieces bring enough to the side to compensate for his defensive shortcomings.

Exactly. I never booed the great man, too much to be grateful to him for. Even with Kenny and Jack, with no Shearer we weren't winning that title in 95. Maybe we could have done it the slower way that Jack initially envisioned (and maybe that would even have given us a more stable base in the long run) but I certainly wouldn't want to re-roll the dice on that without Big Al. That's ignoring the fact that if we hadn't signed him he'd have been spearheading that excellent Manure team for his whole career. If they'd had him they'd have been unstoppable.

Shearer being positive about us is a (relatively) recent thing. For many years he seemed, to me, to act like we hadn't happened. That hurt me, as he was pretty much my hero. It seemed like he changed his attitude to us around about the time he had the street named after him. I think the reasoning is that he was hurt by the way some fans turned on him after he left. Which I can understand, though I also know why fans were hurt in the first place given his misleading comments prior to leaving. The street thing probably showed him that he was still very highly thought of here.

Hopefully after today 'the mysterious case of Joe Rothwell' can be consigned to the history books as an unsolved one, like the Mary Celeste or who shot JFK.

He looks better there. I think that's partly because of how weak we look there when Mulgrew or Rodwell play instead though. I still don't trust him in the team.

As well as another one for the 'criminally underused' category.

Some sort of injury for Reed. He wasn't on the bench either.

No pressure, and finally giving Rothwell a run.

He doesn't have to 'go'. He's still a promising keeper, young for that position. He does, however, need someone better in front of him.

I was about to post, for the last few minutes anyway. Where the hell did he pull those two turns from?

Wow, that's poor from Dack.

I'm sure he clocked that already from the scouting reports. I think Bell has had a very inconsistent game. He's actually done a few pretty good things, including being the main creator of the second goal. But he's also done a similar or larger amount of shambolic things. I really hope TM can swallow his pride and sign the third left back of his tenure.

That would only make things worse. Partly as Williams is an even worse LB, but also because we've been incredibly porous with Mulgrew in defence.

Striker appeared to be the only position we truly tried to recruit in January. I think it's inevitable we will be looking there again.

Sounds to me more like TM doesn't really know the price. He basically just said 'it was 6 million, or 7 million, or, hell, whatever it was we paid'.

Or maybe he could have had this kind of contribution all along. Ehh...no. His version of developing players seems to be to bench them for as long as possible.

Agreed, not without a sustained run of eye-catching form from now to season's end, at least. If he reverts to his more recent form again I think we will keep him, as we would value him more than other clubs. If he does somewhere in between though we could spend the summer worrying about top-end Champs clubs coming in.