Mattyblue

Fine with Smallwood staying, ok as a squad man and only contracted for another season. Signing up Evans and Mulgrew, on presumably some of the biggest wages in the squad, until 2021 will be much more restrictive for the club.

The Rothwell thread is near the top, because he was very good, again. The BB thread is up near the top because he was very poor, again. That’s what happens on a messageboard.

Noticed they’ve slipped Rothwell’s cracker into the GOTS competition... https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2019/april/goal-of-the-season-2019/

I won’t be full of the joys of spring for winning a few dead rubbers. However, teams that end seasons badly, often start the next one in the same vein, so a potential charge to 12th can only be a positive... not a bad thing for season ticket sales either.

Stokes... quick google. Now playing for Tractor Sazi in Iran.

If BB has been brought in as a ‘wide forward’ that makes the lack of cover for Graham even more pronounced.

End of the day we’ve dodged a bullet this season due to the resilience and enduring quality of Danny Graham. His ‘back ups’ just aren’t at the required level, not their fault, they are largely inexperienced/young lads, but that’s who’s been recruited, and a bad injury to him at any point would’ve have left us seriously exposed. More experience must be brought in.

Money and saving face decisions you would think. Much easier to jettison Nuttall back to the under 23s or sell on than BB

You reckon Nuttall will make it at this level? Nowhere near for me. I would imagine he’ll be sold to a League 1 or 2 club in the next 12 months.

He was. I get no pleasure out of saying it, but it’s painful to watch the poor bugger.

Ergo a ‘cameo’. The lad is shot and such appearances, even if only for 10 minutes can’t be doing anything for his state of mind.

BB didn’t cost ‘anywhere near £7million’. I thought the most recent accounts stated that he did?

Henning Berg or Colin Hendry over Dunne. He briefly played with Le Saux, who was a far better left back than Ian Harte! Andy Cole as his ‘sub’ over Bobby Zamora. Tugay over Dembele Friedel over Schwarzer. By the way, I wasn’t particularly arsed about the team itself, sure there was some close calls, he’s played with some top players and as I said It’s all subjective. More that he rattled through numerous names for every position before choosing one and not a single Rovers player was even mentioned. Not about ‘Rovers glasses’, just a very stark omission.

Neither were the Ireland players or Fulham ones world beaters. Which makes it subjective, so he’s made his choice not to consider a Rovers player.

I try my best to give him a clean slate every appearance. At Villa, he did a passable impression of a footballer. Yesterday, well, it was another horrendously bad cameo. End of the day, if he was out of our academy, he’d be nowhere near the first team. He isn’t, but he’s still at a youth development squad age and that’s where he has to stay for the foreseeable, or a loan out. It can’t go on like this for the good of everyone involved.

His players, so he knows best. I just found it very strange that not a single Rovers player even had a mention in passing. He played in some fantastic sides here.

All of them probably bar Yorke, Cole and Hughes. And even Hughes was still dominating games like the League Cup final and Cole was still a far superior player than Bobby fecking Zamora! All about opinions obviously, but for him to mention 30 odd players and not to acknowledge a single one from Rovers, but a load from bloody Fulham was just very strange to me.

Where they hell. Cole and Yorke at a push. He made his debut for us in 1997 remember.

Certainly different than the rhetoric you hear from most other managers. They are usually bemoaning their lack of time and need to get results immediately as that’s the industry.

10k? That’s optimistic...

Off the top of my head - Brad, Tugay, Berg, Hendry, Cole, Yorke, Sherwood, Sutton, Hughes.

Aye, and we still kept a clean sheet...

I think it was his signing and the buck stops with him. I imagine there was some kind of discussion around the club’s obvious new transfer policy re young, English players and he remembered that ‘amazing performance’ at Forest two years ago...

Just flicking through the channels. Spotted ‘Duff’s 1-11’ was on. He picks the best players he played with. Now I imagined a fair few Chelsea players would be in there, but the likes of Richard Dunne, Mark Schwarzer, that Dembele from Fulham and Bobby Zamora as sub?! Not even a mention of a single Rovers player, he rattled through the names of about 4 keepers without mentioning Brad. Remember he played in teams that had a promotion, a cup win and two top 6 PL finishes in his time. I often feel we are the forgotten club of many of our ex players.

It always seems to take Armstrong an extra split second to get his shot off, which means they are often blocked. Another difference from League 1.