Every time a Championship club appoints a manager it’s a gamble. There are so many confounding factors that it’s almost impossible to predict whether a particular individual has a chance of success. Sometimes everything comes together, sometimes it doesn’t. Even Coyle has a promotion to the PL under his belt.

I take your point but every signing is a gamble. Who would have thought that Sanchez would be so poor at Man Utd? Who would have thought that Samba and Nelsen would do so well for us? They, at least, deserve the chance to show what they can do.

Because if we’d carried on with the disastrous cycle of terrible manager after terrible manager, making dire signings, we’d probably have been in League 2 or worse and even more financially screwed than we are now. It’s less than three years since Coyle was starting Hope Akpan in centre mid. Amazing how quickly people forget.

Sorry to interrupt the communal wrist slitting with a controversial opinion but how about we put away the razor blades until we’ve seen how this lot play football matches? This message board has been chock full of criticism of Mulgrew (who, if we’re honest, was scarcely good enough for League 1 at centre half - we only looked defensively competent that season when Lenihan came back in), Raya and Smallwood, and TM has binned them all off. Smallwood wasn’t even in the squad on Saturday. Ultimately, managers live and die by their signings, and in general, TM has improved the squad massively since he took over. The midfield in his first match was Feeney, Lowe, Conway and Guthrie. Emnes was up front with DG, with Steele in goal. The bench was Stokes, Gallagher, Tomlinson, Joao, Wes Brown, Tomlinson, Raya and Mahoney, and the context was a club in free fall with a transfer embargo and indifferent / insane ownership. To improve the squad from that line up to the current one, whilst bringing us out of FFP and in the context of Venkys is nothing short of miraculous. We should be grateful we have a club at all, and for those of you expecting Premier League football three years after that situation - check yourselves. Shall we not just see how they get on?

Why would they be prioritising informing you about the potential deals? No offence, but I’m pretty sure most fans would prefer that they tried to focus on getting signings across the line. You obviously feel differently but I found it more humiliating when we appointed Coyle, and were subsequently relegated into League 1.

So should we keep him just because he has mates in the dressing room? His legs have gone.

We'll have none of that clear-headed optimism on here.... away with you.

I think last night was a good example of what Mowbray is trying to do here, and I agree with his approach. The first priority should be to avoid defeat. We didn’t defend well as a team last night, mainly because midfield had an off day and couldn’t keep hold of anything, and Armstrong can’t do that either. But in and around the box we defended superbly. It reminds me of when Hughes took over - he also prioritised making sure we didn’t lose. Once the team developed that discipline and got used to being absolutely stubborn, that’s when he focussed on our attacking threat and we became a great team. Last season we didn’t have to have that discipline (and conceded a lot as a result) because it was so much easier to score, but if we carried on like that in the Championship we’d be bottom three. Fact is, we’ve lost one game after some tough fixtures, and no one will fancy playing us. With a little luck we could easily have had more points and aside from Bristol City last twenty, we’ve held our own against everyone.

Corrected.

TM’s first team selection, at Burton, drew 1-1: Steele Nyambe - Lenihan - Mulgrew - Williams Conway - Guthrie - Lowe - Feeney Graham - Emnes Subs: Gallagher, Joao, Stokes, Tomlinson, Brown, Mahoney, Raya. Interesting that the defence is almost the same. Midfield now unrecognisable and filled with so much more quality. The other thing to enjoy is how much more TM is getting from the players he kept. Graham, Mulgrew, Lenihan have all improved under him. Even Conway, who gets stick but takes the pressure off the defence coming in towards the end of a tight game, does his job well. Oh, and hands up who misses Conor Mahoney?

Yes, but you were commenting on his performance in this match, when he was (in my opinion and those of many others) a class apart last night. To label a player 'a disgrace at times' for making one mistake at the end of an otherwise impressive performance (when we were pushing for a win in the last few minutes) seems ridiculous. If you think making the odd mistake qualifies as 'disgraceful' you must have pretty high standards. Evans seems to attract a lot of this type of hysterical criticism for some reason, despite being the most composed player we have on the ball. He doesn't do anything spectacular but does all the hard, boring stuff that no one else can do as well as he can.

He presented for every throw in. He moved the ball forward from defence to attack for the entire game. He presented every time Lenihan or Mulgrew had possession. He made an important foul when they were three on one. He continuously made two yards of space for himself to take the pressure off the defence. He did all that and only gave the ball away once all night, when he crossed over the back post. But yeah, disgraceful.

Those figures are meaningless because of the likely resale value of Dack, Lenihan, Armstrong etc. Something seriously crazy would have to happen for those to fail to make £15 million plus if we sold up. We desperately need a talisman up front. Dragging strikers up from League 1 or signing Championship rejects won’t get us promoted. We’ve tried that with Brown / Samuel etc and it doesn’t work. Look at Brereton’s record for the England youth teams - convinced he’ll be quality given the care and attention Mowbray will provide. Mowbray has earnt the right to spend £8 million on a striker, but if Brereton fails then Mowbray will be gone. We won’t lose financially because of the quality of the players we’ve either developed or bought for peanuts. The fact we got Dack for £750k is scarcely believable. He’s probably one of the best footballing and financial investments we’ve ever made. I understand the anxiety about spending £8 million given the long list of charlatans and jokers we’ve had in charge, but in the context of having an experienced manager who has shown he can organise and motivate a team full of promising youngsters, what exactly is the alternative if we want to give ourselves a chance of getting to the PL? Sometimes you have to take a risk and go for it. This is one of those times, in my opinion.

How do you know he passed on it? Perhaps the players in question told him they weren’t interested in signing for us. Preston and Ipswich are both established Championship teams and are arguably more attractive than newly-promoted Rovers. I don’t think the window has been particularly inspiring, but some of the conjecture on here could be toned down a little. Perhaps potential targets would also prefer loans to see whether they would consider signing for us permanently, given that we are a newly-promoted team with a chaotic background and a recent relegation.

SSN saying we’ve bid £4 million(!) for Luke Freeman.

Didn't see that one coming, but refreshing not to have a signing trailed days in advance in the media. Can't really remember much about him from last season but if he turned down a contract at Man Utd to play for Oxford, that's a statement of wanting to get his down and work hard.

https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2018/june/rothwell-is-a-rover/

Thanks JHRover. Absolutely crazy that we now have: 1. Roverstore website 2. eTicketing website 3. Rovers.co.uk 4. My Rovers. Can anyone with access bring this up at the Fans' Forum? At the very least, there should be clear links from the Club website if they can't amalgamate everything for contractual reasons.

Slightly off topic but does anyone know how you can find out your Club Cash balance? I can't find it anywhere on the Roverstore or eticketing websites and it doesn't seem to appear when I try to pay for something from the shop online. All assistance welcome.

That's absolute nonsense, Ward is our fifth choice centre half. 1. Mulgrew 2. Lenihan - injured 3. Downing - injured 4. Wharton - injured 5. Ward The stats tell you that we have the 3rd in terms of goals conceded in the division but only 16th on goals scored. If the strikers had done their job in several games this season we'd be in the top two. If you're 2-0 up at half time in this league, the game is over, but we always make ourselves vulnerable by failing to finish teams off. Blame who you want for the current situation (which I personally don't believe is that bad, given we are only two points off the play offs with two games in hand) but let's not ignore the facts.

How do you know that they had that opportunity though? I doubt they had people lining up to take over a club second from bottom, with no money to spend and shambolic ownership. It would be a massive gamble for any 'up and coming' manager of promise to come here - look at what happened to Appleton. You make it sound like we could appoint anyone we wanted. Most sensible candidates would run a mile. Clearly, that's all Venkys fault too, goes without saying. The bottom line is that if he keeps us up, then he'll have performed a miracle and we'll all be saying what a great job he's done. What happens after that is anyone's guess.

They still watch most of the games though, and will be around Brockhall enough to know what's going on. An entirely new backroom staff would inevitably take more time to understand the deficiencies in the squad.

Playing Devil's advocate, at least Dunn and Lowe know the squad inside out, and will be able to tell him where we need to improve. We don't have the luxury of Mowbray taking five games to see where the problems are, so it might actually be a good thing. He can always bring in some staff in the Summer. Obviously, the motive for Venkys doing this is to minimise costs, but it might actually turn out to be in our favour.

18 month contract is odd - why not just let him have it to the end of the season and then review it? Because Venky's obviously, but still.