Christ on a bendy bus we should have about seven up, this is unreal

Be hard pressed to say who our 'worst' performance is so far - couple of players who haven't had much to do, Pickering for example, but no-one who's been poor. Very solid performance.

We are second best, but not by much

Strong agree, sadly. I was very excited when we signed Markanday - Spurs fans suggesting he should have got a run in their first team off the back of very impressive performances for their reserves/u23s. A year or so in I am getting a bit concerned that he might be a prem Joe Nuttall - remember when he went on a run of something like 15 goals in 14 for the u23s? His career trajectory since then has been League 1 -> League 2 ->National league. I hope I'm wrong, but he's not even getting into the first 11 at Aberdeen at the moment - he's had about ten minutes in the last three games.

Just draws from here on out lads

Thomas is English born but a Welsh international - but yes, it's a rarity these days

We're only doing draws for the second half of the season, aren't we?

Don't hate it to be honest

I suppose there's an outside chance where everything is agreed with Villarreal but he's waiting to see if promotion is on the cards before actually signing the contract (it isn't)

Does the 3pm squad registration deadline apply to championship clubs too? If so surely we have to get an answer in the next hour either way. Edit - just seen the above, sack the board etc.

I thought forests squad was full, hence O'Brien playing here or not playing at all - if it turns out that he's got a squad space at forest he might not be too bothered about the outcome of the appeal.

'earn'

He's certainly made a few bad ones - that one in particular was awful - but over the course of the season I think his passing has been pretty good overall.

I genuinely think that Pickering could be good as a defensive midfielder - he's left footed for balance if played in a two, can tackle and pass and reads the game pretty well. He's just so slow that sometimes all of that is irrelevant at fullback, people just knock the ball past and there's not much he can do about it.

I have a memory that a while back - I think in the later prem years - we were linked with a youngster from a relatively obscure league. Someone on here edited his Wikipedia page to claim that he was the Bulgarian (or whatever, I forget where he was from) u21 100m record holder, with a time so stupidly Usain Bolt good that it should have been an obvious hoax. The next day actual newspapers went with 'rovers chase Bulgarian speed merchant' as a story.

Kilkenny got my Rovers side promoted in FM22, so he's probably rubbish in real life.

I mean yeah, you're not wrong, but before the new management team came in I would have looked at that 11 and thought that Ayala was done, Brereton would be sold by the start of the season and that Hedges was untested and generally perceived on here to be a bad signing who wasn't up to this level. I also thought that Dack was probably finished, Markanday coming back from a serious injury and to be honest I thought that the performances of Pickering, Dolan and Gally (and the rest to be fair) in the second half of last season were poor. So you are correct - I did misjudge the squad. I don't think unreasonably though, and I don't think I was the only one. At the end of last season I thought our lineup would be something like Kaminsky (good) Journeyman - Kid - Wharton(good) - Pickering Travis - Buckley Hedges - ? - Dolan Gallagher With a bench of kids and free league 1 pickups. My point really was that JDT and Broughton aren't doing a terrible job overall, strengthened fine and have actually done a good job at improving the players we have and bringing through youth sensibly. Hyam, Brittain and Szmodics all filled the gaps in the above that I was most concerned about. I also would have absolutely no faith in the previous management to have done as well. Again, I'm not saying that things are all sunshine and rainbows, we need the next couple of transfer windows to be decent, the players we have to keep improving and frankly we need to improve the performances, but I think overall this season is a long way from being disastrous from where we were.

Honestly I think back to before JDT and Broughton arrived, no manager, no clear hierarchy behind the scenes and half the squad seemingly gone (with BIG question marks over whether we would lose more of them, and the fitness of some of them) and I was genuinely afraid that we'd start the season unable to put out an 11 that wasn't completely padded with panic freebees and youngsters who weren't ready yet. I had no faith in any ability at the club to sort it out and genuinely expected, not feared, expected relegation. The fact that we ended up with something approaching a balanced first team with mostly adequate cover in all positions and with half the season gone could relatively realistically end up in the playoffs is something I would have bitten your hand off for. Only two teams in the last 8 or 9 seasons got relegated with more than the 42 points we're on right now (by far and away the highest of course being us, when we somehow managed it on 51). Now in hindsight Hirst and Mola didn't pan out, but we aren't going to lose much on them. I kind of think that by managing Dack back into fitness Szmodics has been made to look like an unnecessary signing. If Dack's knees had completely gone and he'd been sent to the glue factory Szmodics would have played more of a role, and might have looked a bit more effective. It was no way near as bad a window as some people are making out. Jury's still out though - don't mistake me for a 'happy clapper', we need to improve a fair bit. We don't deserve to be as high as third, but seeing as we are this is an opportunity to build on what we've got and improve into the second half of the season. If they can do that rather than the inevitable Mowbray death spiral I'll call it a pretty successful first season.

Mourinho as an international manager is an odd one - how is he going to scapegoat a player? Pick someone to call up for every squad just to not play them and slag them off in the press?

It'd be somehow very Rovers if, 21 games into the season, our first draw was the derby game. Its a bit silly how anxious I am to even see the half time subs (if any!)

would this count as a draw for hoodoo purposes?

Opinion that will go down like a lead balloon - If we could find a new good left back from somewhere I'd be half tempted to try Pickering in midfield - he's got a great range of passing and can tackle, but against a fast winger he's just too slow and gets minced. He's been one of our better players this season and he'd be less exposed on the left of a midfield three.

The Wharton-Morton-Wharton spine is doing a job

Surely if three of our (on paper) more talented players don't fit the system then the system should be evaluated? We can't really afford to just write them off.

It must have been really tempting to hoover up free transfers or whomever was available early in the window just to get bodies in to fill the squad up. Nine times out of ten you end up with an unbalanced unit and a manager having to try to come up with a system to fit the mess of players through the door. Now all the shouting is over I think it's been quite a brave window - giving first team minutes to the youngsters to really test them (but also dropping them again if they don't perform) and then looking to fill the gaps with the correct players and not panicking if we have to wait a bit to sign them. I think that keeping BBD is calculated, as having his quality in the side makes up for a bit of inexperience elsewhere - every goal he scores balances out a potential mistake from one of the teenagers. Not cashing in on him buys us a season to fix the squad up, rather than just a transfer window. I expect that by January the current group of players will be thoroughly evaluated and we can probably expect a similar approach in the transfer window then. Given all the outgoings this is probably the only time I can really buy into a 'two or three transfer windows to sort out the squad' approach. I would have liked that extra out and out striker, but considering we got in a RB, CB, LB (utility), CM, and a Forward, and spent money doing it, I think it's got to go down as quite a good window. Start compiling the shortlists for January.