arbitro

The Fans Forum has been out back a couple of times. I think the WATR meeting was convened at short notice given the disenchantment from the last few weeks. Hopefully we will find something out soon.

I deliberately avoided anything Rovers related last night as I really didn't want to be irrational but the anger hasn't really subsided this morning. Losing is part of football and sometimes in defeat you have to hold your hands up and say you lost to a better team but in our case the last three games we have lost to poor and, on paper inferior teams It's clear that too many players are lacking confidence and making wrong decisions for which we are being punished. There are likely many reasons for this loss of confidence but in truth our form has been poor for a few months now but I think, players being what they are they will blame the upheaval of losing a manager who they liked. But this rot actually started under Eustace. The goals we have been conceding of late are incredibly poor and all have been avoidable and we simply haven't offered enough of a threat at the other end. Poor final balls especially crosses have been frustrating but on some of them the movement inside the penalty area is awful. But, as many have alluded to the problems at our club run much, much deeper and in many respects the on field frustrations are miniscule in the bigger picture. We will never move forward under these people and stagnation is the best we can hope for. We will more than likely have a huge turnover of playing staff in the summer - players come and go but the real changes we would all like is in the ownership and at board level. Sadly for us neither will happen.

I heard his name mentioned as released along with Jackson Shorrocks.

Leeds are falling apart..........again.

Connor O'Riordan has scored again for Crewe today. Interestingly he was among the Rovers fans at Stoke on Wednesday.

I'm pretty sure I'd seen that Stephen Edmondson has been released. Strange.

This has to be one of the strangest match sponsors ever. 😂

Is he persisting with the back 3/5?

Next Saturday at 10.30 am on ITV4 Rovers v Fulham from 84-85 is featured.

That has been the real surprise to me of Ismael's three games as manager. We simply haven't pressed high up the pitch which is something we did well under Tomasson and Eustace. Teams are finding us too easy to play against.

Only four substitutes named? Very odd given how many players we have.

During the first half at Stoke I said to my granddaughter it looked like Brittain was limping slightly.

We just can't afford to start Dolan and Cantwell in the starting line up. Personally neither would start for me but it's more palatable to only have one player giving the ball away so much of getting caught in possession. The back five experiment needs to be ditched in favour of an extra midfielder as Stoke ran all over us in that department and I suspect Cardiff will pack that area and only play one up front.

I don't know for certain but the dots all join up regarding the time and its removal. If my assumption is correct then someone senior entered the directors box, saw it and asked one of his Stoke counterparts to have it removed.

This flag was removed shortly before or just after kick off - about the time Waggott and Suhail would have taken their seats. I don't know for sure but an educated guess would be one of them requested its removal.

I don't like the clandestine things that go on and if WATR are helping with ideas then members should be canvassed for their opinions too and whatever is said should be made public.

Seeing Dolan and Cantwell both in the starting line-up put me on the back foot before a ball had been kicked. I knew we would be giving a lot of cheap possession over to Stoke with those two and so it proved. When we needed pit ponies we got show ponies. In fact for most of the first half I really didn't know where they were supposed to be playing as gaping holes appeared for Stoke to attack. And that really applied to most of the team. We looked unbalanced and lop sided and Stoke exploited this. For me the only player to come out of this debacle with any semblance of credit was Adam Forshaw. The disjointed look and shape (or lack of) is on the new manager. He did an interview this week bigging Dennis up and then didn't start him. When he came on he was awful too. The first half probably eclipsed the Derby first half and despite some second half pressure I just couldn't see us scoring. In fact I felt Stoke would get a second rather than us equalise. There was no creativity whatsoever and we resorted to aimless balls to nobody in particularly which were easily dealt with by Stoke. So many poor performers for Rovers tonight and on the drive home I questioned so many things and the answer to each one was usually the same. Whilst we are in the grip of these wretched Indians and their henchmen over here we are destined for season upon season of frustration and stagnation.

For any Rugby League aficionados there is an excellent three part documentary currently on Sky Sports Action called We are Wigan Warriors. It covers last season when they win four trophies and gives a great insight into how a successful sports club runs efficiently. The psychology used to motivate the players is so innovative.

Seeing grown men with inflatable snakes around their necks was one of the most bizarre things I've seen as a Rovers fan of many years. And the real villains at our club got a free pass.

You could well be right as none of us has a crystal ball to see into the future. I wasn't too excited by the appointment neither but I'm not really judging him from what he says in interviews but what I see on the pitch. I was happy enough with the Norwich game and the character we showed but yesterday was unacceptable on every level. In terms of the length of contract I was surprised by it but it says more about the erratic decision making at Rovers rather than anything about Ismael.

Norwich were better which was generally acknowledged by many. I was commenting on your notion that the players weren't playing for Ismael when we equalised late on and showed a bit of character. Yesterday was undoubtedly poor and the error riddled slow start gave us a huge task but I wouldn't have questioned the players commitment at all.

I honestly don't get those vibes from watching last week and yesterday. It might well prove the case over the coming months but right now I find the notion of players not playing for him laughable.

Me too but on the second goal Hyam and Carter were far too weak. To give Eustace a bit of credit it appears he was looking to exploit our weaknesses by getting the ball in the penalty area as often as possible. He also had Adams chipping away at Travis and it worked as Travis became preoccupied with Adams and lost focus.

As we did at Bristol, Swansea, QPR, Oxford and pretty much every game where we have gone behind.

How do you explain coming back against Norwich last week to get a point. We conceded in the 90th minute and only had ten men. They clearly were playing for him then. Yesterday we started slowly and conceded two soft goals from basic errors. The change in the system made by Ismael made us much more solid. There was no lack of effort and nothing at all to suggest the players are not playing for him.