Exactly. If he's not good enough to be risked, he shouldn't be at the Club. Give him a chance, if he isn't good enough, get rid.

As bad as yesterday's goal was, the goal he let in against Bristol City was far worse and indicative of Walton's complete lack of ability. Bit like the pea roller he let in early on in the season at home against whom I can't quite recall.

I've never understood the argument in favour of playing a player who you know for a fact is crap ahead of a younger one because the former has "experience" and the younger one hasn't been handed a chance yet. Everyone has to start sometime and until they're given a chance you'll never know what they are capable of. I'm not sure either how Walton dropping clanger after clanger is us getting value for money out of him regardless of whether we've extended his deal to the end of the season or not. By that argument you might as well make Smallwood an automatic starter for the remainder of the season.

We might be lucky if he's still at the Club next season.

I see no point in playing either Walton or Leutwiler. We know already they're both absolute garbage. Walton definitely won't be here next season and I've lost track of when Leutwiler is contracted to but he definitely shouldn't be here either. Give Fisher a chance and see what he can do. Worst case scenario is he's no better than the other two but it's fairly unlikely he will be significantly worse. If he's not up to it either then so be it, we're not really any worse off and we've learnt something valuable going forward. On the plus side he might be considerably better. Persisting with Walton is like keep taking a boat with a hole in it out and hoping the hole will miraculously repair itself and the boat wont sink this time. (Ditto playing Bennett at LB or Gallagher on the right wing and expecting them to play well)

but what possible benefit is there from persisting with Walton, and him costing us week after week? How could Fisher be any worse?

Spot on. We all know that's what should happen but probably won't. Looking back on yesterday's sorry display as a whole the most disappointing thing was the lack of urgency and desire. Get the ball in a promising position to break then turn around and pass backwards and sideways until the opposition have had time to get back in position. If that was a team desperately battling for a play off spot, you could have fooled me. Many of us have been saying the same thing about the manager and his comfort zone for a while. I can't see anything changing until he goes. The players are on easy street and as long as they do enough to keep us out of trouble that will do for Mowbray and their places are secure.

The LT claims Mowbray was questioning Walton's decision making but if you actually analyse what he says he doesn't. He merely bemoans the fact that the team as a whole didn't lump the ball up to Graham when he came on and let's Walton off the hook by pretending he didn't see what happened leading up to the first goal and bizarrely insinuates that where we went wrong was that because we had a goal wrongly chalked off last week we were unfortunate not to see the opposition have another good goal wrongly chalked off this week! Utter cobblers from Mowbray but that's nothing new. However whilst he continues to insult our intelligence with drivel like this as opposed to criticising players for not doing their job, there seems little chance of anyone under performing being replaced or any change in the cycle of the team failing to perform whenever we get into a half decent position.

Comparing Raya to Walton is like comparing Gordon Banks to Joe Hart. Raya is no Banks but the difference in ability is still stark.

Walton defies belief, he's an absolute joke. Send him back now and let a young lad have a go, he couldn't be any worse. When you've got other imposters in the team as well like Gallagher and Bennett you've no chance. The teams are much of a muchness at this level and you need everyone pulling their weight. Panic over, Tony's pension plan secure for another year.

This imo sums up in a nutshell why we will never ever do a thing under Mowbray even if he weret to stay until he pops his clogs. It's obvious from that article if the budget for next season is the same Mowbray's ideal scenario would be to give everyone contract extensions and keep the squad the same. Everyone else would be thinking "Thank god for that" set a match to the squad and rebuild around Lenihan, Nyambe, Travis, Armstrong and Dack.

While the cat's away....... It's Gladwin all over again. If we go up all this will seem incredibly trivial and be instantly forgotten. If we don't you just know we'll be told after the season finishes that there is no money to strengthen. Yet Mowbray can find money when Venky's aren't looking to pay his pet players for sitting there doing nothing.

Errr..... that wasn't me pontificating about Platt!

If this is true and we are offering Hart a short term extension to his contract when he's not available to play then that's a disgrace and on a par for stupidity with giving Gladwin another deal because we felt sorry for him. I wouldn't have given Smallwood an extension either but at least he is available for selection if required. If for some as yet unknown reason we particularly want to keep Hart for next season and beyond we should have let him go for now and signed him back up after the end of this season when he's available. If he wants to play for us he'll sign and if a bigger Club came in for him offering more money he'd be off to them anyway, the fact he had another month here won't have any bearing on his decision. But dont waste more money on yet another player who isn't available. If we're doing this type of thing as a deliberate loss leader to establish ourselves as a Club that really looks after its players that's one thing. But don't do it a week after pleading poverty and begging fans not to take a small refund to which they are technically entitled.

The discussion wasn't really about Bauer's ability per se it was the comparison between Bauer and McLaughlin in that they both appeared to be long term targets and at the end of the day we didn't land either of them. McLaughlin always seemed a strange one to me. If he was first choice at Sunderland, why would he want to come here to be a number two, and if we wanted him as our next number one then it strikes me that we weren't setting our bar particularly high. For all that it did appear that he was a long term target and it does seem to me that since being promoted we've found it virtually impossible to get our preferred targets in or over the line. Maybe this is down to Waggott and Mowbray having an unrealistic view of players' worth in the current market, or Venus being not up to the job, or Mowbray being reluctant to bring players in because he feels loyal to the existing staff or being unable to communicate with and get the green light off the owners quickly enough or even a combination of all of the above. I do however think it's giving us far too much credit to say that we're deliberately waiting to see which division we're in before signing anyone. I suspect it's merely a continuation of what we've seen over the last few windows of us being unable to get our ducks in a row.

? I have a better suggestion. Maybe we should chip in between us and get "a face in the crowd" of Walton between the posts. It would be considerably more agile and quite probably would stop more on target efforts than the real thing.

I know what you're saying but he isn't going to Liverpool or City where it would be reasonable to expect to bide his time and try and force his way in. If two Clubs from the same division are offering a similar deal but one expects him to go into the first team and make that spot his own and one wants him to come in as a squad player behind other incumbents anyone would be mad to choose the latter Club.

Just Downing for a year ideally. It would be ludicrous to give Graham another deal imo, he's already had one year too many. I find it extremely worrying that all these players have been offered extensions. It smacks of we won't be able to bring anyone else in for next season and they'll all be offered longer extensions once these short term ones expire

Wash your mouth out young chadders. Worst keeper I've seen in a Rovers shirt apart from maybe Alan Fettis. At least "Dracula" John Butcher (afraid of crosses) was a reasonable shot stopper!

Our dillying and dallying might bizarrely work in our favour if the unthinkable happens and we sneak up via the play offs. We'd be looking at a totally different calibre of replacement across the board.

I'll be eating an extremely large helping of humble pie if he takes us up via the play offs. I still don't actually think that will happen (although I'd desperately like to be proved wrong) and I think this is a massive sliding doors moment for Mowbray. If he takes us up, what can you say? Brilliant job. If we tail off a bit and end the season without ever having been in or without ever having seriously threatened the play off positions, then I don't think that's good enough. Of far greater concern still imo is the state he's left the squad in. We're in the mire as far as FFP is concerned because he's wasted £12m on two strikers who haven't performed thus far. We need one if not two centre halves next season, we don't even own a first choice keeper and arguably only have one passable forward. So far too early to say TM has done a great job. Ironically if we can scrape up he'll get away with his previous recruitment because we'll have the funds to rebuild.

The slip by Brereton was so cruel on him given his history here to date. If he'd been the only player to slip yesterday maybe you could say it was typical of his time here but so many players were slipping in the second half I think you can put it down to rank bad luck. I don't know why we water and water the pitch when it doesn't really need it. We water it heavily at HT in winter when its chucking it down with rain as well.

Wonder if that keeper from Sunderland is available now? Has to be an improvement on Walton even if he's only average.

Needs must on a (hopefully) temporary basis but I actually enjoyed today's game more than most this season. If it's deemed necessary in general to be ridiculously over cautious going forward then there's nothing we can do about it but as far as the football is concerned, if it has to be behind BCD then bring it on as far as I'm concerned.

Thought it was really harsh on Brereton to be subbed, make your decisions on what's happening on the pitch not because you've decided before the game to replace the entire forward line on 65. Other than that I thought it was one of the best performances of the season considering the enforced break. Walton and Gallagher were awful but we knew that already. Results went really well for us today as well. I Even liked the faces in the crowd. There in spirit if not in person.