What happens in the future is irrelevant to the fact that when hes played in the past, including yesterday, he has IMO and other peoples opinions looked like a little boy lost. He may come good in the future and I have not said he wont, of course i hope he does.

A huge problem with Armstrong front is that he is constantly offside. This regularly stifles our attacks.

Slaughtered? People were quite justified in saying that he doesnt look at home in the first team, like a little boy lost. He needs a loan spell.

Walton Nyambe Lenihan Adarabioyo Downing Travis Johnson Armstrong Holtby Rothwell Graham Subs: Leutwiler, Williams, Evans, Chapman, Gallagher, Brereton, Rankin-Costello If Nyambe doesnt make it, I would put Travis at RB and Evans next to Johnson, not ideal but better than having Bennett in the team. Holtby has to start and be given a run as a number 10. He was a bit of a coup when we signed him but the problem was always that he played where our best player plays and it was about fitting him in as best we can, with minimal success. Now is the time with very poor alternatives to play alongside Graham to give him a run there. Armstrong up front means that half of the attacks we muster are broken down by his inability to understand the offside rule, and our 12m pair are not up to it.

Where are the goals coming from?

Holtby should be number 10. Gallagher couldnt score in a brothel.

We have the 10th best defence on the League and the 14th best attack and that is with the goals of Dack included. Bennett is a bag of shit. League 1 player. Get shut ASAP.

Our defence is the 10th best in the league and our attack is the 14th best and that is with Dack. Our team isnt top 6 standard at either end and I know its not ideal that our new additions going back are temporary but now is not the time to address that. Our defence was the 20th best last season so we have improved but our attack is really worrying without Dack. A left back is needed to allow us more flexibility with Downing but we need attacking reinforcements.

Really boring and ultimately dismal display against a poor side. We have lost far too many points at home to shit teams and we look toothless without Dacks goals to bail us out. We have to sign a goalscorer in January. Too many changes and too many ultimately not good enough players in that 11. Walton was fine again. Nyambe ok. Bell crap, simply not up to it and stupid for the penalty both with his initial header and dangling a leg. The centre backs cant pass a ball but were fine in defence against a really poor attack. Johnson was good, Bennett is absolute shite but we all knew that. Rash and technically rubbish. Buckley is quite simply not ready, nearly cost us a goal due to pissing about on the edge of his own box and needs loaning out. Holtby isnt a winger as long as he has a hole in his arse and should play centrally. Up top, Armstrong offered a threat but cant play up top because he doesnt understand the offside rule. Gallagher is hopeless and not up to it. The subs were made far too late and had no time to make an impact. I would bring in Adarabioyo, Downing, Travis, Rothwell and Graham against Huddersfield, yet more wholesale changes but back to our best side. Drop Bennett, Williams, Bell, Gallagher and Buckley and if Nyambe isnt fit I would probably put Travis RB and bring Evans next to Johnson. No chance of play offs.

To be fair I think he adds balance on the side. There are certain points in his Rovers career when he can point at things that others have done notably Mowbray but ultimately he doesnt contribute enough when he does play. He scored 2 very good goals last season but aside from them theres been no real end product throughout his time here. Im getting a little frustrated because he clearly has talent but he is not contributing at all in terms of scoring and assisting. I like him as a player and he can excite but its starting to feel like hes a bit of an enigma, and someone whose reputation increases when he isnt starting and people including me demand his re-selection. There is an onus on him to start scoring and assisting, especially with Dack injured, even the correctly derided Armstrong contributes to goals and assists.

Rothwell never plays on the right and I dont see where the goals are coming from in either of your teams. If you played Armstrong and Gallagher together youd have a hell of a lot of offsides though. Theres no getting away from the fact that Dacks absence is a monumental blow, and thats acknowledgable without talking about forfeits. Any team losing their primary source of goals is automatically weaker as a result.

Buckley isnt up to our standard, neither is Brereton. Hopefully that will change when they are older. None of the strikers we have signed have been up to scratch and with our only goalscorer seriously injured that becomes a big problem. I would like defensive and attacking reinforcements. I love to add players to the squad, I want 4 but 2 as priority, you want 3 so thats a bit rich!

Absolutely. The ability to score goals has somehow become underrated. It was the same with Rhodes, people focused on what he couldnt do even though he was scoring goals consistently at an unparalelled rate to the extent that that alone guaranteed his merited place in the team. Dack has consistently scored goals for us at a rate of not much shy of 1 in 2, for 2 and a half years. Mulgrew had 2 seasons where he would get to double figures from set pieces, hes gone now (rightly so) and Graham has consistently scored a healthy amount but seems to be somewhat on the wane. Dack is our only reliable source of goals and now he has gone and unless someone steps up in a way that is totally at odds with how they have done in the past, then we are going to struggle to get near the sort of goal total that will see us challenging for the play offs. Dack is our best player ywt somehow underrated.

He consistently scores and assists, as talented as Holtby is until he starts having the level of tangible effect consistently on games then he can be compared favourably. Dack is our only goal threat of any consistency.

Goals are the most important thing for a striker so if he is indeed a poor mans Jordan Rhodes, sign him up. We need goals to compensate for Dacks loss. Cant see Waghorn being available but would have him here yeah.

Wonder if Jack Marriott might be a target? Good player available from Derby who could help to score some goals in Dacks absence?

Really difficult team selection. Holtby has to start. Neither wide man deserves to start but not much in the way of alternatives. Id put Johnson in from the start next to Travis but he was really ungainly when he came on last night. Adarabioyo back in if possible. Who starts up top if Graham cant do another 90 minutes?

Goals and assists are a little more than stats. If attacking players dont get them they arent doing their job.

I think we made them look far better than the League table proves. They didnt do much in terms of making me think they were going to score.

I think thats a little generous, to be fair many werent far off abysmal and I would agree on Walton, a few fairly routine saves made him MoM. Rothwell didnt stand out from the rest in a really poor performance. I shared your opinion on Rothwell that he could be a key player this season and earlier in the season he wasnt played enough. Now he has got a run of games, would you agree that he has been a severe disappointment in those games and his lack of goals or assist in 20 appearances, 9 from the start is not acceptable? Armstrong was crap yesterday and I have been of the opinion that Rothwell is the better out of the 2. Recently I have wondered if this is me being mistaken. Both regularly are fairly absent in games but at least Armstrong does offer something in the way of goals and assists, 5 and 2 respectively.

You keep saying "we have different options" and I am well aware that we have other players, but theres no evidence, suggestion or rational reasoning to suggest that any of them can come in and the team can continue to score at the same rate, which itself isnt THAT much. Dack scored goals before he came, and since he joined, hes consistently scored almost one every other game. Graham has also scored goals and has a track record but sadly seems to be slowing down. Who else will score whilst the former is out for a long time and the latter continues to age? Gallagher has 19 goals in 110 Championship games, only 2 this season, and even his best season he only scored 1 in 4. Armstrongs Championship record is less than 1 in 7, he scores infrequently. Based on previous games, there is more chance of Walton stepping up and scoring goals than our 7m man. Rothwell seems to be a 1 or 2 screamers a season type of player, no more. And Holtby is a good player but hes a creator. Who is going to score our goals? We have different options in all of the positions youve named, so your argument is flawed. The reason we perhaps need a goalkeeper is because Christian Walton has made too many mistakes and Leutwiler is useless, but we do have other options. At left back, we have "different options" notably Bell and Williams who you presumably and I agree with your analysis see as not up to task. At centre back, you want adequate competition to our main 2 as Williams isnt up to it and is our only alternative. All 3 are fair, constructive suggestions of potential improvement. What I dont understand is that the players I have mentioned in the first paragraph quite simply also do not have any evidence behind them being able to step up to the plate, yet your mindset to that area of potential weakness is that players who have not scored goals simply "need to step up" which is naive and somewhat fanciful. Regarding Wigan, they are a poor team, they were bottom because quite simply across the whole course of the season they have on a consistent basis been the worst team. They SHOULD be bottom of the league, end of. The fact that we repeatedly toil and drop points at home to poor teams is not indication that these are good teams falsely imprisoned in the relegation spots, it is a failing on our part as we do not have the attacking firepower or spark to break down poor teams who come for a point and often even sneak away with 3.

Stop being so childish. I do get that its not prudent to sign another attacker but them forward signings havent improved us and now we need them to score goals regularly now we cannot rely on Dack. If Bowen at Hull, Grant at Huddersfield, Grabban at Forest etc got a serious injury they would be similarly goosed because they are also similarly reliant on getting their goals mainly from one man. Theres no point pretending that having our main man getting a serious injury like this isnt a catastrophic blow, and for a team who had an outside chance of a play off place, it only massively reduces that chance to be without our best player for half of the season. That doesnt mean we should "forfeit" the season but I am being realistic. I am not saying that we cant name a team anymore, just that whoever comes in we will really struggle to cover Dacks goals internally. Have Gallagher and Brereton done anything to suggest that they could either individually or even between them start scoring goals at an increased rate to cover our top scorer? Will Rothwell and Bennett be able to start doing something quite sudden and cover a man with almost a goal every other game, considering they have 3 between them since we came back to the Championship? Its all unlikely. Its like me saying we dont need a left back we have Bell and Williams. Which is true but you want a new LB because you acknowledge that they cant do the job at the standard we need or at the standard another injured player set in Cunningham.

Where are the goals there? We might have alternative bodies but we are so reliant on Dacks goals and without him I cant see where they are going to come from. I think we are desperate for a wide man and also an attacker who can score with regularity. As much as I dont rate Walton, and as much as I worry at the depth beneath our 2 capable centre backs, in terms of first team, the main 2 priorities have to be someone to put the ball in the back of the net, even if its a loan, and a left back which will also give us more flexibility with Downing. We do also need a winger or 2, a goalkeeper and a centre back in the next 6 months but its about priorities and scoring goals is a major one. Hoping that Gallagher and in particular Brereton start scoring with sudden regularity is beyond wishful thinking.

If its as bad as expected we definitely need a new goalscorer as a priority. As much as we need a centre back that is for competition. Without Dack we lack goals.

Where is this from? Id take only 2 months right now.