19 minutes ago, tomphil said:

I thought Siggy was ok when he came on but he really does need to track back more and more importantly get moving when hes either lost it or passed it to a team mate outside the box.

Was a time or two last night he dropped into midfield, passed then just stood there as the team broke forward.  Got to support team mates at all times going fwds sideways or back in this league if you want to make an impact.

Think it's a mental thing with him it needs hammering home what you have to do, get to grips with that he ca be a more important contributor.

I thought similar. The energy levels up top dipped noticeably at the start of the second half when he came on. I’d say he’s the only player who didn’t run himself into the ground last night, and unless he starts doing so he’ll probably remain a bit part player under Eustace.

Talking of atmosphere, some different songs will be getting played pre match tonight.

Something else that struck me today…

The rule change around goal kicks not having to leave the penalty area is the worst change to the laws of the game since I started watching football.

A point against a team bang in form is a decent one. Their forwards were a real handful and although it wasn’t always convincing we dealt with their threat pretty well.

Eustace has inherited a mess and the idea that we’d be footballing our way up the table under Tomasson if he’d stayed is ridiculous. For the first time in a long time we upped our performance in the second half today, and we’ve actually taken a point from a losing position. 

Grinding out enough points to stay up is the only objective. Pretty happy today.

That ref must have been deliberately cheating. I can’t believe he was that incompetent. 

There is no misfortune too vile or horrible that I wouldn’t wish on Ashley Barnes.

8 minutes ago, Groundhog said:

Prior to Deepdale we'd lost 6 on the trot away from home.

There's a lot of romanticising JDT's style of play going on here, we'd have lost that 3-0 a couple of months ago.

Let's become hard to beat, and build from there, it's what Hughes did, and he did alright in the end. I know it's hard to watch, but what do people want? Follow it up with a win at home, and isn't this what "normal" sides do?

Eustace is not making these lads suddenly unable to pass a ball 5 yards is he?

This squad is an absolute mess, a proper rag tag bunch, good to luck to anyone coming in trying to fashion a side out of this lot - I'll take a point away on a Tuesday night with a clean sheet any day.

Completely agree. We’ve been left with a morale sapped squad completely used to playing JDT’s unswerving style, and without Adam Wharton they are absolutely shit at it. We’ve lost the one player capable of making an incisive forward pass (especially with JRC injured), so we are stuck with backwards and sideways passing.

Look at the Broughton signings in January, players out on loan at this level for the first time who are near and tidy on paper, but miles off being Championship ready. We were hurtling down the table sticking to JDT’s philosophy and it’s took a 37 year old journeyman centre back to help arrest the slide. Eustace has quickly solidified things, but turning us into any sort of attacking threat is a much bigger ask due to our complete lack of athleticism, pace, power, nouse and experience.

Clean sheet tonight is very welcome, we may well have struggled against a better side but I thought Pears looked good and Scott Wharton’s second half performance was much more like it. We need Pickering and JRC back though, Carter too.

I hope Eustace lets Dolan off the reigns a bit, gets him running at players again. The amount of times Britain stopped and cut back inside today was ridiculous, another lingering effect of our possession based approach. I also think we’d be giving Eustace a much better crack at things by facilitating a back room clear out. The JDT approach needs binning and an effective way needs to be figured out, I think we’ll need new coaches for this.

Bring back the long ball for the second half. We can’t string 2 passes together when they have to go forwards.

We’ve been really poor so far. Ayari spectacularly bad.

Can’t see Dolan staying on the bench much beyond half time. We will miss the energy he brings. Wonder if Ayari might sit a little bit deeper, pack the midfield a bit. Hard to know as we’ve seen so little of him.

Just now, bluebruce said:

So if he sold for say 42 million, we'd get a mighty 3 million extra. Woop woop.

Yep. Sell on clauses are a god send to little clubs, but neither here nor there for us. The fact they are so celebrated at Rovers suggests small time mentality.

28 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

A lot of talk about a knockdown price for Adam, and whilst I'm critical of the deal and think we could have got a bit more in the summer, and that he will go on to be worth a whole lot more in the future, I'm not sure we can really talk about the club record fee in this way.

£22 million is more as less as much as could realistically be expected for a CM with only Championship experience. Unless you're a Jude Bellingham, who was a star at 17 and clearly a world class talent, and he only went for about £25 million about 4 seasons ago. I think we could have held out for more or less the same fee, and maybe by the summer we'd have been looking at about 26-28 million, but that's really about as high as it was ever going to go without us getting promoted.

What's frustrating is that this is due to the market economics of us being a Championship club rather than the actual ability of the player. All he was short of was showing he could hack it in the Prem. He's already showing that and is probably already worth £30 million if the window opened tomorrow, and probably about £40 million by the summer. Give it another season and we could be talking about £60 million.

The club better have worked a good sell-on clause into the deal. If not then we really have been low-balled.

Record fees are all relative though and don’t take normal inflation, let alone football hyperinflation into account.

The fact we’ve been out of the Premier League for a long time now (and of course our recent dip into the third tier) does make it very difficult for us to sell players at their optimum. Unfortunately it’s also not helped by the “can’t do” mentality within the club either. With Adam tied to a long deal, and being a home town lad, we only needed to show the tiniest bit of ambition (and not be beholden to an Indian Court) to hang on to him til that really big money move came along.

I’ve seen this spoken about quite a lot, I can state categorically that the sell on clause is the absolute bog standard 15% on any profit.

I think it’s very difficult for Eustace to implement any of his ideas at the moment. There’s barely any time in between games at the moment to do anything other than recovery and the very basics.

We’ve got an unbalanced squad that lacks the required physicality and is mentally weak. We will just have to muddle through til the end of the season, a win, a loss and a draw in his first 3 games is ok, if we keep that up we should be ok. 

I’d have taken a point before kick off today,  it any time you throw away a 2 goal lead it has to be seen as points dropped.

Don’t know about Remy in the away end, but apparently JDT was at Brockhall this morning. I’m guessing it’s because his lads have remained in the Rovers academy, but it’s still very bizarre.

Only Wharton and Garrett from the academy in the match day squad. Can’t remember the last time that number was so low, must be a long time since just one home grown player has started. I thought Buckley would’ve been in the squad today, and Gilsenan and Duru should’ve been.

4 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Surely the answer is not just loads of untested kids. Fleck is one of the most obvious options, Garrett is full of energy but cant pass a ball, get some composure into the team. I dont think Leonard is ready but he should leapfrog the inept Telalovic, Nsangou I think has a poor return even at under 21 level, he shouldnt be leapfrogged just because hes quick. Scott Wharton and O'Riordan are the most obvious options if we want defensive changes.

I’m not advocating bringing all of them in, but I’d rather give our untested kids ago than other teams kids who aren’t up to it. Duru or Montgomery wouldn’t do any worse than Brittain has for the last few months (good game on Saturday being the glaring exception). Agree with you on Fleck. Gilsenan is way ahead of Markanday for me and I’d rather blood him than an out of form Brighton player too.

Appalling performance. Eustace has probably only had one full days training with them, but he’s got a very busy couple of days ahead. If I was him my first port of call would be the U23s. We’ve got absolutely no pace, power or athleticism in our squad so I’d be trying to see what we’ve got in the young lads.

Duru, Batty, Montgomery, Gilsenan, Nsangou all worth a go on the bench over the likes of Ayari and Markanday. If Telalovic has come through our academy he’d have spent the last 4 or 5 years in the North West Counties.

3 hours ago, philipl said:

I don't believe we have a sell on.

Hope I am wrong but I don't think so. 

We do. Pretty standard 15%.

Only managed to bring myself to watch a couple of minutes of it. Still too gutting to see him in another teams shirt just yet.

23 minutes ago, RoversClitheroe said:

So Nicko reckons start of last week @Miller11 "Quick turnaround" is what Nicko says.

Thoughts?

Unless he flew there and back, and had a meeting, between full time against QPR and Monday lunchtime, I’m saying it didn’t happen.

6 minutes ago, RoversClitheroe said:

So Nicko is chatting BS?

Either that, or Steve Waggott can defy the laws of space and time.

9 hours ago, SuperBrfc said:

Seen a couple of comments saying none of Waggott, Suhail or Silvester were at the game on Saturday. I don't know how true that is, but it is possible that they all left for India after Wednesday's meeting with the fans/players.

I can categorically state he didn’t.

He didn’t go to India last week at all.

5 hours ago, ScorpioRover said:

there’s megaslam events in colne and Blackpool as well as PCW

PCW is an absolute shadow of its former self. Dreadful these days.

4 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

He wasn't actually free. Sounded like it was a nominal fee though (I assume something like 50-100k). Wages, agent fees etc probably aren't a big deal with this one though, he's probably on in the region of 2k a week, so when you add everything up I suspect anything above 300k in the summer would be a profit. He'll need to notch some goals by then to fetch that though, he doesn't have a prior record as good as Ennis.

Telalovic shares the same agent as JDT, wouldn’t be surprised if he tries his best to get him moved on at the first available opportunity.

35 minutes ago, Waggy76 said:

Brilliant idea to play  Guy Mitchell 'singing the blues' at full time 😁

Cheers!!

I think there are a lot of parallels between Rovers under JDT and Rovers under Roy Hodgson.

Played some wonderful stuff at times, looked like we could really challenge then fell off badly, mixed continental recruitment, players didn’t buy in to the system after a while, captains causing chaos…

Maybe a continental style doesn’t fit us as a club. Souness and Hughes thrived. Hoping Eustace is more in the mould of the latter.