Pears 10 JRC 10 Hyam 10 Carter 10 Pickering 10 Travis 10 Morton 10 (until his last 15 mins) Sammie Boy 10 Hedges 10 Dolan 11 Gallagher 10 Honestly the best I’ve felt in a ground since the Doncaster match. 1st 20 minutes of the 2nd half we were unreal, best I’ve seen us play for a long time. The 3 hour drive starts here, luckily I’m not driving it and I have a 4 pack!

Small worry with Barnes and Vardys pace against Pickering. But great to see a strong team out (given injuries and suspensions). Good few Rovers here in the pub. Should be a cracking atmosphere.

Just summed up that era, a home win against Millwall would have taken us to a Wembley FA Cup semi final against Wigan and we threw in a shocking 1-0 defeat in front of less than 9k fans

Yeah you're both right sorry. I had Bowyer in my head for some reason. Looks like Bowyer took over a week later as Caretaker. I like to try and block out as much as possible from back then!!

Cardiff was a disgrace, and summed up that whole period. Millwall was the big gut punch for me under Bowyer. We'd beaten Arsenal at the Emirates and then took Millwall to a home replay to finally get to play at the 'new Wembley' in the semi-final. What a chance and we performed so poorly. To add to the woes we would have drawn Wigan in the semi who went on to win it! Incidentally, we played Leicester that same year, in the league, and a certain Harry Kane was on the scoresheet for them. Mind you we had a defender called Karim Rekik playing who I genuinely have no recollection of at all.

Back to the game…..apparently Dack and Diaz are on comms for those watching through Rovers TV

The guard of honour thing, clearly a wind up merchant. I don’t even know why it is a thing at all, regardless of any rivalry. Celebrations - give me Adebayor style every day over this ‘hush hush I played 5 games for this team 4 years ago so I’m not really happy to have scored’

I despair at the replies to that “I bet people will still find something to complain about” etc. It’s probably the least appealing game of the whole season. Mid-week, on Sky red button, against a rubbish team who will bring one of the lowest away crowds all year. Mind boggling they’ve gone for that rather than Good Friday if they actually wanted to make a difference to attendances and atmosphere.

Full strength for me too. As Matty said it’s very likely in 2 weeks we’ll have 20 odd days off (either that or we’ll still be in the cup so happy days). Flying over for this one, last two I came over for were PNE 4-1 and Burnley 3-0 so I can only apologise! Drop a message if there is an obvious pub for pre-match (appears to be the counting house). It should be a good atmosphere with 2.5k sold.

Some good story you’ve got yourself there Mani

“Are you Mercer in disguise, are you Merrrrrrcer in disguise” He gives us the tips in advance at least! 😶

Travis brilliant all game and Buckley great 2nd half. He’s a much better player when we’re leading, has more space when opponents are chasing and he can control the game. I obviously gave him (and Morton) a kicking this week in the other thread but credit where it’s due he looked good today. I’m flying over for the match on Tuesday night so sorry to tell you all this is the end of our unbeaten run 😂

“Gareth Ainsworth, he’s one of our own” ringing out in the away end

Imagine if JRC had gone on loan to League 1 😂 be like Ronaldo in the Saudi league!

JRC what a man! Just a tap in but 2 goals will do Gallagher the world of good you’d hope

Brilliant goal. Superb from Travis. Really really good.

Yeah I don’t particularly like the RB at LB either. If Pickering is fit enough I’d bring him on for Buckley. Move Brittain to RB and Rankin-Costello to CM

I think he did get a touch didn’t he? That loop off him helped it drop where it did, a bit fortunate and I wouldn’t overly criticise Brittain myself.

I think I’d be dropping a 3rd CM in here now. We’re being a bit overrun with how QPR are up for it and how narrow the game is being played.

Another beautiful cross field pass from JRC, This time to Dolan. Unreal

The best player in the league certainly helps. After that result, 3 points today and we really could start to open a bit of daylight, with Watford away at Sheff Utd too.

Someone on the Rovers Supporters Facebook page selling 2 if you’re still interested?

It's not to say Wharton would come in and play much better either, he might not. We've struggled a bit with injuries in fairness so JDT has had his hands tied, but it did feel like it took a long time to 'drop' Morton whereas he was quicker (rightly so) with Travis earlier in the season. I've gone well off topic here to be fair. I guess what we're all saying is it's a bloody shame we didn't get O'Brien in!

Agree 100% - almost impossible to find that information, but we can see it ourselves. We're talking about the example of the JRC ball but I don't remember doing that for Morton all season. Regarding your point about xG meaning we should be being bottom, we're talking about xGF here (xG For) i.e. chances created ignoring the defensive side of things. We average 0.94 goals per match and we're scoring 1.06 goals per match so fairly accurate (only 6 teams have scored less). 35 goals in 33 games. 0.94 is 2nd bottom (Rotherham 0.93) - so as we can all see week to week, we are creating very little (this is the front 4s fault too). Where we're getting the 'rub of the green' in actual position vs xG is xGAgainst (which suggests we should have conceded 48 goals rather than 37). I can't be bothered unpicking that on a Friday 🙂 Kaminski started the season very well? We take the lead and go defensive and solid? Lots of stuff can skew it in reality as we know.

That is why I started the post with 'ignoring our eyes'. As anyone with eyes would not start either Buckley or Morton based on this season.