v Preston (h) - 31/1/2025 - k/o 20:00

[onlyonejackwalker]

Hedges and Dolan got a lot of criticism in the first half of the season. Meanwhile we were in the play off positions for most of that time. 

Hedges and Dolan getting a lot of criticism again today. As we go back into the play off positions.

Let's hope they get slagged off all year. And we coast into the play offs with them starting most weeks.

Congrats to all involved today. Really pleasing win after a tough January.

 

[Dreams of 1995]

I’m told that Big Mak can’t play football very well

Has anybody told him that?

[Forever Blue]

15 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

I'd have to watch the highlights, but didn't he win the header?

No he elbowed their guy in the face and also handballed it. Definite penalty. Which makes it even funnier.

[Forever Blue]

2 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

I’m told that Big Mak can’t play football very well

Has anybody told him that?

He was shit. Now he’s good. 

[Hasta]

Both Dolan and Cantwell need sitting in a room and showing them how pointless dribbles, backheels and step-overs at the wrong time just cost us, when doing the basics benefit us.

Great to get a derby win under our belts, and even funnier that they have a controversial last 8 minutes to go away and cry over.

Brittain, Hyam, Batth outstanding, and Big Mac is definitely on an upward curve.

Edited Saturday at 07:39 by Hasta

[roversfan99]

Great win and much needed to stop the rot, aided by a favourable refereeing display and not without jitters but overall deserved as we should have been more than 2 up before their late surge.

Gueye has become a different player in the last few games and was excellent tonight. Great to see him goal, he still often is AWOL when a ball is played in a dangerous position especially if he laid it off but showed great hunger to get his head on that cross for the goal. The ball seems to be sticking to him so much more and hes got  a great leap on him. He is a player who is particularly easy to want him to do well.

Defensively strong again aside from at the end where an extra defender hindered us rather than helped. Batth is a man mountain, Hyam having a very good season and Brittain superb. Great to see Travis back even though he clearly isnt fully fit and Buckley was much better than he has been.

Dodgy Pears is starting to come back out unfortunately over the last few weeks. We need more quality in attacking areas, Dolan put in one great cross similar to a few recent games yet everything else is riddled with poor decison making and over elaborating. Hedges doesnt offer anything in attack and it was easy to forget that Weimann was playing.

The subs didnt improve us with Forshaw particularly sloppy and the addition of Sanderson didnt aid us. You look at that bench and realise we desperately need more players in to give us a realistic chance of getting over the line. We deserve money spent, Eustace does, a small group of players giving everything do, but Venkys I expect wont care and its such a shame.

[StHelensRover]

I was so downbeat going into tonight's game I couldn't see us getting anything. For once in a derby match we rolled our sleeves up and applied ourselves. Whether or not it was a penalty at either end, we were the better team for three quarters of the game, they (Preston) certainly didn't deserve anything from the game. 

They can whinge about the decisions but it's not like one of our players bit an opponent. Karma.

Edited Friday at 23:53 by StHelensRover

[booth]

Thunderbird 1 was fucking livid at the end wasn't he!

[Inferi]

Happy with the 3 points but not impressed by the performance. If it wasn't for some poor finishing from Preston in dangerous areas it could have ended very differently.  Also a bit lucky with the penalty decision that could have gone either way. Gueye had a good game again. Very poor from Pears for their goal, thankfully it didn't matter in the end.

[Upside Down]

14 minutes ago, Tom said:

Great win, I thought the performance was actually very similar to the Coventry game, the big difference is luck deserted us that night and was in our favour tonight. 
 

Their defender goes off then his replacement is beat by Gueye for the goal then concedes a penalty, they needlessly stop themselves scoring by tapping it in on the line and the 2 penalty calls could have gone either way.

I thought ours was slightly fortunate but I didn’t think there was much in theirs either even if the Sky Sports team wanted there to be.

We were comfortably the better team till we became our own worst enemy towards the end I thought.

 

Pears - not much to do but one awful punch and had a shocker for the goal 

Brittain - class act when he’s on form like tonight 

Batth / Hyam - both solid and no nonsense 

Beck - caught out for the goal and should have scored but still decent 

Travis - makes us tick, grown into a great captain 

Buckley - some nice passing but silly booking then lunged in after that, needs to stamp that out 

Hedges - industrious but a weak link for me going forward 

Weimann - quiet but put one on a plate for Beck 

Dolan - mainly ridiculous, silly step overs and too much but sublime for the goal 

Gueye - some cracking hold up play, his touch is deceivingly good, I think a pacer support would do him the world of good, delighted to see him score and smile, some great headers in our box but on another day may become a villain late on 

Cantwell - delighted he scored but still too many arrogant touches at times 

Sanderson - worryingly mistimed a header at a crucial time 

JRC / Forshaw - didn’t really notice 

I thought Hedges was pretty good today.

Great to see Big Mak bag a goal, he's a real menace to the defence, they just can't handle him bullying them about and we can now play a long ball up top knowing that someone is there who can win it.

Watched the game with the father in law who is a nobber. LOL!!!!!! 🤣

[booth]

1 minute ago, Inferi said:

Happy with the 3 points but not impressed by the performance. If it wasn't for some poor finishing from Preston in dangerous areas it could have ended very differently.  Also a bit lucky with the penalty decision that could have gone either way. Gueye had a good game again. Very poor from Pears for their goal, thankfully it didn't matter in the end.

We outplayed them right up till we had to make subs. Depth and injuries getting in the way of a decent performance (again) I thought. I'd have been livid if I was a nobber.

We had some poor finishing too.

[Forever Blue]

4 minutes ago, Inferi said:

Happy with the 3 points but not impressed by the performance. If it wasn't for some poor finishing from Preston in dangerous areas it could have ended very differently.  Also a bit lucky with the penalty decision that could have gone either way. Gueye had a good game again. Very poor from Pears for their goal, thankfully it didn't matter in the end.

Harsh. The performance was good for 75% of the game until the likes of Travis tired. 

[M_B]

10 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

I thought Hedges was pretty good today.

Great to see Big Mak bag a goal, he's a real menace to the defence, they just can't handle him bullying them about and we can now play a long ball up top knowing that someone is there who can win it.

Watched the game with the father in law who is a nobber. LOL!!!!!! 🤣

Hedges was good, given his time again Eustace would have left him on.

That one  sub was the game changer, I think Eustace thought it was job done.

[chaddyrovers]

Great win and much deserved. 

Brittain excellent tonight. Good defensive and great going forward. 

Batth and Hyam good..

Gueye getting better every game. Good header for goal.

Great to have Travis back and we are better with him in team. 

Deffo pen for us. 

Great 3 points and glad to get back to winning wages  

5th now, Eustace and the players deserved the praise and credit they should. 

Let's get that quality striker in before the deadline and secure that playoff place

Eustace's Blue and White Army 🔵 ⚪️ 

Edited Saturday at 00:11 by chaddyrovers

[joey_big_nose]

14 minutes ago, Hasta said:

Both Dolan and Cantwell need sitting in a room and showing them how pointless dribbles, backheels and step-overs at the wrong time just cost us, when doing the basics benefit us.

Great to get a derby win under our belts, and even funnier that they have a controversial last 8 minutes to go away and cry over.

Brittain, Hyam, Batth outstanding, and. If Mac is definitely on an upward curve.

Id take Dolan over Cantwell. Dolan is so frustrating but at least can sometimes beat his man, puts in the odd good ball, and works his nuts off. Cantwell i am just so confused about what he offers. With Gueye looking to come short and Cantwell having no desire to get beyond Big Mak they are really poorly matched as a pair.

Feels to me like Cantwell isnt going to work out. Id almost look to see if we could convert him to a centre mid as he works against us in that number 10 role slowing the game down and showing very little offensive movement. But i don't think hes got the discipline for centre mid either.

Really struggling to see where Todd fits in.

[den]

1 hour ago, jim mk2 said:

 

I thought Guere (who) had a very good first half but was virtually anonymous in the second and went missing when we needed him to take some pressure off our overworked midfield. He's definitely improving but needs to put in a solid 90 minutes every game before we can say we've got a decent Championship player. 

He ran out of steam Jim but had no one to replace him.

[booth]

Funny seeing Dingles moaning about the referee when they were rescued from defeat by a six fingered ref at t'Turd.

A dodgy sending off, a dodgy offside and foul at the same time leading to a disallowed goal.

Fucking yokels.

[jim mk2]

6 minutes ago, den said:

He ran out of steam Jim but had no one to replace him.

Yes he did Den. Credit to him though, he’s developing well, gaining confidence, it’s obvious the coaching staff and the player himself have been working hard on his game. Total contrast to the frankly embarrassing poor player he looked  not that many weeks ago

[DeeCee]

45 minutes ago, Tom said:

Great win, I thought the performance was actually very similar to the Coventry game, the big difference is luck deserted us that night and was in our favour tonight. 
 

Their defender goes off then his replacement is beat by Gueye for the goal then concedes a penalty, they needlessly stop themselves scoring by tapping it in on the line and the 2 penalty calls could have gone either way.

I thought ours was slightly fortunate but I didn’t think there was much in theirs either even if the Sky Sports team wanted there to be.

We were comfortably the better team till we became our own worst enemy towards the end I thought.

 

Pears - not much to do but one awful punch and had a shocker for the goal 

Brittain - class act when he’s on form like tonight 

Batth / Hyam - both solid and no nonsense 

Beck - caught out for the goal and should have scored but still decent 

Travis - makes us tick, grown into a great captain 

Buckley - some nice passing but silly booking then lunged in after that, needs to stamp that out 

Hedges - industrious but a weak link for me going forward 

Weimann - quiet but put one on a plate for Beck 

Dolan - mainly ridiculous, silly step overs and too much but sublime for the goal 

Gueye - some cracking hold up play, his touch is deceivingly good, I think a pacer support would do him the world of good, delighted to see him score and smile, some great headers in our box but on another day may become a villain late on 

Cantwell - delighted he scored but still too many arrogant touches at times 

Sanderson - worryingly mistimed a header at a crucial time 

JRC / Forshaw - didn’t really notice 

Exactly as I saw it! 👏

[Inferi]

2 minutes ago, Forever Blue said:

Harsh. The performance was good for 75% of the game until the likes of Travis tired. 

Yes it might be harsh. Especially considering Preston has had a good run of form. But we defended very deep against what looked like a quite poor side and they carved out enough goalscoring chances to make it feel like the game could have gone either way in the end. I agree that we looked way worse after Travis came off and JRC came on. And the way we ended the match may have unfairly affected how I viewed the overall performance.  But of course the 3 points is what matters!

[Bbrovers2288]

Didn’t think it was a dominant performance but a great and much needed 3 points to keep us interested. Rode our luck at the end, we looked hella nervy after 90 mins. Gueye has improved massively, got odds on a scoring streak? Pears back to being inconsistent and a bit of a liability. Think we need to part ways next season and get a new keeper. 
hedges is absolutely rotten, what exactly does he do? He looks busy but creates and scores 0, replace replace replace 

[booth]

Travis, Brittain and Mak were stand outs tonight.

We've missed Travis so much. When is Sonny back?

With another couple of players, a striker and Sonny Tronstadt returning, Eustace could get us into the play offs.

We've got Yuki to come back too.

[bigbrandjohn]

1 hour ago, booth said:

Thunderbird 1 was fucking livid at the end wasn't he!

Tempest in a teacup

 

[bigbrandjohn]

Maybe Barth could drop O'Brien a line and tell him that he is playing his best football ever in a playoff team and don't worry about all the previous bollocks. 

Barth and Hyam are immense and consistent. It also mean the full backs can push up. I also like the idea of booting the ball up to Big Mak. He did so well today. Beats the hell out of playing out from the back and losing the ball in our penalty area.

[chaddyrovers]

Icelandic fans who was at Rovers tonight were class and full of voice.