It’s no secret that I’m not Eustace’s biggest fan, but I’m still disappointed that he’s gone - I would have liked to see how the season finished with him at the helm and I think parting ways at the end of the season would have been a better outcome for all involved (including Eustace who very likely will now spend next season managing in league 1) And it goes without saying that this whole situation shows (once again) that the club is a binfire at the moment and isn’t sustainable in the long run. However, if what Elliott Jackson has written is true, then I have to say I’m glad we didn’t just cave in to whatever Eustace wanted. His preference for signing older players would have left us with an aging squad with no resale value and tbh they’re not even that good: Batth is the one who has really worked out, but even then he’s playing better than I think anyone would have expected. McFadz couldn’t get a game, Weimann has chipped in with some important goals but his overall game isn’t great and he doesn’t have the legs for 90 minutes, Bamford - one good season in his entire career, hated by Leeds fans and made of glass - thank god that one was vetoed!! And I think the expectation that Smzodics would have stayed with a pay rise is naive too - he was talking about wanting to move to the prem literally a couple of days after last season ended. All a bumper new contract offer would have done is to encourage every other player in the squad to knock on the door demanding more. In terms of what comes next - as a few others have already said, whilst Eustace has done well (and certainly outperformed what most of us expected) he isn’t irreplaceable - the last 3 managers now have all had us challenging around the playoffs with what, on paper, looks a poor squad and every year I see people on here saying that this is our best chance because the league is poor and it won’t be next season - but like I said it gets said every year, and every year (including last season) we’re in the mix in the first half of the season - so maybe we just need to accept that our players are perhaps better than we think they are and/or the quality of the league is just poor every year. We are in a fantastic position and who knows, maybe a new voice, some new ideas, a new manager bounce etc etc might just see us squeeze into the playoffs this year

Had our perfectly good goal not been ruled out for offside, or a penalty given to us when Kargbo was clipped, then we may well have come away with 1-0 win too. Or, put another way, would Plymouth have still gone on to win had the referee screwed them over and not given them the penalty? But no, you’re right, it’s all just down to mentality

I’m almost certain he won’t have trained with us at all yet, let alone run rings around anyone. Given we played Friday night, I’m not sure they’ll have trained between then and travelling down to London. The lad is probably only just learning his new teammates’ names, let alone how the manager wants to play etc - anyone expecting him to get anything more than about 10 minutes tonight was always going to be disappointed. From the other comments on here, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who is frustrated by Cantwell - I got pelters for mildly criticising him earlier in the season. He should be made to watch the video of Chair from tonight - the way he finds space, makes dangerous runs and, most importantly, keeps possession for his team - that’s what we want (and need) Todd to be doing, but at the moment he doesn’t look capable Also interesting to see Eustace getting a bit of stick tonight. We’ve ridden our luck a bit this season - far too often we’ve been too careless in possession, but good results paper over the cracks. Now we’re on a poor run it’s more obvious that our tactics hand momentum to the opposition too easily. And whilst we all know that he has been let down in the transfer market by those above him, so has every manager these jokers have appointed. At what point does our poor run stop being a good manager let down and start being a ‘death spiral’?

I too didn’t think he was that bad - he got himself into decent positions, but just never managed to find the finish. I don’t think he ever really got a proper chance though - it’s very difficult to find form when you’re only getting the odd 5 minutes here and there, or thrown into the lineup for a cup game as a one-off. I still maintain that had he played as many minutes as Gallagher did over the season he would have at least matched his goal return

The idea is that it spreads the opposition out because they have to have some closing down the short ball as well as being ready for the long one - which, in theory, provides more space to play in and gives you a better chance of keeping hold of possession (I think I saw a stat that nearly 90% of long goal kicks are turned over possession - although obviously some managers, such as Big Sam for instance, will take the view that even if you turn over possession it is at least in the opposition half and so if you can then win it back you’re in a better position than on the edge of your own box 🤷‍♂️) Of course what happened in the first half last night (and not for the first time) is that our passing and movement is so poor that we end up just smashing it long to their defenders and conceding possession anyway

In fairness we were playing with a disadvantage for that period - Pompey kept passing the ball to each other whilst our lads clearly hadn’t been told they were allowed to do that!! Thankfully it improved (although it couldn’t have got worse) and it was Gueye who really made the difference. I get the frustration about the lack of goals from him, but I’ve never felt he deserves the amount of stick he gets on here. The lads a natural target man - wins flick ons, holds the ball up well - and given that we defend so deep he’s fairly crucial to how we play as he allows us to get out and to play in the opposition half occasionally.

Although Wharton is almost certainly out for the season, so that's one more space for a loan this season which is perhaps why Kitching makes sense

Have to agree, I thought Cantwell was definitely our weakest player today and I was amazed that he stayed on for the whole match. Being generous I’d say he wasn’t fit, but then that makes it even more surprising that he wasn’t taken off. But given the impact we’ve seen from past players in his position, Dack & Szmodics most recently, you’d have to say that currently he has been somewhat of a letdown. Personally, today, I’d have brought Hedges on at halftime and moved Dolan into the number 10 position.

We had two players booked for time wasting during the added time, so again he was always likely to add some extra on. It’s always been a bugbear of mine that refs will acknowledge that teams are time-wasting (by booking players or pointing to their watch) but then not actually add on extra time to make up for it. For instance Hull were wasting time from the first 10 minutes onwards on Sunday but we only got 1 minute extra in the first half and 4 in the second. I suppose we can be upset that the ref today applied the rules correctly when often they don’t, but personally I’d rather they all did the same

Are you joking? There were 2 lengthy injuries in the first 10 minutes of the second half - it was always going to be 8+ minutes added. And the 10 minutes was shown just around the time the ball was played forward for JRC to win the corner from which we equalised - so no conspiracy theories needed. There’s plenty of things we could feel aggrieved about - the penalty was soft and he wasn’t going to give it until Gnonto got into his face, Ampadu got away without a yellow card despite the most blatant handball you’ll ever see, the numerous soft freekicks he gave to their right back, to name just a few, so there’s no need to be making things up to get upset about

The problem with signing a loan CB in January is that we would probably be looking for them to come in as cover for Hyam/Batth/Carter (when he’s fit), and so you’re not likely to get a decent loan on that basis - clubs don’t like loaning their best youngsters out to sit on Championship teams benches

Gueye was poor today, but he certainly wasn’t alone in that regard. And I do think that the level of criticism that he receives is disproportionate compared to what the other players get. Take the shot that you mentioned for instance - yes he dragged it, yes he probably ought to have done better, but that was greeted by chants of ‘bring on the Yuki’ (who was virtually non-existent when he was brought on btw). Less than a minute later ACD completely overhits a crossfield ball, smashing it out of play, and gets a round of applause. It’s a funny old game, as they say!

On the inverted winger debate - variety is the key. The really top players can go both ways, no matter what side they are playing on - I remember Duff cutting in and scoring goals with his right when playing on the left for us and Giggs used to turn defenders inside out because they never knew which way he was going to go. Their goals yesterday were both from getting to the byline and getting a ball across the area, but the reason they were able to do so was because Beck was concentrating on not allowing Roberts to cut inside onto his favoured foot - if he had been playing on the ‘right’ side I imagine he would have found it harder because the fullback would have been covering the cross first and foremost. That said it’s all down to how a manager wants to play and what striker you’re playing etc really. If you’ve got Shearer and Sutton in the middle there’s no point playing inverted wingers because you need to get crosses into your forwards. But if you’ve got Adam Armstrong in the middle there’s probably no point throwing loads of crosses in and so you might go for inverted wingers instead (which incidentally opens up space for your fullbacks to overlap and cut balls back from the byeline)

I lost count of the number of times the ball was played up to Ohashi in the first half, only for him to allow the defender to step in front of him and beat him to it - but not a peep out of anyone around me in the JW. Gueye came on and in his first few minutes on the pitch had one ball fired miles over his head and another one launched towards him which he managed to jump for and knock down only for there to be no Rovers player within 20 yards of him - and a couple of guys behind me started with the ’bloody useless him’ and never been a footballer’ crap. I don’t get it. Is it just because he looks ungainly or something? I know Yuki scored yesterday, but just on performance, I thought Gueye offered more (that said I don’t think either are the answer long-term and a striker really needs to be a priority in the window) Cantwell, and Dolan, looked good in the first 30 minutes of the game when we were playing with intensity and looking to get the ball into their feet and play off them - with Brittain, Ohashi and Hedges making runs in behind. However, as the game went on (until the last 10 minutes anyway) we got deeper and deeper and started to play longer and longer balls and Cantwell just wasn’t in the game - mainly because we were bypassing him and launching it over his head and chasing balls into the final third just isn’t his game.

In fairness to the club they did announce that they would be closed (I knew and wasn’t planning on going down) This was in an email I got last week And this was on the website yesterday. In a similar vein, I went to a coffee shop earlier today, had arranged to meet someone to talk about something for work, only to find it was closed early because of a private function - it’s frustrating, but I guess it’s something that happens at this time of year (whether it should or not is debatable, I’m just making the case that Rovers aren’t unique in this area)