frosty

Get in! Going 1 up early away from home has led to some miserable results since we got promoted, pray for today to be different. COYB

Markus Babbel as one?

Lewis Holtby with very good pedigree, Greg Cunningham who came highly rated, Bradley Johnson is used to spending most of his time in the top 6 of this league, a £5m striker, Mowbray has been able to sell and keep who he’s wanted = despite there are still a couple of areas I think we can improve, there should be high expectations from all fans now to (in the words of Mr. Bowyer) have a right good go THIS season while we have this squad together and while the league is so wide open.

I imagine the shocking start refers to losing the first two games only.

Like the end of last season where he was starting, scoring, assisting and we were winning? It’s criminal that that is his only sustained run in the team since he joined. If he’s given half a dozen starts in a row and does nothing, then fine, back to being an impact sub, but a player so talented being reduced to 25 mins a match when he’s shown he can do it from the start just isn’t right.

Yep, no idea why that's back at Rovers all of a sudden. Tacky and small time.

Sparse and flat. Pretty dull this, like all other home games so far this season. There’s such a lack of quality on show from both sides which means we could win this, but yeah it’s dull. Btw - where’s that tacky small-time goal music come from? Thought we were past that stage.

I knew there was something I forgot! That probably annoys me more than the domestic cups. If I was a Wolves fan I'd rather go deep in the Europa League with some memorable nights and away trips and finish say 12th in the PL, than go out of the Europa League early and finish higher up in the league (which could mean another qualification for the same tournament anyway....!).

I love football and life without it would be very different, but here are mine (excluding the obvious such as racism and abusing players online.) - The World Cup and Euros being messed with. A 32 team World Cup every four years in summer, and a 16 team Euros every four years was working perfectly well - why change it? Euro 2016 with 32 teams was a pretty dire tournament and some third place teams (including Portugal) going through just didn't feel right. The World Cup in Qatar stinks while 48 teams in the tournament as of 2026 is loads. - People like Steve Kean and Jerome Anderson making a fortune from the game. - Mid-table Premier League clubs that spend eye-watering amounts of money and have little chance of relegation (not that that should matter) yet they almost do their best to go out of the domestic cups as soon as possible. Can't get my head around it. Bournemouth and Burnley spring to mind. Makes me appreciate Rovers reaching semi-finals every season minus 2 or 3 when in the PL in the 2000s even more. - Huge transfer fees for very good, but not great, players. I know inflation is a thing but it feels like the wrong era for huge transfer fees. I think the 90s and early 2000s was a golden era for football in terms of genuine world class players. Some of those iconic players would deserve these fees more than the likes of Harry Maguire, Kepa, Dembele, even Griezmann etc. - Robotic player/manager interviews.

I fear this too. We’ll have to hope Armstrong has his one good game in 15.

Indeed, I'm not far off finishing it now and I highly recommend it.

Anton Forrester. Crikey. There have been some awful performances and results over the last 9 years but this game still comes to mind whenever I think of the worst game I've ever seen.

Good point, Yorke and Cole didn't do loads that season yet we still finished 6th and reached the semi-final of the League Cup. If Jansen and Cole had carried on from where they left off in 01/02, coupled with Duff's often world class form that season and Friedel being unbeatable at times, there'd have been no stopping us! We'd have probably gone further in the UEFA Cup too.

Even though the quality is low, you could make a case for most Championship games being 'tough' if you really wanted to. Let's take the next three games. Millwall have already been to WBA - a place where some don't mind a 3-2 defeat - twice this season and won and drawn. Only lost once out of six. Can already hear them being dubbed a 'tough nut to crack' or similar. Reading away. They've also been to WBA and drawn. They also beat Cardiff at home 3-0.....some people were happy with the 0-0 draw we had against them last week. We lost there last season, so a draw there would be an improvement, etc etc. If Luton have a couple of decent results before we play them their 'promotion bounce' will no doubt be mentioned, and you could go on and on. At the end of the day it's all nonsense because there's zero to fear and, if our aim is to make the top 6 like Mowbray and the players told us all summer, we should be going out to win every game and not being content with dropping points against teams we're supposed to be aiming to be up there with.

7 points from 6 games then? Pretty much par for the course for a mid table Championship team managed by Tony Mowbray. We’ll just plod along like that all season.

'Sunderland 'Til I Die', yeah it's definitely worth a watch.

Indeed! Strange attitude to cups that lot, they seem to be happy to go out as early as possible every year. They’ve shown enough in the league so far to suggest they probably won’t be in a relegation scrap so why not try and go far in a cup while they have a team that’s capable? Proud of us reaching semi final after semi final in the 2000s (and obviously winning the League Cup in 2002) while still having strong league campaigns more often that not.

Bury have been expelled. How terribly sad. Rovers going bust would be like losing a limb.

Not that surprising Armstrong missed. Dack or Rothwell it should have been. Rothwell in particular I can imagine would have fired it home.

Absolutely desperate for a change to be made, so slow and one-paced today.

Dack very quiet - think he needs more quality and creativity around him who he can link up with. Give them something else to worry about, would get Rothwell on right now.

After years of watching Lowe, Akpan, Evans etc plodding around the centre circle it's such a breath of fresh air to see Travis and Johnson up and down contributing in both boxes. Even just taking Tuesday night, Johnson hit the woodwork twice in one half and Travis made a brilliant last-ditch tackle. We've had years of our CMs doing nothing like that.

Agreed. At the time of our relegation he looked like mid-table PL player at least, so you can understand him not wanting to play in the Championship for an abysmally run club that had Kean as 'manager'. QPR was an awful career choice though. That's where he went wrong.

Whatever your opinion on the players themselves is, nobody can say that £12.5m (I think it’s slightly higher) on three players for Rovers is ‘peanuts’. And while it looks like Gallagher will be a regular, Brereton looks further away from a starting spot than ever.

Looking forward to this one now after the last two results and last night's performance. Cardiff have so far shipped 3 away at both Reading and Wigan and scraped past Luton at home with a last minute winner. So, while I'm sure they'll get better especially with Warnock in charge, we should be going for a win. I'd probably bring Bell in at LB just to keep Williams and Lenihan at CB together. Bell clearly isn't as good or well-rounded as Cunningham but we should be able to get by.