No it isn't an exaggeration Woodrow is "crap"; Gueye is "crap". It's easy to use the forum search function roversfan and tbh we all know it's what is wrote as we read it ourselves But nevertheless my post wasn't aimed at outing individuals. It's a general overview of what I see. There's been a negative perception of our recruitment over the past 3 / 4 seasons. It is easy to see why - the big names go elsewhere these days. We all wax lyrical about Baggies signing Armstrong, or Boro signing this man, or Hull signing this man It's quite common to see the words "ambition" used when speaking of other clubs But here we are, competing and at times bettering those around us whilst spending quite a lot less than them And for me, that is down to what must be an incredibly productive recruitment team. Or else what is it - luck? If we do manage to make the play offs then it is a consolidated team effort, driven by a manager who has recognised the way this bunch of players are required to play and has drilled them well. Not one man, not ten men but all involved - even Gueye, who as far back as 4 weeks ago had 1 wooden leg and three left feet in the eyes of some I am not saying that people are being negative "for the sake of it". People will see a negative for many reasons - some may think we should 'think bigger'. I'd agree with that. For others it may be that they have a general dislike of the player bought; think we need players in other areas; but sometimes people may just be a glass half empty type. The theme remains though - a general negative outlook. I suppose, if you don't consider yourself as a negative poster, then what I wrote has no bearing on you. And if you think I am saying people are being negative simply for the sake of it, then my post is not explained very well. It is that it has become quite clear that certain fans' expectations are not aligned with the resource we have. You can set yourself up window after window for disappointment, or you can look at it for what it is. That we are continuing to achieve more than the sum of our parts; and that for all of the players that come from crap leagues, with no ambition, or are crap, they continue to perform beyond expectation despite all the obstacles in their way

Look, I know you love being the man to defend "just criticism" but the point is that our recruitment team 'wee with the willy we have' Over the course of the previous few seasons, almost all of the signings have been met with a large degree of scepticism I'm done with that. I'm well-versed to the fact we will be signing relatively unknown players, or young talent seeking to develop, or even older players in their twighlight. Because they are the pools we operate in. Am I happy about it? No. But will I constantly look to call those players 'crap' because they don't fit in with the Football Manager generation of 'wonderkids'? Nope. And in fact, our progression has shown that largely we are getting it right. We have continued to outperform teams around us despite our budget constraints. Gueye - "crap"; Ohashi - "came from a crap league"; Weimann - "crap and old" etc etc etc etc But despite all of that, this is another season we find ourselves in play off contention. We may not make it - fine. That's the horror of Championship football. But it looks as though this is another season that the hard-working & clearly very diligent recruitment team have taken a shoestring budget and produced a winning team And so, with all that said and done, it has nothing to do with simply "getting behind the team ffs" and more to do with looking at the recent history and seeing that more often than not, the critique has been wrong, and the recruitment team has been right

Not a bad window for me I am not here for the doom & gloom of "oh he's crap, he's crap, yep he's crap too" - I have heard it all before, with practically every signing we make these days Unfortunately, we haven't a pot to piss in. The recruitment team gets a fair bit of stick on here but I can never understand why. Of the past 4 seasons we have spent 3 of them operating in & around the top 10 places. Yet our budget sits comfortably within the bottom 10 - maybe even bottom 6? I think the recruitment team has done an excellent job with the resource we have. Coupled with the issues around budget, we also have a senior team who just aren't pulling their weight - whether that's with accidents with paperwork or drive & ambition Despite all of this, we once again find ourselves post-Christmas in the play off hunt. The additions of Dennis, Kargbo and Woodrow are extra competition up top whilst we have addressed some imbalance at the back. Ok, we may have downgraded Baker with Forshaw but that was largely out of our hands. It was a must to get somebody in quickly & cheaply. I think we will see Kargbo tonight, with maybe Denis and Woodrow waiting until the cup game at the weekend

Blimey, if your career is on the decline at 29 then we may as well give up He has 3/4 years in him He did it last year in the Scottish Prem where the goals are the same size unbelievably!! All talk anyway, more likely Edward Longshanks than Shankland

Unfortunately it’s that “English premium” Plus a few Champions League apps and a PL app here and there and quickly the value rises £10m is a lot of money, but I suspect a lot of that will be made up of performance related add ons

Hes had a few 20+ goal seasons Not bad for a crap player

Morton is a good player. Thats why he attracts offers around that mark

Who are the 11? 1. Amario Cozier Duberry 2. Adam Forshaw 3. Sanderson 4. Dolan 5. Hedges 6. Owen Beck 7. Siggy 8. Hyam 9. Weimann 10. Batth? Who is the last one? Need to get Hyam and Hedges signed up for me. It’ll be a big loss to lose Beck, Hyam and Batth in a single season The rest are replaceable Biggest loss will be Owen Beck. But he was never ours to begin with

It changes it completely, not somewhat A deflection happening once a goalkeeper has dived means the goalie is relying now on luck It is why not a lot of people can play well in goal. The ability to time your dive with where the ball is going to end up is rare; the best in the world may have cat like reflexes and be able to adjust. Unfortunately, those types of keepers are rare as rocking horse shit It wasn’t his fault he conceded that free kick at all

The 2.5 year contract seems strange They must be paying over what they wanted to pay for him, so have the short contract in place to minimise risk There’s not much reason for it otherwise…unless it is all he would give

I’m told that Big Mak can’t play football very well Has anybody told him that?

It is ok though, because for every post we have saying “so and so is signing” we have the same lads on hand to remind us the person who posted it is a “wannabe ITK” It’s like groundhog day. Bring on Abebajo…..

I agree that we won the first part of the battle but going into the end of the half we started to lose that momentum Forshaw isn’t as bad as being made out but paired with Buckley isn’t the best partnership. Neither have that tenacious attitude - and comparisons to Trav and Tronstad are night and day But I do agree with you on Cantwell. For me, I’d put Buckley in that 10 and play Forshaw and Cantwell, with the idea that Buckley drops much deeper and helps Trav win that battle in the middle. Like it or not, we don’t have another Tronstad, and in true “moneyball” style if you have to bring in 2 players to replace what you lose in Tronstad then so be it

We have to get a grip of them in midfield. The last two games we have lost that battle For Bristols 2nd goal their player ran completely unchallenged through the centre of the park. It’s been a while since Rovers conceded a goal like that I would be tempted to lose Cantwell and drop a third player in with Trav and Buckley to make sure we win it. Problem being, that 3rd player is Forshaw.. It isn’t a must win in the literal sense but failure to win here and morale hits a new low. PNE have a habit of beating us and they couldn’t have picked a better time for this fixture if they tried. Not confident at all

January will always be like this I think the management plan for the club is pretty 'consistent' now in respect of expenditure In the spring timeish our "board" will be given a budget for year spends. We will effectively spend this in the summer months. From thereon we are an accounting exercise - did our monthly spends equate cost to value; what is forecast to spend against what we have left to spend Any money we make on transfers will mean less capital investment by Venkys LLTD in the following summer The idea that we can reinvest x amount of transfer fees is barmy. It has never been that way. This is why all talk of "we should have sold x, y and z" is pointless. There's no point selling players. We may as well hold them for as long as we can and then go again if it doesn't result in promotion Selling a player does absolutely nothing to benefit the Rovers. That's been made perfectly clear

Forshaw has come at an unfortunate time to be honest By all accounts, Rooney was a quite terrible coach. He’s been playing under him for 6 months. It was going to take time to get up to speed, especially with the way Eustace expects his central midfielders to play Having to come straight in the side isn’t ideal. I think it was a poor choice for a signing - maybe should have took a chance on a Morton loan or something. He would be better. I would have taken him on a loan to buy with promotion option. Liverpool want rid

I believe I have inadvertently created a scene I meant “expect a signing” as in - we have lost one player off the wages so expect one in Tends to be the way we operate

Expect a signing tonight

Bradley Dack was much better and so was Sammie We have had some good attackers over the past few years - stretching back to Rhodes - and so a below average one sticks out like a sore thumb imo Cantwell is the sort of player who relies on people around him as well. At the moment he is having to come really deep to get on the ball. It isn’t playing to his strengths at all. He needs pace either side of him and a forward to bounce off. We are three players short of seeing his full potential for me

Cozier Duberry isn’t much different to Dolan really. I think Dolan offers more overall Been an organised half as we expect. Feel there’s a moment of magic that will unlock this defence coming soon We need to start getting balls into the box for Gueye. The one frustrating part of Becks game is his insistence on fizzing the ball across the box low. Sometimes we need to play to our strengths. Other than that, good half of football and 1 goal will win this game so need to make sure it’s ours

When we spent on Szmodics we also had months of hearing he was a waste of money too

Mowbray was a good manager but his time here came to an end. Such is life I never got the whole "lining his pension fund" argument. If you aren't earning money or 'lining your pension fund' then why the fuck are you going to work? For the love of it? Did people expect Mowbray to work for free because he was in his 50s? He was dealt a shoddy hand when he took over. A club in terminal decline with the worst employment seen in my time as a Rovers fan (Coyle - not just a poor manager, but a Dingle too "Agent Coyle") and a team that was disjointed, unbalanced and demoralised. When Mowbray left, we had a number of academy players transition into senior squad members and a list of players who, with the right contract management from above, could have been sold and earned the club a tidy sum of money We had good times with Mowbray, we had bad times but his integrity was never in question with me. His 'dumbing down of the club' was in poor taste at a time when he was under pressure - for me, that is the negative I take from his time. His comments were at times crass. Other than that, he left the club in a better state than when he found it and really that is all you ask from your manager

There's a lot to be said for that, for sure You look at some of these players and just know they'd be a nightmare to play against. You are 100% right about Beck In the lower levels of football a lot of the 3g pitches have barriers running only a few metres from the touch line. I've seen a few nasty collisions, including broken arms and cheek bones. Some defenders revel in the opportunity to put a man on his backside. Beck is one of them There was a moment yesterday when it looked as though the winger got past Beck and somehow he managed to stay with him, track the run, and basically run the winger off the pitch. As a centre half you love those types of full backs. There's a few who would miss the first tackle and so will just let the winger past, even at this level Coincidentally, as good a footballing side as JDT had us, I'm struggling to think who I wouldn't have liked to come across in that squad. We had a very soft underbelly and have done for years. So it is refreshing to see us winning the battles this season. It used to be that when we did see players give a bit, they got sent off for doing it foolishly - I think of Garrett or of Buckley throwing the ball at that Boro players head. It was all naive and nicey-nicey. Never a recipe for success

Ah I'd take anything people say with a pinch of salt He got into double figures for goals each season with Baggies. For a man with no end product, playing from the left, 10+ goals is a good return You'll struggle to find better for the same cost in this league. If we go cost to value then BTA seems a good option

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this Tyrone. A lot of talk about how Gueye is awful with his feet...I don't see it. He isn't the most technical player in our team but awful is a stretch It's another game that Gueye has changed. We looked blunt in attack before that, When Gueye enters the pitch, the defenders have to think about something differently. Weimann wants to get in front of the defender for crosses, whereas Gueye is happy to have that ball lofted and he'll attack it wherever the centre half is Is it a stretch to say Gueye wins us the three points? Maybe. We were much better than Pompey and would have probably found a goal elsewhere but I'm going to give it to Gueye. Just like against Sheffield Wednesday and the last minute equaliser for Leeds (it was Gueye's assist) - that is 7 pts that Gueye has come on and contributed heavily to in a month. I'm sure there will be more going back that I have forgot Overall thought it was a scrappy game to be honest. They are as poor a side we have played this season. 3 pts in the bag and a 3-0 home win is exactly what this fixture deserved. Owen Beck and Callum Brittain are fantastic on either side. I think Beck is my favourite player though. What a signing he has proved to be