11 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

This has to be another game we go into v a direct rival embracing the challenge and thinking that we have a good chance of getting 3 points, there is no reason for any inferiority complex. A loss would be a setback yet again at a point in which we are primed to be able to really push ourselves into that top 6, a draw would be respectable to an extent but a chance to make up ground somewhat spurned.

 

That penny really dropped for me in the first half against Brentford. I'm not sure if they were playing within themselves a bit, but we went toe-to-toe in playing a high tempo attacking game and we outplayed them. Not saying that we definitely would have won without the sending off, but we've played plenty of the better teams now and I don't think that we've been outplayed by any of them when it was 11 vs 11. We've only really struggled either i) during a massive injury crisis or ii) against teams that are set up to frustrate us. 

The issue we have is turning good performances against good teams into the wins we deserve. Only getting 1 point from the performances at Brentford, Swansea, Watford and Bournemouth is ridiculous, although to a certain extent you credit them for being more clinical. I think Bristol City are probably the sort of team that will look to attack us but don't have the individual quality that some of the other teams at the top do, so I can see the game suiting us quite well.

1-3 Rovers

7 minutes ago, joey_big_nose said:

Injuries a massive issue. If Williams is fit I would go 

                     Kaminski

Nyambe.   Ayala.    Williams.   Douglas.

       Holtby.     Johnson.  Rothwell

     Gallagher.   Armstrong.   Dolan.

I think Elliott struggled in the false 9 role.

But to be honest any of Pike, Bell, Elliott, Trybull, Davenport, Buckley could start. Will just come down to whose fittest....

Bracing myself for another injury to Ayala and/or Nyambe. Then we are really up sh*t creek.

I'd personally have Trybull in there in front of Johnson. Should be fresher, and I'm pretty sure he won't be able to play against Norwich, so better off giving Johnson a rest and save him for the weekend.

Other than that, I'd go with the same team. 

1 minute ago, Ewood Ace said:

He'll be playing in the lower leagues if not non league in a few years. There are a lot of players like him down at that level good on the ball but unable to handle the physicality of the game and ends up getting bullied. Yesterday the Brentford lads down the left were going past him like he wasn't there.

Game of opinions, but I would be absolutely amazed if it turns out like that. Genuinely shocked. 

I can't agree that he's nowhere near ready either. He's only doing it in flashes at the moment, but when he gets it right he can already see passes which nobody else in the side can, perhaps Holtby at an absolute push. Even yesterday he showed some lovely touches with the ball at his feet.

He's a bit lightweight and inconsistent, I'll grant you. Patience with this lad will be rewarded by the bucketload. 

38 minutes ago, Butty said:

I’m not sure “backs against the wall” and “Amari’ Bell” should ever be used in the same sentence ? I think Douglas was probably feeling the injury that kept him out of Wednesdays game so with us being down to 10 men TM probably didn’t want to risk Douglas aggravating that injury, I might be wrong though and you may well be right! 

I did find myself wincing as I typed it!

I'm certainly not his biggest fan (not sure any of us are) but I do think that he's improved steadily & is adequate back up at this level. Having said that he was really poor midweek, but I was pretty impressed by him today. 

On Douglas, I could be wrong but are we certain that he's definitely injured? I know that he's obviously first choice, but given that we knew we'd be back against the wall in the second half bringing Bell on might've been tactical?

1 minute ago, davulsukur said:

If you appeal and you're unsuccessful, don't they get an additional games ban?

I think that's only true if it's considered a frivolous one. Not sure how they arrive at judgement, but if anyone can look at our case and call it frivolous then the game has gone!

Miracle point. So proud of the effort today

Just now, arbitro said:

Fair play to Mowbray for bringing Wharton back. I for one didn't think he would recall him but stick with the more experienced Ayala.

Big call. This is probably the game that on paper would have suited Williams the most since he's been injured. Toney's big and strong, but it's not really his physicality that should worry us.

Out of the two we have available, Wharton is obviously the most mobile but he won't have been exposed to too many attacks like Brentford's before today. Plenty of managers would have gone with Ayala's experience, so let's see how it pans out. 

3 minutes ago, JoeH said:

I seem to remember a lot of people claiming Hughton would fire Forest into the Top 6, a few going as far to say that Hughton will easily finish above Mowbray with Rovers. Same sentiments towards Neil Warnock and his Boro side. We're currently ahead of both and one of which is in a serious relegation dog fight! 

To be fair, Middlesbrough have improved plenty since Colin has showed up there. Still well in the hunt for a top 6 place and it wouldn't shock me if they're competing for the automatics in the spring. 

Have to admit I'm surprised that Hughton hasn't had more of an obvious impact. He does seem to have tightened up their defence, but points haven't followed. Might be different once they get Grabban back.

8 minutes ago, Hoochie Bloochie Mama said:

Mowbray gives injury latest on Rovers midfielder Travis | Lancashire Telegraph

Back in a month hopefully. 

Would be good to get both Dack and Travis ready to start the F.A. cup game. Any significant contribution before then is a bonus. 

13 hours ago, Madon said:

If a Premier League came in for Armstrong in January, how much would you be happy to sell him for? 

I strongly believe that if we are ever going back up then this is our year and Armstrong is absolutely pivotal. 

It would need to be an offer of £25 million + to even consider it!

One of those players where you would not be confident of replacing even with a massive budget, so I wouldn't be happy selling him at any price, really.

In terms of what we should be accepting, I agree that something like 25 million is what should be required to start a conversation. If we're still in the hunt come the end of January, I wouldn't even consider that. 

I know that controversial or underperforming players attract more discussion than players who do the business consistently, but I'm amazed that we've reached a total of 16 pages on Arma in just over two years.

By himself he's managed to at least equal the number of goals scored by a third of all the clubs in the league. He's scored double the number of goals of Derby County. Amazing given about 12 months ago there was a decent argument that he'd struggle to start as a number 9 with no strike partner. 

2 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Way too much pessimism above.

I've yet to see another Championship side I've been particularly impressed with this season and we need to be going into every game with the mindset that it's a winnable fixture and perform accordingly.

None of this we'll settle for 3 draws or WLD malarkey.

Agree with that to a point, whilst we can look at the last two games and feel a bit lucky to have picked up 6 points, we weren't outplayed by any of the top sides we've come up against this season with the exception of Reading.

Even so if we were taking a Hughes-like approach of targeting a certain number of points from the next few games, a return of 5-6 points would be very decent in keeping the optimism going. Norwich will be weakened with injuries, so three points there and 1 win/2 draws from the other games keeps us well in touch with the top. 

For a boy of 12, Harvey Elliott is very good at football

With the possible exception of Armstrong, I think Mowbray will be looking to rotate our entire midfield and attack before the new year. Think having Rothwell on the bench for this one if anything recognises how much of a key player he's been for us this year, given our tough week coming up.

No Cooper for them - big loss

Last minute equaliser for Cov against Wayne Rooney's Derby.

19 minutes ago, JoeH said:

Johnson has to play. Changed our game against Barnsley, took some proper control of that midfield and against Millwall we need the "soldiers" to coin Tony Mowbray's phrase. Give Tom Trybull a rest. Other than that I don't see the need to tinker too much. Bell is going to have to play left-back with Douglas out til the weekend, and then its a toss up between Wharton and Ayala really. 

Feeling a Holtby goal.

Game is tailor made for Johnson and Ayala, although I wouldn't advocate dropping Wharton if he's made a complete recovery. 

Mowbray seems to be hinting that Douglas will probably be fit, but I'd be very comfortable playing Bell for this game. With the schedule coming up and a couple of little question marks over Douglas' ability to play so many games back to back, Bell's going to get into the team at some points during the season. Might as well play him now and give Douglas a few more days to recover. 

Strangely - given how relentless our December is, there's a full week before and after the third round - two weeks between league fixtures like an international break.

Obviously it's risky to make wholesale changes - but we should be able to give some of our over-flogged players a decent rest.

Boring draw, but a good one. 

8 minutes ago, only2garners said:

Millwall had 6 players unavailable on Saturday - Zohore, Mitchell, Mahoney, Bennett, Romeo and Bradshaw. As I don't know a lot about them I have no idea whether any or all of these 6 would have started had they been fit though. Or whether they might be fit for Wednesday.

Apparently Jake Cooper played 15 minutes with a dislocated shoulder too. Would have thought he would miss out on Wednesday. 

22 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Of course it does.

But you can’t judge a fanbase by the rantings of a few pissed up imbeciles at away games (many of whom never step foot in ‘shit’ Ewood). However, as a whole, the crowd has been great with him and I was proud of us for that.
 

Think that's completely fair. I think he would have struggled to avoid criticism will be online. It might well be a minority and a bit echo-chambery, but the torrent of abuse and derision underperforming footballers get online is absolutely unreal. Doesn't make Rovers fans any different to any other club of our size, but I'd be surprised if it didn't affect him at times.

Agree that on the whole, fans at Ewood have been very patient with him, and now that patience seems to be paying off. 

10 minutes ago, only2garners said:

No away fans yet, quite probably not all season.

Let's see what the future holds, but I'm hopeful for the back end of the season. Sufficient proportion of the population will be vaccinated by April that football may return to something like normal.

At the very least I hope they'll let us in to Wembley in May.

42 minutes ago, Hoochie Bloochie Mama said:

We weren't especially decimated against Forest or Cardiff and those are the two results that were particularly poor. Losing away to Watford or B'mouth is not especially unlikely even with a full strength team. Injuries are just an excuse and 13 games is enough to make a judgement on how the team is going to fare. 

v Forest: Rovers: Kaminski, Nyambe, Lenihan (c), Ayala, Bell, Johnson, Buckley (Chapman, 68), Evans, Dolan (Gallagher, 53), Brereton (Brennan, 81), Armstrong.

v Cardiff: Rovers: Kaminski, Nyambe, Ayala, Williams, Bell, Johnson (c), Holtby (Chapman, 78), Rothwell, Dolan (Buckley, 60), Brereton (Gallagher, 58), Armstrong.

I'd argue that missing both our starting number 8s for the Forest game was quite bad, but that's splitting hairs a bit I guess. We should've played better in those games, even if a points return of 1 point was a little less than we deserved. 

Even so, we're not in December yet & we've played multiple games with a third-choice out of position left back, our back up keeper, our fourth choice centre half and without arguably our four first choice centre midfielders in Dack/Travis/Holtby & Rothwell. We'll all have it bad at some point this season, but so far I'd say we've had it a bit worse than most & hopefully it'll have evened out by the end of the season. 

Anyway, all in all I think we're slightly unfortunate not to have a few more points than we do, and I think we've definitely played well enough to not be scared of anyone in this league. In previous years we might be looking at a Brentford/Bristol City/Norwich week as damage limitation. This season I hope we're looking at it as a chance to make a statement. 

Just now, Hoochie Bloochie Mama said:

They've affected everyone in the league, Norwich and Bristol City have both been badly affected and are above us. And we've got a better squad?

Something's not adding up...

We're still looking at a small-ish sample of results. At this point last season Brentford were only just getting going, but their quality showed as the season went on. All teams have been influenced by injuries and covid, but I'm not sure how many teams have had as many first teamers out for individual games as we had before the international break. Even yesterday we finished the game with a fifth choice centre back, and we're in miles better health than we were a few weeks ago. 

I'm not saying that we do have a better squad than those teams by the way! But if we're judging our league position, selection issues alongside some reasonably unfortunate results earlier in the season could easily have us a bit higher up.