Good point. I was thinking about quality and experience. Maybe he’s done in terms of age?

Ayala, Fox and Al habsi would be a great start. Cauley Woodrow as a wildcard maybe?

I don’t think his legs have gone. He’s not really that type of player. Doesn’t rely on his legs as such. I based all of these players coming to the end of their contract (Other than Leutwiler) on “Do they have a chance of playing in our first choice 11?” Downing is the only one who does. Graham a close second but the manager obv needs his £14m quartet to start firing. Whether or not we sign Whiteman is irrelevant. The fact that we’re looking to sign a CM confuses me when you look at how many players we have AND that we’re still negotiating with Downing. Trav, Evans, Johnson. Rothwell, Downing, Buckley, Davenport. That’s 6 players for 2 or 3 positions max. Something / someone has to give. I’m hoping it’s Evans or Johnson who make way.

Downing was my player of the season up to Christmas and was still in my top three up until the break for COVid. He’d have got another year no problems for me in the mindset that we’re going to focus on keepers and defenders...but the rumours about Whiteman have got me confused as to where on Earth we’re going to play all these midfielders.

Argh...you were doing ok until you said Butterworth. If you genuinely believe he’s one to forget then it calls into question all of your calls.

Maybe Whiteman was one of the ‘couple’ of players Mowbray said we had agreements in place for at the fans forum. It definitely felt like at least one of those was for a foreign player. But Whiteman does fit the mould in terms of age, profile and affordability.

Ben Whiteman - See post from @Sparks Rover who’s his pal

Is mad that we desperately need two keepers, a cb and a lb and we’re having talks with a Cm tmrw! ? Couldnt write it

I must admit when I saw the “we’ve not had full clarity” line I did think it appeared that something had moved. As if he’d had an outline budget. Just seemed a bit more focused

I have to say @Sparks Rover I really hope you’re bang on the money with this. I’ve been really worried that we wouldn’t have any cash to spend this summer. Assuming Whiteman’s in for talks tomorrow that means, A - we do have budget and B - we’ve got a plan. Delighted if so.

Bloody hell...if we sign him you do realise I’m gonna have to do a full 180 and ‘love’ him ?????‍♂️

I’m not sure if they do anymore. A 3 points increase on last season with big gaps now opening up in the squad would suggest its going to be difficult to even repeat this years performance, never mind improve it. The return of Dack will of course help. Id suggest that this is as good a time as ever to review our Collective goals and make the change if necessary. TM still has pros. The lads will always play him and his introduction of youth is good. I just wonder if it’s all got a bit stale? If I were the owners and I wanted a custodian of the club to keep us inching towards our goal then great. But if I want promotion next season the Tony is not our guy...argh, tough one!

Big questions of the manager imo. Statistically 5% improvement on last season which seems even more negligible when you consider the turnover of players which is about to ensue. No doubt the injury to Dack contributed to the final points total but it’s not been good enough overall. Finishing on 70pts this season would’ve been acceptable to me. Weve finished exactly where our budget sits but we need to overachieve to be successful. Time for a change? Yeah, seems reasonable to me.

I’ll hazard a guess that the twitter account claiming Travis to Coventry isn’t even run by a human. Looks more like a ‘bot’ set to pull clicks. Maybe Rovers and Coventry fans were particularly active at that point of the day etc...send a a tweet like this and Boooom...

Will certainly give those teams with bigger budgets and squads a big helping hand as it stands.

I understand what you’re saying and the way you are rationalising it feels, well, rational. I confess that I haven’t seen enough of him at any level to make a judgement. The point I’m making is that aside from your opinion ‘they’ see him as an 8. Someone to sit next to the 6 (Trav) and dictate the play from deep. They see the time he creates on the ball and his ability to pick a pass into those forward positions as his real strength. They want him taking the ball on the half turn from the CB or Trav and starting our attacks. i don’t think any of us would be as obsessed with seeing him as a 10 if he wasn’t so slight. But he will fill out.

I think you’d have to know what was really going on with Chapman to make an informed opinion. ??

I like the idea of a loan to Holland or Belgium. Or they could just use and integrate him like City have with Foden who faces the same / similar challenges physically.

Fair enough. I don’t think they’ll loan him out because they think he’s the best of the bunch and can effect the team positively now. On a personal note, I wouldn’t loan him out to League 1 either. Loan stints aren’t great for every player. I think they need to get him playing alongside as much quality as they can. Play him next to Trav and get him feeding Dack and playing passes Trav can’t...be interesting to see.

Yeah, 5 subs apparently.

Your point doesn’t really stand up other than in your mind. Because they see Buckley as an 8. A position that we don’t have that much cover in. There’s nothing ‘hyperbolic’ about the basic opinions of people who watch them all play every day.

Current Rovers first team and youth team coaches.

Tbf I’m not professing to have seen that much of Buckley but it seems that he’s the one they believe is the real deal. That’s not because he’s tearing up the 23’s as such. It’s because when you work day in day out with footballers you just get a feeling that you are watching someone special. Two lads I know who are still employed in professional football as a scouts watched Buckley in cameo appearances this season for the first time (both matches in where I thought he was “alright”) and they absolutely raved about him. They also said two Prem clubs were watching him in those matches. ??‍♂️

Let’s see. I think how much we have to spend will be a big decider. Who knows what formation we’ll play but that seems to be the one he likes

Argh, tbf, ever time I see SG live I can’t get over how big he is. He often looks like a 15yr old playing in an U11’s league. Im desperate for him to start using it. Get a few bookings and rough defenders up. If he got it right running in from the right he’d be up over any left back and with a run on the CB I’d bet on him more often than not. Physically he should be every bit as dominant as Rudy was.