Oh yeah, there's no way they were remotely interested in him as a player, but I'm sure they liked the 20 million he raised

It feels like it's stubbornness and a sunk cost fallacy with them now. They don't want to cut their losses because one year we might get lucky and avoid the New Year death spiral. Or maybe we'll produce a whole team of Adam Whartons at some point. What's especially depressing is that if Eustace did get Rovers up through the play-offs, they probably wouldn't invest the Premier League money. Don't worry about getting relegated with a Derby level of points, we'll have a few years of lovely parachute money after that, and Balaji can impress his mates with a few jolly-ups at Anfield at the Emirates.

Who'd like some lovely stats? Rovers have 9 clean sheets from 19 games - only kept more at this stage in 4 previous seasons. Last time was in 1994-95. Rovers have exactly the same record after 19 games (W10 D4 L5) as in the 2000-01 promotion season - also the last time we had 34+ points at this stage in either of the top 2 tiers. Rovers have taken 18 points from 10 games against teams currently in the top half - only Leeds (19) and Sheffield Utd (20) have taken more. Rovers have dropped 2 points from winning positions this season - the only team in England's top 4 divisions who've dropped fewer are Newport. This last one won't be for everyone, but if xG is your thing... Rovers have faced an xG per shot of 0.091. Simply put, if this is low that means you're defending well, because your opponents are taking low-quality shots (for instance, from far out, or in situations where they've defenders closing them down). Rovers have the 4th-lowest in the Championship, and our xG per shot faced is lower than Liverpool's (0.096).

I'd also be interested in this - I'm based in Elephant & Castle