Tyrone Shoelaces

I still have the dream we'll fill the ground on all four sides again one day.

It's pretty rare that when you have an illness in the team, especially when you're travelling to away games, that it only affects one player. Maybe Travis was suffering from a bit of " Rothwellitis ".

Well if I had a £10 note for every time I've seen Rovers teams over the years struggle against " very poor " visiting teams I'd be reasonably wealthy. Let's hope we can put them to the sword. My mind goes back to the that game were we were playing West Ham at home two days after beating them 8-2 away at Upton Park. I had a paper round then and I distinctly remember " The Daily Mail " having a cartoon on the back page showing us selling cricket style scorecards instead of programmes outside of Ewood Park on the morning of the game. We played like drains and lost badly 3-1 !

Winning's great and I was walking around with a big smile on my face yesterday because we won well. In fact I'm still smiling now ! Having said that we're also in the entertainment business and if we are hoping to attract back the stay aways we need to be entertaining as well.

If we carry in in our recent form we'll be there or thereabouts. We need to rediscover the sort of consistency we showed when we got promoted. We were winning regularly without blowing teams away then. We usually found a way to take the points. This weekends game against Luton will be good pointer. Win well and I'll start believing, if it's a repeat of the Charlton game it'll be back to square one.

This year is going to be wide open. If we can get our act together we must be in with a chance.

We won yesterday playing the system, 4 at the back, that we've used most of the season. You look at the skill set of your players and design your system of play around that. Not the other way around.

I heard if Rothwell hadn't have cried off yesterday morning he was in and Armstrong was out. On another tack, what's happened with Davenport ? Has he fallen down the same black hole as Gladwin ?

Yeah you're right Dave. Maybe we've got the message about having a pop from distance. 2 in 2 games, can you remember the last one from outside the penalty area ?

That's where the goals come from. Get in the box as often as you can. Especially when you're shot shy from distance as Rovers are. Excepting the Williams bolt from the blue last week.

We'd have a good chance of going up I think.. Another Mike Newall would do me, even a new Rudy Gestede.

There are areas of the pitch you need bodies in. That hasn't changed for a long,long time.

I would wager the average age of the poster on here will be older than the ones on " Social Media ". That means most of us have been around the block a few times, bought the Tee shirt etc. We've seen it all before, several times.

Nothing wrong with that matey. I'd swap places with them tomorrow. They are still 2 goals better than we are.

Keeping all those midfielders happy when they won't be getting game time, or even making the bench is the other side of that coin.

Oldham was awful, we looked like 11 blokes who had just met on the carpark outside at 2-30.

The teams you refer to Paul may rotate personnel, mainly because of the sheer volumes of games that being involved in four major competitions means. However they very rarely change the way the play. Players come in and out but the shape stays the same.The have a system and they stick to it. When we won the Prem we had a very basic pattern of play that never varied and worked very well for us.

If we looked more settled up front with a consistent goalscorer leading the line like Danny Graham was recently so to speak I'd fancy us for the play offs. As it is expecting the goals to come from everywhere else is a bit of a gamble.

Their fitness levels were good but when you're winning most of the time people are more prepared to play when they're not 100% fit. They don't want to risk losing their place because it might be a while before they get it back. Conversely when you're struggling players won't play if they're not firing on all cylinders.

Caught the interview. " Different game plan for next week ". Mm.

Yeah I thought he may be thinking of both Gallagher and Armstrong playing up front in tandem. With Dack behind and the three of Travis , Evans and Downing in midfield. Maybe he's saving that for when we go behind.

I'd say that's how we'll play unless we swap Armstrong for Gallagher.

Twenty regular fans who go every week could post their idea of what the team should be and all twenty would have it wrong every week !

Yep, Hart and Gladwin are also still on the books. I can see Bell going if we could get our money back.

That's a well over populated squad. It's a long while since we had that many players on a photo. Probably when we were last in the Prem. What it's all costing I shudder to think. There's at least half a dozen there that should have been either moved on or loaned out in the window.