The oft injured Ronaldo, with the shot knee(s)?

Five years ago (essentially) is pretty recent when you're talking about such matters. Whilst I agree Hughes has managed his finances well, offloading deadweight and bringing in quality players, the fact of the matter is that the Trust, or the board (whoever decides these things) has heavily funded Rovers with little or no gain. Why would you expect them to invest again when their return will be minimal, at best?

You should be sorry. As philipl says, the club is losing millions of pounds a year due to the shockingly poor crowds. I believe they made a mistake backing Souness and his signings for as long as they did, but you cannot question their funding of the club. Hughes alone has spent £8.3m, roughly - Bellamy, Savage, Mokoena. Nelsen was free, so was Kuqi. Souness, since 2000 has spent £50m, roughly - Ferguson, Cole, Grabbi to name but a few. He recouped £39m, roughly - Duff, Dunn mainly. Factor in the obscene wages Cole, York, Ferguson, Sukur and co must have been on and you're looking at a substantial loss during his tenure. Selling two home grown talents only served to reduce the attendence figures. Not to say I don't agree - the board should back Hughes, he's proven himself an astute manager in the transfer market, as well as managing to extract a lot of production out of averagely talented players (thanks to an excellent coaching staff). However, I'd understand if the funds provided were meagre, or far below the demands of Hughes.

When did Rovers hire Martin Tyler as the commentator?!

I'd be mightily impressed if the board can summon any money up. The amount they have invested in the club recently is absurd, considering the size of the team/fan base.

Should have put one away with the chances we've had. I've a sneaky feeling Newcastle will nick this - a Shearer goal is always on the cards. Newcastle sound like a very dirty team on the radio.

I think we were all asking that Matt

It takes a lot of pressure off the strikers to convert every chance they see. It also makes the team much harder to defend against

I'd say he's got great skill and the ability to play the killer ball down too. His crossing is also pretty good, when he wants it to be

Exactly, he's done the job Hughes asked him to do. Where's Dickov on that list I wonder, he's worse than Reid at shooting and has no pace or positional awareness.

It'd mean we'd have no goals coming from midfield though. If anything he's an attacking midfielder, as he'd be able to get out on the wing and cross it, or thread balls through to the forwards, and most importantly get into the box to shoot.

I can't understand how he can conduct an interview of that nature with a straight face. His players were cynical beyond belief.

Couldn't bring myself to applaud his when he was subbed on, I can't accept him as a Wanky Wanderer. Gave him a hand after the match though. Not that it matters who he goes to, he's finished. Just I hate Bolton.

He's a Bergkamp type of forward, linking the midfield with the front men, which is why he goes wandering for the ball sometimes. He was easily our best attacking player today and I was mightly impressed with his performance in his natural role. Unfortunately for him, Dickov is @#/? at anything other than being a nuisance - there were no runs and no link ups for Bentley to utilize. This wasn't helped by three of our midfield not bothering to turn up - Savage, Pedersen and Emerton take a step forward please . It was a crap match with Bolton not even looking to play football - as somebody mentioned, on this performance they're a disgrace to the football league. Besides the defence (bar one slip up) and Bentley, nobody played particularily well - Reid was ok, but not MotM material, that was Todd's surely. Friedel was also surprisingly good, especially on the foolish Neill chest down. A 0-0 draw is all we deserved with the quality of finishing on display (three clear cut headed chances that one of the top teams wouldn't have missed).

Good luck to the lad, but I'm certainly not going to chant his name/applause if he makes an appearance today. As mentioned Bolton is one of the worst places he could have transferred to.

You're known to Todd, so I'll take your opinion with a pinch of salt. Best defender on the park last night was Todd, no-one can argue that. The goal was not his fault as you're not meant to play offside when it's 2 on 3, especially when the attacker is much quicker than you....well scratch that, you can try it if you like, but a quality forward with a decent through ball will beat you almost every time . Todd was playing Saha pretty well, but he needed Nelsen to step up and challenge Rooney (forgive me if they weren't the players involved, I've only seen the incident once and I wasn't concentrating on them as much as the Saha run) to narrow the angles he had available. He backed off and backed off leaving Todd in no-mans land thanks to Saha's intelligent run and Rooney's decent pass. Friedel's effort to save it was pathetic, but that's for another day. Having said that Nelsen should be captain. He wasn't particularily good last night, but he's got a cool head on his shoulders. The way he handled Smith after his scythe of Savage served to calm the situation down somewhat and you'll notice he was the player talking to the referee about the outcome of the incident - Todd was nowhere in sight. In terms of leadership and respectability Nelsen is your man. Todd isn't very vocal, he leads by example but that's not really what you want from a captain, and his short fuse makes him a liability as a mediator between the ref and the player who's just committed an offence. Todd and Nelsen is also our best partnership - Zura is good, but he's not on Todd's level yet. Definately worth signing though, as three quality centre halves is exactly what this club needs.

Not really - the author doesn't admit that Rovers strolled through that game, yet still won 3-0. He or she is deluding themselves that with a bit of luck they could have eeked out a draw. In truth Rovers could have simply stepped their game up, out of the second gear they were comfortably engaged in, and made QPR look as bad as they truely are. As for Savage and Tugay kicking seven bells out of Rowlands, what a joke - they're two of the softest tackling midfielders I've ever seen.

Can't complain. He kept us up and helped bring Bellamy in - he did his job.

What did he do exactly? Didn't watch MOTD and was too busy cheering to notice Todd's celebration.

I think you fastforwarded too far, Bellamy's goals were class. No tap ins there.

As if they released him on his birthday, heartless.

I doubt Sparky is going to see the type of money Souness had to play with. I mentioned it earlier (probably in a different thread ) that our backroom staff has the highest number of guys in the league with Uefa level coaching badge(s). The coaching the players are now receiving is second to non - they're a hel! of a lot fitter for one thing, and much more organised. You've just got to look at the development of Neill - he was a clogger at right back, an athlete playing football. He's turning into one of the best full backs in the league under Hughes. Likewise with Bentley, he's come on leaps and bounds under Hughes - there's still a long way to go mind, but the results are promising. We're overachieving right now with a poor talent pool of players (not including the youth team, who I've never seen ). The clearest example of this is when Bellamy is on the field - he's good, admittedly, but not the superman he seems next to the rest of the squad. He makes us an entirely different team going forward because his talent level is much superior to anything we have in the squad. I shudder to think what this backroom staff could have done with Jansen, Duff, Dunn & co.

You understand I don't rate him as a manager right? I'm just suggesting that his move to Newcastle was a smart one on his behalf - he was going to get sacked here. Instead he's been employed for an extra year on a larger paypacket.

They'd blatantly let Manchester burn if the Theatre of Dreams was on fire

Disagree with that - he's been employed for an extra 18 months on, what I'd suggest, a larger pay packet. Rather astute move in hindsight as his tenure at Rovers was coming to an abrupt end.