I could understand why United or any Premier League club might see Pears as a good option as an English number 2. He'd be relatively cheap and it's not like they'd expect him to play in anything other than some early round cup games. It would be a dream for us as we desperately need to move on. He is a known quantity at this point and really limited and guaranteed to make a costly mistake or two within any 10 game run. For that reason, I'd rather see Toth - or any other replacement - be given a serious run in the side. This idea that you can plug a keeper in and judge him passed on 90-180 minutes is lunacy. Whenever we do actually move on fro Pears we need to make sure that the new keeper feels that he isn't on trial and that he will have a solid run of games during which he can make a mistake without losing his place. Pears is decent. Does an OK job. But rarely makes outstanding saves and certainly makes more errors than he does game-winning saves.

How do you stop the time wasting without a punitive measure? We all know they won't properly add on time. And when do they start? And what happens when you do it in the final minute of additional time? You kill an extra 30 seconds and boot it down field and we play for 30 seconds extra? But now the team is deep inside the opposition's half? It really does seem like a pretty decent solution.

VAR is very much an anomaly and isn't about the actual law of the game, just about the ability to scrutinise it differently. Can you think of an actual law that is different at one level than another? Other than specific league rules like the number of subs, etc, I can't think of any, and I can't think of why it would be beneficial to the game.

Would you rather have an attacking corner or have the ref play 1 minute more of additional time? Which could be a goalkick for the opposition, their attacking corner, their free kick, etc.

But you can't not 'give a fuck' when law changes tend to trickle down (technology aside). The change in how the infringement will be punished will certainly crack down on how much teams can take advantage of the ability to kill time. Will a corner be awarded every time it goes to 9/10 seconds? No. But will it stop teams from killing 30 seconds? Almost certainly.

😃

I'll go for 9+ points from our next 3 games. I think we will find our way to 3 wins and a draw.

Just to respond to this particular element - there's also absolutely nothing stopping the referee from also adding the time in addition to awarding the corner. They don't have to treat the time it takes to get the corner setup as wasted time.

But we know that won't happen and you could argue that giving the other team an attacking corner is far more valuable than adding on 1 minute of stoppage time. They may end up not even really getting that ball in that additional minute, but you actually give them a good attacking opportunity with the corner. Your idea is also really difficult to enforce at the amateur level where you won' have a 4th official to help you keep time quite as accurately. It will be a lot easier for a referee at any level to simply count to 8 in their head and then award a corner if it takes too long. It feels like a good attempt to fix a big problem, so I don't see why it would receive so much pushback for any reason other than 'I don't like change'.

Not really how VAR works in any of the major leagues.

Don't dislike the change. Something needed to be done as you often see keepers hold the ball for 30-45 seconds now (including them dropping to the ground after collecting the ball). I can understand why an indirect freekick feels like too much of a punishment and it's also such a rare sight these days that it would be strange to start enforcing it with that type of punishment. A corner is a lot easier.

I think a few on here are being a bit too negative about our performance and/or overstating their dominance. The draw was a fair result. They started both halves well and got back on top immediately after we went down to 10, but we also had moments where we controlled the game and looked more dangerous.

This is an insane statement. He may well end up being superior to him, but this is an absolutely insane statement.

I’ll plug my own podcast as we often discuss the Championship and Rovers and we have quite a lot of Rovers-related content and guests in the pipeline.

Can't really win on that front. If we gave him an 18 month contract you'd have a ton on here saying that it showed a lack of commitment and that you need a manager who knows that he is part of the long-term plans of the club. Then you give him a 3 year deal and you've got some saying that it is too much of a risk.

Watching last night it was remarkable how much better both Leeds and Sheffield United looked compared to us. No major revelation there, but the gap between ourselves as the top 3 is massive - even if we are only a couple of league places behind them. We absolutely need Burnley to finish 3rd as I think we would have no chance against Sheffield United in the playoffs. Burnley's lack of goals at least means that we have a a chance if we can find a goal or two from somewhere.

The English is too good for me. JDT spoke very well, but I very much doubt that he would write like that. It doesn't strike me as the speech or writing pattern you typically get from someone writing in their second language. *Although looking deeper there are some slightly oddly worded responses.

Agreed and, more importantly, we can't count on picking up many points in our final few matches, so we very much need to make hay while the sun shines. If we can pick up at least 4 wins from that set of fixtures then we will likely find ourselves in a very good spot with a handful of matches to go. The teams below us are decent, but we probably won't see any of them go on a 4/5 match-winning streak.

Who's saying that?

Short-term deal, buy-out clause, non-promotion clause. Lots of solutions to the second problem. Eustace was an idiot.

Are we sure that Dolan has that much flair? I think that's part of the issue. He sometimes thinks he does, but he doesn't really. In the same way that he looks like he's quick, but he's not. His decision-making is an issue, but not because of flair, more because of selfishness and a tendency to run down blind alleys. He does the occasional stepover and the flips after goals are good, but I don't think there's a lot of flair within his actual game. That isn't meant as a criticism, but he probably does need to realise that he's not quite the trickster he may have imagined himself as when he was 17/18. He's a lot closer to Alan Mahon than he is to Damien Duff or Keith Gillespie. He's a workmanlike winger.

League position is everything. We have fairly decent squad with a dozen matches to go and the playoffs entirely within our own control. That's much better than taking over a 'project' club that is currently 15th. I'll be as critical of the club as anyone, but we would do ourselves a disservice to not realise what a good situation the club is now in for the next 3/4 months. Any unemployed manager worth their salt should want to be taking charge of a shot to nothing and see if this ends with them being a Premier League manager by the end of May. If they don't take us up? Well, they can walk away if they want. Nothing lost at that point and they won't look bad given what happened with JDT and Eustace.

And, not to be a Broughton defender, but it is where the DoF + Head Coach approach has another huge advantage. Do we have a clear system now? A style we want to keep? An approach for the future in terms of types of players signed? No. So we have no easy criteria to use to sort applicants.

You're probably right, but we are also infinitely more attractive now than we were 12 months ago. Of that there is no doubt. We should now appeal to every Championship manager who has yet to have a real shot at the Premier League and every Premier League manager who has made their living in the bottom half of the table. Plus a host of foreign managers looking to break into England.

It's an interesting comparison, but I think that Nyambe was a 'bigger' name. Nyambe had a genuine moment of being a bit of a talked about prospect. Dolan has never had that.