Very frustrating. Shouldn't have been hard to pick up 5/6 points from 5 matches. Had we done that, we'd be right in with a chance.

He was never great here and only showed flashes of ability and had limited fitness and availability, but he at least offered the possibility of potential. Do I miss him? No. But all of the replacements are an undeniable downgrade on the possibility of the team improving or overperforming. Sigurdsson at least offered the hope that we might have signed a bit of a gem. I'd take that now.

I mean, he just wouldn't. I could count on one hand the number of managers that would have lost their job within a similar time frame. Let's direct our criticism at the right people and focus it on the areas where we can actually show what a joke this club is at the moment.

That just isn't true. The club is a mess, but 'normal' clubs don't sack new managers after a handful of games. Let's not say dumb things that make it easy to paint us as dumb supporters.

We have to be real and say that any new owner would likely need to know that they're signing up for 20-40 million a year. Yes, they can improve the overall financial performance of the club by re-engaging with supporters, but, in order to do so, they need to spend more on and off the field.

I said I knew a group who were interested. Middle Eastern, not Qataris. At the time, the owners had zero interest in selling. Probably spoke too soon on that one and underestimated the challenge of convincing the owners to sell (it was an immediate no and even felt like a blank cheque would have been rebuffed). Things might be a little different now. Will they sell? Still unclear. But, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that interested groups are making serious enquiries.

But, I've deleted that image as it is probably the sensible thing to do for various reasons. So, it would be good if you would remove the quote.

You are probably right. But I’m not involved in that part, all I can speak about is the part that I am.

I’m not going to bother getting into it, but, as I’m sure you can imagine, these are challenging times to get a representative from the club on an interview without providing certain guarantees. That being said, very much still a work in progress. As for the other issue, all I can say is that I’m aware of something. Whether or not the owners want to sell or will sell? That’s a 40 million dollar question.

I will say this very quietly and I won't go into it any further, but I'd say watch this space (patiently).

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.