Rovers v Magpies

Three things have cost us dearly this season!
A lack of goals, particularly from our front men, has been caused by the lack of investment in a goal scorer at this level. Yes brown & Paynter have chipped in with goals, but with our defensive record, we should have walked this league.
The state of the keepmoat pitch. The team do like to play the ball on the floor, but on that disgraceful surface, it's not possible. Bobbly & rock hard. This leads to the third thing....
Our home form, has been shocking. Mr Ryan talks of fortress keepmoat, more like fortress team coach this season!

The only positive I can come up with today is Brentfords pitch has grass on it, so we have a better chance away than at home next weekend!

Chin up DonnyRed, all is not lost.......yet!

Stanton - your post could be a wind up of course but for the sake of the excercise, i will "bite".
Can you tell us how "someone" (JR of course) could have had any bearing on the result yesterday?

Lanza in Tenerife.
I fear a Ionly/Lanza Lovefest coming on.
I hope I am wrong.

Is it a thing with Liverpool lovers and players alike, they bite??

We seem to have changed from needing very few chances to score to being the opposite. Were our players more suited to the Saunders dour/ugly counter-attacking approach than the more deliberate build-up?

There are fewer in defence to beat if you break quickly.

The ultimate example of this was was the Brentford home match. 28% possession and 5 shots on goal against their 72% and 8 shots, but a 2-1 win.

So the Meath plan seems the way to go; sit back, but counter attack with determination and pace when opportunities come our way. They will have to attack for the win and the memories of the previous match may increase their frustration as long as we hold out.

It's effectively a play-off final. I couldn't get a ticket either and it would be good if there were a live TV stream. Listening is far more difficult than watching, but at least we will have the benefit of the descriptive talents of Glenn Wilson. Somehow, when things are going badly it sounds so much worse when we have to endure the murder of the language from his home match counterparts. It grates when I hear “He’s took a bad touch” (which in a sense also indicates that the passing game is not our forte). Even when I hear “thev gev everything” which is good, I wince.

I think you could be onto something Donaldo. The truth is that I think you actually need to adopt both approaches. The problem we had earlier in the season was that we just couldn't keep the ball, so we invited pressure onto ourselves all the time and it was only heroic defending at times that kept us in games. However, if we lumped the ball forward 20 times, then we may get a shot on goal 5 times and because we broke quickly, the opposing team's defence didn't have time to organise themselves. Now, we are better at holding the ball, but most of the time, the opposing defence has time to organise. On Saturday, Notts County (who played a great away game) had 2 or 3 men on Copps and Cotts every time they got the ball - they restricted the space and most of the time we weren't good enough to pass through them and we didn't get forward quickly enough (the pitch doesn't help either). Having said all that, we did come close to scoring - we created more chances than County and could easily have secured a point or more and that would have been enough. However, we have won some that we perhaps didn't deserve to win on the balance of play so swings and roundabouts... I just hope that the players do themselves justice on Saturday.

Crazy: Sometimes I wish I was able to pick the team and the tactics, but on Saturday I think I'd prefer someone else to take the pressure and hopefully get the glory. You can't even get tickets in the home "end" unless you are on the Brentford database, but perhaps they will make some more tickets available to us if they can't fill their part. That happened at Brighton.

Just listening will be really hard. The consolation if we fail is that playing under that kind of pressure will be good preparation for the play-offs.

Your end of comment probably applies to every other team in the top half of the division Crazy.
Won some that we didnt deserve to and lost some that we shouldnt have.
It happens to everyone, it is just that we only notice when it happens to us.

Indeed Hound - as I said, "swings and roundabouts"

Me too Donaldo - whilst like all fans, I have my opinions, I know that Mr Flynn knows more about football than I ever will and that he is best placed to make the decisions!