Boring Sag

Is it particularly risky? Was this not City’s exact strategy with Liam Manning after strong links with Lampard and Eustace for days? Rovers already had this from when it was announced they were negotiating with more than one candidate.

Not necessarily tinpot. Robinson was favourite and ideal but Taylor got sacked 2 days ago so he’s become available and he’s probably better

I think we'll probably win today, but I'm not sure on the improving spirits thing. Barton is a weird character and outside of the game I will agree is a very awful person, I was rooting for him a bit when he joined on that front because you know, bad reputations can stick and I thought he could've changed. And then he beat up his wife and I was like "well so much for that!" It seems like, however, he's a pretty good man-manager, which is surprising but it also applies for Mourinho. Mourinho would absolutely ruin players in the media, think Martial or Mata. I remember Essien saying however that players would want to die for Mourinho. I don't think it's a coincidence that it seems loaned, young players tended to do well (Taylor, Thomas, Anderson, Quansah, Gibson, Crama, Bogarde, Connolly etc.) and a fair few despite probably being able to get better offers decided to come back. Hell, people don't forget but Barton was just as critical of Luke Thomas when we were in League 2, yet he decided to come back. It's a weird occurrence, but I would doubt the majority of the players are thinking "wow, thank God we got rid of him!" I imagine for most it was probably a shock and seemed premature. It's changed. Now it's Garry Monk. Super curious what City fans would think about that appointment (try to be unbiased!!)

Dean Holden 6/4 for some reason

Listen, I know there's a lot of talk on the 'big' (relatively) signings for us, but frankly literally any improvement from last season I'd take. The more the better of course, but I think we're still a fair bit off the playoffs, especially if Collins continues to play poorly. Ryan Woods looked very good today though. Main issue throughout was the lack of a striker!

If this is sincerely the case. That literally no Championship or League One club wanted him other than Rovers, then surely Rovers might have a half-decent chance at the signing in January? If there was no interest, I imagine it's because DMAC seemed to want to make a profit on him despite having a year of his contract left.

DMAC seemed to be waiting out for a high bid up until the last minute. Offer from Rovers has been in place in principle it seems for a couple days. In my opinion, in terms of getting the deal done just seems a shambles all around.

I'm not sure this is necessarily non-believable. Apparently it came from Tom Gorringe, who of course would know how late it was. I could imagine EFL taking the view of "4 seconds late is just that. 4 seconds late. Had all summer to do this transfer, we set the deadline for a reason," which would make sense to me at least. Barton seemed to echo similar sentiments in his pre-match interview today. I think the timeline isn't contradictory and fits Ferguson's post-match comments today. And from memory all the stuff with JCH's agent seems plausible as I believe his agent was in prison when he was with us. Could be wrong though. Could be completely our fault or it could be Darragh's had us on toast.

I'm all good could be worse could have lost today

No. I believe you're confusing Jonson Clarke-Harris for Stefan Payne. Clarke-Harris and Rovers seem to have had a pretty good relationship since he joined.

Yes

Well I don't think Loft is playing either way really, not like we let Collins or a regular starter go. And I don't think it was Rovers' competitive ability that made him attracted to us but the fact he apparently wanted to move back this way and was of course at the club for a period. By January though a lot of teams will be looking for strikers, that's the main concern for any continued move I think.

In all honesty everyone's been talking about JCH for weeks and I've been telling people no chance. I made sure I had virtually 0 hopes up until Darragh's tweet and even then I was almost certain it'd be a Championship club. But the Dan Hargreaves tweet saying the deal had been agreed, have to say that would sting! But JCH or no JCH I think we've had a good window, the only issue is we'd have let go of a striker when we needed one, before today I was expecting a loan striker from god knows where (I actually thought it might be Mason Burstow from Chelsea, but he's gone to Sunderland. Sometimes I really don't get the levels certain clubs will loan to, Tristan Crama our CB for instance apparently got some loan offers rejected from Ligue 1 and now he's in League 1, doesn't make sense to me, same with Elliott Anderson going to us when we were in League 2. Perhaps destination is more important than competitive level when clubs are looking for loans sometimes). I think there's still some free-agent strikers; like Lyle Taylor and Connor Wickham, but of course they're a huge step down from JCH

Just rebuking the "this isn't a good signing" arguments. But I'm sure that it'll keep our finances in good stead for now anyways, and there's always January!

Being as unbiased as possible. I don't understand the train of thought here, if we want to talk about this objectively. I don't think this shows literally anything for City's ambitions, anyone who looks at the state of the two clubs in terms of infrastructure & finances right now will know there's quite a considerable gap. But he is not an 'okay striker for League One.' He's probably the best striker in League One, or at least one of. Since signing for Rovers initially he's scored 81 League One goals in 123 games. You speak of him like he's Leon Clarke too, the Championship season where he scored 12 wasn't 6 or 7 years ago, it was the season before last, and for a relegation side. Also seen quite a few here talk about some sort of urge for immediate success, going for extremely old players or something. I don't agree. Averages are very skewed from the fact that we signed Wilson and Friend, 34 and 35. But if you look at our squad it's a fairly good mix of loans (Vale, Bogarde, Crama), older more-experienced players (Wilson, Friend, Marquis) and younger more talented players (Gordon, Taylor, Thomas). So yeah TLDR it's a really good signing for Rovers, and he could be a lower-Championship striker fairly easily I think (hell Lockyer is literally the captain of a Premier League club!); but it doesn't indicate some sort of lack of ambition of City (in my personal opinion, I think Pearson holds you guys back in any sort of long-term promotion-charging potential, could be wrong though) EDIT: Well looks like it hasn't happened! Oh well, onwards and upwards I suppose

Collins could still go, either this summer or next. Could be a big fee (relative for us)

Looks like that bloke on Gaschat the other day was right! https://www.bristolrovers.co.uk/news/2023/august/club-statement-new-ownership/#:~:text=Bristol Rovers Football Club can,a result the football club.

Trigger Warning: This will say one nice thing about someone supporting the Gas As an observer rather than a commenter Gas, I'm going to offer a "realist" perspective. I know many on this forum will boo and hiss because as people have said, this is more of a "making fun of the Gas" thread rather than an "objective, balanced evaluation" of Rovers. Not knocking it, if you enjoy it then that's your business. My view is that there are idiots in literally every fanbase of every club there is. There are absolutely clubs who have more so a "reputation" for it; Milwall, Chelsea, Leeds, Liverpool all spring to mind immediately. Portsmouth I seem to recall has a couple really weird blokes. Rovers definitely has some weirdos, but I wouldn't say it's exceptionally high. I don't think what football club someone supports affects their actions, this isn't their political beliefs; this isn't what job they do. Most people follow clubs either because they're local, or because it's passed down to them. Not to shame but it seems kinda like when a tory comes up to me and points to a crazy lefty and then goes "look at those crazy lefties, surely you don't want to be with them; vote Conservative." I don't know why that person should represent me or my actions or my beliefs. Similar here. Because of this I just think people are people and some people support Rovers, some City, some Newport, some Stockport County, etc. There's definitely cultures but I don't believe people are that hugely different and so I wouldn't say it's a special Rovers thing. As for the stuff on Rovers people posting here, personally I just read this because I like the format more so than gaschat; but I post there occasionally. There's definitely some insightful people on there, Pirate especially is very knowledgeable on youth and non-league football and has caught out a couple players who've become very decent players when they weren't well-known. I imagine the Rovers forum needs more policing simply because City is a bigger club and if it wasn't it's much more likely to have City fans "brigading" that then vice-versa, I imagine you'd see the same for Stoke/Vale, Forest/Derby, Portsmouth/Southampton etc. I occasionally post on Reddit, and I used to post on the Tories forum for a couple years because it'd be interesting dialogue with people I disagree with, then the old moderators stopped posting after having just added a new moderator who was extremely active (an Enoch Powell fan *shudders*), the composition of the forum started changing in the sense that crazies didn't get banned anymore but people who disagreed with the Tories did more and more. I can't remember the conversation leading up to it, but I remember someone claimed as a Labour voter I was morally responsible for Socialism, and because of this its millions and millions of deaths. I said I disagreed and those people don't speak for me and I got banned, the other person didn't. The moral of this stupid story is that many "free speech havens" aren't as free speech as many of its defenders say; or if they are it could all change quickly (this isn't to say the mods here are like this). On away support, I personally like our away fans; I don't think we're anything special but it is a nice change when I remember a couple seasons ago I think the team that struck me the most was Fleetwood with having some of the worst away support I'd ever seen. I don't believe we're a Premier League team in waiting or whatever, I think we're probably just an average League One-sized club, that's not to say we can't ever make the Championship but we'd have a long way to go. Similar sized clubs have got promoted to the Championship but it's about drawing support. Personally I think our stadium although making for a decent atmosphere is terrible, so maybe the stadium could draw us support (if it ever happens), or maybe not; who knows!

Have a lot of Sheffield United mates from my time up in Sheffield working for HSBC, rate him very highly. So I'd disagree, but I also thought Little was too good for us and he's been awful when he has played this season.

Apologies, I'd have gotten it correct but my Grammarly membership expired!

I'm gas but genuinely shut up you muppet you're embarassing

New rules. 1 point for a draw and loss on pens, 2 for a win on pens. Makes literally no sense.

When I was growing up, around 16 or 17 the house next to mine was occupied by 3 boys around the same age. 2 were utter ***** but the other one I grew quite close to and we became good mates. Years later he got married, and I met his father in law. Who actually believe it or not supports BOTH City & Rovers. I couldn't believe my ears, and my recall of the situation is rusty and I can't remember his reasoning. But I do remember he told me he had a season ticket for both clubs, and would attend each game individually as long as there wasn't a City game or a Rovers game at the same time, if this happened he would just do one and then another. So a City game when both were on, and then a Rovers game, but if only one club was playing he'd go watch that! I suppose you could also count myself, as I believe I went to a few games at Ashton Gate when I was 4 or 5 with my late City-supporting step dad, but my dad (bless his heart) had had a rough childhood and so didn't know how to bond with me, and so he asked if he could take me to Eastville because the only thing that he thought would help us bond was going to watch Rovers, and so around 6 or so I suppose I did switch sides! My late step dad was a wonderful man, when my dad saw himself unexpectedly out of the job he realised he couldn't fund buying both him and me a season ticket, and so my step dad offered to and paid for them. Yes, you heard that right! A City supporter paid for 2 Rovers supporters to have season tickets, was such a wonderful man! Not someone who switched though no.

Yeah no I 100% agree. Especially with the acting like it was City fans pretending to be us mindset, I can't understand it. This is a genuine question but have there even been any examples ever of the fan of a rival club doing something bad whilst posing as a fan of that rival's club just to make them look bad. It just seems, so redundant. Also regarding Taylor, I understood why he chose the move but for me I never understood the timing. You had Tammy Abraham on fire, I know he would have wanted to be competitive but I think it was blindingly obvious he wasn't going to be a starter for you at that point in time unless you played a two striker system just because of how well Abraham was doing. It would've made much more sense, in my opinion, to have waited until the end of the season, where he would have likely finished as League One top goalscorer, and have been touted as Abraham's replacement rather than signing, Diedhiou? Is that his name? I just think that would have been a scenario that made much more sense. And if the issue was money, if that scenario played out as it had, than he likely would have been paid more than when he was signed as second choice in January

Given the fact we haven't spent a single year in our history in the top flight of English football, I'm genuinely in shock that he believed that haha