So what exactly is the answer?

[mrfrostsdad]

What's the answer?
1) Is it the manager?
Wellens has proved he can manage a football club. Leyton Orient are running away with promotion atm. Didn't work out for him with us for some reason.
Butler should never have got the job. No experience. Easy option.
McSheffrey should never have got the job. No experience. Easy option.
Schofield looks like he's going the same way. No experience. I won't say easy option, because he wasn't part of the existing set up.
None of these can could/can see the players we have are not capable of doing what they want them to.

2) is th the players?
Without a doubt to a great extent. This group is the biggest shower of dog s**t I've seen for many a year. I wouldn't give a fat rats a**e if not a single one of them was here next season. Many are completely past it, Clayton, Anderson to name just 2. Some are simply p**s poor. Williams to name just one.

3) is it the board?
I'd wager that our budget is as good or better than most teams in the division. But somewhere along the line, they must rubber stamp who is employed by the club. They help pay the wages after all.
We've needed an experienced manager for ages, but we keep bring in total novices who are clueless. We need someone to kick some arses, not Buttler, McSheffrey or Schofield.
We need solid investment in bringing in players who can actually play, maybe even paying transfer fees. Not a set of has beens or utter crap that we have now.

What a mess! What say you?

[Chris Black come back]

Manager can only do so much. Butler and McSheffrey were clearly poor appointments given their total inexperience. Actually felt sorry for them both. Schofield should be doing a lot better than he is, but it’s simply not a good squad and more generally there is an air of failure and accepting defeat around the club. It beggars belief that we have pissed away all this money and this will be our worst league season since 1997/98. Recruitment has been a total joke.

We’ve gone backwards at an alarming rate from being cheated out of Wembley in May 2019 to the shitshow that trudged off today in December 2022.

God only knows what happened but we are now absolutely bang average middle of the table League Two. There is no injustice or bad luck, we are totally deserving of being where we are.

[drfchound]

We’ve gone backwards at an alarming rate from being cheated out of Wembley in May 2019 to the shitshow that trudged off today in December 2022.

That is exactly how I feel.

[Reg of the Rovers]

Our budget is decent so I don't blame the board, we have a new manager who is trying to change things - time will tell on that one.

I don't think we're a million miles off at this level - we just don't learn from our mistakes, or our success!

We beat Grimsby easily because we flew out of the blocks, pressed hard, moved the ball with some urgency and got our goals when we were on top. We lost at Colchester and Tranmere today because (first two mins today aside) we were slow, played backwards, had a lone and isolated striker and didn't press or close down with any urgency or force.   

[ChrisBx]

A combination of the three, but more so the squad and the board.

The football-related strategy of the club has been substandard for years.

[Canadian Rover]

It doesn't matter.

Nobody at the club is accountable from the top to the bottom.

And they don't care about the fans expectations whatsoever.

[andyst79]

Majority of the players are inept, but tactically that was embarrasing. The manager has to take full responsibility for that performance I'm afraid.

[Branton Red]

The root cause of Rovers' demise is simple and obvious IMO.

Any organization that continually appoints inexperienced, unproven individuals to key managerial positions is only going to go one way.

Backwards.

The answer is therefore equally obvious.

Either those in charge learn from this continuous error and correct it or they are replaced by people who will.

Only then are Rovers' fortunes likely to sustainably improve.

[mrfrostsdad]

The root cause of Rovers' demise is simple and obvious IMO.

Any organization that continually appoints inexperienced, unproven individuals to key managerial positions is only going to go one way.

Backwards.

The answer is therefore equally obvious.

Either those in charge learn from this continuous error and correct it or they are replaced by people who will.

Only then are Rovers' fortunes likely to sustainably improve.

To be fair Branton, I don't think even Pep could get this lot playing well because the great majority are completely and utterly hopeless

[Branton Red]

The root cause of Rovers' demise is simple and obvious IMO.

Any organization that continually appoints inexperienced, unproven individuals to key managerial positions is only going to go one way.

Backwards.

The answer is therefore equally obvious.

Either those in charge learn from this continuous error and correct it or they are replaced by people who will.

Only then are Rovers' fortunes likely to sustainably improve.

To be fair Branton, I don't think even Pep could get this lot playing well because the great majority are completely and utterly hopeless

All the players have been signed or re-signed to new contracts by the the previously appointed inexperienced, unproven managers.

Which underlines my point.

[mushRTID]

Seen a few things on Twitter this last week saying there are parties interested in taking us over.

Yep. I know it’s twitter.

We desperately need some new energy and ambition I’m afraid.

[since-1969]

Elon musk ?

[StocksArmy]

Without going on a huge rant the answer to the problems is propper investment. Loans and frees will keep us stagnant forever.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Difficult to say it's down to one single factor. There's probably a combination of things however, we can only look at what Schofield is trying to implement and with whom.

In his first few games, the players seemed to buy into him but that honeymoon period was all too short.

So why can't or won't the players carry out the game plan? Are they all thick? Can't be arsed, or is it too technical for them?

Schofield has a preferred system but he's not brought any players with him where he's played the system successfully or worked with his philosophy in the past and believe in it.

Performances suggest he's struggling to get his messages across and turned into action. Of course, some players are more receptive than others.

We can recall SO'D and other managers acquiring players who they'd worked with before, who they knew would want to work with again and had that trust they would take instructions on the pitch and bring other players up to the standard with them. Plus other players who would fit the system/philosophy. You'd probably need two or three players on the pitch at least who you knew you could trust and can influence others.

Wellens, McSheffrey and now Schofield haven't had the time to instill a way of playing or get to the next transfer window to redress the balance. Plus Wellens and McSheffrey were both hampered by a long injury list too.

Of course, 'experienced' managers are likely to have longer lists of players who they've worked with but, we know things aren't that simple these days with the transfer windows

There is no simple solution that we fans can identify. Changing manager/head coach again isn't the right thing to do, unless there are issues behind the scenes we don't see so I think he has to get a chance of getting players in that are better fits and moving on those that aren't.

Of course the man in the position to do most is Copps and that responsibility gets more acute with each defeat. Now is the time to hold our nerves and hope he has a bloody good plan for January.

[DonnyBazR0ver]

Without going on a huge rant the answer to the problems is propper investment. Loans and frees will keep us stagnant forever.

Easy to say. Much more difficult to implement in a January transfer window alone. We can't label a free or a loan as being wrong for the time, as long as we acquire players of the right stuff, it may take a combination of loans, frees, fees to get what we want in the short term.

Most of us thought the last transfer window was a relatively good one. I know fans still listen intently to what JR has to say, and even he said in July it had been a good transfer window.

[Silkscarf]

Baz summed up the position perfectly.

The Stevenage game (I think it was?) we looked like 1970s Holland. We lost the game 1-0 (it’s football, that happens) but I thought bloody hell I can’t believe these are the same players. Schofield coached them to that performance in about a week. They listened to him and did it on the day. Trouble is they need to do it every week and more than half of them are not good enough. So he’s got to get players in who can do that stuff. We have to give him time to do that.

[selby]

  Bite the bullet, go out and sign some players with a bit of pace and a dig in them who like a battle, and can play a bit.
  There are players that would not cost the Earth, are ambitious and like a battle and not necessarily household names.
  Any outlay would be covered just getting better results and in the play offs

[Colin C No.3]

Seen a few things on Twitter this last week saying there are parties interested in taking us over.

Yep. I know it’s twitter.

We desperately need some new energy and ambition I’m afraid.

Jog on!

[Colin C No.3]

  Bite the bullet, go out and sign some players with a bit of pace and a dig in them who like a battle, and can play a bit.
  There are players that would not cost the Earth, are ambitious and like a battle and not necessarily household names.
  Any outlay would be covered just getting better results and in the play offs

I know you watch plenty of games selby. If you’ve ’identified’ players who short term could give us the energy, drive, fight that is so lacking in this bunch, I’d go with that.

[Daniel_Smith]

I think it's easier to answer why we find ourselves in the position we're in rather than try and figure out how we get out of this mess, and you have to put that down to those running the club.

All the recent managerial appointments we've made have been internal candidates or external unknown quantities. They weren't the easy options - they were the cheap options.

I certainly don't fall for the guff about "one of the largest budgets in the league" or "we'd pay the manager a high wage regardless of who we hired". It's gaslighting by the board pure and simple, and unfortunately plenty of fans are happy to listen and believe those comments despite evidence to the contrary.

Would getting new owners in solve the issue? Depends who you brought in and how ambitious they'd be. The answer is - probably not. Doncaster isn't a Southern club which seem to be the clubs attracting foreign investors - unless you're a Northern club with a previous Premier League pedigree.

We don't get enough fans in ground even when we're doing well, so gates are always below par. That puts off investment. Remember John Ryan's constant rallying cries when we were in the Championship?

So you need a local investor(s) who is a lifelong Rovers fan and isn't bothered about losing money. I don't see that person or persons coming frankly.

[Pliskin]

The people who run the club don't seem to have a clue. It's a series of bad decisions and generally poor stewardship that have led to this point rather than one bad transfer window or one bad managerial appointment.

The alarm bells started ringing the summer when we sold Marquis. Despite knowing from January that he'd be wanting to move on if we didn't go up, we weren't proactive in identifying a replacement and no sense afterwards that we'd made every effort to get someone in before the deadline. But we'd surely have someone lined up to come in the moment the January window opened right? Wrong. It still took us until the end of January before we'd sign someone who could've been described as a replacement. By which point the season was a couple of bad results away from being over.

And that was just the start. Seemingly every transfer window we're slow and reactive, the incoming players generally worse than their predecessors. Bizarre and ill suited managerial appointments, all different, but not one has been able to make a positive impact on the team performance since Moore left. There now just seems to be a general malaise and losing mentality around the place that feels like an impossibility to turn around. When you think we can't get any worse, we do.

We're now struggling to put a decent team together at a level we've played above every season bar one since 2004. While the club is obviously still in a healthier position than it has been for most of its history, we now have a team that is arguably worse than what we'd have if we had no one putting money in and still played at Belle Vue.

This is just a moan really because I've no idea what the answer is.

[Butchers Red]

Well we could do a lot worse than ring Dave Penney, and / or Mark Albrighton who if either had the misfortune to share a dressing room with this lot would kick them all the way back to Donny. It's simple - no pride, no passion and at the end of the game they're all strolling round shaking hands like nowt happened.

Oh and by the way - Faulkener wasn't ready ffs

[Chris Black come back]

Coming out of that match at The Valley, we still had a team and maybe a squad more than good enough to challenge the following season, if we could find decent loans to replace Kane and Wilks.

Moore gave us a short term sugar rush by filling the side full of loans, while underinvesting in permanent players. Since those loans all ended, we were left with a shell of a squad and recruitment since that point has been a masterclass in appalling decision making at every level.

[ForsolongaRover]

  Bite the bullet, go out and sign some players with a bit of pace and a dig in them who like a battle, and can play a bit.
  There are players that would not cost the Earth, are ambitious and like a battle and not necessarily household names.
  Any outlay would be covered just getting better results and in the play offs

Is this realistic though? Are we an attractive proposition to the kind of industrious competent hard-working player that fits this profile? Our recent history is decline and failure. The last batch of signings looked eager to learn and took us into an automatic promotion place. Since then, promotion form dipped, McSheffery was sacked and now we are on an even steeper decline under a Head Coach with little professional credibility. On top of that, the sort of individual you envisage would be “his own man” and self motivating, not the kind of player that would relish having the Coaching Manual thrust down his throat.

[swintonrover]

The biggest failure was throwing Wellens under the bus budget wise. Moore leaving was awful, but I understood the logic behind putting Butler in charge. Problem was, Moore just kept signing loanees, so when Wellens took over, we had 7(?) players.

 At that point, that had to be above average outlay as we needed to build an entire squad. Instead, they provided a continuity budget, so instead of spending a transfer budget on 3 or 4 signings to improve, we had to spend the same money on 13 players, thus the quality was lower. We keep trying to spend money on doing up the squad bit by bit, but without the baseline, you can't do that.

SOD built his team over a few windows, but he had Penney's reliable squad to fill in whilst bringing in his team. We haven't had a baseline for a while, yet keep trying to build bit by bit. Or, as what's tended to happen, try and build a baseline, but because we've had to spread thinner it's wholesale every year.

As annoying as it is, if the board won't overspend, we need to tread water in League 2 and upgrade the squad 2 or 3 high quality players at a time, not sign a dozen every window, whilst crucially keeping the nucleus (Knoyle, Miller, Molyneux) at the club.

[Chris Black come back]

I fear that over the last 12 months people looked at us just like that, hence the mish mash of recruitment. Basically those who would join us, rather than those who fitted our system.

[Chris Black come back]

The biggest failure was throwing Wellens under the bus budget wise. Moore leaving was awful, but I understood the logic behind putting Butler in charge. Problem was, Moore just kept signing loanees, so when Wellens took over, we had 7(?) players.

 At that point, that had to be above average outlay as we needed to build an entire squad. Instead, they provided a continuity budget, so instead of spending a transfer budget on 3 or 4 signings to improve, we had to spend the same money on 13 players, thus the quality was lower. We keep trying to spend money on doing up the squad bit by bit, but without the baseline, you can't do that.

SOD built his team over a few windows, but he had Penney's reliable squad to fill in whilst bringing in his team. We haven't had a baseline for a while, yet keep trying to build bit by bit. Or, as what's tended to happen, try and build a baseline, but because we've had to spread thinner it's wholesale every year.

As annoying as it is, if the board won't overspend, we need to tread water in League 2 and upgrade the squad 2 or 3 high quality players at a time, not sign a dozen every window, whilst crucially keeping the nucleus (Knoyle, Miller, Molyneux) at the club.

This rings true but Wellens signed the following players - Ro-Shaun Williams, Ben Close on a three year deal, Dan Gardner, Jordy Hiwula, Rodrigo Vilca, Tiago Cukur, Joe Dodoo and Aidan Barlow.

These were not successful signings. In fact, I’d go so far as saying that the summer 2021 window was probably the worst in living memory. Galbraith and Matt Smith v2 were decent loanees and Knoyle, although struggled at League One level, has been a decent signing generally. Pretty much every other player Wellens signed has not worked out.

[Donny Exile in York]

The cheap option manager appointments, the procrastinating transfer window in summer 21 are aligned in my opinion with other signs like the flimsy pamphlet type programme, awful material of the away kit, lack of kiosks being open in the ground, all tangible indications of significant lack of proper investment by the owners in the club despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.

 It's clear we have been downsizing both on and off the pitch since pre pandemic  which probably facilitated the owners in a desire to cut the cloth accordingly.. only this cutting of cloth accordingly is simply transparent on the pitch as the death of a thousand cuts with a continuing decline in results and performances. I've read the words austerity and gaslighting.. the last decade almost since 2013 in terms of lack of success and 5 year plans to the championship do now suggest so. Other than the McCann year when he managed to galvanise rhe club and got rid of the soft centre (apparent with the number of yellow and red cards),  we haven't looked like matching previous achievements. Now we look more likely of falling through the trapdoor back to the conference. I did hope Coppinger could generate some magic off the field to be reflected on it but right now it looks way off. 

Our rapid decline is hard to take, is it a coincidence it has happened following the sad loss of Rovers fan Dick Watson, and before that JRs departure, a step process of decline linked to reduction in financial support, despite the rhetoric to the contrary.

That said we have witnessed a real horror show of performances including by experienced pros over the last two years and there is absolutely no excuses for the clear lack of application in.the away defeats this season at Hartlepool, Colchester, Carlisle, Tranmere amongst others.. absolute horror shows with hardly a shot in anger in three of these absolutely shocking and unacceptable performances (first half at Colchester excluded). So the current crop of players and both managers this season are also culpable too.

[Chris Black come back]

We’ve made some poor footballing decisions on managers and players. The financial fundamentals though are robust so it’s just a matter of using our cash wisely and stopping pissing it away. The structure that Copps is now responsible for should stop idiotic decisions being made. The window this summer was ok but not altogether great, so I hope he’s going to oversee something better this time. 

[GazLaz]

JUST SIGN SOME PLAYERS THAT ARE GOOD AT PLAYING FOOTBALL.

Fairly easy solution to it all.