Originally Posted by
Sonny
How would you price it up out of curiosity? I'm not massively confident that Rovers will win it or anything, but looking at the state of play I think that pricing looks pretty reasonable.
Byrne and McEneff are big losses, and Mandroui and McCann could go either way (although both have the potential to be good signings.) But outside of that Rovers have basically retained the squad and added Gannon and Hoare.
A lot of turnover at Bohs including losing their best player. Definitely some interesting signings with good potential but I don't see how you could really argue for them ahead of Rovers or Dundalk at this point. Very weak looking at centre half to me also.
Dundalk have also had big turnover including Rodgers, Hoare, Gannon, Massey, Flores, Oduwa and Colovic leaving. Seeing a lot of people saying 9 starters or something from the cup final are still there. That's fair enough, but they were played off the park in that game, and finished 22 points behind Rovers after 18 games. That's a lot of ground to make up. Their goalkeeper situation looks very suspect, and pretty much all the signings are major unknown quantities. Some of them will no doubt work out, but none of them are very obvious upgrades.
I understand there are so many unknowns that seeing Rovers odds on might be a bit jarring, and I certainly wouldn't be backing them at that price, but I can't really see the argument against it on paper.