You are spot on , Rankine was out on loan & was allowed to play against us & I believe he netted 4 goals out of the six , a quite bizarre decision by us to allow him to play , regarding Brown , he is a Stoke player & can obviously play against us .
He scored 1 goal, Phil Jevons got four that day. Which incidentally was the last time we played them in a league game.
I believe our reluctance to play Rankin was, at least in part, financially motivated. Something about not wanting to trigger the appearances-related part of his transfer fee.
I think Walton needs to work on his parrying. He's been parrying shots back into play. I know that both Bristol City goals came from deflections but he'd parried the initial efforts back into danger areas.
Senior moment, I knew someone bagged 4 & I thought it was Rankine, but hey ho it was still a crazy decision to allow him to play .