I don't think Rocky should have gone. Simple as.

Much as I liked him, he just wasn't project manager material yet.
He's obviously a hard working young man with a lot of guts and initiative, but he was out of his depth in this task where he had to manage a bunch of people who have no interest in keeping their job in one of his sandwich bars, but to become sirallen's apprentice themselves and wouldn't mind if Rocky failed....

Rocky was the right man to go. I thought it was quite obvious, so I was surprised that the You're Fired audience seemed to take pity on him. Then again, even if you spent half an hour getting to know Hitler you'd probably start seeing things from his point of view.

If one aspect of the task caused the boys to fail then he wouldn't have been fired, but EVERYTHING was wrong- the theme, the food, the presentation, the budget ect
And when everything in the task is wrong the team leader has to be held accountable. And the worst thing is that it should have been something that he was good at because he had experience in it.

Rocky talked the talk but when the pressure was on he looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
Plus, the people he took into the boardroom seemed to be the people that he gets on least with, not for anything to do with the task. He doesn't seem able to speak against Philip because he was his closest friend.
Rocky seemed to think the show was Big Brother and he had to nominate the two people that he wanted to evict.

Rocky was a lousy TM, and was definitely the right man to go. He instructed Phil to pitch £60/head for gods' sake! Where was his business acumen? He flogs his own butties for about £2 each, so where on earth did he think he could justify that sort of price for such small amounts of food?
And as for the butties he sold on the street. He used the classic cheap sandwich trick when he told the lads to "Make sure most of the filling is down the middle, so when it gets sliced, that's what they'll see, and it looks professional". Now there's a recommendation for Fatso's!!

The worst thing of all for me though, was seeing his hide away in the kitchen, out of site & mind, whilst the rest of his team had to front the client and its' guests.

Frankly, I think he was intimidated by the whole affair. He's far better being back in his comfort zone, Oops, I mean the North East!

I think he was the right person to go. He seems like a really nice lad but the number of poor judgements he made throughout the task (and the fact he made a LOSS) made it impossible for SA to sack anyone else IMO.

Apart from all the very obvious business mistakes made, I thought the team's presentation was almost unforgivable. If I'd booked caterers to run a function for me, the very last thing I'd expect would be a gaggle of unshaven, unfit, unattractive, spotty, possibly unwashed (and probably sweaty) boys dressed in togas!

Watching them serve the food actually made me feel slightly sick

But that's exactly my point. There are a million different scenarios I wouldn't know how to cater for, so the trick is to find out in advance, rather than wing it, as he did.

Plus I'd say anyone would expect a firm of lawyers working in one of Londons most famous and expensive buildings are going to have certain standards.

The editing was awful last night. I hardly saw James throughout the task, then suddenly he's been accused of being a big mouth who can't stop talking - wish we'd seen some evidence of this being the case.

I think Rocky was probably the right one to go out of the three - but as Howard said, he brought the wrong two back in with him. Phillip, for example, should not have been allowed to escape the net.

He missed the basic point and didn't set a price to match his expenditure or vice versa. The price they asked for was plucked from nowhere and unrealistic and there was no relationship between what they ended up with and what was spent. He had no idea what profit he was aiming for after the price was agreed and his sales team had no idea what price was asumed or needed. He probably needed to find someone competent to keep both cost and sale figures in mind or do it himself. . Yasmina aimed at 70% profit went for it and got it with a bit of luck that she wasn't paid nothing for cutting too many corners .

He then compunded it by not stopping the 2012 idea, not getting his kitchen and food quality right and not seeing that the togas were absurd and inappropriate. He finished himself off by taking two people in for no real reason and then not attacking them enough. He also had no defence because he hadn't delegated anything clearly - giving food quality to someone, monitoring the waiters to someone and sharing the responsibility for pricing and cost calculations would at least have shared the blame around. As it was decisions were either not made or were silly and things were just not done and no one but him should have done them.

I don't think Rocky should have gone. He showed a lot more potential than James and Howard. I'm actually quite disappointed, as he was one of the contestants who I was most interested in watching. I know we didn't see a lot of him, but as the youngest contestant and already earning more than Sir Alan was offering, I thought he would be an interesting contestant. I think it should have been James who was fired.

Rocky definitely should have gone - I've worked in catering, and assumed that he's just walk this because of his background... - having seen this, I've got no idea how he runs all those successful sandwich shops!!

I do think Rocky should have gone, I can't forgive the limp peanut butter sandwich or the sausages on crisps, but I think he got the worst leaving present on You've been fired. That shirs signed by all the Middlesborough team that he used to play with that are now premiership players living his dream? Nice touch, talk about kick a bloke when he is down. He looked like he was going to cry when he got that - he stuffed it under the table and didn't know what to say.

I didn't notice watching it last night, but popped round my Mum and Dad's to load some stuff onto Mum's ipod and she was watching it - the poor bloke looked slightly destroyed by that gift, a complete kick in the teeth (no footie pun intended) Adrian might as well have said 'And here, Rocky, is what you could have been doing, earning the adoration of ntens of thousands and lots of dosh as part of the package'

Sir Alan had no choice. The silly fool took the wrong guys into the board room.
The guy who made the deal for the evening meal. reducing it from £60 to £15. but he was smart and complemented Rocky in front of Sir Alan so he did not pick him.
& Whoever spent a fortune at ~Theme Traders - & those outfits!

Rocky was totally out of his depth.

Terrible, wasn't it? Reminded me of Jim Bowen and Bully - lets have a look at what you could have won.

Council flats and speedboats springs to mind

(BTW, I know someone living in a council flat that went on Bullseye and won.... you guessed...sold way via Exchange and Mart, years before ebay)

He deserved to go- he couldn't even make a profit in his own area of expertise.

Tens of thousands? Tens you mean, we're talking about Middlesbrough

Just watched 'You're Fired' on iplayer. Rocky is such a sound bloke. Prorbably one of the nicest that's been on The Apprentice such a shame that he was fired.

I agree, he is as simple as and keeping him in there might have provided lots more laughs as he tried to be a businessman.

Rocky gave up. He had a look of someone who was going to be fired right from the start of the board room bit. He had no fire, he put out no defence... there was no passion. He just sat there and took it and made it easy for Sir Alan to get rid. His face said it all.. I was half expecting him to start crying.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in The Apprentice is putting yourself forward for a task that is in the field you're an "expert" in, and then mess it up.

Howard should have gone.

Last week AS fired Anita for doing exactly what Howard did i.e. didn't speak up and stop things going wrong. As AS pointed out running 10 pubs he had the experience to recognise the project was in trouble, just as Anita had the accountancy experience to know they had overspent.

Two weeks in a row now Howard has escaped after being useless to his team.

James at least is passionate about the team wining, but he wears his heart on his sleeve and he will have to learn how to communicate better if he is going to survive another board room experience.

Rocky may not have won in the end, but his problem is he doesn't have the formal business skills of some of the others and he just couldn't handle the boardroom post-mortem examination, in fact the boardroom environment full stop.

Actually it came from phoning a catering company and asking what they charged. I'm not sure what went wrong, there. Presumably they just misunderstood what was meant by a "theme". There was no need for themed costumes or room dressing. The big mistake was dropping from a £60 affair to a £15 without scaling down the expenses.

Howard did not deserve to go. He could have contributed more to this task and he made a error with his research for the prices but this task was still one that covered Rocky's area of expertise. Howard had nothing to do with the olympic idea or the choice of food, both of which Rocky went with and both of which were disasterous, as well as being the project manager behind a team that made a loss.

Howard also did a good job as project manager the week before. They would not have won the task if he did not get them to focus on their costings(which Mona did not do) or came down to the car lot to lend a hand when the other lads had only washed one car in one and a half hours. At the end of the day, the blame has to lie with Rocky who was a awful project manager.

I've not seen anything useful from James yet but going off what has been said about him by SA and Nick, he is very highly respected in his job.

Rocky f*cked up royally in this task, and for that he had to go. However he was one of the most articulate people I've seen in the last 3 in the boardroom; direct and to the point with no suck ass waffle. I think he could have learned a lot over the next few weeks, but alas the prats will prevail.