He's a politician first and foremost who was brought in by the FA to pour oil on troubled waters after the Big Sam debacle. Did better than expected initially, healed factions within the squad and imo did pretty well in 2018 and 2020 apart from the crucial games where his lack of proactivity and in game management cost us. Should have been replaced after the Italy final for me. Heard a rerun of an interview between Simon Jordan and Allardyce recently where big Sam attributed Southgate's failings to lack of managerial experience. He said the longer you've been doing it the better you are at in game decision making.

Still have my 125th Anniversary Season ticket....when we had people running our Club who gave a damn.

That was John Butcher for the old timers. Not many modern keepers confident with crosses these days.

Another clown who should be nowhere near ownership of a football club . Wednesday banned from making ANY signings for the next three windows.

Dracula?

Yeah it is odd that they haven't scheduled anything in for boxing day to be fair. Can't be a time where that has happened before.

https://news.bet365.com/en-gb/article/premier-league-boxing-day-new-years-day-fixtures/2025061808503860465 They are subject to change but why didn't they just arrange the programme for Boxing Day and then give the 'subject to change' line (which all fixtures are anyway).

Rovers are still paying his existing contract, and will be doing so until the end of the month, when his contract expires and he moves to Chesterfield completes

And definitely missing when a cross comes in

As disastrous as Pears has been, his stats always showed quite high compared to other keepers, mainly on last season though...Season before he was just terrible. We will get over a million for him I'd say.

Couldn't stand losing to those berks yet again...no thank you!

He's usually missing when the opposition have a shot at our goal, tbf.

No chance, could easily get over £1m from a Championship Club for him. Then if Man Utd (or any other PL Club) still want him as their 4th choice, double it.

Nobody is paying £2m for Pears. 6 Figures I would think.

Couldn't help but notice that Pears is conspicuously missing from all the new GK kit marketing. Their latest X post even features one of the younger goalies (Michalski I think) alongside Toth. Couple that with Toth being touted as next season's #1... pretty much confirms that Pears will be sold this window! Should be a cool little £1m-2m in the transfer kitty Venky's pockets.

Markandey is a 4th division player, as this proves.

The wages to trigger his contract year are probably higher than any transfer fee we could have got for him. He's really not very good.

It's OK I play Mondays but wanted a 2nd night haha

Anyone remember the Kappa kits? They were painted on!

We play in Wigan. Sorry it's always full!

Is this like a post-season tournament or a pre-season tournament? I noticed that Chelsea subbed on Liam Delap the other night, who they obviously only signed shortly before.

The fixture list will be absolutely butchered for TV before long. Wouldn't surprise me if some of those fixtures on the 27th December were moved to boxing day for TV coverage, and some to Sunday the 28th too. Then that could have a knock on affect for the games on the 30th December to move a day or two and end up on NYD which is a Thursday, and then some Saturday 3rd Jan fixtures moved to the Sunday etc. Be interesting to see what the Championship schedule is over Christmas. I could see 26th, 29th December, 1st and 4th January for the games.

Considering the club are always crying poverty, it is a bit strange we haven't tried to scrape some money out of this situation either now or in the future. I doubt any league 2 team would have paid any transfers fees, so your idea seems like a no brainer almost. Unless we've gone all noble and "done the right thing by the player", which is at odds with how the club operate on day to day basis.

Looking at their games it appears that there are no Boxing Day or NYD fixtures in the Premier League.

Away boxing day and home on the final day going off there fixtures.