I understand that. Personally I’d complain to the passport office but you might not think it’s worth the bother.

I do miss the times when we last had a Big sale, P. Jones, splashed 6.80m on Scott Dann and nearly 4m on Goodwillie recouping 1.5m. Running a football club is extremely difficult. Minimizing risk is a clever way to do it. When it comes to not backing Eustace, he was delighted with both Sanderson and Forshaw in the Jan window. In addition we brought in AK and Dennis. The summer transfer window I think most supporters were pleased with.

That's a Twiggy team (not much up-front).

No point praising how good some of our younger players are when the Premier Leaguee sharks are always circling. We get excited at the prospect, then they're off.

At the moment we line up like this as our strongest lineup: Toth Albieusu, Carter, Hyam, Ribeiro Tronstad, Travis, Cantwell Ohashi, Gueye, Hedges Subs: Picks, De Neve, Kargbo, Tavares, Tyjon, Buckley, Montgomery, Leonard, Forshaw, Wharton, Garrett, Pears. Really need reinforcements...

In short - no!

Again, why is it preferable to 'develop' 'young players', and in doing so likely sacrifice results, over immediate results which we were getting last season under Eustace and which should have taken us into the play-offs? Who wins from the strategy you are so happy with? Rovers? No chance. We sacrifice immediate results under the pretence of a longer term plan. When did we last benefit - really benefit - from a player sale? The Wharton emergence and sale should have been our golden lottery ticket - once in a generation. And where did we get with that one? Plenty of tweets and back slapping among Rovers and the support base about 'one of our own' but naff all to actually show for it, unless you count remaining in business as being something worth boasting about. Gestede benefits because he can claim we are 1 window into a 4,5,6 window process which secures him 3-4 years of employment. Venkys benefit because it saves them yet more money. Pasha stooge benefits because if one or two of these players come good and we sell them, even if its for a small fee, it is all profit and he can get a pat on the back from the money men in India.

Hopefully Cantwell does...

Ah yes, if in doubt say "negativity" to make someone seem unreasonable. I commented on the link and initially and named at least as many positives as negatives. I even questioned @RoversClitheroe (without reply) who just said it was a terrible signing, or something along those lines. I think he is a decent enough signing. I praised Batth regularly for his performances and wanted him to stay. The only revisionism is coming from those underplaying how good he actually was. The main reason that I don't expect any new centre back to be as good, in this case McLoughlin if he signs, is mainly because of how good Batth was rather than any shortcomings on any new signing. Whether he would have replicated that, we will never know sadly.

Age is irrelevant here. See Adam Forshaw's new deal. Eustace had us in the top 6 thanks to these sort of players and if we'd have backed him even remotely in January he'd have potentially led us to promotion. I don't think anyone anywhere would have been bothered about how old Danny Batth is/was. Those signings were working a treat for us - that's what sensible clubs do with a limited budget - back a manager working wonders on it and let him keep going - Derby have clearly identified he's a man who can secure results on a meagre budget. Nobody associated with Rovers can claim there is any sort of sustainable long term plan as much as people would like to convince themselves there is. We change executives and management more often than people change their season tickets, we deliberately let contracts run down making no effort to renew them and fail to invest or build anything remotely sustainable. It's a myth, please don't delude yourself that because we've been outdone by Derby on Batth and Weimann that we are following some grand long term sustainable strategy. We're firing into the dark with Gestede following Pasha's instructions because it's the cheapest way and because he might earn a few brownie points in India if a couple of them pay off. Rovers won't benefit from it either way.

Only quoting Val who directly compared him to beck

Anything happened on holiday do cant bothered scrolling 😕

A very important part of it is not playing old players all the time which blocks the development of the young players. Without saying anything about needing a new RB or LW it is a fact that more bodies makes it tougher for our youth players to be a part of it, even getting 10-15 mins cameos.

It will take a hell of a signing to replicate the performances that Batth put in last year. I dont get why people are making out as if he is easily replaceable.

I think it's more that he's the ACD replacement - he's a winger. I know he's played LB, but we have Ribeiro and Pickering for LB.

'More financial upside' Totally pointless issue if a) we don't renew contracts, b) we get relegated or miss promotion because of it, c) well sell them but it all goes into covering Venky losses and not back into the club.

It seems to be quiet a common problem among our academy graduates...

Nobody said it was controversial. But to be clear, was it not you saying a page or two back that the Hull fella was slow and might not suit the managers way of playing? Surely the same applies to an even slower Batth who you continue to eulogise over (probably because he isn’t here anymore). It’s almost like you always focus on the negatives in any given situation!

I thought bar two mistakes by the atrocious Carter (albeit Williamson went walkabouts on the 2nd goal too - clearly a CM playing CB) Sweden didn't do much. England completely ran out of puff when they equalised though.

I don't think anyone can on the one hand complain that the bar has been lowered on signings, then go mad about releasing Batth and Weimann. It shouldn't be beyond any decent recruitment department to fill those two spots with players of equal/better quality.

Probably took more money for one year and wanted 2 years with the less amount we would have been offering

Non of those five prospects you mention are at a stage where they can hold down a first team spot.

Wasn’t it said that he wanted a 2y contract at Rovers?

I’m not saying they necessarily will be replaced by two better players straight away, but hopefully they will be replaced by to players With more financial upside if they turn out great. When it comes to the experience in the squad; we have Hyam, Wharton, Pickering, Travis, Tronstad, Carter, Cantwell and Hedges to name a few. This is spiced up with some very exciting prospects in Tyjon, Batty, Duru, Montgomery, Riordan.

Don’t worry about Carter, he’s only got cramp.