Hey guys, not sure how you receive opposition fans, so could be my first and last post... I'm a Forest fan. Just came along to see your thoughts on Ben Brereton. Allegedly Jim Whyte of SSN has said today on TalkSport you're now willing to pay up to £14m for Brereton and are confident of it being done this week. So thought i'd give you my thoughts on BB. He's a very mature player for 19yrs. He's a strong lad, he is a very willing runner and his movement gives centre-backs a tough time. He is much better centrally than out wide (can also play wide in a 3) where he moves into channels to win balls and drags players out of position. He is not afraid to go up against defenders and can beat them when facing them up. He is also very good at picking the ball up a bit deeper and driving at defenders, cutting inside/outside and going past them. His movement finds him in good positions to score. He's not particularly fast, but the way he likes to run at people means he is usually facing them up so he knocks it by them and goes, he moves as quickly with the ball than without it. In a straight sprint off the ball he's not the quickest. But he loves to run with the ball at defenders. What he needs to develop still.. Is his finishing/composure. He was our main man the second half of last season and the pressure didn't help him as a then 18yr old. He missed quite a few very good chances where he seemed to lose his composure. He has previously scored a lot of goals at youth level with calm finishes, but he couldn't really get it together at first team level yet. He also struggles with his back to goal, he's not mastered his first touch yet with someone up his backside, and it can bounce off him, or he tries to win a lot of free kicks and gets in some trouble for diving. I think it's just a bit of naivety and if he can learn to not get occupied with a battle with stronger players, he can focus on winning the ball more than beating the man. In the main, I think most Forest fans would be sad to see him go, because he is a talented young lad who can come off the bench and change the dynamic of a game. Not sure he's totally ready to be the leading man just yet, as he has some important parts of the game to learn, but he sure has the potential to be a very good no.9 with development. Not sure he's ever going to be a 20+ goal man, but he can contribute more than just that. In terms of a fee, we don't sell too cheaply nowadays. It's been mentioned we won't accept less than £12m. Which is probably right, wouldn't expect it to be all up front, but if he goes you can expect it to be a deal worth over 8 digits in total, with a sell-on included. Not sure what your financial situation is, or how true Jim Whyte's £14m rumour is. But we do currently hold the record for biggest fee between Champ clubs (£15m for Assombalonga to Boro & biggest teen received fee £13m for Burke - that was too cheap too as Fawaz was desperate to recoup a fee all up front). I think whilst he'd cost quite a bit for what he has done in the game so far, he does have potential and he could be someone who'd be a great foil for Bradley Dack, as he moves defenders around very well when on song, which could earn Dack some more space. Be interesting to see how it all plays out none-the-less !

Harrison Reed sounds more like someone you would go to for legal advise or to buy a house.

Any excuse to post this

If, as the Notts reporter says, it would take 14 million, with a significant sell-on (why the hell should we take that kind of risk to not even see all the profit?) just to make them 'seriously consider' it, we should walk away immediately. Frankly, I wouldn't be looking to pay 8 million for the kid either. Spend it elsewhere, or loan a striker and revisit it in January or summer. Even a cheap lower league punt is preferable to spunking our load on a kid who isn't on the Forest bench and isn't close to proven enough. It would give us time to scout cheap markets like the French one - that Brentford lad who has 5 already this season cost just over a million from the French leagues and is 22. It would be disappointing, especially after this speculation and the figures being bandied around, but I'd genuinely prefer the old chestnut of 'keep our powder dry' if this is the best we can do. This deal makes me uncomfortable at anything more than 5 million, and it's clear we wouldn't get him at that price at all. Bored of it. Hope TM has another iron in the fire.

Fans are right to be sceptical. Man City was the wrong move for him and the Sunderland stories do ring alarm bells. He's also a case of another player who had too much praise and money when he was too young However if he is genuine about his desire to play and rebuild his career we could have one heck of a player. Give him a chance

Hi lads, Sunderland fan here. Just wanted to say good luck with Jack Rodwell. As you've already gathered, Sunderland fans in general consider him to be probably our worst signing in history, but I noticed not many people had mentioned his record when he was with us, and some are quoting that he was "fit and available to play" but being hounded out, which is a debatable point that I'll get to in a moment. There are a few other bits of info that are probably worth noting, so I'll throw them in too. As some of you have quite rightly pointed out, it was Sunderland's daft fault for giving him a 5-year contract on 70k per week and a relegation clause that would only activate if we failed to get promoted back to the Premier League on our first attempt, meaning that when we were relegated to the Championship we ended up stuck with a player on huge wages that couldn't get into the first team. He was literally the only player on our books that didn't have an automatic 40% wage reduction immediately if we were relegated. While it would be easy to say we Sunderland fans held his wages against him (because they restricted our transfer business) and the club froze him out to get rid of him, a lot of ground had been tread before we even got to that point in our relationship with him. First of all, his record. From the last time he'd won a match that he'd started when he was still playing for Man City until his first win as a match starter in a Sunderland shirt, he went 1370 days without being on the winning team in a match he had started. That 39 match streak included 37 starts for Sunderland in the 2.5 years he'd played for us up until that point... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/38867929 Then there's his injury record. For a while it seemed like whenever we thought he was ready to come back into the team and was making noises in interviews that he was ready for selection, he'd get another injury. https://www.physioroom.com/news/english_premier_league/players/2742/jack_rodwell_injury.html We had manager after manager while Rodwell was at the club that seemed to give him a chance at first and then end up not selecting him ahead of our other midfielders when he was allegedly fit to play. After we were relegated, he decided he wasn't a midfielder anymore. Our then-new manager Simon Grayson said of him "“He told me that, before going into the first team, he had played centre-half for Everton and also through the age groups with England, and he felt that might be his best position because psychologically, and maybe physically as well, his body can’t take the demands of playing in midfield any more." https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sunderland-hand-jack-rodwell-chance-13758808 Rodwell had been offered a way out. There were clubs interested in signing him for free and Sunderland had told him we'd happily rip up his contract and let him sign for another team, but he chose to stay with Sunderland on his 70k per week wages, training with our U23's. He at some point had announced to our management that he no longer wanted to play for Sunderland, and there was a rumour that he'd actually said that he no longer wanted to play football at all. He then released his now famous statement to the Daily Mail, which infuriated many of our fans with his talk of being the fittest he'd ever been and his hope of getting back into the England team... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-5280715/Sunderland-outcast-Jack-Rodwell-insists-hes-not-blame.html ...to which Chris Coleman, our manager at the time responded... https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/chris-coleman-reacts-jack-rodwells-14177256 When he finally left in the Summer after our relegation to League 1 and our new chairman taking over, there were champagne bottles popping open all over Sunderland at seeing the back of him. Obviously we fans can only see snippets of information and try to fill in the blanks ourselves, so who knows what actually happened behind the scenes, but between his losing streak, his injuries, and the way each successive manager failed to get performances out of him, the rest of his time with us on high wages training with the U23's and refusing to leave to join other teams while claiming "it's not about money, I just want to play football" in his Daily Mail interview was just adding insult to injury. The general emotion in Sunderland right now is one of shock, that any professional football club would give Rodwell a chance after his time at Sunderland. I hope for your sake that the contract is some kind of pay-as-you-play deal with a clause that if you lose he doesn't get paid. Anyway, just wanted to pass on a Sunderland fan's perspective. All the best.

Just knocked this up merging the New Order / Rovers theme, can easily alter to a 6x4ft template

I have to turn off whatever media I'm consuming if Danny Murphy is on it. I genuinely can't stand him - not sure if it's the accent, the face, the Robbie Savage mentality of considering himself a past great or the fact that he's a massive hypocrite due to the above.

If anyone can get a tune out of this junk shop fiddle, it’s Mogga. Our dressing room cameraderie and never-say-die performances haven’t come from nowhere, they are the result of his man-management, which I think is Tony’s outstanding attribute.

To be honest the way things are panning out I'd take Herbert Chapman at this point

Time to move on, £5m was enough of a gamble, this is getting silly. You do have to wonder why all our targets have been domestic, are we simply not scouting abroad now with this new system?

12 million quid would be criminal, we're getting into the Afobe, Assombalonga territory there, players who have long track records of banging goals in at this level. I doubt very much it will get anywhere near that but even so that's a terrifying prospect. If the lad struggled with the pressure of being Forests man up front last season then banging that price tag on in a newly promoted team who need to stay in the division could be crippling.

I think it was perhaps JH that made the observation initially, but Mowbray isn't helping himself by setting these deadlines, then not delivering signings by said deadline.... (Just in case anyone starts, here's a little disclaimer: I'm fully behind Mowbray, I love the guy, I'm not being negative and have total faith in him.

Football is mad isn't it. Signing an Premier League winning ex-England international for nowt - bad Signing a kid nobody had heard of until 2 weeks ago who can't get a kick at Forest for 8 million quid - good

Should get along well with our Graham

Sylla would be a Surprise Surprise signing.

I happen to know that someone on the Riverside texted Waggott to complain about the brightness. This was about the time of the first Reading goal. Soon afterwards, it was turned down. Not quite as good as texting Shebby Singh with an instruction re substitution, but there you are!

The links with yourselves surprised me at first. I hadn't followed Rovers' fortunes intently but I was aware of issues of financial backing from the Venkys. Although it looks like you've done some good business recently. I'm not here to justify fees, because I think they're bonkers. For some reason potential costs more than experience in todays world, the more untested the higher the cost. Like you said, Bamford has score plenty at this level and cost £10m, but then we paid £13m for Carvalho from Benfica who has about 40/50 pro games to his name. Likewise, we paid £6m for a player who just scored 20 goals at this level last season (granted he is 30 now) but would demand twice that for a 19yr old with fewer than 10 goals in 50+ appearances. It's madness. It's almost a case of if you haven't had time to prove you're not as good as you may be, you have to pay just incase the player might be destined for the top. I've heard of 16yr old kids moving between clubs for 7 figures, but you can buy an experienced and talented player for less that sometimes. There's no logic to the market. If you buy Brereton, it will be more money that seems logical, don't disagree. He does have the ability to be a good player at this level already, which is impressive for a 19yr old striker. He isn't all about goals and he does cause defenders problems and runs into channels all day long. He has missed quite a few chances, but I guess the hope is he can turn those into goals, because if he did last year, he'd have been an 18yr old striker with 10+ in the Champ and he'd be at a Prem club now. I guess we'll see in the next week what happens!

So he needs to develop his composure/finishing....the very things that you want from an expensive striker and the very things that you pay premium money for. 8-12 million is very much premium money for this kid !!!! We already have Domonic Samuel who you could probably say the exact same things about. There's no getting away from it paying anything over 5/6 million for this lad is genuinely bonkers and straight out of the Venky handbook of football ownership particularly when they are rooting around scrimping and saving on virtually everything else. Odd times again.

Not sure we can afford 14 million, and am equally sure that if we could we shouldn't be spending it all on one player! Let's say the budget is 8 or 9 million, given the cost of the likes of Dack and Rothwell, surely this money would be better spent on improving the whole squad rather than 1 player in 1 position. Very much an all the eggs in one basket. By my reckoning we need at the very least we need a couple of wide players, a striker and a good right back (as cover and competition). Spread "even" £8 million on those players, say deals of £2 million per place, and you can get some very decent players in and a very competitive looking squad.

I thought Bell has played well generally since coming in and offers more going forward than Williams does.

Absolutely, it just seems everything is polar opposites these days, there seems very little room for balance. Everything is either euphorically amazing or dreadful.

We wont get the chance to sign many ex-England international 27 year olds for free, I'm quietly confident about this one. Doing some reading around his time at Sunderland it does seem like he has been victim of some of the same tactics Venky's used on Robinson, Salgado and Roberts, freezing him out purely due to what he was getting paid. Sunderland fans will rightly complain about his getting 77k and having no relegation clause, however that's not Rodwell's fault, nobody forces clubs to offer daft contracts. Also I've read that Rodwell should have ripped up his contract and walked, why? Why on earth would anybody make themselves unemployed? I've not read specifics on what his attitude problems are but a lot of it seem to stem from him getting paid a lot of money and being in a team that to a man were crap the final season in the prem, in fairness Sunderlands plight is as much down to mismanagement at boardroom level as it is to the team. We've seen how chaos at the top spreads like widlfire and Sunderland are definitely victims to that. I've got a really open mind on this one and looking at the facts of it he's 27, cheap, played 160 odd premier league games, won a premier league title and played for England 3 times. How many other championship players can boast that? On that basis alone I'm willing to give him a good go.

Dont agree with this signing at all. Obviously I will back him etc but hes been rotting away for a couple of years and has both attitude and fitness issues. The strangest thing about it all is not only his awful recent history but its his alledged potential position. We "have the money" and obviously the freeddom of the market so why we are resorting to someone who as far as I know hasnt played as a centre back professionally, with his success, albeit a long time ago coming in midfield, as a centre back signing (if true) shows for me a flawed recruitment for that position. Surely just sign a centre back, even if Bauer isnt available. Hate signing square pegs for round holes. I just hope hes one of a few but hes certainly not "win win" and I hope the in my opinion cheap and desperate nature of the deal is a one off and we sign some better players.

And what if he can't hack the pressure of the fee and just goes into his shell ? That's happened plenty of times. Kevin Davies being the classic example. Then we've blown our dosh. We need a target man because we can't play like we did at Hull every week, I wish we could. Teams will come to Ewood and deny us space for the quicker players to run into.

A club record fee on an unproven teenager who scored just 5 goals last season, if we can't find better value than that then it is a poor show.

Even more stupid is this loan to buy thing, in essence it's a permanent transfer. The efl should have just kept their window open till August 31st or close the whole thing on the 9th

Lovely job Perth. If you could remove the footballs and replace with white circles (as per blue on the original) and go back to it being a halved design then that's my new screen saver, t-shirt, flag and forehead tattoo sorted.

Come off it. What list must he be off? We must be some way past the Z list by now and back on AAand BB etc. After the generally positive reaction to the signing of RodwellI I think if we were linked with Bradley Orr and Leon Best someone would come on here trying to defend it and saying "Trust Tony" and if it was good enough for him it's good enough for them.

needs a bit of font adjustment, but above gives a rough idea

2 weeks ago we are after QPR's star midfielder, fast forward 2 weeks we are now after QPR's 5th choice striker = Transfer window Venkys style

Cheers. Strange. Don't have any recollection of their first season at all.

I’ve only seen Sylla once and he scored so on that basis he’s better than Chris Brown!

Well, no, we don't need to get involved at all. We could just get involved with some of the transfers being done at far more reasonable prices. Armstrongs, Dacks, Edwards, Rothwell, Davenport, the Brentford lad, there's plenty available. It has just been said that Millwall are about to spend their record ever fee of 1 million! They've had quite a lot of seasons in this league, all told, for that kind of spend. They finished 8th in it last year. Potential can be bought without a premium. If it doesn't work out, you then have enough left to try again. I'm not saying don't spend quite big, but something like 4 million or so is really the upper limit of what we should spend on potential. Anything more, we need someone who has shown they can do it NOW. There are no guarantees in football, but it's wiser to gamble big bucks when there is a track record.

I wanted us to take a chance on Brereton when the fee was being mooted as 5 or 6 million and we were being told we had a healthy budget and it was being made out we also had money to bring in Freeman as well. But I'm struggling to understand why we are even still talking to forest with some of the figures being suggested. Players like Bradshaw and a few others are moving to clubs for low fees whilst from the outside looking in seems we are wasting our time persuing a player that his current club are looking for silly money for. I honestly can't wait for this window to close

Ha ha ha. From Brereton to Sylla. My God. If Idrissa Sylla signs as part of this "fab 4" Tony promised us then it's beyond a joke. Where has he ended up? He's still at Peterboro. Still available for £2.5m.

I may ask to be put into a coma for a week as all this transfer shenanigans is driving me crazy!

I'd walk away. He's not the only deal in town.

Thanks for the posts, we know very little about him - most of us hadnt even heard of him until deadline day. This potential signing is causing some debate here for various reasons. Our owners have spent little to nothing in the final two years we were in the Championship - in fact selling up 30 million in talent and not reinvesting which led to the drop. We spent 1.5 million in league 1 and now suddenly we apparently have 8/12/14 million to spend on top of the transfers we have already brought in Armstrong for 1.75, Davenport 500k, Rothwell a few hundred k. While it sounds great that they are seemingly funding us for some kind of push nearer the better half of the division, many are worried about using such a large chunk of it on an unproven teenager who seems to have a fairly poor goalscoring record - especially when the likes of Bamford went for a similar sum of money despite having banged goals for fun in this division previously. If what you say that his finishing, hold-up play and composure are his biggest weaknesses, this adds a bit of concern as those are exactly what we need as whoever comes in would be direct competition (and eventual replacement) for Danny Graham who excels at most of those areas of the game. Many have argued that the money would be best spent spread around the squad as we could do with a winger, creative midfielder as well as a striker (or two). You say young English youth international strikers cost a premium - Adam Armstrong didnt.

Thanks for that, really informative post and makes me think even more that he is potentially the right player at the wrong time. Sounds like someone that would be great to bring on around a stable of quality forwards, unfortunately we're not blessed in that department and whoever we bring will need to hit the ground running and be the leading man.

On the New Order theme, If the budget stretches, you could have "Touched by the hand of God" with picture of Shearer with his hand aloft celebration? Or failing that, MGP punching the ball into Newcastle's goal...

It's one bloke's opinion on a messageboard, how does that make Raya a scapegoat?

Cant see how to find a better player available on a free that would come to us. Give the lad a chance. Only a one year deal. Its not a random fella, its England international Jack Rodwell!!

A balanced objective post about a topic you will no doubt feel very passionately about - backed up with facts. That won’t go down well on here but I certainly appreciate it. Thanks. Of course, someone will be along now to tell me I’m talking nonsense (or being negative) and their post(s) will get lots of likes from the herd that we now have on here since the Rovers official messageboards closed down and the blue and white goggled types migrated over here, while the edgier posters set up their own fan site in response and promptly cleared off. Cheers.

Yes, I commented on this in another thread that perhaps Evans and Smallwood are too similar to be playing together. I think the reason we look so good with Bennett in the central 2 is that he offers something different to Evans and Smallwood in that he drives forward a lot more, which makes the midfield a whole lot more balanced. I said in the other thread that whichever of the 2 stayed on in the 2nd half would have looked better and had a better game as they had Bennett in support of them. (That said Evans was excellent second half.) I'd imagine this'd be the same in most teams, even with much higher quality players. I wonder if part of the reason any combination of Tugay/Reid and Savage looked good was because they had very different abilities which complimented each other. How Tugs would have done without Savage getting the ball, or vice versa Savage without Tugay to do something with it - doubt either would have been quite as effective. And yes, I appreciate it's not a total like for likeness - Savage and Tugay were in a different class, but I think the principle is sound: chose a team that compliments each other. I imagine that's what TM was hoping for with Whittingham and Smallwood last year actually, which didn't really work out. At a lower level, the dangers of having 2 similar players in the 2 was probably less apparent in a more forgiving league, too.

Certainly cause a lorra tears..

Raya Nyambe Lenihan Mulgrew Bell Smallwood Evans Palmer Rothwell Bennett Graham  Rodwell to come on in the 85th minute, score the winner and peel off his shirt in celebration to reveal a Newcastle one underneath. He'll then never play again.

New Order and Blackburn Youth go back a long way as far as i'm aware, the more retro flags etc the better.

The vast majority of these posts seem fair and reasonable. it appears we are concerned about ‘taking a punt’ and the impact it may have on team spirit and the dressing room. i would argue the quality of our manager now is quite different. We don’t know the non-financial terms Mowbray has agreed and we shouldn’t under-estimate the power of s strong dressing room either to pull him round, or spit him out. Strukee me the person with everything to prove is Rodwell and if he doesn’t, Mowbray will know how to deal with him. Whilst it’s fair to be concerned, as supporters we need to set him up to succeed and just see what happens!

Hi, I agree completely about the contract. It was definitely our club's fault for giving him the contract, not his fault for accepting it. The dissonance came about from him stating in the Daily Mail interview that it wasn't about the money, he just wanted to play football, while turning down opportunities to sign for other clubs to remain at Sunderland, training with our U23's. I know what you mean about the "giving a chance to a former England international" thing. It does sound harsh, and yes perhaps my judgement is clouded. I am trying to stay balanced with my appraisal while relaying the general feeling about him in our fanbase and trying to show the reasons our fans feel the way they do about him. With Rodwell, for any Sunderland fan, it's really not an easy thing to do to stay objective when discussing him. ? Good luck to you guys too!