Mattyblue

You’re probably right RV, Venky’s seem to want their best paid folk in manager roles - Chief exec and team manager to bow and scrape each summer. Lambert obviously wouldn’t do it, Mogga cannily used it to his advantage.

Oh aye, the young me couldn’t understand why you’d want rid of my hero Speedie! However, England capped striker for loadsofmoney Rovers is a different world than 19 year old Championship striker for Venky’s reliant 2018 BRFC.

Indeed, there always seems to be plenty in the youth set up in the 90s - Given and Duff to name two stand outs.

In fairness, Shearer was capped already and in the England squad

I knew you would want to spend it back then, indeed after you said it on that thread I said ‘Yeah right! You'd be swinging from the chandeliers of Chez Chadwick if we signed someone for 10 million!’ Which is fair enough and I hope they are still intact the morning. So my advice to you would be stop blindingly agreeing with the club’s stance, if you’ve always wanted us to buy players for big money, say so, otherwise you look a bit daft when just two months ago you ‘didn’t want us to pay big money for one player, we should build a squad instead’ now we should DEFINITELY pay £8million for a Championship 19 year old

I wouldn’t say half personally, however are the non marquee foreign managers that are parachuted in usually any better?

Ha, does seem slightly stalker-ish, or I have a rain man memory, but in reality I stumbled across that post when looking for another in the season ticket thread. Got to hand it to the chadster, he reminds me of a media trained politician trying to spin his way out of a bind after being caught out by Andrew Neil...

Interesting, because in June you said: ‘Rovers clearly arent willing chuck millions and Millions at Promotion but do it a smarter way less cost way of building a squad with good players. Well lets agree on 3 million pounds come from season tickets sales thats 25% percent of our wage budget. Big help to Mowbray signing players. Yes you are right it wouldnt get us signing players at 10 million but I wouldnt want that anyway.’

Do you want us spending big money on one player?

McLeish, Scumbag, McDonut, Dalglish, Ferguson, Lambert, Pardew, O’Neill, Rodgers, Hughes, Pulis, Hodgson, Moyes, Redknapp, Mick McCarthy/Terry Connor

In our relegation season of 2011/12 - 15 out of the 20 were British or Irish, that’s some change in six years...

To be fair, we’ve had managers from the rest of Britain and Ireland since time immemorial pretty much, so I don’t particularly class them as ‘foreign’, though yes they aren’t English so I get your point. The issue isn’t the likes of Mark Hughes and Chris Hughton (born and raised in England, just chose to play for his mother’s country), but the likes of Javier Gracia at Watford, had to wiki him because I’d forgotten who their manager was- spent his career treading water in the Spanish second division largely and a few spells in top flights around Europe taking sides to no better than mid table. He’s a prime example of what’s wrong with the English game - that goes for players too.

Indeed, lots of parallels with Hughes at Rovers. Though we did even better, top 6, multiple cup semi finals and a run to the UEFA Cup knockouts. Man City took a punt on him, fast forward to today and there’s not a chance a club with top 4 aspirations go for Dyche, just the way the game’s gone.

The League Cup is still one of the three major competitions in this country, yes the lowest profile of the three but still a trophy to win all the same. However, I wouldn’t say the League Cup has got any less prestigious in recent times, it’s been like this for years; ‘the Worthless Cup’ anyone? Though the Carabao sponsorship era has been particularly shambolic - yet so has the Checkatrade Trophy, maybe that esteemed organisation the ‘EFL’ have something to do with it? What has changed is the collapse in the FA Cup’s importance. League football (and Champions League) now dwarves everything else, to the extent the FA Cup struggles to draw crowds or strong starting XI’s, with replays on their way out and midweek rounds on the horizon. Total contrast from years past in which it was THE competition, with crowds massively outstripping league games.

...and the posts are gone! Has Keith Laird been in touch with his lawyers again in solidarity?