12 hours ago, Bohinen1983 said:

I can't find the post, but I said when we flogged him for a pittance he would go on to play for Spain and here we are..

I don't want to go over old ground, but whilst he had a few weaknesses his positive attributes far outweighed those. The guy was class and produced saves he had no right to make.  Sold one of our own for a pittance to a rival. Some of the worst business I've ever seen. It's not like he'd never played a game for us and was somewhat of an unknown quantity.  Raya had exhibited massive amounts of potential.  Absolutely sickening. That we have a downgrade in Kaminski that's fairly steady no makes it no less bitter of a pill to swallow. Shocking piece of business!

Downgrade in Kaminski?

Kaminski who’s being getting into the Belgium squad for the last year or so?

In my opinion, Kaminski’s been better for us than Raya was during his time.

Raya was decent but had his shaky moments. Remember him being (rightly) dropped a couple of times.

The issue with Raya is that we initially replaced him with Walton. That was the real failure.

Feeble. 

3 minutes ago, danger19_80 said:

The point is they told everyone the game was definitely on an hour ago. Plenty will have travelled on that basis. If there was always an element of doubt remaining they should have said. Terrible comms from Rovers.

Is there a chance that the ref has made the call to have another inspection at short notice and not Rovers.

10 hours ago, Upside Down said:

It's so simple that the only explanation for not doing that is either gross incompetence or deliberate sabotage. 

Neither is acceptable. 

Sabotage, really?

No idea why the club have overcomplicated it and pushed out a bundle instead of a significantly reduced priced one off game. 700-800 fans would be far better placed filling the gaps elsewhere in the stadium rather than alone in the Darwen End.

On the other hand, regardless of the bundle, adult tickets are £20, The game is at 3pm, we’re top 6 and it’s not televised. It’s clearly down to more than just the price.

Yes, the club could/should be doing more but the brutal truth is that we just don’t have the fanbase to get more than 13-14k home fans at Ewood these days (unless it’s a promotion party piss up on a bank holiday with massively reduced tickets). 

12 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

I’ve no problem with it being open generally, why not.

My issue is with yet another bundle offer, an offer that has failed time and time again. The club just doesn’t seem to grasp what works and what doesn’t here, bizarre really when they possess all the data.

I don’t think the bundle has necessarily ‘failed’. Sounds like it’s on track get around 1000 which is as good as can be expected.

I think it’s good that the club are trying to do something, my complaint is that we should be filling up the 3 other stands first. Get the BBE upper open before the Darwen End. The riverside is half full at the best of times. 

That being said, clearly price is only so much of an issue. We’re a top 6 side and tickets are reasonably priced whichever way you want to look at it. 

I also have concerns about how many seats would be empty if we got to Wembley but I’m treating that as a good problem to have right now.

1 hour ago, darrenrover said:

Must win game....no draws, no excuses!

Latest update is that tickets are going extremely well and Hospitality is all but totally sold out.

COYB and bring on The Blades!

Might want to tell that to the ticket map on the website. Plenty of empty seats in the BBE and JW currently. The hundred or so double deckers will have 4/5 seats each in the DE.

Tickets are £20 irrespective of the ticket bundle. 3pm kick off and not on TV. Really hope we can get a decent gate.

Would much rather we got fans in the BBE upper rather than the DE to start with but let’s see how it goes.

10 hours ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

If we had any real ambition we would have seen some serious action in the transfer window just gone.

Such a lazy criticism to make. Refusing to sell players who can walk for nothing in a few months would suggest there is ambition. ‘Serious action’ like we can suddenly start throwing millions around. You’d be the first to criticise if we ended up under a transfer embargo. 

Great news about TK. Thought the club always left contracts to run down without bothering to do anything about it so this must be a shock to some.

This is a must win to take some of the pressure off the Forest and WBA games. Really tricky series of fixtures coming up and Swansea are arguably the most beatable side we face this month. 

Hope we’re close to full strength. 

Looking back, I’m more grateful for what we had than bitter about what we lost. How much money have clubs such as Spurs spent trying to win the title? Liverpool only won it for the first time a couple of seasons ago. 

The reality is that we should have had more ambition going into 95/96 but the economics of football were changing rapidly. Within a few seasons, the cost of buying a top PL player rose significantly. Jack’s money wouldn’t have kept us fighting at the top for long, even if we had done better in 96.

It says it all that Jack’s legacy still saw us become an established top half PL side throughout most of the 2000’s despite relegation in 99.

1 hour ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

I’m about disappointed we didn’t make more out of the fact two of our players were fouled out of tomorrow’s game by that pub team at Luton.

Don’t necessarily disagree but think Edun has struggled at LWB since Pickering’s injury so looking forward to see what Giles can do.

14 minutes ago, JHRover said:

Watched his interview. I find it hard to harbour any ill feeling towards the lad - he certainly comes across to me as genuine and honest about the situation.

As before he has a short career and has a young family. If another club are offering him far more money and a much longer contract then it is easy to see why he might be interested, especially when his deal here ends in a few short months and he won't know what comes next.

The bit of his interview that really hurt me was when he admitted that it would have been a big life changing move for him and his family which is why he was interested in it. You might think this is Man City or Real Madrid offering him a deal with that sort of language, or at least a club far above us in the pyramid offering a one in a lifetime move to the PL. But no he is actually referring to Bournemouth.

Makes you realise just how far down the pecking order these clowns have dragged us when our star players are seeing Bournemouth mid-season as a life changing move. Cheers Venkys and Maggott.

I actually feel sorry for him. I think he and many others have been mucked around by Venkys, Mowbray included. Their approach is going to cost this club big time when all these decent players leave because they're refusing to sanction better terms.

 

To be fair, it’s the fact that Bournemouth are a recently relegated PL team that’s the issue not the size of the club. We’ve not been able to financially compete with clubs who have dropped down from the PL long before Mowbray came along.

Fair play for giving an interview and addressing the issue. Can understand that he was looking out for his family but he can’t be surprised by the fan reaction given it was a promotion rival.

Hope he gets a decent reaction at Ewood next time out given some of the online abuse stuff but whatever happens this season, he won’t be held in the same regard as his team mates.

18 minutes ago, rigger said:

Over his time with the Rovers, I would say that he has mislead the fans with some of his media statements. 

But why do you take his comments so literally? He will be intentionally coy about team selection, transfers etc because other teams will be listening in. If you’re expecting transparency then you’re being naïve.

50 minutes ago, rigger said:

Diaz. On your other point about Mowbrays comments. Mowbrays biggest fault has always been the bollocks he speaks to the media.  

I don’t know why people get so bothered about what he says to the media. It’s completely irrelevant. No manager is truthful during interviews so it always needs taking with a pinch of salt.

Having said that I’ve always found his post match comments relatively honest. Certainly an improvement on one or two previous managers I can think of..

20 minutes ago, booth said:

For those that think we'll be okay if Brereton is absent for a period of time, turn away from your tv screens now.

No one has said that we’d be ok long term without him but did we cope against Boro? 

We don’t have the money to buy another 20 goal a season striker. Our strength over the last couple of months has been our defence. We scored 2 goals in January and got 8 points. 

46 minutes ago, alcd said:

Any significant absence for Brererton between now and the end of the season - potentially 23 matches including internationals - and its over. Failure to sign any striker with a physical presence shows a total lack of ambition and commonsense. 

We don’t tend to play with out and out strikers, they’re more advanced forwards. Dolan, Khadra, Gallagher, Brereton and Hedges can all play there. We don’t necessarily need another conventional number 9. 

1 minute ago, glen9mullan said:

I think the fact we had an offer for Dembele accepted, shows there was money to spend. In rovers recent terms, that would of been above what we usually spend.

The wages are our biggest issue,

How can Waggott justify giving a new siginng 10-15k plus if he wont offer anywhere near that to the players out of contract?

He wants to stick to the wage structure, he believes is market rate. Sadly thats not the case, other clubs are paying more.

I expect we will hear, wage demands were just out of our reach, 

Other clubs are paying more = Bournemouth.

We can’t compete on a level footing with them given parachute payments and FFP restraints. That’s just the reality all championship clubs who haven’t recently been in the PL find themselves in. 

35 minutes ago, 1864roverite said:

The things that don’t add up ? Dembele fee agreed he chose Bournemouth nothing to do with Rovers. Other offers were made none were accepted not Rovers fault if clubs demand too much ! What baffles me is letting Butterworth go as we have very little cover up front UNLESS there are some freebies out there 

When Butterworth has been on the pitch we may as well have been down to 10 men. His performance against Middlesbrough was appalling, he didn’t break out of a jog. Deadwood. Glad to see him gone. Hopefully he can sharpen up on loan.

All the noises before the window was that we couldn’t throw big money around and we were never going to compete with Bournemouth’s spending. 

Overall, fairly satisfied. Keeping hold of all our key players was the main target this window and there were plenty on here that assumed Venky’s would flog the lot at the first sign of a big cheque.

Centre mid still feels a bit light but when the injured players come back, we have reasonable depth across the squad.

Play offs still need to be the goal. Top 2 would be a huge bonus. Looking around the Championship, other than Bournemouth I wouldn’t say that many clubs had a better window than us. 

2 minutes ago, pick32 said:

So the two bids were actually for Elliott and Solanke then? I thought someone was having a laugh 

Sounds like we had a bid accepted for Dembele but he chose Bournemouth. The wages some of the Bournemouth signings must be on. If they don’t go up this season they will be in massive trouble.

3 minutes ago, Craigman said:

Not sure the owners want us to get promoted. Signing 3-4 players today was needed. At the moment we have 0. 

Refusing to sell a player out of contract in 6 months for a fee over £3m doesn’t suggest that at all.  

19 minutes ago, AdamRochina said:

lack of ambition , lack of planning and forward thinking,  pathetic from rovers

You don’t think Zeefuik took some planning? Household name to you was he?

Feel underwhelmed about today given the comments over the last week but at the start of the window I would have been relatively happy with keeping the squad together. Think we’ve done some decent business all told. Squad still feels thin in places but we’re better off than where we were 4 weeks ago. 

Bournemouth aside, I don’t think many championship clubs have spent much.

Glad to see Butterworth head out. Miles off Championship standard at the moment.

An underwhelming day but doesn’t mean a bad window necessarily. Retaining the key players was the priority and adding to them with a few good value, quality additions. Think it’s been acceptable. 

We can’t use Bournemouth as a yardstick given their parachute payments. We were never going to spend big money given the FFP situation.

Just now, MarkBRFC said:

Covering all basis Bournemouth.

I think we'll only get Giles in, but we're still a midfielder and striker away from being able to stay the distance for the top 2 for me.

I still think play offs are the most realistic for us. Top 2 would be a phenomenal achievement. Hopefully we can get one or two in the door but at the beginning of Jan I’d have taken keeping hold of the squad with a couple of additions.

Interesting that there’s been no interest in Brereton even since his goal against Argentina (what a ridiculous statement). Can’t help but feel that him being in South America has helped us on that front although I doubt anyone would have met our valuation.