We did pretty well on Rudy. Signed for £200k, sold for £6m a couple of seasons later. He did nothing after leaving us as well so I think we got a very good price for him which, as Chaddy says, was the best offer in for a player who wanted out.

Brilliant game, I’m still buzzing. Just read the last few pages and I love that everyone has a different MoM, it shows what a good team performance that was. My vote goes to Ayala, first time I’ve seen him at his absolute best and he was very impressive indeed. I’m shocked to think that I would potentially have Gallagher as runner up, but really all of our attackers were excellent today. It looked like we were going to really struggle this season but our young players have really stepped up. I’m absolutely loving being a Rovers fan again. What a team, let’s keep this going lads!

Tyrhys Dolan “giving it the old Tugay” as he comes off the pitch. 👌

Aye 🙄

Buckley has been brilliant today, such a great passer and even a good committed tackle towards the end of the first half. Diaz amazing as well, touch of luck about the second goal but he had to get the chance so fair play to him. As has been previously said though we’ve been great in all positions. Other standouts for me have been Pickering who adds so much down that left side, and Ayala who has been the rock for us and close with a header. Loving this, come on Rovers!!!!!

Has anyone here watched Succession? We got into it a couple of weeks ago and found it amazing. Very funny, a mix of sharp, black humour and stupid jokes and wonderfully produced and acted by all concerned. it depicts a dysfunctional family where the patriarch owns a massive global media company, and all the family members are pretty much despicable in their own way. I gather that it is loosely based on the murdoch family so there is a lot of skewering of right wing opinion and media bias. Despite all the major players being so vile I normally find myself feeling sympathy and rooting for some of them, testament to the stellar writing and acting. It’s created by Jesse Armstrong, previously famous for his work on peep show and I think he also worked with Chris Morris on four lions. It’s now my top recommendation to everyone I talk to about box sets. You can get it on sky Atlantic in the UK. Third season starts in October as well 😀

Yeah but in all other areas we are happy for professionals to operate at the high levels of their field without questioning every judgement and suggesting that they don’t know what they are doing. Have you ever called your vet “Mogadick”? What about complaining about a pilot’s lack of charisma? There aren’t any message boards where people complain about how a surgeon tried to perform a heart bypass and stating that they’re missing obvious points of improvement. TM is a professional manager, not as good as some coaches for sure, but with decades of experience behind him it is hard to listen to armchair experts on here banging on about how they can see what he can’t. We’re all entitled to our opinions, I’m ready for TM to leave now as well, but it frustrates and depresses me to constantly read the same old crap in here day after day. As BDS stated, TM has a level of expertise in coaching professional footballers that is beyond the comprehension of probably anybody who contributes here. Your comparison with vets, doctors and pilots is an apt one, so if you respect the above professions for their expertise and knowledge then why can’t you see how embarrassing it is to think that you could do better then TM, or let yourself down by slinging childish insults around. The above is not all aimed at you btw, just my observations on those who post the same inane, tired old cliches and personal attacks on a daily basis!

Ronaldinho was 5’11, not exactly short. Rivaldo 6’1.

Don’t think we ever crossed swords but I just wanted to wish you the best of luck mate. Can’t have been easy facing up to a problem like that and you have all my best wishes.

What a man

The new match centre is a good job 👍 Although I thought it hadn’t been updating properly when I saw the player stats but then I realized that we’ve just been dire

That last statement is a bit rich IMO - you spend a good proportion of your time in this MB trying to wind chaddy up, or hounding him with repetitive questions. The rest of your time is spent boasting that you can get Alan Nixon on the phone, confidently predicting that we’ll sell our best player (I think for about 3 transfer windows with Rhodes), suggesting that our manager is about to be fired, claiming that our club will soon be sold, praising Owen Coyle, and making unrealistic and illogical match predictions. If you want to drop allusions to being ITK then you should try to get at least 5% of your predictions right. By all means take the praise when you are right, I’ll be happy for you, but you have to accept that people will enjoy highlighting your many, many errors when you take such delight in trying to bring everyone down by making up unsubstantiated rumours on a daily basis.

Just listened to the rest of the podcast there. Orr comes across well, considering I used to hate his guts. I’d imagine there’s a lot of interesting stories to be told from that era. As you say, the toxic atmosphere and general air of incompetence must have made for a grim workplace.

The Bradley Orr link was very interesting. Goes to show there are two sides to every story.

🔥

So why is the jury out on Dolan and JRC but not rothwell? For me they’ve shown a lot of promise. Anyway your argument was that TM doesn’t like skilful players or know how to use them. The players listed above show that (just like every other manager) he does try to bring skilful players to the club and develop the ones we already have. Case closed 😂 edit... and I forgot to list Dack, probably the most technically gifted player we’ve had since the prem, and a player that TM brought to the club and developed.

Tbf I quite regularly read on here that we’re “better than the likes of Brentford” or shouldn’t be anywhere near the likes of Luton and so on. To me this can only be based on our proud history rather than a logical comparison of our current squad and setup of the club. In honesty we’re no better than any other team in this league and are where we are on merit.

I thought you said: Gallagher playing as CF and being given the same freedom would bring similar results IMHO. Your quoted response is a facetious response to a reasonable question. I don’t understand your unrelenting focus on making Armstrong out to be a weak point in our team. He’s the best striker we’ve had in a long long time, certainly since Rhodes and probably since the PL days. We absolutely should try our utmost to get Arma to sign another contract, ideally with a view to providing the goals that will get us promoted, at worst with a view to making a huge profit on him which must be on the cards. Strikers that get over 20 goals a season should be celebrated, not damned with faint praise or criticised. The question of rothwell or Arma is ludicrous and a complete non-starter when you compare both player’s contributions.

Fair play, and I can’t believe Bell is 27.... I’m from the same town as Lyons meaning I probably know more about him than any other Rovers fan, for once I have encyclopaedic knowledge of one of our players lol. I was fairly excited to see him develop but I acknowledged that he had a lot of work to do and was therefore surprised that he’d be hyped up. It was a strange signing, I think he was 20 by the time we got him so he’d spent a long time training with a part time team - too late for him to make any sort of impact in a professional league.

I can’t remember anyone ever describing Brad Lyons as wizard-like or even as a winger. Really he was a free transfer, worth a punt after showing promise in the Irish league but sadly one who didn’t work out. He’s not been impressive in league 2, and at the age of 23 he’s not likely to improve to championship level. It’s the right decision to let him go and I don’t think it’s indicative of anything more than the common narrative of a player from an inferior league not being able to take the step up to a higher level.

Say something enough times and it’ll eventually come true. It’s interesting that ITKs never disagree with each other - when one claims a signing is imminent, Jordan Rhodes or Bradley Dack is being sold, or TM is getting sacked, none of the others come out and say “that isn’t what I heard”. Maybe that’s because most of them have as much insight on the inner workings of BRFC as the rest of us.

Nailed it.

I reckon the only way this won’t go ahead is if the major domestic leagues and UEFA negotiate with the big clubs to revamp club football. To me it all seems like a power move to force through changes to the CL format - guaranteed places for the elite clubs for starters. In the 80s the big English clubs threatened a breakaway league which led to them getting a better financial deal and eventually the PL. It worked then and they’re IMO trying the same again now. Additionally there’s talk in some of the statements about doing this for the global fan base - I think that we’ll see select domestic games played in global locations similar to what American football does occasionally. Sadly I don’t think there’s any chance of this happening. Fans in Singapore have no interest in clubs like Blackburn Rovers or even the bottom half prem teams. I doubt that most of them are even aware that clubs outside the “big 6” exist (apart from the wonderful Hong Kong Rovers supporters club). They want to see Utd vs Real Madrid every week and they’re not likely to protest this move. There could even be places for super clubs to be founded in the Far East or Australia etc and gain entry to the league eventually. The premier league is a global brand now and this is the next logical step for them. It stinks but it’s the way the game has been going for a long time. I hope the motion is defeated but even if it is we’ll be in this position again and again.

Spot on

Hate is too strong a word I admit. However, it’s bizarre to me that our top scorer and only the 20th player in our history to score 20 league goals in a season is criticized for being selfish in front of goal. There’s nothing wrong with playing for yourself when you’re scoring more goals than the rest of the team combined. Sadly I think you’re right about TM and I totally agree that we need a replacement before we can move on, and to stop us from regressing further. I disagree though in that anything needs to change with Armstrong. He’s different class at this level and we’re doing the right thing by playing to his strengths. TM hasn’t brought much money in from transfers right enough but I reckon this time we’ll make a very handsome profit on our investment.