Tomorrow

That's a very good listen although when you get to the manner of his departure it will still boil your blood again.

Have you been to the Birthday Party yet?

I played it in VR at my mates, but fortunately only had the option of playing it through in flat at home !

I found it started off good and then gets a bit repetitive, then the story really picks back up again about half way through. Stick at it. It is. It must take hours and hours longer to complete in VR as you find yourself just creeping around every corner.

He's wrote a separate message to the fans.

There's a lot of scepticism on here about stats cos they are used to justify the performances we have seen (by Mowbray and some Twiterati, not by you). However if a bricklayer does a job and the end result is clearly shite, you tell him it's shite and he starts telling you why his methods are better, it doesn't matter. Ultimately the job he has done is shite. That's what's happening at Ewood. And therefore the methods are are not trusted, even though it's the bricklayers fault.

Unlikely, but What would happen if Lingard banged in a hatrick here. It would just make Southgate look an idiot.

He first came to my attention in the Sunderland documentary where he missed a lot of chances. I've watched him since whenever I've seen him and he has a good attitude but isn't very good and doesn't score with regularity . I'd be passing that one over.

That's half the problem. We don't have a go-to midfield paring. Players never play enough games consecutively together to form an opinion on whether that partnership actually does work. They seem to get rotated based on who the opposition is. Unless the manager is a tactical genius, such tombola-ism isn't going to be beneficial to the team.

Exactly. I watched almost every game last season and we regressed. Tony tries to convince us that our football progression is further on than it was a few years ago, but as far as enjoyment of watching Rovers go I preferred the League One and first season back performances, where we actually got the ball in the box and caused some excitement. We've boosted our performance stats in areas which might look good on paper, but we are going backward in terms of results and excitement. And no stat on earth will tell me Gallagher should be on the wing.

Gerrard has done a cracking job there, not just to get them back on top but to win the league by such a large amount and break the 100-point barrier. Their record in Europe this season is also impressive.

I remember a few legia fans with their kids being in the Fox before the game having their pics taken with Rovers fans and Rovers scarves. I remember the actual games as being pretty low-key surprisingly.

You see, that's where we disagree. I think he was generally average to poor. So our viewpoint on extending his contract is going to differ. At 22, you tend to know the abilities and limitations of players and I don't think he's going to be anything other than a mediocre Championship player. After 3 years we still don't know if he's a striker or a driving midfielder-cum-winger, as he doesn't look good enough at all as the former and all his better performances have come as the latter. I think he could be replaced and improved upon relatively easily by a decent coaching / scouting network, but it wouldn't make financial sense to the club to discard an asset and spend more money to replace it. And that's my problem. In order to try and maximise the value of the asset, we will not look at replacing and improving the team when I believe it would be relatively easy to do so. (although the amount of squad renovation required means that there are more important changes needed elsewhere) I'd be curious to see if a new manager came in whether he would see the potential in BB also, or if he would be limited in his appearances as the new manager would not have to worry about justifying the purchase.

This is another area to watch. With all of the other repair and replace that needs doing in the squad this summer, Brereton isn't perceived as an issue. But sooner or later somebody needs to decide whether to cut their losses and let him leave in 12 months, or offer him a new contract in the hope that he comes good and they can recoup some money in later years. I suspect new contract will be incoming over the summer as they will still feel they can get something back from the player, and therefore he will be shoe-horned in front of the likes of Dolan to justify it. He was better this season than the previous two, but he was still pretty poor.

TM - "If I sort the friendlies, can I stay" TM - "Hello?" TM - "Helloooo. Is anyone listening?" * silence * TM - "Yippee"

No, but we did finish 10th and get to a league cup semi final a couple of years later so I'm not sure it rings true.

I honestly don't care. I'll watch the Wed/Derby game. If we play some fringe players or try something tactically different I hope it pays off. However If we play then same tippy-tippy crap with a striker out wide then I honestly hope we get beaten, and Forest and Coventry go flying past us.

I've just downloaded PES2021 Lite for free on the PS4. Not had a PES game since about 2017/2018. On the previous version back then they had lots of online tournament that started at set times of the day which gave you and hour to qualify and then went into a knockout stage. It used to last 1-2 hours per tourney depending on progress. However on the Lite version all the tournemnts are either several hours with no ko stage (Home vs Away leagues) or the months-long E-competition. I know the lite version is stripped down. Does anyone know if the full (non-lite) game has the shorter tournaments like 2017/2018? Google isn't helping. Edit - it's only £13 so I just chanced it.

You could argue about the ratings slightly but overall the comments are fair enough.

SLEXIT

I wasn't writing an in depth editorial piece on the issue. I was scrambling a reply in between Microsoft Teams meetings. But you are indeed correct.

Cardiff, Newport and Swansea disagree. But point taken. I'm writing on here whilst trying to work you know !

Neville was making the point on Sky last night that City's owners, if any, were the ones most likely to back out on sporting grounds. It's highly unlikely they got into football to make additional billions. And it sounded on Sunday like they were the last to commit.

I agree with your vision but I don't think it will happen. I fear the clubs bemoaning the greed of the big 6 will suddenly change their tune when there is only £X amount of money left in the UK game, and that money is being divided up between the 86 football league teams. I think your Evertons and your Crystal Palaces that are speaking out about this now will suddenly go quiet once their income has dropped and when they realise that if other clubs go bust they will be able to get a bigger share of £X. Do you think Burnley's new owners would care? Do you think Venkys would care? I don't see a total reset for a long time. I see the Super 6 dining at an elite table, whilst the rest of the clubs ultimately will turn on each other and scavenge for whatever money is left over.