Hasta

The problem with that is it needs highly competent people running the club and identifying players to pull this off. Whilst you are waiting these "few years" for your academy players and cheap prospects to be 'built up', you need to not be shit enough to go down. If we sold Brittain, Travis and let Dolan and Baath leave, and replaced them with people who needed a 'few years' then we would be worse as a team and probably go down.

Family moved to Leicester from Portugal when he was 9 months old.

Yep. That’s the Rovers attitude alright. I’d prefer to think if we were in the premier league again under new owners and tickets priced sensibly, then with the modern boom in football attendances and a connection with the local population, we could get back to previous levels. Think big.

Tavares family moved to Leicester when he was less than one year old, so he’ll probably come across as more English than Portuguese. Article here.

Cos we brought Forshaw back and added a relatively expensive (for us) midfielder. I was scathing about Forshaw resigning but if we keep Tron, Trav and add Tav then I’ll be ok with midfield in general. But history tells us that’s not how we operate.

At first glance he looks like he could be a decent punt. He is Nani’s cousin apparently

He’s meant to be on £20k at Stoke and we were rumoured to be paying Siggurdson a good whack (£12k to 15k) due to how we got him from the Russian club. With Dennis and Woodrow there clearly was money to target a better midfielder. We just didn’t identify replacing Baker as a priority and ultimately it cost us massively.

All I said before was replacing baker with Forshaw was “fully on rovers”. However Pompey reportedly paid £6500 per week for Isaac Hayden. What were Baker and Siggurdson costing us combined? £18k? How much did Dennis and Woodrow cost us? So there clearly was some money to play with. Once Baker left, that should have been a priority.

I don’t know as I’m not paid to find them as a job. The club surely knew recalling Baker was an option so you think they would have had a plan. But if rovers had any statement of intent with the position they were in then pay the matched bond and bring Hamza Choudery in. Middle ground would have been Lewis O’Brien Failing that be cheaper and get Isaac Hayden. All three moved on loan to the Championship in January. The ‘restraints’ we are operating under are fully self inflicted.

Replacing our 3rd choice midfielder, who had started the last 4 games and was likely to get a lot more game time as the squad creaked towards the end of the season, with a guy that couldn’t get in the Plymouth side was fully on Rovers. Huge drop off in squad depth.

I'll start. Absolute fucking joke. The one area where we probably should be looking at academy players (4th or 5th choice backup) and we are signing up a guy who was generally piss poor after being brought in off the Plymouth scrap heap.

I was thinking about this before I replied to the thread earlier and the two bits in bold are key to this ongoing debate. It’s the word ‘luck’ that is causing part of the issue, as in reality it’s getting softer ties that you probably wouldn’t expect at later stages of the tournament. I certainly think we got that in last years tournament. Whether it’s luck or not is debatable by pure definition of the word. The second point about the expanded tournament is also quite relevant. It may be that due to the increased number of “softer” teams in the competition, that “softer” draws become more of the norm. What Southgate clearly did do was avoid the Iceland’s and the group exits that plagued us under other managers. Games and groups we expected to progress through, we did.

The last Euros was a bit out of the ordinary based on who we played by seedings. No pot 1 or 2 teams until the final. First time it’s happened since the euros were expanded. Remember those seedings are based on results / merit. The other argument is based on what you define as lucky. Just because the ties in later rounds are based on results in that tournament, it doesn’t mean you can’t get ‘softer’ ties. Take a random cup upset. In 2011 Stevenage (4th tier) beat Premier League Newcastle. You could have played that tie 10 times and 9 times Newcastle would probably have gone through. In the next round Reading drew Stevenage and Reading won comfortably. Reading definitely got a softer tie against Stevenage than they would have had against Newcastle. Were they “lucky” they benefited from the earlier upset?

I’m not naive enough to think that money and contract length aren’t key points for renewals. But I heard from a good source towards the end of the season that a lot of senior players aren’t happy with how the club has been over the last couple of years, especially with the manner of Eustace leaving. Since then we’ve had Waggot depart, giving Suhail more control, and the shambles of the women’s team. I suspect the likes of Brittain and Travis don’t really want to renew. It’s just being leaked as financial as that’s the only way to save face. Similar with Baath. As a regular starter you think he’d sign up straight away for another season. He could want two years. But he could just want out.

Shouldn't be a surprise. Don't forget we got practically live feeds from The Avenue's CCTV camera's a couple of years ago during the bizarre Fans/Players/Waggot meeting.

I'm calm about the shirt. As I say, it's OK. In the grand scheme of contracts being run down, players sold to pay the bills, under-qualified buffoons running the club, season ticket prices going back up, the women's team being made redundant and the ground looking like shit, an above-average shirt is the least of our worries for our 150th year.

Meh. It's a Rovers kit. I've seen better and seen worse. As the official formation date of Blackburn Rovers is 5th November, the club could redeem itself here by requesting to play in the home game closest to that date in a different shirt which has a proper retro feel. Then putting it on sale in the run up to Christmas as a limited edition (i.e no re-stock) But that would cost additional money on the shirt and be a risk on the stock, so unlikely. Although Yasir is probably scribbling notes as he reads this.

I think in a major tournament, the further you get the better you expect the opposition to be. So we were unlucky in the same way that you’d be unlucky to walk down a back alley and not find a tenner on the ground.

Yep. In the World Cup you can have teams from across the globe and still be ‘competitive’. But this is different. Almost 75% of the New Zelaland national side play abroad. In the UK some of them play for the likes of Reading, Burton and Mansfield. Therefore what does that tell you of the quality of players who still ply their trade at home for Auckland City? And yet here they are.

I’m waiting for Nelson, Padiham and Burnley 😂

Thought it was Soccer Aid when I flicked it over and saw the score.

They were in pots 3 and 4 by merit 😜 I do get your points, but I still feel like that last tournament opened up massively for England. And it’s a good job it did as we still could only draw 4 of the first 5 games in 90 minutes.

My only point is you can get lucky with the draw. Tranmere and Sunderland both knocked out Premier League teams. You can’t control who you play, but things can pan out more or less favourable. Englands ‘performances’ in the last Euros were fairly poor but they had a kind enough draw to get through to the semi finals and then actually played ok against the Dutch. However we did get a bit lucky with the draw. There were 24 teams, seeded and split into 4 pots. In the knockout stages all three games were against teams from either pot 3 or pot 4. We got lucky being drawn against a 3rd place qualifier in the last 16 and we didn’t play any team from seeding pots 1 or 2 in a knockout game until the final. That’s the only time that has happened since the tournament was expanded to 24 teams.

Millwall reached an FA Cup final in 2004 before getting battered off Man Utd in the final. Still a great achievement for a 2nd tier club. However they didn’t face a premier league team until the final. They played:- Walsall at home, Telford away Burnley at home. In the quarter final they got past 3rd tier Tranmere, the lowest side still in the tournament. Meanwhile the four remaining Premier League sides all drew each other. In the semi they beat second tier Sunderland whilst Arsenal played Man Utd in the other semi. Is anyone actually arguing here that they didn’t have luck on their side with the draw?