Hasta

I think you are being very optimistic there. I think your ultra-hardcore who will pay blindly without any idea of where they sit or when they will be able to attend games is less than you think.

This is a bit of a rambling post as I've only just started to think this through, but I'm undecided on next season. I'll consider whether I renew once we know what is being sold. Firstly how much will they cost? Then what will the match day experience be like? Just like part of the fun of away games isn't just watching the football for 90 minutes, for home games the social aspect is still important. Can I meet up with my mates who I only see nowadays at the footy and sit together? Will the concourses be in operation as normal? In September, you aint easily going to the WMC beforehand and calling in the Fox on the way back home. So what you may be left with is just turning up, sitting apart and watching a game of football with 7500 fans spread out and no away atmosphere. That isn't the match day experience for me. Rovers have allowed me over the last few weeks to experience sitting in my mates 'man cave garage' watching the iFollow coverage on his big TV with a beer. As there is a 'cap' on the number of fans allowed in stadia, at some clubs many home fans who normally attend may not be able to get tickets. Therefore will iFollow be opened up to UK fans for this season? Regardless, it is easy enough to get a stream even if it isn't. I struggle to get to some midweek games anyway. Do I want to commit to a full season, when given the choice for some games I actually might prefer to stream it with mates now rather than sit apart in the JW stand. From my point of view, the social aspect has always covered the 'drab football'. We enjoy the day and can laugh at how bad the football is for some games. Being bland on the pitch won't affect my decision, but what I feel the experience is going to be like might.

It's always up 50 minutes before kick off.

Only just catching up on this thread. The thing with Chapman is he is different. Has a different skill set than the other attackers. Last game and this game is irrelevant, but in those Barnsley and Wigan games when we we're piss poor, I'd rather have had some minutes of Chapman at the end than keep flipping up front between Samuel, Graham, Brereton, Gallagher. None of those are going to create you anything themselves. Having Chapman on the bench as a bit of something different would be imaginative. Dropping Gallagher and Brereton because they were poor at Wigan, then bringing them on to try and change the game a few days later at Barnsley, is unimaginative as a manager.

Without knowing what day they are paid and over what period that pay is for it's difficult to judge. I thought you meant they stopped topping it up from the end of July , therefore in August. If they were a normal business you can't really complain that a company that was being generous initially had changed strategy as the future landscape became clearer. But then you remember we offered players on big salaries an extra months contract and it all goes out the window.

From August, the club has to start paying the employees income tax, NI and pension contributions which were covered under the furlough scheme up until now. Therefore most of the 20% extra which the club have been paying to the employees will now be paid in tax, NI and pensions. The club aren't saving much money, they just don't want to pay out more from August than they were paying out in July. Not saying that's not worrying btw.

I've not followed it closely but have seen comments on twitter about there not being any significant creditors. If they don't have debts and don't owe HMRC a load of money (which most clubs normally do in administration), then from a Wigan fans perspective what is the reasoning they have done this?

That team looks tiny.

We had a squad that should have been a middle of the road championship team in 2017. Mowbray has turned it into another middle of the road championship team. He's not done a bad job because he's got us back to where we actually should have been with our team from when he took over. However he hasn't took us any further forward. Average. Stability. How do we move forward? If we can have a go at spending another £12 million without weakening the existing squad that that will help up move forward. However FFP doesn't allow this without moving on Dack / Lenihan/Travis, and after last summer I don't really trust Mowbray to bring in the right replacements. I'm also nervous we could end up with Coyle Mk II and things could go drastically worse. However, if you don't want fans to drift away you have to have realistic plans to push on further, and at this crossroad that means gambling on a change of manager in my opinion.

Good episode guys. Interesting listen.

I know Bennett is getting a slating, and I will say he's never been a fullback so it is ridiculous to shoehorn him in there. But watch the goal again from last night. Walton has the ball, and he advances up the pitch in order to stretch play. But once we lose the ball he should be busting a gut to get back. He is still strolling back when the guy knocks the ball in in the right back position. Benno can't even say he was busy watching the replay like the rest of us ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SeJoqOpRdU Apologies if this was mentioned at the time but I've flicked through and can't see the goal specifically referred to.

Sorry. Misread it.

I presume you are not watching then.

We should have been in kitchen sink territory in this game ages ago.

Strategy appears to be work it slowly to Rothwell and see if he can run past a few. Even simple things like try Armstrong on the other side for 10 minutes we refuse to do.

It depends if you honestly think he was actually trying to play the ball. If you do, then his timing and judgement is even worse than he has shown so far in his Rovers career. He's nowhere near it. If you don't think that he's trying to play the ball, which a few of us obviously don't, then he's got knocked to the floor, got back up, ran across and kicked someone out of frustration. Admittedly not very hard, and had the ref even just gave a free kick not many people would have batted an eyelid. But nowadays you can't just kick a player because you are frustrated. However, if you honestly think he was genuinely trying to kick the ball but is simply that bad a footballer that he missed it by miles, then I understand why you could argue he is just clumsy and unlucky.

Brereton's kick was about as petulant as the Leicester guy's kick yesterday which he also got a red card for. It's not going to hurt anyone, and once upon a time they would just get on with it, but nowadays if you kick someone without the ball being there you are going to walk.

If you look back, thats precisely what I did say. That's where this debate started. To take over a team averaging less than a point a game, and to produce what would have been 67 points per season pro-rata over 15 games was a good points return. To get a lower points per game return last season, and to say it was progressive because it was our first season back, even though most of the squad was the same squad, is a bit of a cop out. I think where he had us in that spell in 2017 under his tenure, and where we are now, is not as progressive as people are making out.

Look I think he has probably run his course now, but I can't agree on this. I'm saying his points return of 1.47 points per game was good, especially compared to what came before him that season. You said his points return wasn't good and that is black and white. If a new manager came in today, won 3 and drew 1 of the last 4 games, and we missed out on the play-offs by 1 point, would his points return be not very good?

I'm far from Mowbray biggest fan, but he gathered enough points per game to see us 7th or 8th if he had gone a full season at that rate. I know he himself said he failed, but if someone took over Norwich tomorrow, won 3 and drew one of their remaining games but got relegated, you wouldn't say that since that person took over they hadn't obtained a very good points return just because they got relegated.

My gripe isn't necessarily that he brought in two expensive flops. It's that rather than cut his losses he has persevered with them, often out of position, to the detriment of the team. Chapman has not performed for the club so has been bombed out of the squad. Other younger players get a little bit of game time, have a poor game, and are bombed out of the squad. Easy to do when they haven't cost the club a lot of money. As he has spent so much money on these two, he has to persist in weakening us by trying to fit them into a formation somewhere rather than accept what has happened (expensive mistakes) and resort to playing either superior players (Graham) and youth players (JRC). Whatever is the reason why he has kept going with them, it's bad management. I'm not one of these people who blame Mowbray for relegation back in 2017. He came in with a job to do and nearly did it. It was almost a freakish points total that saw us relegated, and his haul of 1.47 points per game (over 15 games) was a very good return. The problem was being too slow bulletins Coyle rather than who we brought in that season. However 1.47 points per game would have garnered us 67 points in a season. Over a 15 game stretch in 2017, Mowbray got that squad performing at a higher PPG ratio than we did last season and probably will do this season. Getting promoted the following season wasn't a gimme, and Mowbray did well to bring in Dack and Armstrong and get us back at the first time of asking. But the side that came back up should have been better than the side that Mowbray unluckily went down with. It was hardly a team of lower league journey-men facing the might of the championship for the first time. I don't buy the 'but it was our first season back in the Championship" nonsense. Thats why last season I thought we under-performed and this season 60+ points is the absolute minimum I would expect.

Walton is a mediocre goalkeeper. He's probably better than Steele but still makes too many unforced mistakes, and also concedes goals which, whilst he can't be blamed for, a better keeper would keep out. This last part is what makes a good keeper in my opinion. He obviously wasn't the plan when we sold Raya, but the original targets must have fallen through and he was a desperate move towards the end of the transfer window. The fact we sold our goalkeeper, and ended up loaning a goalkeeper who was inferior, is poor management. To balance it up, the reason our defensive record is improved is that Tosin / Lenihan has been a better partnership than previous seasons. Great loan signing by Mowbray. If we had signed Tosin then then that would be superb, but Mowbray needs to pull that quality of signing again for next season (and sort the keeper situation out)

To balance the books? If the answer can't be Brereton and Gallagher, then that tells us the problem.

This. Good players don't always need a fancy YouTube video reel.

With West Brom, Brentford, Cardiff and Leeds left to play, Derby will have to play very well to make the top 6. Sickening isn't it.