As annoying as it is, I kind of accept this is a “move for Sky” scenario. Next Saturday will piss me off more when we kick off at Ewood at 12.30 and yet we aren’t even on Sky TV. We are one of 2 other games available for “streaming” at 12.30 which clash with the televised Derby / Norwich game. Ball ache for me as it takes up my Saturday morning and afternoon. Bigger ball ache for QPR fans. At least we had 8 weeks notice or whatever.

Yeah but wait till the new signings settle in.🙄

To be fair to Abbey it was pretty numb from Joshua.

Just looked into this. Roads closed 1pm till 4pm. The main closures are the two roads which run directly from Deepdale back down towards the town centre (Deepdale road and Skeffington Rd). They are not closed around the ground but from about half way down towards town.

Be aware the 09.11 train is cancelled. That leaves just one train direct to Preston in the morning. If you are relying on that then good luck 🤞

Somewhere there’s an ex-Skybet odds compiler shaking his head.

I agree completely, but I also fear the rich are the most powerful here and that's not what will happen. Many, many years ago (2005ish) we talked about a European midweek league and a domestic league at the weekends. It's just happened by stealth. I mean, look where we are now with the champions league. If viewing figures and interest is high in this, and the format proves popular for the armchair fan, then it will become "Why can't we expand it and play 10 games in Europe during Autumn / Winter" and so on. And it will be the domestic game which gets squeezed out. If they suddenly say that "unless you finish in the bottom 8 in that league above your Champions League spot is secured" then we have the European Super League from a couple of years back. And the top clubs will lap it up. But to your point, I agree. Go back to 6 CL games, ditch the World Club Cup and if you want to do the Nations League do it over a longer period so in each international break you only play 1 game. Otherwise ditch international breaks completely.

I said initially it would be the clubs. It's already happening. The players won't be calling for it yet but secretly the top clubs will certainly prefer less cups and league games. The champions League is now the European Super league in all but name. A quick google reveals Pep already called for the Carabao Cup to be scrapped. Not sure how much truth here, but here is a report from 4 years ago claiming Liverpool and Man United are behind proposals to reduce league size to 18 teams. Given a choice between Champions League or Carabao Cup ties, financially of course they would rather ditch the cup and play more Champions League games. Once they make it clear to their players that more money is available for them if they play European football rather than League Cup football, the players would fall into line. As for the Nationals League, I'd completely abolish it if we are abolishing all games which aren't Euro / World Cup qualifiers. But if we are having international breaks with 2 friendlies, as we did previously, I much prefer it over those.

But it's not the champions league or club world cup the clubs would want cutting as that makes them money. It will be shrinking the domestic leagues and cancelling cup competitions. The number of domestic games now is surely far less then ever, with no league or fa cup replays. The added games are all European. But you don't hear teams specifically blame European competition. Some players might, but once it becomes obvious those are the games that pay most to inflate their salaries, they'll want the games against lower league teams gone. The big clubs would absolutely love a 16 team premier league with only 2 relegation spots. Less games but less chance of going down and losing access to the honey pot

As above. If you don’t want to compete in the League cup, then pull out before the first draw. But don’t complain that it still has a European spot attached to it and try and get that moved elsewhere, which is what would happen.

Biggest surprise for me about the Preston game last night was finding out that Harrison Reed will turn 30 in a couple of months !

Don’t worry. Owen Beck is cutting that cross out all day.

Firstly, I think the "The project" was clearly sold to JDT with a bigger chunk of investment than actually happened in the summer of 2023 (shock horror) Under "The Project", I doubt we would have brought in the players we have this summer who are aged 26, 28, 33, 33 as there is no chance of development and re-investment. So when we were linked with players who would improve the first team, but don't pursue them because they dont fit "the project" it gets frustrating. Add in that the people who were running "The Project" were deciding that Markanday, Telalavic, Leonard were the kind of players we should be attempting to develop and you understand why people got sick of hearing it. Buying cheap shite, who were predominantly young, was justified by "The project". I think we all agree there is nothing wrong with having a plan and vision for 1ry, 2yr etc+.

Birmingham strolling against Wrexham here in one of those games you somehow want both to lose.

As above, it’s not sold out yet. We’re in to the final 800 but still available.

🤣👏

JDT wanted players to play a certain style of football. He was insistent on it to the point it was overly-stubborn. His footballing philosophy did work though. He had an immediate impact which saw us climb to the highest points we'd been in the Championship under Venkys. The problem is he was doing it with players who were not fully suited to that style. Players who were out of their comfort zone playing that way and who felt it wasn't playing to their strengths. Once they are out of the team, of course they will become unhappy. Had JDT been at a club who could have brought in players better suited to that style and moved the other players on, it would have been a more harmonious camp and I feel he would have ultimately have been a success. Unfortunately we were unable to bring in any players who would suit his style of football better, so he was stuck trying to force players to play a way they weren't happy about, and due to his lack of man management skill the whole thing turned on it's head. Whilst that sounds like Im praising him, it's actually a major negative. The 'stubborn' word was banded around even before the Burnley game in his first season. He will fail at Sweden for the same reason. The pool of players is limited and he will try to force them to play a way that doesn't suit them, and they won't like it. However there's a good manager there for a club that can afford to be as ruthless as he wants to be. Drop him into somewhere like Middlesboro for example, and let Gibson spend so that over a couple of transfer windows he can bring in players he wants, and I feel he would do a very good job. But when you need to "wee with the willy you have" and grind out results more pragmatically, Eustace clearly is a better fit here. And that's not meaning to do disservice to his coaching and tactical ability, which we are now starting to see more of.

Rovers on form. Sold out away end. High expectations. Local derby. I feel I've seen this one before. 🙄 Hopefully Eustace can solve the terrible lack of wins we have in local derbys.

And yet 2 walk-ons will pay for itself. As above, yes if there’s a danger of quite a lot coming on the day, but I imagine that there is enough stewards to cope with Bristol City bringing an extra 100 or so.

Certainly a shift in policy from previous years. Normally it seemed to be no tickets on the day if the away team were in danger of bringing enough walk ons to require opening up another section of the ground (other half of bottom tier or open all top tier). I understand that as you may not have the stewards or catering staff planned. That’s what I thought happened with Derby on the opening day. But when there’s 800 coming in a section of the stand that can hold over 2000 it’s daft.

As this has become the official thread to moan in, how can you buy tickets (Preston away) early on a Thursday morning but 28 hours later they still are not available to collect after Friday lunch. If it takes 48 hours to get them ready why doesn’t the confirmation email or website tell you this? Im on holiday this afternoon so was able to get to Ewood, but with work its not that easy for me as just saying “come back to collect them next week”. It’s just another example of things being less fan-friendly than 10 years ago. Get them available quicker, or warn people to leave it 48 hours.

To be fair the likes of Leonard and Gallagher couldnt beat a player. I don't think Yuki is necessarily the kind of player who is going to go up to the last defender and waltz past him. However so far I think he has shown better movement and finishing ability than both of those I've mentioned. As you say, it's early days though. For 10 games on loan, Vratislav Gresko was the best full back I'd ever seen at Ewood.

If he’s carrying an injury, it was pretty stupid to start him against Blackpool then.

There was therefore also an ‘agenda’ against Eustace but he’s turning it round. The thing is the people who thought Pears wasn’t good enough have simply been proven right. Personally I think he’s sub par generally, with the odd stinker (Wigan, Sheff Wed). I do think he is better than Wahlstedt who was generally poor most games (feel free to downvote @Exiled_Rover 🙂 ) But regardless of people’s initial thoughts, he has proven that they were right that he shouldn’t be first choice for even a middling Championship Club.

Firstly, you’re now resorting to stats that don’t sum up always what actually happened during the game. We witnessed it a lot under JDT. Last time you beat us at Turf Moor you scored all 3 goals in the second half. In that same half Rovers had 53% possession and completed about 15% more passes. So what? One area we did dominate was proper chances created. Watch the sky highlights and the only time it shows you attack is the goal. Not to say you didn’t move the ball to the edge of the danger area better, but like at Leeds and Leicester last season, we are prepared to do that in tough away games - defend the box and hit on the break. In the second half we had 4 shots / chances which were all clearer opportunities than anything you carved out against 10 men. You started brilliantly, but from the equaliser until the sending off I was pretty happy with the way the game was going. With what I saw, given the choice I would love to roll the dice and play the rest 11 v 11 of the game rather than take the 1-1.