Hasta

Another Aussie, Viduka, would be up there with one of the best arrivals to English football from the SPL.

Was OK. Probably a decent championship left back but ultimately one of Brain Kidd's rubber dinghy men in the relegation season. I suppose he was on a bit of a hiding to nothing being brought in to replace Le Saux.

We signed him on a 3 year deal. At least Rudy got this one tied down. 🦾 That possibly limits us just giving him away or terminating his contract.

No he didn't. He said it was down to past mistakes, but both Pasha and Gestede were in situ when the contracts should have been looked at last summer. They were also in Situ when Eustace was saying "I think the players would like to know (on their futures)."

I’m always of the opinion that you have to be fairly poor player-wise and lack tactical nouse to go down. It always surprises me how limited sides are, who are sat comfortably mid-table can appear sometimes. Therefore until I’ve seen how our lot gel I’m going into it with an open mind. The most likely result I feel is a defeat, but it wouldn’t be surprising if we were saying West Brom looked fairly poor after the game and we come away with a decent result. The obvious issue is right back. Montgomery looks a big risk and Alebiosu is a complete unknown.

Wait till you see the defending for NEC’s third goal.

Not sure they would. They couldn’t down at their place. We did the Ewood game 2-1 after they had gone down to 10 men in the first half.

Beck nearly got Cambridge into the first ever Premier League, although if you’re going to be a long ball side, do it with Steve Claridge and Dion Dublin up front. Leicester beat Beck’s Cambridge in the ‘other’ play off semi final in 1992. Otherwise that could have been an even more uncomfortable afternoon at Wembley under an arial barrage.

They won’t engage properly. They don’t want to. Fans opinions are a hinderance to their aim of cutting costs and cutting ambition. Mike Graham spent years telling us we needed to keep engaging, and look at his speech as the outgoing chairman at the last Rovers trust meeting.

GET BEHIND THE LADS FFS ( And the boardroom. And Sky. Don’t forget Sky. )

On what planet is Danny Batth injury prone? He was out for 6 games last season. 3 the season before. Going back through his career he hardly misses any games every season.

I think Stanley are in for a tough season.Be surprised if they aren’t in the bottom 4 or 5.

From LT:- Aynsley Pears and John Buckley’s time at Blackburn Rovers could be coming to an end after the pair were left out of the squad to face NEC Nijmegen. Pears has not featured in pre-season yet due to a hip injury but did play 90 minutes for the Under-21s in midweek. He kept a clean sheet as they beat Barnsley in a behind-closed-doors match. “It was a decision that we made,” Ismael told The Lancashire Telegraph on their absence. “I don’t know what the situation is for them and the future. We took a decision for the squad today and that’s who we picked, that’s it.” It’s understood that both Pears and Buckley asked to play in the midweek match for gametime but that has done little to change the pecking order. Rovers will surely entertain any offers forthcoming with neither play likely to be content with sitting out.

Buckley will get a club, prob league one, but no one will buy him for any noticeable modest fee. A good move for him now would be somewhere like Wigan.

Pears will get a buyer somehow. Bucko will be given away.

Travis and Tronstadt looked today like they had no intention of competing for anything close to a 50/50, which to be fair doesn’t bother me in the last pre-season game before we start proper. However for their third goal Travis just looks like he can’t be arsed sprinting, is so slow to get across and just lunges to bring him down and misses.

And yet Barry Bannan signs a new contract this afternoon 🤷‍♂️

How else are we going to hit Gestede’s target of 3000 academy minutes this season.

You post this like you’re proving or showing how strong our squad is, but to most of us it just looks weak. Saying players who “suit Ismael’s style of play” means nothing. Telalovic might have suited JDT’s style of play more than Keifer Moore, but if they aren’t very good it doesn’t matter. And if our style of play is “closing down and pressing” you need to make sure they still have ability and aren’t just headless chickens. No good getting the ball and wasting good opportunities and positions like today.

Have I gone to bed and woke up and suddenly every thinks Gueye is Zlatan ! I wouldn’t sell him due to the lack of options and he’s a handy plan B, but talk of £4mill to £6million is bonkers. Ismael didn’t fancy him at all at the end of last season, and he didn’t start a game after mid-March.

1. Winners of the Championship Ipswich 2. Automatic promotion (runners-up) in the Championship Coventry 3. Four Play off semi-finalists in the Championship Leicester, Sheff U, Boro, Southampton 4. Three relegated sides from the Championship Wednesday, Hull, Charlton 5. Where will Rovers finish in the Championship? 16th 6. First Championship club to change manager (after the season starts) Swansea 7. Winners of the Premier League Liverpool 8. A notable wild card prediction of something that will happen in the Rovers universe during the season (e.g. Donald Trump visits Ewood Park) The stands or the whole ground become sponsored. The Venkys Xpress Stadium. The Number 39 Kebab and Pizza Blackburn End. The Vape-orama Nuttall Street Grandstand.

I stand corrected. He seemed quite safe when he first started playing for us but was one he really seemed to get forward when JDT-ball was working. For some reason I thought he arrived a year earlier.

Mowbray bought a raw Brittain. JDT got him playing one-two’s, first time passes, running off the ball and getting into the box. Eustace got him defending better. Its a good example of a player absorbing the best bits from each coach he’s worked under.

Bizarre competition. You'll be telling me next we don't get than much-desired trip to Wembley if we got to the final.

And Burnley. Probably scheduled for 8am on a Monday behind closed doors.