Blue blood

Absolutely. And a poor time to have a wobble too for Brentford, right before the play offs. They're uncertain enough without going in on a poor run.

Feel a bit for Charlton. Had some key players not refused to play they'd have had more of a chance.

it would be impressive how bad he was if it weren't at our expense. We should have known when Wigan weren't gutted about not getting him back.

Goodness it's a tight league. One goal at any number of games and everything changes again. Edit - well done Rovers. Normal service resumed...

I wouldnt call WBA or Brentford a big club. Yep that is a genuine frustration. Am not sure how/why you are proud of this as it isn't on merit of the club.

Wigan, Coventry, Rovers - you don't have to look far to see the EFL have been horrifically negligent with their fit and proper tests. Guardians of the game and the football league - not in the slightest.

Carlisle have produced or developed on loan a few handy young keepers. Westwood, Gillespie and Krul (I think) were all there early on in their career. All 3 imo looked very talented/promising although unsure how they have developed since. Not too sure really how much our keeper coach was involved in that, more a comment on the club doing well there for a period.

No I think it's pretty factual that without those 5 we would be in trouble. You seem to be struggling with the difference between commenting on squad strength and saying players will leave. I'm talking about squad strength not whether they will leave. For example if I say without a car I would struggle to do my job I am not predicting the car is going to break down or crash, but rather staying an essential for the job. To dismiss such a statement as pure speculation totally misses the point. It's not about likelihood but capability. Likewise in both cases said capacity issue could occur and it's worth thinking on the risks or probability issues. That's what others are talking about, how likely are we to need to sell? Whilst there is a huge element of uncertainty - we can't see into the future - evidence can be weighed up and judges conclusions made. Also scenarios can be formed - of X then Y. Admittedly there is an element of speculation to this but one based on reason and probabilities. So, apart from totally misunderstanding my post, since you don't seem to like any sort of uncertainty I would suggest this perhaps isn't the best thread for you!

Never said they did. What I did say was those 5 are crucial to our success and without them we are more likely to struggle than succeed. Another interesting thing to note from those 5 is most have been with us for ,3 seasons. I guess you could argue Armstrong joined permanently last season but even so to not have any of your best players be brought in 2+ seasons is a tad worrying. Add in that 3 are academy graduates that is both encouraging as an affordable source of talent but also a lot of pressure to put on the academy.

Take those 5 out and you are looking down instead of up...

Indeed. And this is what makes it so dangerous. Those in the favourites group will coast, those outside of it will be demotivated and full of resentment. It's a terrible way to run a club.

This is what annoys me most I think. It's one rule for his favourites, one for the others. Walton Bennett and Gally have all been rubbish for most of the season and keep getting selected, Mulgrew and Smallwood had umpteen chances before being dropped. Some of the younger lads are dropped if they have one bad game or "have played a lot of football." Best 11 plays is a load of balls and it's hypocrisy like this which makes me dislike the man.

Said it before and will keep coming back with it. Just because someone has an opinion doesn't make that opinion valid, true or unchallengeable For example my opinion may be Walton is the best in the world, Messi it rubbish, Smallwood is better than Kante, that Rovers natural level is league 2, and that Watford will win the prem next year. None of those opinions are valid, true or unchallengeable. So staying that's my opinion isn't a valid get out clause when people challenge said views.

And this is why we need Venkys out of the club and should be railing against such a terrible system.

In a word, yes. The primary school milk monitor has more authority than Waggot. And even in best case scenario that he does have authority then there is the minor issue of conflict of interest as his mate got him the gig.

Which shouldn't be used to excuse TM, a terrible keeper or be happy about the current situation. That said I'm fairly confident that the target, even with our lunatic owners, didn't include wasting £12 million on strikers or more pertenent to the discussion a keeper who drops so many clangers. Simply put if Walton is here next season we know that winning is not in the remit of the manager or owners. We would be using a proven failure who over the course of the season has demonstrated he isn't good enough. If we sign him it can only be for non footballing reasons..

It's a simple debate imo. TM isn't that good a manager, he is ok at best. In fact I think he is ok rather than useless but definitely not good. We are owned by Loons who are controlled by an agency that are third rate. All managers come from here. So given the pool and people making the selection the chances of us making a better appointment then TM are minute. The odds of making an appointment as good as TM isn't great either, in fact the likelihood is we would get worse. In no other club would the possibility of getting a worse manager be a reason to keep the current one. However in the circumstances at Rovers it seems a very compelling and strong motive. So roll the dice and very likely get worse/no benefit or stick with someone very limited who can't do it either. What a choice. No wonder we are stuffed until.Venkys go. Once we have a better owner TM will be out like a shot - would have been fired 3 times over at a normal club imo - and the possibility to progress becomes real. But until Venkys go we're stuck between a rock and a hard place with no way out...

Great post. Agree with 99% of it. Very well put. Only thing I would disagree with is the fear of another Coyle or substandard manager. Given the agency choses the manager or limits the options (look at last 3 for.compelling evidence of this) and Venkys history of appointments, and you have to say that it's a very real and genuine fear. It doesn't excuse TM or make him a good manager and in a normal club he would have gone three or four times by now. But just as the evidence points to TM being mediocre at best the evidence also points to the very real handicaps we have in appointing a new manager. In fact I would say imo the only reason for keeping TM is the extreme likelihood we will appoint worse.

To be fair it could only be an improvement on Coyle. I mean it literally couldn't get any worse bar a Kean 2 situation and that was a unique set of circumstances we will never see again. TM is distinctly average but the agency in charge does seem to specialise in dross. So yeah it's a lot more risky changing managers now even though TM isn't that good.

How have Brentford overtaken us? I think its because they have recouped more in fees and built up and progressed the team year on year. They are ahead of us because they have done things the right way. Far from Brentford showing us we can't compete, they are a model for how clubs can compete dispite not having parachute payments, a big fan base and strong financial backing. Also PNE and Millwall are above us with smaller budgets. I hate to say it but PNE have been much closer to the playoffs than us with none of our alleged advantages.

I'd take McCarthy in a shot but who is his agent? If it's not the ones running us then we have no chance. If he is with them, then I would be hoping that such an appointment would be made and would do that swap in an instant. He has multiple promotions on his CV (more than TM) and did very well on a limited budget at Ipswich to keep them in the Championship (contrast TM's £12 million splurge). Players speak well of him (mostly) which means he probably be not too drastic a culture shock for our squad - they need a better mentality but a more friendly approach to raising standards may be the better than a manager like Souness or Roy Keane who is too combustible. If he is on the allowed list I would be telling TM to pack his bags.

Even the non catastrophic appointments have been poor. Bowyer, Lambert, Appleton and Berg (albeit the latter two were in different times) don't inspire confidence they would do better than TM when finding a replacement. It's hard to muster any enthusiasm for a new manager search given the owners and restrictions in place.

Absolutely that's the only thing for me that makes me not gutted that TM isn't gone. Not saying he is a good manager but being run by a substandard agency does mean replacing him well will be nigh on impossible. Venkys and the horror show previously are probably key reasons why he is popular with elements of the fan base too. In a normal club, or Rovers pre Venkys, everyone would want him out. Look at the stick Sam got for doing a much better job. It always comes down to Venkys and the effect they have on us, one of which is the erosion of standards.

There's a few things that undermine this. 1) Holtby wasn't out that long, 2) Holtby has been available throughout the return period and we have played a stupid false 9 formation instead and 3) losing your best player is going to have an impact as you say. Adjusting for this (for which there was plenty of time) doesn't necessarily mean getting a like for like replacement. Maybe we could have replaced Dack's goals with an improved defence bringing in a defender to equally lessen what we conceed, or a striker who was more clinical. Sure keep the formation but that doesn't mean adjustments for Dack being out cannot be made in other ways. Again Evans' injury record is exceptionally well known. Sure one of them was unfortunate and not due to being injury prone but he consistently has been injured throughout his time here as post lockdown has shown. Relying on someone with such a terrible injury record is asking for trouble. In fact it's plain stupid. This point also ignores the fact Johnson was brought in to be the midfield partner of Travis and has tanked at it. So whatever way you look at it, this is the manager's fault for relying on a sicknote and/or buying a dud alternative. I agree the Cunningham injury was bad fortune. However we never replaced him even with ample time. It also ignores that Williams was our cover for centre back too, so if one of our centre backs had got injured we would have still had a hole in the defence because the manager did not have adequate defensive cover. This is horse manure to put it bluntly. Sorry that's harsh but it feels like a complete rewriting of how Bennett has been handled by TM. Remember Bennett played the last game because Nayambe "had played a lot of football." Nothing to do with the injury situation but forcing his golden boy into the team at any cost. The idea that Bennett has only played as much as he has because of injuries is laughable. Further evidence of this is that Downing did a decent job at lb (and I thought JRC looked ok there too) but Bennett has been played there ahead of both of them on several occasions. Apart from the January transfer window. Plenty of time to rectify it there. Or having adequate defensive cover. Or not relying on a permanent crock in Evans. Plenty of ways we could have improved planning or predicted elements of our misfortune. Again two issues with this. Firstly other than blind hope what makes you think Gally or Ben will step up, they have been absymal. There's very little evidence whatsoever that they can step up. I don't think we should be giving TM more time because these guys may come good, as they very much look like they won't. Secondly even if all of this is accepted (and I think I have made a decent case for why it shouldn't be) what about all the other errors? Gally on the wing. Midfielders as a false 9. The terrible transfers of players such as Walton. The tombola selections. The non scoring strikers. The bottling it whenever we are near to the playoffs. The struggles TM has against teams when we are clear favourites. There's a hell of a lot of issues on top of the ones in your post, even if you can excuse them.

Ah but let's be honest with this such a mixed record - which shows more bad than good - is pretty appalling. Mixed is a very clever term as it is vague and can be spun positively, whereas the context determines what rate of mixed is acceptable. For example at uni a mark of 70% is a first and therefore a good result, whereas 70% pass ratio for a safety check would be horrifically inadequate. So in the context of a football club a mixed ratio of successful signings is pretty poor. from this list given 50:50 would be the best ratio TM could be said to have with successful transfers (I think the list suggests it is worse but we will go with that for now.) So that means half of our signings are duds. Given probably two thirds of our squad is made up of signings and half of them are duds that means a third of them are dead weights because of TMs mixed transfer record. When we look at the context and examine the specifics we see this is far from positive but horrifically mixed. It gets worse when we consider the level of risk and opportunity costs of the failed signings too. After all a low-cost failure doesn't have the same negative costs as an expensive one. Hughes for example trialed a few failed strikers such as Jeffers (and Fowler). They stunk but at low cost the risk and damage was minimal. Contrast that with TM - the big signings have gone badly wrong the last 2 years and 2 of the 3 expensive ones in league 1 went badly too. Theres a lot more damage from these signings being missed in terms of costs and not being able to respend the money or have used it elsewhere. Also on this loans. Loans are to give you things you otherwise couldn't get. They are there to rent a better quality than you could buy, like Tosin. Problem is this better quality in than we can afford often hasn't been the case. The likes of Harper and Walton have been poor, but also use up slots that really should have been top quality. Slots that were an opportunity to get better than what we could buy. So yeah mixed is the word, and in the context of a football club that is a terrible result.