That'd be a surprise as it'd mean we've sold more tickets for a friendly than we've sold season tickets. Hope he's right though.

How strong is Batty's accent 🤣 Great video!

Yeah I've seen buses around the Ribble Valley advertising those on the back. Think it's either the 18/19 or 19/20 season. Half the players on there aren't even here anymore and Waggott's of course bumped the prices up since. Really poor.

We had another Chilean, Carlos Villanueva, on loan in 2008/09 but he didn't play much. Couple of Argentinians going back a few years - Mauro Formica, Franco di Santo. Can't think of too many more South Americans off the top of my head..... Ruben Rochina was another Spaniard as well as Salgado. Javier de Pedro too going even further back, although he barely kicked a ball for us.

Lovely assist!

After not getting any minutes in the qualifiers, I thought maybe the manager didn’t rate him after seeing him in the flesh for the first time. Less likely to be the case though if he’s in the Copa squad. All or at least some games on BBC I think, albeit late at night for us here.

Verratti is exceptional, just injury prone. Jorginho isn't as good as Verratti but can still keep the ball all day long and has just won the CL. Any Serie A followers will know that Barella and Locatelli are really good too, Barella in particular.

Agreed. We've had enough 30+ year old players here lately happy to play out their remaining years in mid-table of the Championship as they know they aren't good enough to play at a higher level. Avoid.

Wonder if Mowbray knew about this - or would Kante have had to learn the position from Smallwood?

Robbie Savage on commentary sounded like he’d swallowed one of those books - “Pogba is playing as a number 6 as part of a double pivot.” He’s playing as a sitting/defensive midfielder then....?

"Why do you want to sign Zidane when we have Tony Mowbray?"

Some absolute beauts in there. Thought he might have been older than 35 by now - surprising he went out to Mexico aged just 29, yet Florian Thauvin is about to do the same at 28 (to the same team, Tigres, as well). Both moving on the back of successful spells at Marseille in their peak years, not like they were on the decline or anything.

Zamarano and Salas, what a front two. Hope they’re not judging Brereton against that standard 😬

Surprised that’s actually happened. Wouldn’t have had him down as being ready to play in highly competitive, feisty South American WC qualifiers. There’d be a partisan crowd there too normally. Best of luck to him though, would be a great story if he could do well and help them qualify.

Can only echo what others have said, Nuttall's poor. His only half-decent trait seemed to be finding himself in the right place at the right time (granted there are far worse attributes for a striker to have) but apart from that he didn't look like much of a footballer at all to be honest.

To be honest most of our Championship seasons have been mind-numbingly dull, the only exceptions I can think of are 12/13 going through five managers and falling into the relegation zone in April, 13/14 where we still had a very small chance of the playoffs on the final day, and of course 16/17 when we went down. The rest, consisting of mid-table nothingness, just blur into one. It really has been a miserable decade with absolutely nothing to shout about apart from promotion out of a division that it was embarrassing to drop into. Just the way Mowbray likes it though, plodding along in mid-table in the Championship (although I'd be surprised if we're as high as that next season....). Think the same goes for quite a few of the players too unfortunately, though we should be rid of some of them this summer.

JRC should be one of the easiest contracts to tie up. He’s a decent prospect but I wouldn’t have thought he’s played regularly enough to attract any serious interest from elsewhere, he’s had some big injuries too. If we’re struggling to get him to renew, and as Skip says I doubt he’s asking for much, then that’s very poor.

Hah, I wouldn't be happy with that at all if I were a PNE fan. When does this type of thing ever work out? Cheap option indeed. Still probably finish above us again mind if we have Mowbray for the entire of next season.

Yeah, he’s well wide of the mark with that one (if he genuinely thinks that of course). But either way it’d be nice to have a manager who talked up Rovers like he’s doing for Portsmouth, instead of Midtable Mowbray calling Boro and Stoke massive clubs and saying things like ‘Shearer and Sutton aren’t here anymore’.

This is Mowbray's (and a lot of our players too I imagine) dream match - end of season, nothing to play for, the beach is in sight and playing a poor side who are already on their holidays judging by their result last week. 2-1 or 3-1 Rovers with the players clogging up social media after the game saying how nice it is to finish the season with a win. I'd be too embarrassed to post anything at all after the run we've been on second half of the season.

That’s my fear as we go into the summer. No games, a lot of people (not on here) will forget about Mowbray, how much a change is needed and just how abysmal this season has been. Focus will turn to transfers, who’s getting a new contract and kids on social media will be drooling over whichever PL youngster we borrow next thinking it’s some sort of coup for Blackburn Rovers. Round and round we go. Depressing.

Fine with that. On a free he was probably worth a punt, but it hasn't worked out really. He'll be 31 just after next season starts, pretty injury prone and doesn't really stand out much when he does play - neat and tidy, but he's never really looked a class above, apart from maybe during some of our big wins against 10 men earlier this season. Seems a decent guy though so good luck to him. Hopefully he'll be followed out the door by some of the others who'll be out of contract and of course Mowbray himself.

He’s been okay on the rare occasions he’s played, nothing special but I do remember him playing well at Brentford when we were down to ten men not long before he disappeared off the face of the earth. However the thought of Mowbray talking about “what might have been” after Ayala features in a couple of dead-rubber wins between now and the end of the season, with the beach getting ever closer, makes me want to reach for the sick bucket.

Surely we must be selling hardly any iFollow passes now. Weren't we down to about 1000 for one game, and even that was a couple of months ago? Must be, what, a couple of hundred now? Few hundred absolute max. I haven't paid to watch on iFollow since December now when it became clear it would be another season of nothingness (not that, deep down, I expected anything else under Mowbray) after hardly missing a game before that. Not missed it one bit.

Agnelli at Juventus is one of the most slippery characters of the lot, he’s been right behind something like this for a while. When Atalanta first qualified for the CL a couple of years ago he openly spoke out about how they basically shouldn’t have qualified as they have no European history. Proper weapon that guy. Atalanta of course went on to progress further than Juve in the CL that season which was brilliant. And on Sunday, the day of the announcement, they beat Juve 1-0 and overtook them in the league meaning Juve might not qualify for the CL next season. So it’s no surprise they’re involved but you’d like to think, given the Agnelli family have owned Juve since 1923, that he’d appreciate history and genuine competition a little more than all the American etc owners behind it.