frosty

Crikey, well played! What tactics are you using? It was a real slog when I eventually (had about six or seven years in the Championship after getting promoted first season from League One) got promoted to the Premier League with Rovers on FM 18, finished 17th with about 35 points.

A couple of FMs ago, think it was FM 18, JRC turned out a good player - well, his stats weren’t amazing (not really anything above 14 or 15 apart from maybe the odd physical or mental attribute) but he performed well at Championship level, got a few goals and eventually I sold him to West Ham for about £15m a few seasons in. He didn’t play much there though. Haven’t played as Rovers on FM since then but probably will do on FM 21. Hopefully players like him and Buckley will have decent potential now they’ve properly broken in to the first team. Buckley should already have some decent attributes (passing, composure etc) to work with.

Question - how did it go from this to the dark hooliganism days just a few years later in the 70s and 80s?

Phil Foden on loan wouldn’t be bad either ? Travis must have been playing as a ball winning midfielder with hard tackling to rack up that amount of cards?

12 years ago? ?

Time to move on from Evans IMO. You could count on one hand the number of good games he has a season and it feels like he’s only fit for max 50% of our games. I’d sell him tomorrow if we signed Whiteman.

Fair enough about everything financial etc, but this paragraph isn’t true at all sorry. The only criticism of a player at Ewood in recent years that I’d regard as aggressive or ‘unfair’ was Keith Andrews v Spurs in 2011 - if there’s been anyone else singled out there’s been a valid reason for it (Danny Murphy v Peterborough). You’re talking about the same crowd that somehow didn’t give Coyle any stick at Ewood until February of that season, and Bradley Orr didn’t receive anything either after sticking up for the most hated individual in the club’s history minutes after our relegation. Imagine that at a club with an actual aggressive crowd (you know a lot about Italian football if I recall - imagine the same scenario over there, crikey). Kean would have been run out of town a lot earlier too. Unfortunately Ewood has been pretty dead for a while and a few fellas shouting ‘bloody hell Brereton’ or groaning when Jason Lowe played another backwards pass doesn’t count as aggressively critical.

Love Holtby's lofted passes to the far post, all been so accurate. Good job Bell was offside, made a mess of it.

Does Cunningham think he's still playing for us?

Roy Keane is probably my favourite, but Carragher and Neville do a good job on Sky Sports and do bounce off each other well. Shearer and Sutton I like as well - Sutton upsets a few but give me that any day over someone like Jermaine Jenas. In terms of commentators, Steve McManaman is abysmal. It was painful having to listen to him night after night watching the latter stages of the Champions League on BT Sport the other month. He had absolutely zero knowledge of any European teams and was just giving it your old ‘English team good, foreign team bad’ - quite surprising given he played abroad. Although it was hilarious hearing him almost in tears when Lyon dumped City out. BT do employ some excellent presenters/pundits with a high level of knowledge of European football - James Richardson and James Horncastle in particular. Should get them involved in the main CL coverage instead of only The Goals Show.

Barely any senior football at all between those three! As it stands too if Bell got injured we'd have to move Williams to LB, leaving only Lenihan and Ayala as CBs with any senior experience (if we sold Wharton), and they're pretty injury prone themselves. I'd keep Wharton around (though I know he's at the age where he'd want to be more than, say, fourth choice CB) and, ideally, sign a first-team left back so Williams isn't needed there at any point.

Bowyer wasn't capable of getting a team promoted from this league regardless of who we had on the pitch unfortunately.

Looking forward to discussing what sell-on clause we have for Nyambe in about 2023.

We’d probably get away with it in this game but it’s the bigger picture with Nyambe that’s more worrying. We should be doing everything we can to tie him down.

Would be furious if Nyambe is dropped. He looked a big threat going forward at Bournemouth with his assist for Armstrong and he set somebody else up too with a cross from the right, can’t remember who. Asking him to be better going forward but then dropping him the next league game after he looks a threat in the final third? Makes no sense....

Dack posted a video on Instagram during the week of him and Butterworth on the bikes in the gym, they might be at a similar stage in their recovery maybe. It does feel like he’s been out forever though yep.

I certainly wouldn't say Rothwell runs sideways; he's one of the most direct Rovers players I can remember. His first thought is always to drive forward when he gets the ball.

I’ve still got probably around a dozen Calcio Italia magazines from between the early 2000s and about 2012. Used to get it every month. The ones from the early 2000s will be worth a few quid now I bet! Apart from that I get Four Four Two probably two or three times a year. It’s not cheap but it’s always a good read, and passes the time nicely on flights or long train journeys.

I’m glad that some players we’re after have said they want to get to the Premier League and have, by the sounds of it, pretty much challenged Mowbray as to whether he’s serious about getting promoted. For too long now we’ve had a mix of players who have had a brief taste of the PL and know they aren’t good enough and, primarily, players who are just happy to plod along in the Championship as they know that’s their level. Couple that with no urgency in the dugout and off the pitch and it’s no wonder we never challenge at all. It still winds me up now when I think about Gallagher’s Instagram post last Boxing Day - ‘10 unbeaten’ and a smiley face. This after two dire home draws and performances against Wigan and Birmingham which ensured we didn’t enter the play off spots. That said it all. For what it’s worth, under Mowbray I don’t think we’ll ever even enter the top 6 at any significant stage of the season - never mind go the whole way and get promoted. But a change in mentality and desire on the pitch would at least be most welcome. Of course first we’d have to actually sign said players and ‘get them over the line’ which seems incredibly difficult for us to do.......

Indeed, they both like a trick but that's where the comparisons end; Rochina is a lot better than Palmer and has been a regular for years in one of the strongest leagues in the world.

Two people think JRC will be world class? ? I like him and think he'll be a good player for us, but that's one of the maddest things I've read on here - he's 21 and has played a handful of senior football matches!

A young Roy Keane discusses being linked to Real Madrid, Liverpool and Rovers. Can't see us being in a transfer battle with those two clubs again - so let's savour a time when that was the case.

Indeed, Alexander-Arnold should be one of the first names on the team sheet every game, no idea how he can be on the bench.

In the coronavirus thread you’ve been saying that businesses need to all start opening up now to ‘get the economy going’, ‘protect jobs’ etc etc. What’s the difference here? Apart from it’s a decision taken by Rovers so it must be staunchly defended.

It does sound like Kipré is the better of the two, and I still hope we can get him in. But ‘brace positions’ certainly makes it sound like it’s a signing that most wouldn’t receive well at all, whereas Sarr would probably generate a ‘meh’, mixed reaction....don’t think anybody knows enough about him or has watched him enough to have a strong view either way.