frosty

Sarr is supposed to be steady enough isn’t he, so I don’t think signing him would warrant a ‘brace positions’ post - particularly when most of us probably realise deep down that Kipré is unlikely to join.

Bit harsh. He's got the choice of a mid-table Championship team or a side that's now in the Premier League. Even if he starts the season on the bench there, all it takes is an injury, suspension or one of the starting CBs in poor form, and he'd be in. Do alright and all of a sudden you're a regular in the Premier League. I know where I'd go if I were him (and had no affiliation to Rovers obviously).

To be fair Walton is probably no worse as a CB than he is as a goalkeeper.

Indeed, throwing Choupo-Moting on instead of Icardi was bizarre. Icardi would have buried that half chance that Choupo-Moting tried to flick/poke in towards the end.

Looking forward to Brereton's next goal for us in a dead rubber against Birmingham ?

No Liverpool fan should want Bayern to get through - if they win the tournament, they’ll join Liverpool on 6 CLs/European Cups. Of course if they’re your standard glory hunters, they may not be aware of stats like that

Hilarious. Well done Lyon ?

Yeah, Cunningham looked decent and was without doubt better than Bell and Williams both going forward and defensively. Far more complete full back. His injury was really unfortunate. That said I don't think we'd have finished much (or any) higher even if he'd have stayed fit. We were still our soft-centered selves once we'd had a couple of wins taking us near the dizzy heights of the top 6 - as evidenced by our last three games with Cunningham in the side, which yielded just one point (he went off injured in the third of those games, QPR, but we'd already shipped two or three by then). We'll always be like that under Mowbray regardless of personnel IMO.

First time I've seen that 'Goodbye Tugay Welcome Tuncay' banner (penultimate pic)! Having googled, it looks like we were linked with him a year later, summer 2010, but not before. Random one. Great album though and an excellent day - Ewood packed, top players in the blue and white including the great man's final game, the sun shining and yet another season of top flight football to look forward to.

I was gutted for Atalanta. So close to getting the win. They were absolutely knackered by the end though - Gómez off injured, Hateboer (I think it was) injured and on the pitch just to make up the numbers. Once PSG equalised, it was either they score again to win in normal time (like they did) or they’d have got at least a couple in extra time. Bringing Mbappé off the bench, even if he’s not fully fit, is almost unfair. I don’t like Neymar at all but he was excellent, despite missing a couple of good chances. I’d forgotten just how good he is at dribbling, almost impossible to stop. Still can’t believe what happened tonight. Barcelona losing 8-2. Madness. It’s been coming though - they’ve been thumped in one game in each of the last three or four CL seasons, albeit nothing on tonight’s scale. But their recruitment has been absolutely dreadful and they’ve paid the price.

Agreed. Nobody saw the whole false 9 thing coming after the restart, for example. And now that he has a few weeks' thinking time before the new season, it wouldn't surprise me if he ends up dreaming up another over-complicated plan.

Good shout, £1m for Jordan Slew has to be up there actually. Had forgotten about him given we had a truck load of dodgy signings and wastes of space around that time.

Forza Atalanta! Really hope they beat PSG. They're a fantastic team to watch and, despite finishing a few points off the top in the league, I'd say they're the strongest Italian team at the moment. They're by miles the best to watch. Unfortunately they're missing their first-choice goalkeeper and also Ilicic who's a great player. Still got the wonderful Papu Gomez, who's a lovely little player. You'd expect Bayern to beat Barca who were poor even in victory in midweek, Bayern have pretty much been smashing everybody since football restarted, but in a one-off game with Messi involved you never know. Hope Lyon can repeat what they did to City last season, but you'd expect City to win...

In terms of being a disgrace to the shirt, Orr and Murphy, with the likes of Etuhu and Best not far behind. Horrible time to be a Rover that 12/13 season (apart from Kean leaving). All useless on the pitch but I hated having them at the club. In terms of us signing players for dodgy reasons that weren't even proper footballers, Myles Anderson and Edinho. For players not living up to a big transfer fee, Kevin Davies, Barry Ferguson, Grabbi and - as it stands, thankfully he's got time to change this - Mr Brereton. Must be a £7m curse as the slightly more expensive ones, Rhodes and Andy Cole, worked out.

Or ever! It’s so simplistic to say ‘if Dack was fit we’d have x more points and we’d have been in the play offs’. It just doesn’t work like that and so many other variables come into it (for a start the manager hasn’t shown he’s capable of even entering the top 6 with us).

Difficult to say right now but, unless we sign some good players that have a burning desire to properly challenge for promotion and who won't settle for second best, I'd just expect more of the same. We've got some good players here (albeit there are a few gaps in the team now) but having never entered the top 6 with our current bunch, I'd be surprised if we ever did without a real shake-up and mentality change. And as it doesn't look like Mowbray's going anywhere anytime soon, that'd have to come from the players. Provided we don't sell any of our better players, we know this team and manager can give us WDL most of the time (plus strong runs of form followed by poor ones) so I'd just expect more of that.

I also read that 12 years ago they knocked Atlético Madrid out of Europe and the year before that they drew away to Bayern Munich. Now they’re getting ready to face Barrow and Harrogate.

Hmmm. "the 23-year-old could find himself a man in demand this summer" and "A proposed continuation of the five substitutes rule could see Premier League clubs keen to add more attacking options to their armoury." Things that 'could' happen - is that all this article is based on? Are the LT trying to stir up interest in him themselves?

Very good point. Aren't we also now at the end of Mowbray's 'four or five transfer windows' plan?

The decision to sell Raya in itself was a poor one, selling him to eventually bring in Walton made it even worse. A year on we’ve no senior goalkeepers on the books just a few weeks before the start of the new season, while he’s collected the Golden Glove, could get promoted and is now being linked to top Premier League clubs. What a mess.

Way before my time but these brief highlights popped up on Twitter earlier:

Last season we had the dire Ipswich and Bolton teams in the division, nobody's been that bad this season (apart from Hull in the last few months) - that might explain it.

We're in big trouble if all four of those are part of the senior squad and get much game time next season (Wharton possibly excepted as he's racked up quite a lot of senior experience, even if it's in League Two). Grayson and Magloire are both 21 and have barely played any senior football between them - that suggests they're nowhere near ready for the Championship any time soon, and maybe never will be. If money is so tight that it means 'defenders aren't coming', then I expect our recent defensive woes to continue next season.

That’s from February 2019 and he signed a new deal last summer. Plus that Phil Hay fella at The Athletic (he was also at Yorkshire Evening Post until recently) knows everything about Leeds. Either way, it’s turned out to be a bargain and credit to Leeds, a mid-table Championship club at the time, for pushing the boat out and thinking outside the box.

Bielsa is on around £3m a year Chaddy. Mentioned towards the end of this article by a journo who has covered Leeds for donkeys years. https://theathletic.com/1901739/2020/07/17/marcelo-bielsa-the-inside-story-of-a-leeds-love-affair-that-made-dreams-come-true/