vyeo
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Posts posted by vyeo
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2 hours ago, Gav said:
I was in a room yesterday with a Blues fan, a Wednesday fan and 2 Rovers fans........
We all agreed Plymouth would go down, a couple had put "Heart break" bets on, getting 18/1 and 20/1 respectively. It will be interesting to see how tomorrow plays out, the bookies don't often get it wrong 🤞
Ps - Just a word on Rovers fans travelling tomorrow, tickets sold out a while back I hear. You are all a credit to this great club of ours and deserve better, much better. Each week we read about the tremendous support away from home, you should all be very proud of your efforts.
Leicester 1 Rovers 3 (Do it for the fans)
I have a bad niggling feeling that we'll go down on goal difference by a single goal, because that is just about the only outcome more painful than the 2016/17 relegation. I don't usually bet, but have also put in my heart break bets.
Don't think i can bear to watch tomorrow, will probably just check the results in trepidation after its done...
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9 minutes ago, bboy said:
We'd be a lot safer now had we lost 1-,0 to Bristol city
Agree, can't shake the bad feeling about this one. Also the way it has turned out, we would be better off in terms of safety if we had lost to Leeds but beat Sheff Wed.
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2 minutes ago, Rogerb said:
That could be read two ways but I'm guessing you weren't excited by him.
Hahaha, yea I should have written abject, dark, Kean days.
The sad thing is how after the promise of last season, and the first third of this season, it has all unravelled so badly, so quickly.
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3 minutes ago, JHRover said:
Pretty much agree with the lot of it. What a post.
JDT by no means perfect but he had valuable assets. Ambition, drive, personality, a vision. I think back to last season, particularly August to February, and the first half of this season, and this was a guy capable of dragging this club out of the stinking cesspit that it has been dragged and into a potentially bright future.
Alas as we saw with the Allardyce fiasco, as we saw with the Bowyer/Lambert fiasco, these owners and their minions will always find a way to derail and destroy any positive momentum or progress and set the club back years. I should have known better but I admit I believed. I genuinely thought that with the Director of Football approach and JDT leading it and after the season we had, going so close in league and cup, that the ingredients were there to take the next step and crack the play-offs.
More fool me. I can't describe the disappointment I feel about the way in which once again these people have destroyed something that should have been good and positive and that fell into our lap almost by accident after Mowbray finally left.
Yes it was clear that JDT was burned by the O'Brien fiasco, yet he stuck at it and we still went close last season. It was clear he was unimpressed by the summer's shenanigans yet he stuck at it, moved his family over, accepted the constraints and we, somehow managed to get ourselves sat just outside the top 6 in December with this squad.
Then a third transfer window of nonsense, culminating in Adam Wharton being sold, the McGuire disgrace (what sort of club treats other clubs and players in such a disgusting and humiliating fashion?) and no reinvestment was the straw that broke the camel's back. Totally understandable for anyone with any self-respect to draw a line at being undermined by your colleagues.
Of course ownership and a board with any finger on the pulse would have sacked JDT once it became clear that the damage was irreparable and the direction things were going. I agree that he was essentially saying 'f... you' to them and going gung ho wanting to be fired.
Yet they couldn't even manage his departure correctly. It came far too late, even in the week it happened they took days on end to announce it.
They're just a disgrace. There's no coming back from this in my book. It's happened too many times and I won't fall for it again.
Yes, couldn't have summed it better. It's the hope that kills you. I truly believed too and was the most excited I've been about our prospects since the Kean days.
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It's been so depressing over the last 4-5 months that I have not been able to muster the energy to post my thoughts about our farcical season. But after watching that s-show yesterday, I feel that I need to let it out.
I'm in the Eustace = useless camp. I did not like his appointment from the start, because I thought his good spell at the start of the season was a purple patch and not indicative of his normal standards. But I did not want to pre-judge him and certainly hoped that he would come good. Given our constraints, we need our head coach to be able to get the team to produce at 110% of as a collective, and I just don't think he has the tactical and coaching nous that we need to be able to do so. Eustace's initial comments about togetherness sound like an empty soundbite recycled from JDT, who in contrast, meant it when he said it.
In fact, Eustace lost me on day 2 with his dramatic entrance in the second-half of the Stoke game. I thought he saw that we had a safe win, and wanted to claim credit for it, though I'm sure one could argue that he genuinely wanted to shore the team up. For me though, it was more performative than substance given that he had not had any training session with the team before that. The fact is that the Stoke game was one of the few positive games that we've had in the last six months, and Eustace did not set the team up.
Since then, I've not been impressed at all with Eustace's contribution. Sure, he shored the defence up somewhat, but the team as a whole looks disjointed. For all the players' complaints about JDT and our poor results this season, we could see a plan and a method to the madness - there were indications that the players knew what to do, what patterns to play, and were well-drilled. Whether they could do it or not is a different story, but on balance, I would argue that JDT extracted more from them than they otherwise would have been able to produce. In that sense, our current situation is just a reversion to their normal standards.
Going back to statements and how he presents himself, Eustace has also proven useless. No clear communication, hides in generalities, and as yesterday's comments show, does not pursue accountability and certainly does not set the right standards. These are basic leadership traits which you would expect a good coach/manager to possess. I hoped he would prove me wrong; after all, who expected Gary O'Neil to turn out so well? Unfortunately, Eustace is more in the Ince/Coyle/Appleton class.
On JDT, I lament what could have been everyday. I think he's the best we've had in the last decade, and could have done something special with us. It pains me but objectively, I definitely hold JDT responsible to some extent for this season's mess too. In this regard, I think his broken relationship with the board is the key factor.
There was no trust after the Lewis O Brien incident last year and no alignment of vision, and I think JDT found it difficult to be motivated in such a demotivating environment. If Maggot had been more professional, if the board had been straight with JDT, if they had set more ambitious targets despite the financial difficulties - tell JDT we need to ride it out this season, that we still want to have a good go despite the limitations, find a way to do it - we might have had a better outcome. (Remember, JDT showed that he could deploy tactics to shut the shop and play the dark-arts when he first arrived - I remember this well during our win/loss sequence in the first half of last season, when we barely conceded when we won, and it looked like we were playing some form of 90s Italian tactics.) Instead, Maggot obfuscates and publicly says that mediocrity is ok, sets no targets except to develop players - well, my assessment is that JDT decided to work to rule and gave Maggot exactly what he asked for by playing an expansive game at all costs and giving kids like Adam Wharton and Harry Leonard (too) much game time, even when it might have been better to rest them at times.
In the end, JDT's departure was inevitable. That said, if we got relegated, I would still have more trust in JDT to create something with a youth squad in L1 - in fact, I would be pretty confident of a reset and our chances of winning the league by a clear margin, given how we regularly spanked lower league sides with youth-heavy teams over JDT's reign.
Now with all the above said, the root cause of our woes is still Maggot and Venky's, no doubt about that. I don't know how involved or uninvolved the Venky's are on a day-to-day basis, but if we had a competent CEO who can set the agenda correctly, aim high, and maximise what he can within his remit, we may have a fighting chance. Instead, we have a chancer, more than happy to settle for the mediocre, so we get what we get. Put it this way, if we sign Coventry rejects (both in the boardroom and on the pitch), we get Coventry-standards (the terrible version from a couple of years back, not the heroic one at Wembley yesterday).
Finally, our prospects this season - we're certainly doing our best to snatch relegation from the jaws of safety. I've had a foreboding feeling all season. Too many similarities to our relegation in 2016/17 - massive cost-cutting, terrible signings (Telalovic - Stokes, Moran loan - Emnes loan, Greer - McFadzean etc), the same type of FA Cup draw (good effort and near upset against a big PL team - Man Utd then in the freezing cold and Newcastle this time), freakish results in the run-in (I remember thinking that we had done enough when we beat Villa(?) was it, and Brentford on the last day), but the other relegation candidates fought hard and chalked up enough points elsewhere. I'm praying for a miracle in our last two games, but am not optimistic.
If we somehow survive this, I pray that we can somehow reset in the summer. But back to the start of this post and the theme of this thread, Eustace is not the man to get us there.
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2 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:
Has they been any consequences from the Failed transfer of Duncan McGuire of any staff member losing their job?
There was probably a reward for a job well done
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Just now, Displaced Rover said:
However shit and injury prone he seems to be, it's a massive risk to loan him to a relegation rival. Maybe they rate him that little...
It's another wage off the books. Tick for Swaggot.
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5 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:
So
£18m in
plus
Loan that won't be made permanent
Loan we don't need
Possible further loan
and Ennis possibly out
And Bayes is trying to dress it up as something impressive
We'll probably end up with just Billy nobody, who we do not need, and fail to get the rest over the line. This really smacks of the league one relegation season again, but at least we had Graham and Mulgrew then. We can't even point to people of similar ilk now.
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Didnt think we could go lower than last year's window, but we did!
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1 minute ago, alex l said:
Don't know how true this is but...
If these numbers are accurate, it's a con-job on Orlando to get them to loan him to us for whatever we could find in the cookie jar. No way are we intending to make the deal perm, even if he hits a goal a game.
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1 minute ago, roversinmyblood said:
Yes me too.
Ah thank you, i thought my computer was going nuts.
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Sorry to trouble - just to check if anyone has issues logging into the Rovers' website?
I can't log in despite trying three different browsers. The website just resets itself whenever I click log in, without the log in page actually coming on.
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I read it as JDT taking a dig at Waggott's no-expectations comment from the summer, and the ownership's lack of ambition.
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We look so leggy today. It's kinda understandable after a busy week with two tough games, but more worryingly, we look like we have nothing viable to rotate. If Tronstad still can't get a game in this situation, JDT must really think him not ready/not rate him.
And GOAL!
Come'on, hope it gives us the momentum to push on. Don't give anything cheap away, please!
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My stream's gone dead again but we were abject for the 15min that it worked. Need a response in the second half.
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5 minutes ago, RoversClitheroe said:
Rovers TV not broadcasting for anyone?
It's not working for me in Singapore too
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If we stay in the championship:
2 forwards (replacing BBD and Dack, who I don't think we'll keep in this scenario), 1 midfielder (replacing Morton), 1 left back, 1 centre back (replacing Ayala), 1 utility (replacing Mola + Edun).
Of these, I think we would aim for at least one of the forwards and the midfielder to be first-11 quality for a top-6 championship team, and possibly the left-back if the money stretches far enough. (Someone said Manning would be available on a free - we should be all over that!) Some of the current rotation options, like Dolan, may get promoted to regular starters. The rest will probably be rotation options to build depth. I think the centre back will depend on what the market looks like - may go for it if someone like JPVH becomes available, but we probably wouldn't look to pay a significant fee for a cb.
If we go up:
2 forwards, 2 midfielders, 1 left back, 1 centre back, 1 utility, 1 right back, 1 goalkeeper
Immediate needs are not too different from the first scenario, but would obviously have more ammunition and hence chances of getting better quality. I think we may keep Dack if we go up, simply because there would be more space to carry his wages in this case. Additional goalkeeper in this scenario because I suspect both our keepers, while good for championship standards, won't be good enough as prem starters. And similarly for right back and centre back too.
Also, I hope we would go for a practical approach - strengthen wisely with quality in key positions, a bit like how we did in the early Hughes years (i.e., accepting what we thought was sub-optimal players like Dickov, Kuqi, Mokoena etc) instead of replacing the entire team ala-Forest. (You just know that we would go down in the year they remove parachute payments, so we better build sustainably if we do make it!)
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1 hour ago, Bethnal said:I’m confident Broughton’s out in public, eating sh*t because he recognises the frustration and that nobody else is going to. For me, that’s leadership. He’s setting an example that nobody else has done before under this ownership and essentially challenging those that he’s covering for.
Frustrations are at ownership and long-standing executive level and that’s where all the ire should go.
Fully agree. I thought Broughton's move to front the interview and claim responsibility was pretty much textbook leadership, and certainly in line with my personal leadership philosophy and training. It looks to me like Broughton has been through a series of formal MBA and leadership training, and he strikes me as someone who has a clear sense of direction and strong convictions.
With regard to the interview, I thought Broughton made his points well and sent the right messages to different stakeholders. The overall message of yes, we screwed up, but let's look forward, was pragmatic and pitched at the right level - I think he was speaking to everyone - players, employees, fans, and this is really all we can do now as a club.
What I liked more were the extras:
I like that there was a subtle challenge thrown in to the current group of players - by saying that we were looking for players with the X-factor, the self-critical player would hopefully get the message that they need to pull up their socks. (I just hope they get the message!)
My personal favourite was the passive-aggression observation about how we had followed the decade-long process, and it's been proven to be not good enough. In one go, he was taking the public hit, and at the same time, criticising the shit-show within the enabling functions of our organisation.
I just hope the loons in Pune notice this and back the right horse - it's clear that the club needs a transformation to enable us to compete with our structural constraints. At this point, I would be comfortable with GB taking on the CEO role, and confident that he would do a better job that Waggott.
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4 minutes ago, goozburger said:
We agreed loan packages with at least two clubs for strikers in Undav and Kone. They fell through because the selling clubs halted the deals in the end - the former because I don't think Undav wanted to go, and the latter because the selling club didn't get their target. So they did find strikers, but the deals never happened.
Yes you're right. I'd forgot about Undav and Kone. Still in line the broader point that we were looking for top championship quality - these guys would probably be seen as immediate first-teamers. But because neither deal happened, and LOB became available, we decided to go for LOB instead of getting a filler striker. (And we wound up with nothing!)
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I don't know why I still bother... but.
I actually think that the approach on the football side was sound. I totally get that Broughton has not delivered the signings, but I'm still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought his approach of going for two strong loans (Sorba and the ultimately tragic LOB deal) was actually a mark of ambition. To me, these two moves were clear indicators that JDT and him were going for promotion via the playoffs. I still believe the approach for this window was to maximise the limited funds we had, by getting the best quality we could have got. I think they were focusing on top-quality championship players, and probably did not get a striker because we couldn't find someone better than what we had. When LOB suddenly became viable after WBA and Sheffield Utd pulled out, I think GB and JDT decided to go for it as LOB would have given us a clear overload in midfield, and Brereton could have done a job up front if we play Sorba on the left.
In fact, assuming that LOB did agree terms on the potential permanent deal and it was just a matter of a late submission, I have no idea how we sold that to him, probably with a very low release fee included.
Mystery is why it fell through. I had thought, and was prepared to believe, that it was an honest administrative oversight. But the datapoint of Waggot and Pasha being in Birmingham on deadline night raises questions. I would be very interested to know if they regularly attend away matches, or if it was actually an exception that they attended the replay. At worst, and with the history of the last twelve years, you have to wonder about the possibility of sabotage on the administrative side. A less conspiratorial possibility could be that it took to long to get approvals on (or even to work out) the numbers in the permanent contract, as I would bet that Waggot and co would have no idea what the financial modelling would look like should we get promoted.
Finally, a crazier hypothesis is whether Rovers, Forest and LOB all agreed to try their luck with the EFL and take a common position that they need not agree on permanent terms yet, and submitted the deal without that element, but was ultimately rejected by the EFL.
Overall, I think the logic of the footballing approach is sound, but the adminstration of the organisation is appalling. To deliver on the mission (footballing success and promotion), you need sound enablers at the organisational side, which we do not have. If JDT and GB are as competent as I think they are, or have as much professional pride as I think they have, it would be a tough task to convince them to stay for another season.
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Doesn't gel that the dispute is over the terms of a permanent contract. Even if our amateurs did not know that it had to be sorted as part of the deal, surely Forest and O'Brien's legal team would know. I find it difficult to imagine that all three parties did not realise this, if it was a requirement.
And if it's true that the player was unwilling to agree terms on the permanent contract, then the whole deal should have just been off - there couldn't even have been a submission. Either way, looks like we missed the boat. I can completely believe it being an administrative screw up somewhere.
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2 minutes ago, Inferi said:
Sounds so unprofessional. Ridiculous.
And yet so believeable.
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7 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:No one cares about Porteous
Every club, in every window, will be linked with players they don't land
It is not a damning indictment of the clubs' ability to get deals done, it is a damning indictment of the insatiable thirst for clicks and site traffic stemming from the 24/7 media industry
Once again the player we acquired was not spoken about once
I love the to'ing and fro'ing about should we sign, shouldn't we, is he any good, can he better us. Love it. Keeps you interested. But only a downright idiot would be foolish enough to think we 'missed out' on every single player name dropped or linked in the media
The truth will be somewhere in the middle. Some we may have missed, some we may have enquired once and moved on immediately, some we were never in for at all
Fully agree with the above.
I believe that GB and JDT are trying to play their limited hand as best as they can. I think it's quite clear that we do have some money to spend as indicated by the bid for Porteous and paid loan for Sorba, though the budget is not large. An additional constraint is that we probably have very limited wriggle room on the sum - this could be a function of the club working on a block budget per season, internal wage ceiling, income challenges and FFP compliance issues etc. (Some of these issues could be Venkys-imposed, but some are also likely to be structural challenges that GB and JDT can't fix directly, and would require a whole-of-club approach to address and for me, the blame is on Waggott.)
With this challenging operating environment, my best guess is that GB and JDT are trying to get the best-bang-for-buck with the objective of strengthening the squad overall. I'm sure that GB and JDT can see the issues in our midfield and attack, and in addition, they are probably also concerned about left back and the succession plans for Ayala and BBD. But given the financial constraints above, they'll have to prioritise. This means they may have to sub-optimise certain parts of the team for the greater good, hence the "project" approach and talk about needing a few windows to get the playing squad to where they want it to be. (This is not defeatist, and doesn't mean we won't try to do as best as we can in the meantime though!)
I think GB and JDT are probably looking to bolster the attack and midfield this window. But because we have such limited resources, we will need to be picky. This could be why there have been reports of enquiries, but not so much about serious negotiations. I think we may have decided to bide our time because the early enquiries did not throw up anyone available within our budget, who is clearly good enough for our needs. We could be consolidating and studying the market, to see what the best combination of options could look like, while keeping open the possibility of other options emerging late in the window, so that we can maximise our chances of getting it right.
So far, it looks like we were serious about Porteous, and that could be because he would have helped fix two issues - the current midfield problem and the Ayala situation next season. That said, I'm not super bothered that we missed out on him. Such things happen. Cantwell was probably also serious, but I'm afraid most sane players would choose Rangers over us at this point, so no blame there. (I might be overly charitable, but I trust that GB and JDT have a sound approach overall, and I'm actually somewhat heartened that we're trying to be discerning and not just grabbing anyone available.)
My guess is that Sorba was an opportunistic deal. GB and JDT likely moved decisively for him once he became available, as they feel he is too good to pass up. This could be why they went ahead even though a paid loan with no option to buy doesn't look good on paper. I have not watched Sorba enough to have an independent view on his ability, but his stats certainly suggest that he is far more effective at chance creation than whoever else we have. So for me, Sorba brings something new to the table, and I applaud the move actually. (I will save the criticism for when JDT plays Sorba as a holding midfielder :P)
Bringing in Sorba also gives us options - on the field, it could free BBD up to play more centrally, where hopefully he's more D than BB, and that could in the short-term allow us to get away with not bringing in another striker. It would be a calculated risk, but at a systems level, could then free up the remaining budget to address some of the (many) other areas that we need to fix if the right player becomes available. Or it could allow us to sell BBD this window, which would then change the budget we have to play with in the next few days. It could also let us loan out Markanday, who JDT seems to think is not fully ready.
So overall, I think GB and JDT see Sorba as a "no-regrets" move, and my guess is that we'll try to strengthen with one more player by the end of the window. I would be pleasantly surprised if the budget stretches to two more additions with no outgoings, but I think this is unlikely. I would bet that the profile they are looking for is likely to be someone championship-ready, or a premier-league-minus/league-one-plus type with strong upside - I don't think it would be a kid on loan as a filler (I hope!).
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I've not posted in a decade, but just felt that I wanted to comment now. I'm a big fan of what JDT has done, and in particular, appreciate the uplift in spirit and atmosphere that he has brought since joining us.
I've watched our other abject away displays, but yesterday was the first time where I have been really, really disappointed. The selection was baffling - I can understand excluding Adam Wharton, but dropping Scott?! Think Pickering would also have felt hard done by, given his improvement over the last month or so, and having built up a good partnership with Brereton on the left. I really thought JDT would have come out to apologise for that non-performance after the game. I suppose he tried to do so in his comments, but I thought something more explicit was required given the circumstances. I'm prepared to back his calls, including on Dack, but this was a situation where he needed to hold up his hands, in my opinion.
Anyway, having cooled down overnight, I'm telling myself to not lose sight of the bigger picture. For me, JDT has done very well overall for the first half of the season, and I would give him an A- just based the outcomes he has delivered so far. I'm sure he's not here for a lark, and that every game/result matters to him. I buy that he sees us as a project, but at the same time, I don't buy that he's not shooting for promotion this season. (Even yesterday, watching on ifollow's feed, did anyone catch JDT's reaction to a Buckley mistake down the touchline shortly after coming on? It was a blink and you'll miss it moment, but he was Fergie-mad and jumped off his chair.)
This defeat will have hurt, even if he doesn't say so overtly. The unknown is how JDT and the team reacts after the WC break. I'm quietly optimistic that we will not have a death spiral like in recent years. A big factor would be whether we are able to make a couple of astute additions to the team in January, and this is not on JDT alone - I'm hoping for a striker and a midfielder. The league is so close this year, and you never know what could happen.
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v Leicester City (a) - 04/05/2024 - Will We Stay Or Will We Go?
in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
Posted
Just so glad we didn't choke. The immediate feeling is pure relief. Hanging at the back of my mind is still the sense that this is in all likelihood just a stay of execution, but at least we're still alive.
The Championship is so tight and Ipswich has shown that you can do wonders without breaking the bank - you do this by investing in good coaching, correct signings to fit the system and running the club well. Everything we lack. Until we can sort out Maggot and Venky's, we will not have the foundations right.
On to the summer of low-budget non-moves and the deadline day cock-ups. It feels like we should actually have something in the bank this summer and FFP can't be an excuse now - let's see what tale Maggot cooks up this time.