1 hour ago, RevidgeBlue said:

I'm proud to say I didn't watch a minute of it.

At the moment with being new the Competition lacks any credibility and might as well be a series of pre season friendlies.

The South American sides seemed to take it incredibly seriously though so we'll have to see whether it captures the imagination of the Public and gains gravitas the more it's played, or just eventually gets shit canned as a silly idea.

Even with favourable game times for me I saw very few matches. It wasn't something that was on my radar. I did watch yesterday though as I had spare time due to being sat in an airport waiting for my delayed flight, as is the norm at the moment over here.

The South American teams are mid-season so are fully match fit. City wanted nothing to do with the tournament as their early exit proved.

What do Chelsea do now? The Prem season starts in a month. Do they get any time off? Will they have any preseason? 

2 hours ago, jodrell said:

I watched PSG in the quarter final of the champions League they looked a lot better without all the super stars and playing as a team.

Some pundit was on US TV a couple of seasons ago, it may have been Thierry Henry. They were lamenting the perennial failures of PSG. The sheikh's who own them wanted flash and glamour so they'd been buying up star after star and getting nowhere. Their point was that they should scrap it and start again with young French players. They didn't go that far but did go with youth, expensive ones, but it's worked out. Their ability to press is excellent, and they are all good enough footballers that they can receive the ball anywhere and not worry. 

As for Real I think Mbappe is one of many problems. He didn't play all tournament yet comes back in for the final and does nothing. He has a penchant for sulking too. 

I flicked between the women's game and the Real Madrid v. Dortmund CWC game on Saturday. England women were disjointed. I wonder if the selection process has played a part in unsettling the squad. 

As to the other game, watching Jude Bellingham is a pleasure. He wasn't overly influential in the game but he oozes class. I reckon that you could stick him in any position and he'd excel. 

4 hours ago, roverandout said:

According to reports diogo jota has died in a car crash 

He did. He and his brother veered off the road in Spain; ESPN: Liverpool's Jota dies in car crash

I watched a good game last night. Bayern beat Boca Juniors 2-1. It was end to end stuff with Bayern wining it late thanks to a nice Olise finish. Kane scored first for Bayern. Boca's equaliser was a really good goal. 

The game was a full house in Miami. Boca fans never stopped signing and chanting.

17 hours ago, waynerovers said:

Figured I'd start a topic for this seeing as it starts tonight. 

Anyone else planning on watching this? I reckon it's gonna be a really good tournament, I think teams are going to take it seriously. I feel no affinity towards City or Chelsea so I've decided to follow Bayern for the tournament seeing as our England captain is leading the line.

Looking forward to seeing Messi tonight on the world stage again.

Match kick off times are favourable for me so I'll probably watch a few games but won't go out of my way to make sure that I'm sat in front of a TV for any particular fixture.

US TV is promoting it well but tickets sales are low. Add in the US government's declaration that immigration officers will be present to aid security at stadiums means that I doubt they'll sell what they projected.

2 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

The thing about that back 4 was that it was set in stone. There is so much uncertainty now.

Left back is a real problem, Lewis Skelly has been fast tracked and isnt totally convincing and Hall again is a bit of an unknown. 

At right back, you are replacing one of the very best full backs in the world at the time. Trent is the obvious option there but Walker at his peak could neutralise any wide man, although his continued inclusion is unwelcome.

Im not convinced that any of the back 4 can be fully confident of being a starter next summer and thats not a healthy position to be in. And its not because we have loads of quality.

I agree with you. If all 4 were fit, they were playing. Now we have no idea. 

Injuries have played such a big part in Tuchel's decisions. James, Stones, Shaw, Hall, Guehi, TAA, have all been out for varying periods. 

Would Tuchel have considered Shaw and Stones if they hadn't been injured? They played less than 20 games between them all season. Will either of them play for their clubs if fit next season? 

Hall was excellent until his season ending injury. He'll be back fit for August, and will have Champs League football to look forward to. Same with Lewis-Skelly.

Availability questions aside it should be Reece James or Trent at right back. TAA playing in Spain will be interesting. Real have Alonso coming in, and Carvajal will be fit at some point. 

8 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

I didn't say it sounded unreasonable. Unappealing though for sure.

I know you didn't. I was affirming Mercer's point that 5 games a week is not outlandish. 

It doesn't pay well either, adding to the lack of appeal.

50 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

How does one physically get to see 5 live matches a week? Unless several of them are on a park pitch?

Is your younger relative CONSTANTLY on the road, reviewing video footage from hotel rooms as he (or she) hops from town to town?

That doesn't sound unreasonable.

An acquaintance of mine was a scout for a Prem team. He was always somewhere, be it at home or abroad. Same with another pal. He scouted players 16 and under for a different club. He'd spend his weeknights travelling the length and breadth of northern England looking for players other clubs had missed. Then writing up reports on each player he liked. 

54 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Of course unlike the plethora of players that have been given a go over the past year or so, Wharton would need to be actually given a chance.

I think Wharton's injuries cost him. He wasn't really fit all season and was out for Tuchel's first squad selection. As has been commented in his own thread a rest this summer will do him good as he hasn't had a break for a long time.

34 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

The idea would make sense to get a manager proven to win trophies in order to get over the line. Southgate built a base on team spirit but came up short whenever he came up against a good team.

Problem is, that platform isnt necessarily there, the squad of players has now regressed and is not at the level of previous tournaments. Much of the base and the foundations have aged and are over the hill now. You are left with a sub par set of defenders

People mention the likes of Wharton, Branthwaite, Lewis Skelly, Livramento etc as players coming through but they are not top level players, yet anyway. Wharton is as close as any but unproven at the highest level. It feels like we are between generations/cycles of players with

The mess at the end of yesterdays game saw maybe 4 players who all want to play in the same position all crammed in similar to what Carsley did. All of our best players do the same things in the same position. We are miles away from the levels of the likes of Spain.

It's looking like Southgate's trusted back 4; Walker, Stones, Maguire, Shaw is no longer. Replacing them is no easy task. There is plenty of talent available at both full back positions so that should be easy to fill. It's central defence that needs solving. Guehi was excellent (1 slip aside) at the Euro's. Left footed Colwill looked like Maguire's long term successor not too long ago but seems to have plateaued. Konsa is steady away without being van Dijk. Branthwaite is "unproven" (i.e. not at a Champs League playing club). Who's left? 

The game was meaningless as far as qualification goes but I hope that Tuchel learned from it. The crowd certainly let him know that it was unacceptable. He must know too.

It's time for him to ditch his experimentation phase and start planning for WC 2026. Get rid of Walker, Henderson (J), Burn, Chalobah. I'd probably ditch Gallagher too. 

Play a left footer ant left back, a right footer at right back, and start thinking about a central partnership,

All of us on here want Wharton to play.

Kane was goosed at last year's Euro's but still has it. He'll score another hatful for Bayern next season. If he stays fit he'll be as effective as ever. It's what Tuchel does with Bellingham that will matter. He can be England's talisman but Tuchel needs to play him where he will be most effective and avoid a Gerrard-Lampard situation. If that means not playing a talented player (Palmer for example) who could get in his way, then so be it. 

There is summer, more qualifying games, and a long domestic season to go before the World Cup starts. Tuchel was hired to win. His ego is/was big enough for him to take the job. Roll on to September.

4 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

It was ‘live on Norwegian TV’, ergo all the Scandinavian advertising. It was all very exciting!

Piling into a random pub that was packed to the rafters with people who would usually never set foot in there to watch Rovers play on a dodgy feed. Those were the days.

22 hours ago, Gav said:

I’ve had time to take stock….. We beat a Ski Resort 1-0……

This has to be one of the worst England results since conceding to San Marino in 1993?

Worrying.

 

I'll start worrying if England begin to lose qualifying games. Until then it's the old cliché of 3 points, job done, on to the next game. 

I'm not defending a moribund performance by England yet playing Andorra in no way resembles preparation for France or Spain. Andorra know what they can and can't do. They have only conceded 5 goals in 3 games. Terrible teams are able to better frustrate superior opposition in today's game due to them receiving more money witch leads to better coaching and organisation. Other results over the weekend had Bosnia beating San Marino 1-0 and Wales beating Lichtenstein 3-0, at home.

England fans spent years and years deriding Southgate for his supposed lack of tactical acumen. Nobody is doubting Tuchel's talent (yet) so let's hope that in the next 12 months he gets England qualified easily and is able to form the players available to him into a unit capable of winning the World Cup. 

I didn't know where to put this but it made me laugh.

Woman complains about Corfu hotel with no English food available

There are some classic lines. At first I thought it was written on 1st April. 

6 hours ago, Hasta said:

Half of it was. The other half was about the ref being incompetent, which he was.

To call the ref "as incompetent as our owners" and that "he should never be allowed to ref again" are orders of magnitude greater than the error. 

We all know that Venkys (our owners) are much much worse than a bad decision during a Premier league game with implications for 4th or 5th place.

To say that an official should not referee a game again is yet another hyperbolic statement that I'd expect only a Villa fan to make. Referee's make mistakes weekly, why is the one he made deserving of him giving up his profession?

There is still nothing on Martinez's idiocy, or Villa's 12 points from 33 to end 2024. 

Let's blame the referee instead. It's easy to do.

21 hours ago, TheFinalCountdown said:

Ref as Incompetent as our owners.

He should never be allowed to ref again.

Rather harsh on both counts. He made a split-second decision and from where he was stood it looked like a foul. VAR rules prevented a review. 

Referees are easy targets. I've not seen one comment on the stupid decision Martinez made to get himself sent off. Hojlund wasn't going to score, he never does. Playing more than a half with 10 men cost them more than a refereeing error. 

In the wider picture Villa won a league game on October 19th. They then won 3 out of their next 11. Blame that drop in form, possibly because their squad was tired from weekly European games, for not qualifying for the Champs League, not a referee.

3 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Amorim doesnt seem to be under any pressure, obviously hes different in that he hasnt had the full season but they were 4 points off the Champions League places when he joined. I dont know if these are 100% true but he has apparently won 9 points in 5 months and has a points per game record of 0.02 per game more than Steve Kean! Hes stubbornly stuck to a system that clearly isnt working and there have been no signs of any improvement whatsoever.

Amorim has been awful, so I hope Ratcliffe and his cronies do what they did with ten Hag and give him an extension. Not only are the players at his disposal not up to it he won't shift from playing an unworkable 3-4-3. Look what Moyes has done at Everton, or Pereira at Wolves. Adaptation is one key to being a good coach. 

His overall record is; P-40, W-15, D-10, L-15, giving him a 37.5% win rate. However, that is skewed by the Europa League. His Prem record is P-26, W-6, D-6, L-14, 23.08% win rate.

Steve Kean's Rovers Premier League record; 

Overall;   P-67, W-17, D-14, L-36, win rate 25.37%.

2010-11; P-29, W-9, D-7, L-13, win rate 31.03%.

2011-12;  P-38, W-8, D-7, L-23, win rate 21.05%.

I'd be worried if I was a Man U fan, but I'm not so I'll watch and laugh.

1 hour ago, DE. said:

I'd be curious to know how Spurs fans are feeling about this season. Very weird situation they've found themselves in. 

An abominable PL campaign which may well see them finish as the 4th worst team in the division over 38 games - although theoretically they could still finish as "high" as 14th, owing to actually having remarkably solid GD for a club in 17th position. When you factor in that the three relegated clubs are just Championship level sides LARPing as PL teams for a season, though, it's still an embarrassing position to be in. They've also lost the most games in the division as it stands outside of the bottom three (Spurs 21 lost, Ipswich 23, Leicester 24, Soton 29). 

Yet, the league campaign effectively means nothing and was arguably pointless, as they've qualified for the "Champions" League regardless, thanks to the Europa League 'Get Out of Jail Free Card'. 

So, if you're a Spurs fan who basically wasted a ton of money to mostly watch your team lose week in and week out, does winning the Europa League and therefore qualifying for the CL make up for it? Or is there still some resentment there? Particularly as far from all Spurs fans who attended the league games will have been able to attend many or any of the Europa League games. 

As for Man Utd fans, well... they get to look forward to moving into a gigantic circus tent in the not-too-distant future. 

My guess is that Spurs fans won't care. They won a European trophy and have Wednesday night Champs League games to look forward to next year. 

As to the game, like most I wanted both teams to lose but I'll take Man U losing over Spurs. It wasn't a classic by any means but Spurs decided to park the bus which was a rare day for them. 

Man U needed 1 goal so took of 1 abysmal striker in Hojlund and replaced with with one just as ineffective in Zirkzee. Next up was a change at wing back.

Man U have some massive problems. If their aim is the top 4 they need to replace the whole squad which will cost an utter fortune, which apparently they don't have. 

19 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Certainly hasnt been the best league in the world this season. 

No title race and the gap between the Premier League and the Championship growing and growing due to the financial inequalities that grow and grow.

It has been a drab season. There have been very few good games too. Spurs 3-6 Liverpool was good entertainment. I can't think of more at the moment though.

Lots of breaks punctured any momentum, the main culprit being too many international breaks, especially early in the season.

Oppositely, if top spot and the bottom 3 are ignored it's been a very competitive season. 

3 minutes ago, Displaced Rover said:

Whichever of these goes through is irrelevant - either will get pumped by Sheffield United 

Stranger things have happened but I agree. Neither of them should pose Sheffield Utd any problems.

The game was summed up by 2 missed gilt edged chances late in normal time. Sunderland's midfielder cocked  up a golden chance to win it by deciding to shin it sideways from the penalty spot, then Coventry's striker performed a similar trick with his head from 4 yards out in injury time. 

Here are all teams promoted from the Championship in the last 10 years;

2014-15: Bournemouth, Watford, Norwich City

2015-16: Burnley, Middlesbrough, Hull City

2016-17: Newcastle United, Brighton and Hove Albion, Huddersfield Town

2017-18: Wolverhampton Wanderers, Cardiff City, Fulham

2018-19: Norwich City, Sheffield United, Aston Villa

2019-20: Leeds United, West Bromwich Albion, Fulham

2020-21: Norwich City, Watford, Brentford

2021-22: Fulham, Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest

2022-23: Sheffield United, Burnley, Luton Town

2023-24: Leicester City, Ipswich Town, Southampton

2024-25: Leeds United, Burnley, ????

Newcastle, Wolves, Brighton, Brentford, Villa, and so far Forest, came up and stayed up. 

Bournemouth, Burnley, Fulham, Sheffield Utd, Watford, Norwich, and now Leeds have yoyo'd with varying degrees of success. 

Boro, Huddersfield, West Brom, Hull, Luton, and Cardiff all went down never to be seen again. 3 of them will be playing League 1 football next season. 

What will happen to this season's 3? 

I think a big part of staying up is having a solid set up behind the scenes. You can spend millions on players, but without a cohesive plan and a clear direction teams will struggle. Luton have found that out very abruptly. They were lucky to get promoted. Didn't really know what to do. Went down, and now down again.

16 hours ago, Exiled_Rover said:

Liverpool fans booing a player leaving them for a bigger club.

They really are scum.

There were a few other fan reactions that made me laugh this weekend. 

Southampton fans celebrating like they'd won the league after securing a lucky 0-0 draw against City. Followed by Leicester fans taunting Forest after the match finished 2-2 and put a serious dent in Forest's Champs League chances.

Both teams got relegated. Shouldn't they keep quiet? 

On 07/05/2025 at 02:20, cesus said:

Accrington Stanley have decided to close their academy. I can't help but think we will see another Lancashire club really struggling to compete in professional football like Morecambe,  very soon. 

Andy Holt seems to have turned the taps off for anything other than keeping the lights on. They've struggled to compete with quite a few National League teams on wages recently, worrying times for their supporters.

90% of Accy don't care about Accrington Stanley. How they rose up from semi pro to League One was remarkable, yet they need significant outside investment to subsidise club revenue. Without it they'll slide back into non-league.

5 hours ago, chaddyrovers said:

Yes he does. He is still funding the club despite not being a director of the club 250k a season. 

With cost rising and that taking its toll on all businesses it can't be easy decision 

On Coley's bar was a way to raise extra income for the club, investment in the local area, employed more staff and growth the local economy. Don't think there is love lost between him and council now. I know some councillors are trying to get the club back onside and used it as the community asset in the area. What a town football club should be

It employed a few bar staff, hardly Apple levels of job creation. You forgot to mention that it was built without planning permission, not soundproofed properly, and therefore subjected local residents to late night noise every weekend. 

18 hours ago, Gav said:

Arsenal all over PSG right now, but they need to score or the inevitable will happen. 

Donnarumma has just made an outstanding save, low to his left, thunderbolt from the edge of the box. Think Flowers VE Day, but better.

Donnarumma made some outstanding saves last night. He tends to do that against English opposition. 

Once Ruiz scored it was over. Arsenal weren't scoring 3 goals. Although if Saka's second chance went in the Parisians would have got very nervous. 

Arsenal were hurt by injuries. Gabriel was a big miss at both ends of the pitch. Kiwior is a big drop in talent. Havertz, although not an out and out striker, gives the team a focal point. 

For all the guile that Odegaard and Saka have Arteta has spent the season relying on free kicks, corners, and last night long throws to score. I read a few comments on the BBC match report (I know it's not high brow), but many were scathing of Arteta's tactics, and his managerial skills.