Difficult one - if we had a new manager in place who would be given that money to spend on improving the team I'd take the money without hesitation, assuming it was at least £5m. With TM in charge, though... I don't think it'd make a blind bit of difference whether he was given the money or not. It'd be in a drop in the ocean as far as our debts are concerned and if TM was given any of it I wouldn't trust him to use it to improve the team. So, I guess as long as TM is here the question is met largely with a shrug from me. We're screwed either way with the current dimwit in the dugout and our absent owners continuing to not give a shit about the club beyond the absolute basics of keeping the lights on.

I managed it but wouldn't say I enjoyed it 😅 Half Life Alyx is about my limit as far as enjoying 'scary' VR games!

I actually ended up completing the game in flat mode first, just so that I knew what was coming 😂 couldn't hack doing it first time in VR!

Can't imagine Tony's collection of soft lads lasting very long under Keane. He'd need to be allowed to buy an entire new squad.

It's absolutely terrifying in VR.

Fortunately others have responded so thoroughly to this post that I don't need to say much more. The only thing I will add is that Mowbray himself said, more than once, that Brereton was his purchase and his decision. Unless I've missed something there has never been any evidence the owners had any input besides providing the cash. Do you have proof to back up that claim? If so I'd be genuinely interested to see it, as all I can remember reading is the manager telling us he was 100% responsible for the BB transfer.

Absolute nonsense. Championship clubs don't need to take £7m risks on youth players and it was a gross misuse of our funds to do so - regardless of whether those funds were 'earmarked' for such a thing or not. Have any of the many, many clubs that have been promoted whilst we've been in the Championship spent that kind of money on a kid, at the expense of their first team? I'd wager not, although I would love to be proven wrong to investigate that as a case study.

Right back at you!

Can you imagine playing for a team like Chile in the Copa America and then having to come back and play for turgid Tony Mowbray in the Championship?

Yeah, exactly. Not much point talking about his experience with Chile helping us out because the lad will be Mowbrayed as soon as he returns. Assuming he moves on soon I'm sure his international involvement will benefit any team with a half-decent manager, but it won't be us as our owners are idiots and our manager is a complete dope.

One of my enduring memories of J-Lowe is when I went to watch us play Ipswich at Portman Road. He received the ball in the centre circle - looked up, spotted an opposition player running towards him, and fell over before he'd even been tackled. The lynchpin.

Honestly I'm at a point where I just can't get excited about new signings as long as Mowbray is in charge. Even if the signee appears impressive I already know his impact will be neutered by Mowbray's coaching and style of play, and will be lucky simply to play in his natural position.

I think it was mentioned his mother is Chilean, so I assume he has enough of an understanding to get by.

As far as Rovers' stats are concerned, it pretty much just shows the alternative hypothesis ('more possession = more points') can't be proven, so the null hypothesis ('more possession = irrelevant') is true. Obviously possession is just one of a number of intertwined statistics that make up a match. Our style of play, coaching and team selection from match to match all play huge factors as well (amongst other things) and aren't factored into simply possession stats. All we can say from the data here is that if TM claims dominating the ball leads to better results he is wrong.

Did Shebby only load Portugal as a country?

I didn't really have any reasoning for my percentile segments, beyond 10% increments simply being easiest from 45-75. I'd agree that the sample size is relatively small in regards to our lower possession stats, and it should probably also be factored in that those two home matches where we had less than 46% possession were right at the end of the season, essentially in dead rubber matches. What the stats do show, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that possession-based football doesn't work for us. By pretty much any segment you'll rarely find much more than 1.3 PPG, combining home and away - but let's face it, you don't need data analysis to tell you that. You only have to look at where we are in the table. Anybody who's been watching us this season knows full well that our style of play is largely shit and the results are testament to that. The fact that our PPG really doesn't improve at all the more possession we have, though, suggests a focus on possession isn't the answer as far as our current players and manager are concerned. Whether less possession is the answer is up for debate. As you say, I don't think there's enough proportional data from this season to make a judgement on that.

I built a relational database containing this season's stats which as far as I can tell seems to be accurate (BBC stats for possession). Assuming my statistics are correct and I didn't screw up the indexing somehow, it ends up like below: 45% or Less Possession Games Points PPG Home 2 6 3 Away 4 8 2 Combined 6 14 2.3 46-55% Possession Games Points PPG Home 5 8 1.6 Away 6 6 1 Combined 11 14 1.3 56-65% Possession Games Points PPG Home 10 11 1.1 Away 7 3 0.4 Combined 17 14 0.8 66-75% Possession Games Points PPG Home 6 9 1.5 Away 6 6 1 Combined 12 15 1.3 So yeah, assuming my calculations are accurate, the more possession we have the worse we get across the board until we reach the 66% mark, which is still marginally below 46-55% possession and some way below < 46%.

Another thing that's changed from previous years is our ability to score late on. This season we scored more goals in the last 15 minutes of games than any other period. At the opposite end we scored our least amount of goals in the first 15 minutes of each half... raise your hand if that one shocks you.

Appreciate data is a bit of a touchy subject on here lately, but I've been messing around with Power BI and using Rovers season stats... and our season really was absolutely wrecked by dismal performances against the top six. We only managed 6 points against them all season - 4 at home (Barnsley (W), Swansea (D)) and 2 away (Brentford (D), Norwich (D)). With that said, even though there was a general feeling that we were 'flat track bullies' we actually took more points from the teams who finished between 7th-12th (19) than we did the bottom six (18) or the teams who finished 13th-18th (14). Our best months for collecting points were November (11) and January (10). Worst months were October (4), February (1). We technically picked up 4 points in May as well but only had two matches which we won and drew, so, proportionally a good month. Our best month for goalscoring was September (11) whilst our worst was was March (4), but January (5) and February (5) were somewhat dry months too. In terms of conceding goals our best month was January (1) and our worst was December (11) - although we also conceded 10 in October and February. Interestingly even though January was one of our lowest scoring months, because we only conceded one goal we picked up 10 points from a possible 12. What a difference a good defence makes, huh? In comparison February saw us leak 10 goals, and therefore only pick up 1 point from a possible 18. Hopefully our statisticians show that one to Mowbray. Team we scored the most goals against home and away this season - Birmingham (7) Team who scored the most goals against us home and away this season - Watford (6) Interestingly (?) we kept more clean sheets away from home than at home this season, and also conceded two less goals away from home overall. Although who knows how home and away form in general has been affected by empty stadiums. Also, the only team not to score against us home or away this season? Middlesbrough. Yeah, I know.

I'm not sure how long JR will be around for. I think his contract is coming up somewhat soon, and whilst it was a good idea to use his voice to establish the brand in the beginning, it probably isn't needed so much now. I really like Tony Schiavone as a commentator - he's engaged, has a sense of humour and an open mind about everything he's seeing. He sounds like he genuinely enjoys the product and knows from past experience exactly how to get talent over. Going forward I'd probably have JR move into a backstage role of some kind, then shift Schiavone to the main play-by-play guy alongside Excalibur. Personally I don't think a third voice is needed, but if they do want to stick with the three man booth Tazz has great chemistry with Excalibur so would be the obvious choice. If they moved in that direction I'd personally remove Tazz from any storylines though. Just watching Friday Night Dynamite, still a bit concerned over the amount of former WWE mid-carders/retirees showing up. The show is still fun to watch but man, there are a lot of ex-WWE people showing up now. I guess we'll see if it translates to long-term views/ratings/buy rates. With that said Andrade showing up was cool, as WWE massively misused him (shock), but the crowd reaction was a bit strange. I don't think they understood Vickie Guerrero's initial screech when she announced him, then when he appeared it was more surprise/confusion than a huge pop. Honestly back before AEW was a thing I pretty much hated wrestling too. Raw and Smackdown were briefly good around the 2016-17 period, but everything else WWE has produced for the past decade, practically, has been varying degrees of shit and not even so-bad-it's-kind-of-entertaining shit, just boring. I did try getting into NJPW but I only ever really watched the Wrestle Kingdom shows and a handful of isolated matches on YouTube. TNA by the early-2010s had generally become utter garbage as well so that was out too, and ROH was patchy at best with terrible production. If AEW didn't exist I'm not sure I'd even be watching at this point. Raw is so bad that I don't even want it on in the background, and whilst Smackdown is OK it still suffers from the same erratic booking as Raw, minus Roman Reigns who is fortunately mostly isolated from that (and no surprise that as a result he's the best thing about the show and indeed the entire WWE, by far).

Honestly I don't think Miro needs her. What would concern me about that is AEW trying to come off as WWE-lite. I wouldn't be averse to introducing Lana a lot further down the line, when the Miro character needs a fresh boost, but right now he's doing well after a lukewarm start, so I'd leave him as he is. On a personal level because he was a real dickhead last year when indie wrestlers were struggling during the pandemic. As a wrestler he's fine but needs to work outside of WWE to become a better rounded performer. The left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, I guess. Smackdown creative must be banging their heads against the wall. I don't think he's being released, but something weird is going on with him for sure. He's been off TV for a long time now and keeps posting strange, cryptic tweets on Twitter. Not sure if it's a mental health thing, an illness or something else, but it's a shame he's not around as he's a really interesting character and a good performer. Vince has still done his best to neuter everything unique about him since the NXT call up, though, so maybe it's better he stays away. It's been rumoured for a couple of years now, no idea if there's any truth to it. If there was any time that everything points towards a sale, though, it's now. Have to admit I've always believed Vince would die owning the company, but maybe something is forcing his hand? WWE not owned by the McMahons would be really bizarre, but I don't think a new owner could do any worse as far as Raw is concerned. Agree, this is why I think Braun would benefit from going somewhere like Japan to hone his craft. He's only ever known the WWE style and it shows. He could be great, but he needs seasoning elsewhere.

Great news to see JRC signed up to a new contract, just hope the injuries clear up for him next season.

Japan does love a big Gaijin monster - just a case of whether Braun could handle the way wrestling works over there, I guess.

I'm with you on Braun. He had a good run in 2017/18, particularly during his feud with Roman, but has become less and less interesting since then. His last feud with Shane McMahon was embarrassingly bad, although that is more on creative than Braun. It's still strange that they terminated him though, considering he has the kind of beef Vince can usually only dream about. I was watching Black's twitch stream post-release and it's incredible how much thought he put into all of his promos and matches, even down to details like colour and lighting. The guy is seriously switched on and as you say, it's criminal how he was used. I know Vince Russo gets shit on a lot these days, and often rightfully so, but I guarantee if Black had been around during the Attitude Era Russo would have listened to his ideas and gave his character memorable and interesting things to do. Everyone remembers acts like the Brood and 98-99 Undertaker. Black has just been at WWE in the wrong era, unfortunately. AEW could do huge things with him though, and I hope they do. Black and Riott would be the two I would pick up if I was AEW. Murphy could do great things in Impact/NJPW. Not sure about Braun. He might just sit it out for a while and come back to WWE on a much lower deal. He strikes me as a WWE lifer.

So apparently the third hour of Raw got a 1.1 rating, which is abysmally low. Something like 400,000 viewers switched off after the second hour (keeping in mind the viewership was low as it is). Granted it was a holiday in the US, but even on previous holidays their ratings/viewership has never sunk that low. I mean, I get it as Raw is garbage and I'm shocked over a million people still watch such a terrible show, but if WWE are even starting to turn away their core viewers then they need to realise there is a huge problem.