Getting promoted would also show up his abilities (or lack of) as a manager. Staying in the Championship is safe for him and safe for Venky's as they would have to spend a shed load of money on new players.

I genuinely have to wonder at times if Mowbray has been told not to get us promoted.

Umbro are far from lazy catalogue policy. All their kits are unique (bar having the same pattern on the sleeves/cuffs). Even the collars on each kit are rarely used on another teams kit. You mention wanting Kappa, but they use pretty much the same template for every single one of their teams (they just change the collar on some of them). Also, the club have the final say on the kits we use, so if we end up with a grey away kit, that's down to the club choosing it from the selection of designs shown to them.

Southampton are switching to Hummel next season after mutually agreeing to end the deal with Under Armour early. This is due to Under Armour changing their marketing strategies, so we can rule them out as our next kit manufacturer.

The Recoverite deal was an initial two year deal. https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2020/august/rovers-secure-ground-breaking-shirt-sponsorship-with-recoverite-compression/ The Umbro deal is due to end this season. I would have thought a deal with a new suppiler would have been done by now as kit designs are usually agreed on about 10-11 months before release. Unless of course we've signed a deal with Adidas, Nike or Puma, in which case it will be straight out of the teamwear catalogue (probably with a plain back if it's Adidas) with a badge and sponsor slapped on it. I'm guessing an extension to the Umbro deal can be ruled out as they would have been able to announce it as soon as it was signed. I'm hoping it's either Hummel, Macron or Kappa but I fear it will be a shitty teamwear deal with Adidas.

Looking at the websites of all the teams that played away on Tuesday and Wednesday, we are the only one that mentions a refund. It seem that a few other clubs never sold a season pass to start with and didn't even include one in their season tickets. The only one's that weren't affected were the teams that had their games live on Sky as those games aren't shown on iFollow in the UK.

The fault purely lies with the EFL. All the clubs in the Championship have 7 midweek games this season, with one of those 7 being played tonight. All clubs were told that iFollow would include the 7 midweek games in the iFollow season pass, so all clubs playing tonight would rightfully assume that the game would be included for free, but weren't told until yesterday that it wouldn't be. Any fan that bought a season pass for any of the clubs playing away tonight has been screwed over by the EFL. Rather than dealing with the shortchanging of the fans themselves, they've let the clubs sort it out themselves so that any anger over the issue is directed at the clubs and not them

But they aren't. Brighton conceded 54 goals last season. the same amount they conceded in their first season in the Premier League and six less than they did in their second. They also scored more goals last season than they had done in any of their previous seasons in the Premier League. Going by what I've been told by a number of Brighton fans, Hughton rarely had a plan B, and often played players out of position (where have we seen that before). Their fans seem to be far happy with Potter at the helm as they are a better and more exiting team to watch. Is Hughton a better manager than Mowbray? Yes. Is Hughton as amazing as some people seem to think he is? No.

You have to remember that this is Rovers we're talking about where transfers always take an age to be announced. Medical's seemingly take nearly a week with us.

The kits have been delayed due to the sponsor changing. That's not Umbro's fault, and I'm assuming the club have asked Umbro to print the sponsor on them instead of the club doing it as there aren't enough members of staff to do it themselves. Bournemouth who also have their kits made by Umbro are in the same situation as they didn't get a new sponsor till late either and they also only have their kits to pre-order. They do say on their site that they are aiming to send them out to those who have bought them the week commencing 28th September so I'm guessing we'll send them out around the same time too. Southampton don't have any of their shirts for sale at the moment due to them having to change sponsor. Pretty much every single team in the World has had to release their kits later than usual as Covid disrupted both manufacturing and shipping.

I agree that it looks poor having third kits selected from the teamwear catalogue, but given that every team that has Nike, Adidas or Puma kits and isn't claased as a top tier team by them gets teamwear kits, only having a third kit like that every so often isn't too bad. It is halved on the back, but not reversed halves. The same applies to all the halved Hummel kits too.

But they don't select our kits from their back catalouge. All of our home or away shirts have been designed from scratch and are not available as a teamwear option. The only kits that come from the teamwear catalogue are the third kits, and that's down to the club not wanting to have a contract that means we have to have one every single season like pretty much every other club in the country. If we do ever need one, the club sort it themselves, hence the fact that Umbro never even acknowledged that we third kit last season. Umbro are actually one of the few manufacturers that actually create unique kits for their clubs. Even Hummel who are often credited with making unique kits, resuse their designs a lot. This season they have given Bristol City and Charlton pretty much the same kit bar an extra red stripe on the collar and cuff on one of them. I think you have to give some credit to the club for not forcing a third kit on the fans every season given the number of clubs that do even when they aren't actually needed. Norwich are the worst offenders for this and Newcastle do it a lot too. Spurs are releasing a grey forth kit this season despite the fact there is no team in the world to play against that would force them to use it.

Given that we are going to be wearing the away kit today against Leicester shows that there is no problem wearing it against teams that play in blue. Middlesbrough often have a large white band across there kit across their kit but it doesn't stop them from wearing it against teams in white, same goes for the white sash on Southampton's new kit. Wearing our away kit against teams that play in blue won't be a problem.

They were bang on because that's the official render by Umbro.

All kit manufacturers do their renders like that, so it's genuine.

That's the bit I don't like about it either as it makes one sleeve look wider than the other. I'm assuming they went with a black sponsor to match up to the Umbro logo which was made black as they expected 10Bet to still be sponsoring us. Hopefully we'll have Hummel next year as they seem to be the best manufacturer design wise. As long as it's not Adidas, Nike or Puma I'll be happy.

I very much doubt the sponsor will just be the 'R' as they will want their name on display so that people know who they are. Also, Umbro have been using flags for all of their promotional material for all of their UK teams. I have a feeling the green flag in the image is a hint towards the colour of the away kit as someone on here mentioned last year that this years away kit would be green.

Interestingly, the u23's played today and wore last seasons away kit, but it had the new EFL numbers on and has a sponsor on it that doesn't look like anything that's ever been used for any of our teams. It's also the wrong shape to be a patch put over the 10Bet sponsor. This makes me think last seasons away will be used as a third kit and that a new sponsorship deal has been agreed.

All the promo material is done by Umbro now (it was last year too) and will already have been done. It will be in the same style as the Huddesfield one. It's just a case of waiting for the club to decide a release date for it.

That's the goalkeeper kit from the 18/19 season.

I think it's possibly down to the first team, youth team, and womens team all having different sponsors so it's more cost productive to receive the shirts unsponsored. It also allows the club to sell shirts with the womens team sponsor on it. Also, if we were to play any pre-season friendlies in France, we wouldn't be able to have 10Bet on the front as betting sponsors are prohibited in France.

I'm guessing that the club shop not being open has a big part to play in it too as the sponsors are printed on the shirts by the club shop, and not Umbro, so they would need more than one person working there to get all the shirts ready. The one big problem about the club shop staff doing it is that at least one member of staff doesn't know how to align the printing correctly. This is made evident by some of the dodgy unaligned printing seen on some of the shirts worn by player's, and also my away shirts from the past two seasons where the 10Bet sponsor hasn't been centrally aligned.

Bournemouth were only wearing it because their previous sponsorship deal had ended and the sponsor the used for the remaining games was a temporary one. The kits still don't have a release date. All kit releases are late this year, so it's not just us. 13 teams from the Championship haven't shown any kits off yet.

Those are Umbro's teamwear kits that have been on their site for years. They won't be the new kits.

Quite a few clubs haven't revealed anything either including other Umbro teams such as Brentford, Huddersfield and Hull. We don't usually reveal the kit until the week leading up to it's release. Luton's home shirt is out on the 7th August, with their away being 7th September and their third kit on 2nd October so we may see simliar dates for our's too. Bournemouth's isn't on sale yet either, and they only revealed it because their previous sponsorship deal had ended and the sponsor they've been using was only a temporary one.