JHRover

Its not all about the money. Apparently we are in the play off race so why would we hand over half our ground to the opposition? We are already too generous with away crowds. Nobody else offers nearly 8000 seats to away fans. I wouldn't be surprised if Waggott had looked into it. Wouldnt be the first time home season ticket holders have been moved from their seats to accommodate large away followings. Hope those 'marginal gains' achieved by sticking 400 fans up in the gods aren't going to be missed by having 8000 Leeds behind the goal.

Forest owner got the coronavirus and was at their game v Millwall the other night....

To make matters even worse it seems the stadium and training ground are still owned by the previous owner. So now they are in a real mess with the club owning no real assets and looking set for relegation. Always had a whiff of something not right.

Burnley usually play reserve matches at Curzon Ashton. The odd part is that they've already tried having it at Morecambe and Oldham. Things get even more complicated when you consider that tonight we are playing Wolves in the knock out stages of the competition, before completing the group stage 3 days later. So if we lose tonight we are out of the competition, but then have to prepare for our final group game v the dingles. Mental.

Richard Sharpe will stick up for his mates at the club who feed him stories and make him cups of tea every Thursday pre match conference. To be turning up two games running supposedly chasing promotion with no defenders on the bench whilst our promotion winning vastly experienced former captain sits at home collecting his wage is simply inexplicable. You must be born yesterday if you think there isnt more to that particular story, sadly it seems the majority were born yesterday judging by the number who happily lap up the nonsense.

They have a good home record. But going there happy to get a point is an issue. We don't have plenty of games left. After today we are down to 9 - 27 points up for grabs. A draw today puts us on 54. We will need at least 20 points after that to get into the top 6. Two very tough home games against the top 2. Then away games to come against the relegation threatened sides and then against rivals in the pack Cardiff and Millwall. All those games will be labelled tough and folk will settle for a point in them. But it won't be enough.

Signing lots of players to replace lots of departures doesn't mean that there is a big or good or decent budget. It is filling a self created chasm with frees and loans. Trying to spend money or talking about spending money are different to actually spending money. We seem to be good at it until the money is needed.

Bottom 3 are the 3 who came up last season. Interesting.

No, we decided to sell our best players when we didn't need to, and then refused to spend any money replacing them with any quality. Try to blame players or managers but the owners were responsible. I dont agree Coyle had a decent budget. I think it was a poor budget especially given the sales and money brought in. Its exactly what Hull have done, only our collapse into League One took 12-18 months, theirs is looking like 6 months

Didn't we do exactly what Hull have done with Rhodes, Gestede and Cairney and subsequent relegation?

John Smith the Darlington season ticket holder hasn't missed a match in 30 years. John Smith the Newcastle fan is the same. Why does the latter deserve more for his efforts than the former?

Loyalty like when they were getting 15000 a week in the 80s?

Why does a Newcastle fan deserve more than a Hartlepool fan? Because he comes from a big city rather than a small town? I measure strength of support on ones loyalty, not on whether there's a lot of them

How do we ensure the media giants continue to cough up millions for the rights. Must be tough when all the early rounds consist of reserve teams and clubs not taking it seriously. Won't be much interest from lucrative overseas markets if the usual big boys aren't there playing each other. FA Cup ruined by the FA.

And once again City, United, Arsenal and Chelsea all kept apart in the quarter finals. Good for the tv companies.

I think there's more than a bit of revisionism and rose tinted outlook on life in here. Lambert wanted rid of Rhodes? Perhaps. But I think it was quite obvious at the time that the reason for that was because he was led to believe that he would be getting all or a large portion of the cash back to address other areas. Would he really have sold him if told he wouldn't get any money back? Unlikely. It was the owners failing to honour their side of things that led to Lambert walking and indirectly to Coyle arriving and relegation to League One. Graham has been great but that's beside the point. He was brought in on a 6 month loan and only after he loved it here and started scoring did he decide to move here full time when his contract expired. Hanley, Duffy and Marshall all left for rival clubs when it became clear what direction we were taking having sold our best players and appointed a joker as manager. Before that policy began clubs like Brighton and Wolves were inferior to us.

James Nursey, usually in the loop, reckons Warnock could be in at Ipswich soon. Probably too much for even him to do now with a 6+ point gap and only 11 to play but he's their best chance. Wonder if he could be persuaded to have a crack next season

It's a real odd one with Ipswich. First few months of the season they were in brilliant form. I went to their game at Accy Stanley and I think at that time they were clear at the top and unbeaten. They were terrible that day, lost, and since then have been woeful. If they hadn't had such a brilliant start they would be bottom half now. There was that odd thing around December when Lambert started having a wobbler talking about leaving and then a week later had been given a new 5 year contract. Since then they've fallen away. I wonder if the players have seen through it and aren't responding to him. Or whether Lambert has just given up now he's got a bumper deal and is waiting for the sack so he can go off on a break. I watch his interviews and they are very repetitive and uninspiring. Like he simply doesn't care and is just waiting for the inevitable sack.

So why did they sell everyone of value between 2015 and 2017? Please dont say Ffp because no other club behaved as we did and no other club was sanctioned. The suspicion therefore is the lenders in India wanted some back so instructed a fire sale. We can agree pre contract deals with players, yes. But why would we do that and commit to summer signings in January when we might get promoted which would change everything. We've never done this before and it is unlikely Mowbray will know his budget until he goes off to India. I will eat my hat if foreign players arrive in the early days of the summer window.

A move of the Leeds game was always on the cards. Anyone seriously pinning their expectations on that one being a 3pm Saturday game must not follow life in this division very closely. Leeds going for promotion? As if Sky were going to miss that one. Sort of makes a mockery of the nonsense claim from Rovers/police that the game has to be a lunchtime kick off. On the cusp of promotion there will be thousands of Loiners coming over with a day on the beer.

I think it is highly unlikely that Tosin will be back here. Both he and City will have higher things in mind than another year in his prime at a club hoping to get into the top 6 in the 2nd division. I also think we will be lucky to hold on to both Nyambe and Lenihan given their progress. Just have to hope the Bank dont want the overdraft reducing. All set with attackers - I hope not. I think major question marks hang over Brereton, Samuel and Rothwell. Graham finished at least in the managers eyes and Dack and Holtby long term career threatening injuries. How can European signings be agreed? Does Mowbray even know his budget yet? I presume you are referring to free agents but they will not have signed pre contract agreements with us. Why would we do that when we dont know what division we will be in?

Couple of hundred grand on Derrick Williams. After selling Hanley and Duffy for £10 million.

Mowbray has tried to justify what happened with Raya going and nobody coming in. I'm afraid I simply don't accept that selling our 1st choice keeper to a club like Brentford without anyone else lined up to come in is reasonable or appropriate. Mowbray can repeat excuses about the market until blue in the face. It isnt acceptable. For the manager to be talking about recruiting an entire new defence this summer is ludicrous. No matter how you want to dress it up. It is a consequence of over reliance on loans and cutting corners on those positions and is not healthy. This has been going on since 2012. The owners will not allow funds to be used on those positions. Imagine if we got up in late May and then had only a few weeks to assemble a defence ahead of a Premier League season. Madness. Likewise any hopes of going again with momentum next season to go one better hinge upon us getting early good business done and those players settling in quickly. Won't work on past evidence, when it took all summer to get Tosin in and Cunningham at the 11th hour once we found a taker for Mulgrew.

We've heard all this before. Rightly or wrongly there will be no appetite to overhaul the defence in the summer, even if by some miracle the owners authorise significant expenditure on it. Mowbray attaches a lot of weight to trust and doing his homework on players. He won't want to risk upsetting the apple cart by bringing in 2 keepers and 3-4 defenders. I expect one of the first pieces of business will be a new contract for Bell and possibly also Leutwiler.

We need a win. We aren't going to move upwards by drawing or losing and hoping our rivals all drop points. Sooner or later we need to make up the ground. We've wasted 3 good opportunities in the last week to do so, and now the requirement is to do it away from home at a ground not many teams win at. A draw is a good result if you are happy with a mid table finish. If you want promotion then 0 wins in 4 games isnt good enough.