That is a full team of youngsters though, as opposed to selecting the handful of top players earmarked for top tiers of football Let's have it right Wharton and Phillips have been touted as future players for Rovers for a while now. In most youth squads the sad reality is there's a handful of good lads and the rest are making up the numbers. That's football - it's a ruthless sport Garrett has represented England youth and looks a player but this season is too early for him. Hayden Carter and Jack Vale have both had games at senior level under their belt. Carter especially looks like he can make it. I haven't seen enough of Vale but people I trust think he's a good en, and let's be honest, they have watched him more times than roversfan who disregards youth football as uncompetitive. Take his word about any young player with a pinch of salt I think this myth that we have, or are going to be, relying on large amounts of youth kids to play regularly in the starting 11 is pub talk frankly.

Jack Vale and Hayden Carter are 21 and 22 respectively. They aren't kids. Adam Wharton and Ash Phillips are all very highly rated. As said a million times - Phil Jones was 17. In reality we are asking, or suspecting, potentially 4 players to step into the first team. Not necessarily the starting 11, the first team. Two of which are matured young adults; one of which is now 18 and one who is in his "coming of age" years. 17 years old is old enough if they are good enough. I think Phillips is easily good enough to play in this league. Wharton too. It isn't that good of a league, and the days of being lumped about the pitch is just archaic talk. It's a different game. Sparks mentioned James Hill a few pages up. He was 17 / 18 when playing regularly for Fleetwood in League 1. Looked a class act. Bournemouth signed him for a £1m in January, and they are a Prem club now. I was speaking to a mate of mine about Zouma only earlier today. He's an avid Hammer. He was 16 when he started playing in the top tier French league. 19 when he got his move to Chelsea. The phrase goes: if you are good enough you are old enough. And I would say it is incredibly disrespectful to think Ash Phillips cannot be as good as a player like Zouma or Jones when you have actually sat and watched the young lad play.

Yep Our wage bill is something like 110%+ of our turnover It is a poor way to run a football club and leaves you with little room to manoeuvre but that is the reality on the ground Broughton has a difficult task at hand to land players of promotion quality on the wage structure he has to work with. You have to imagine he will want to shift the likes of Ayala pretty soon but then you also have to wonder whether all of his wage then becomes available You want to be below 80% of your turnover, that way it allows full breathing room from FFP even in a "bad year" In order to do that we need to become very reliant on the academy - like it or not that appears to be the way this Club is going. I think we have the boys in the academy to compete at this level, genuinely, and the likes of Travis and Wharton will lead the way this year Loans will probably be the order of the day unless we get rid of BBD. Unfortunately, reality needs to hit some people, and all talk of 'creative' accounting with wages is easy to type on a messageboard but not easy to put into action, as clubs have found out to their peril

At the moment Mellor this is true. FFP is literally stopping the Venkys from spending any more on wages and transfers The argument would be that, if FFP was scrapped tomorrow, would the Venkys then suddenly turn the taps on and spend? You would have to imagine not, given that the typical day to day running costs of the Club not under the influence of FFP, ie: ground, are typically under funded In this respect Venkys lose their credibility Crowd really is insignificant. Other opportunities for increased revenue are there. For example, they could spend £10/20 million on fixing the Riverside into a nice stand, hospitality, hotel or conference suite. They would need to spend that on a striker "if they could" and by doing this it would increase turnover. They won't because they don't want to. But at the moment FFP is giving them an excuse not to invest on the pitch.

It is criminal in reality In effect you are banning investment in a business The idea it makes it more competitive is wrong, as has been seen by the significant gap in wealth that has occurred since the inception of FFP Football fans really do need to get their act together. The problem is that so many people support the Premier League and the Big Clubs that it would be very difficult to gain a foothold It is no surprise that Liverpool were the biggest driving force behind FFP. They have also gained the most from the lack of real investment in other Clubs The line about slowly destroying Clubs is frighteningly accurate and part of my cynicism thinks this is by design. European wide authorities would rather a NFL style franchise where mega money and sponsorship deals is provided through a handful of 'clubs' each with a significant thanks owed to the authority (UEFA) for their existence It is the wet dream of elites like Platini and co, and we are sleep walking into it whilst we bicker about the idiots who get caught up trying to clamber for crumbs at the big table (Venkys)

And that's unfortunately a sad indictment on FFP Boro pay wages equivalent to around 80% of their turnover. We pay at about 110%. They still pay more than us. FFP is without doubt the most unfair system the football authorities have brought in. It's design benefits big city clubs whilst town and smaller city clubs suffer

Is gagan a new player?

Ash Phillips signed a 3 year deal last summer, which did not come into effect until this year when he turned 17

No clue why you continuously use adjectives like this to describe our players, like competent and incompetent It literally makes no sense Notwithstanding the fact that Dan Pike is an extremely "competent" footballer. He'd run rings around you. But he's a young lad and he's good So is Brown. He looked more than "competent" with a ball at his feet against one of Birmingham City's best players. Was you there or was you pretending he was incompetent on here? Blues fans talked him up after the game as a decent defender Compare and contrast with your views on signings our 6 fingered neighbours make. Some lad you had never heard of but described as interesting, young and fast, after scoring a few goals in the Turkish league and 2 in the Belgian league. Meanwhile our lads aren't competent You are on the bloody wind up, it's the only way to explain it

Where FFP rules have been broken then sanctions have followed. See Derby, Sheff Wed and Reading Steve Gibson is thee single biggest supporter of FFP. In fact, he lobbied the EFL seriously hard over Mel Morris' creative accounting. It is Steve Gibson who argues the FFP rules should be implemented to the fullest and harshest terms. You shouldn't hold him up as an example of how to circumvent rules put in place by the EFL SwissRamble is a very good account to follow to keep yourself informed on financial dealings of football clubs. If you look at where we sit you will notice every club around us in the >100% category are either cutting costs dramatically or have already been sanctioned by FFP rules. You will notice that Gibsons Boro, whilst still high, are nowhere near paying as much per % of turnover in wages as us. Middlesbrough losses of +£30m in 2021 meant they had to drastically reduce wages, and they did https://www.insidermedia.com/news/north-east/middlesbrough-fc-report-losses-as-covid-bites

I think we can I personally think Crawley needs replacing. A decent enough knock in the final innings but has shown time and time again he will give his wicket away. Lees on the other hand can play. He’s had a tough start but two 50s in 5 games is ok. Pope at three looking good. Root is the best player in the world. Stokes and Bairstow are the counter, and the perfect recipe at the middle order. We know Stokes can dig in if he needs to. Personally I don’t want him to that often. Playing to your strengths is as true in cricket as it is football.

Bairstow has had a couple of hard fought hundreds away from home as well 47er Particular stand out being the stand he made in the 1st innings at the Waca back in 2017 which was an incredible knock. We got hammered though Think he got 100 in Australia around Christmas time too But he has spent his career giving his wicket away too easily for my liking. One of the best white ball cricketers out there though. He's got a long way to go but he's in such a flow I wouldn't bet against him scoring 100 anywhere right now

A portion of them are because of the relegation, which I suppose is also the fault of Venkys I think around 5,000 would come back immediately if they sold the club

JH I don’t think anybody doubts that the Venkys are responsible for where we are but why do you keep pretending like FFP is not a big issue We regularly over spend, even after this cost cutting. Other clubs are just better ran economically Say we wanted to increase our wage budget by £10,000 p/wk, already across the first team, that equates to £520,000 per year So for every £10k we need another half a million. That’s not including bonuses and fees that have become part and parcel of the modern football contract So if you think you can increase turnover of a company by half a million in 12 months then I would suggest you are in the wrong job. That’s quite the sum. In the spirit of fairness I will say this is firmly at the doorstep of Venkys. If we say we have lost about 5,000 regular season ticket holders since they have come, at an average of £300 quid a ticket, that’s £1.5m they have lost us in yearly turnover. Or £30k a week. I genuinely do not believe we will get them 5,000 back unless the Venkys sell or we reach the premier league. Regardless of how much marketing or pricing initiatives they will not come back until we reach the dizzying heights of the Prem but I am all ears on how you plan to do it

Why would Macron bother? It was destined to fail before it even came out You’ve whacked a crap logo on top of a kit. Steve Waggott made the commercial decision to put a Red Devil on our front Hes a clown. It’s as simple as that. He may have other things to worry about than our “image” but he’s overseeing some rather calamitous moments. That’s saying something given what we’ve had to go through in the last decade He’s not fit for the role he’s in. It’s becoming more and more clear. If the whole printing of sponsor story after is true then it’s just further proof he’s taking the piss

I believe it is on a rolling basis Rev

Should that happen the pimms will be flowing More than likely out for less than 10, but at least I've got Pope and Root to look forward to Here's to hoping I get to watch Bairstow smash it about at home on Saturday and don't see him Friday...you never know with this lot though

I don't think I've seen an opener edge the ball as much as Crawley. Not up for it I'm afraid Lucky enough to be gifted tickets for the opening day tomorrow, sitting in the Eric Hollies stand. Last time I saw England v India we tore em apart and bowled them for less than 100 at Headingley. Hoping to see us bat this time so I'll let you all know just how bad Crawley is in person 😄

Not if we are near the top of the table Matty £40 will still see a lot of "one timers" come if there's a good chance we'll give em a stuffing Not that I agree btw, actually think the pricing at Rovers borders on criminal

Buckley is a better option than Dack for the famed "high press" Bucko is pretty good at winning the ball back up top. In fact, so was Rothwell. His pace allowed him to sometimes just nick in front of a stray ball. I'd say Buckley is more likely to start the games than Dack but I know nowt. You'd prefer Dack to be strolling around a bit, keeping fresh, for that late lung busting run into the back stick for a tap in. That's how I imagine Dack. I definitely do not want him chasing defenders with his tongue hanging out

I think it comes with a change of regime but we haven't been linked with anyone really aside from the Bosnian fella. Usually we are linked all over the shop. Is that a sign of the season ahead? Top clubs may be unwilling to loan out their best players with the World Cup in the middle of the season. There's every reason to suspect they may come back with a list of injuries after a guelling winter campaign. We might struggle to see the likes of Harvey Elliott or even a Khadra/Van Hecke status of loanee I hope we pull up trees for the Bosnian. Sounds highly rated and at 6 foot 4 is what we need. I'd love if we can tempt van Hecke back, honestly one of my favourite loanees in recent memory. Loved him to bits and if he had scored THAT goal it would have been goal of the season for me even though it was a tap in 😄 I am hoping GB is working behind the scenes and managing to keep things under wraps. Sharpe has never been the type of journo to go for inside scoops so we are lost on that front but since the Bosnian talk there's not been a peep about any player whatsoever. Time is ticking!

I would say Nyambe could play in the premier league You look at full backs like Van Aanholt who made a career from being physically better than wingers. Nyambe can be as good as him. Let’s stop throwing shade at Nyambe who has been a great player for us over the years. He’s as good a right back you can get in this league if you ask me. The only thing he lacks is pinpoint crossing but I still think the right coaching can get that out of him let me put it this way, I think Nyambe is a bigger loss than Lenihan

It’s not an angry group, more like one or two It’s a regular comment by the same one or two (“not ready”, “I’ve seen better down Pleasy”) when young lads come in and have an average or poor performance on here. Happened with Buckley - expected to pull up trees from the off. They are usually missing when they come good though. Some of us on here will remember the pelters Lenihan and Nyambe used to get. Now they are saints Mowbray regularly rode rough shot over players, like Nyambe, whilst learning their trade. There was the constant talk of “learning his way” and it was quite regular to hear him comment on young lads in the same way. You can ignore it if you like, but it was discussed at length on here I don’t really wish to go into much with you but remind you that only a couple of days ago you called youth football uncompetitive. You’ve spent weeks rubbishing the prospect of our academy boys being able to step into the first team as unrealistic. The fact remains that if, after Portugal, GB and JDT decide they are ready I’ll trust them over yourself, who uses every opportunity to rubbish academy football Nobodies development has ever been hindered by minutes playing football. If you want absolute rubbish you should reread that sentence until you can’t read it anymore

Exactly Chad We have a lot of posters who expect these academy lads to come in and never make a mistake Even at Sunday league the difference between the late 20s and early 20s lads is striking. The calmness during the game, being self assured and more confident. But those older lads started in the same way You have to be damn lucky some of the posters on here will never step foot near a training ground. It’s Mowbray level of disdain to our youth. Like they have to relearn everything about the sport because it’s first team and not u23 Remember the u23 used to be the reserves. Lads have been cutting their teeth in “seconds” football for over a century And every single footballer has had a debut It is harrowing to hear the lack of confidence they have in our own lads. They are a produce of our academy, some of them local boys who would love nothing more than to wear the shirt. A damn sight better than the waster journeymen we’ve had over the time. If age dictated how good a squad was how do you explain that in the season Barnsley made the play offs, under Valerin Ismael, they were the youngest team in the Championship. They were also the youngest team in the Championship last season and got relegated. It is about the coaching and ability and not the age of the players

You forgetting about Ash Phillips?