Dreams of 1995

LOL 🤫

Vale should have started over Gallagher The rest is ok

I never got this horse thing either. Where did that come from?

Bloody awful game Fancy myself a bit of a pro at Warzone though. Used to be anyway, before I had to get a life again after Covid ended, now when I fancy playing I get shit on from great heights by younger lads who can play 6 hours a night Really does ruin my Sunday mornings

Getting the business done Let’s get Van Hecke in now. We need a centre half given Phillips head seems to be at Spurs Someone needs to tell him just how many careers they’ve ruined 😂

Morten Gamst Pedersen tralalalalala

JDT is right - you don’t get chosen by managers like Klopp unless there’s something about you Looking forward to seeing Morton to be honest, he’s highly rated Teams in the Championship have always relied on loans. It’s a sad fact of life here. Let’s not get worked up

It was daft to say no, but tbh he did sign Markanday who was bagging in goals at the same level Delap had played at It wasn’t Mowbrays fault his hamstring went

Cute 🥰

That’s not common sense, no In managerial terms it is a constant on the sporting side. Head coaches come and go, the sporting director tends to remain over large periods of time A constant in any senior management role is not a complexity or a potential conflict It is the job of the sporting director to implement the club vision and sign head coaches that are best suited for it. Otherwise you end up in a situation where the next gaffer decides he wants a total change and you are back at the beginning of a journey Our experience over the past 10 years operating without a constant sporting director shows you that. In comparison to clubs like Brentford, who have seen the rise of the club progress even as head coaches have changed If what you are saying was common sense then it would suggest that almost every elite club in the world is operating with ‘an added layer of complexity’, usually accompanied by a very high salary, for a nonsensical reason

Oh of course. This hyper successful model of operating, that has now been adopted by almost every top level club in the world, has no real reason to be doubted And it goes to show that a Director of Football being added to the mix may, seemingly, could (or whatever) cause potential conflict and delays is a nonsense

Yep That many issues that the following clubs have Directors of Football Man City, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, PSG, Chelsea, Barcelona, Dortmund…. do you need me to go on? Obviously though your finger is more on the pulse than them clubs, with their layers of complexity and conflicts 😃

How many other boards within the football pyramid do you see come out and squash every rumour the media publish in public? I challenge you to find me one

It was in the paper today according to Twitter. Can't get too excited yet, it's just our luck someone will trump his wages and he will go there. Highly rated, young, British and cheap. Perfect recipe for championship clubs.

In the last two years we’ve played Sri Lanka, India twice and Pakistan in odi. Obviously not counting Netherlands in that Roy and Ali played well against Sri Lanka, especially Roy, and the first Indian series. They didn’t play against Pakistan which I think was due to Covid ? It’s only in the latest series vs india they haven’t performed It’s just been said that Roy and Bairstow reach 50 runs as an opening partnership over 50% of the time. Why would you disrupt that?

Well we haven’t played a lot of ODI lately. Roy was brilliant against Sri Lanka last year. And Moeen Ali had a fantastic knock against India at Lords and that 70 in 20 odd balls against Windies in the t20, from recent memory Roy is a great white ball cricketer. I don’t get the rush to drop either. Both of them bring a lot to the team and have been part of a set up that has seen us win the World Cup. In fact, I’d say Roy getting injured in the t20 World Cup really put us on the back foot against New Zealand. Cricket is a game of opinions but I wouldn’t be dropping two of our better players just yet.

Replace Rashid? Rashid is a fantastic spin bowler. Can’t say I’ve been overly impressed with Parkinson for England Chaddy both Roy and Ali are match winners at white ball cricket. Why would you replace them?

True but I don't think that is the case at all When you look at the squad I'm honestly struggling to see where we are plugging all these young players in to fill gaps. In my eyes, they are the substitute bench, and the likelihood of us fielding them all at once is slim We are being linked with centre halves so the position of worry looks like it's being addressed. We will miss out on players but unfortunately that's the position we are in thanks to the owners. In reality I think whilst we are likely to see a bt more of Wharton, Vale and Carter this year, I don't think they are going to be considered starting 11 But, I will say this, if JDT does consider them starting 11 then that is on him. He would clearly think they are good enough and that's his decision. There are a lot of freebies out there who we could sign within the wage bill if he thought otherwise, to say not is silly, but JDT and Broughton have a clear directive of signing good players with the youth as complimentary to that. They've made that clear themselves, or at least GB has

You are still making out like it's "a number", assuming large Truth is if you have watched Wharton you'll know you'd rather him in the middle than Johnson. If Garrett is replacing Davenport then it probably is a downgrade currently, but Davenport was never fit anyway. Rothwell's replacement will have to be someone, but I suspect Buckley will be dropping deeper with Dack back fit. In defence Carter is good enough for this league, as is Wharton and Ayala. The only players we have been linked with really are centre halves so it's obvious the management see a need for an extra body in there. I don't think anybody is suggesting Phillips is going to replace Lenihan - just you - but in requiring 2 or 3 centre backs I'd say is far off the mark. You need one more in there with Phillips and Carter as back up. Up front you still have Dack, Markanday, BBD (hopefully), Gallagher and Dolan. Vale would be back up to them. So where is this "large number" coming from? All a melodrama really. And why is it totally impossible to compare Zouma and Jones to Phillips.......they were 17 at one point in time as well you know. They all seem to be having similar trajectories: decorated youth careers with early forays into professional football. Highly rated by the top clubs. Why's it impossible? Because you say so? The lad is 17 and if he is as good as people say he is then I'm all for giving him a go. But as said he probably isn't going to be this first teamer people are trying to make him out to be because we have options already and are looking likely to sign another CB, whoever and whenever that may be

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