Dreams of 1995

Yeah and to be truthful it is my biggest gripe with Mowbray about how he treats the younger players. He's an old grump that seems to think you don't know the game unless you are 35. Take a look at the game time Stewart Downing has got in comparison to other younger signings. He has brought through a few youngsters but he has also publicly chastised them for little to no reason. If he is to rely on them he can't keep treating them the same way as he treats Nyambe for example

Tony once again saying too much. No need to say it is a rebuilding job. I get what he means, but it isn't a rebuilding job. It is adding permanent fittings to where you once had temporary works. That's not rebuilding, that's continuing the build. Of course it will be taken literally, and of course I will get pelters for trying to define what he is saying, but I certainly don't think Mowbray is looking at his squad thinking he is starting again on it. He knew last summer that we'd need a keeper, centre half and left back again this year. It's not a surprise to him or anyone. The surprise might be that the taps have been turned off, although maybe he should have thought about that before the luxury signings that haven't quite worked out yet.

That subjective point is interesting Blue blood because I actually think Walton gets a harsh time of things on here. I think poor is a reasonable assessment but on threads he's been called talentless, terrible and all manner of t's and c's. I thought he was below average but nothing better than that, and in some years time he might become a reasonable standard Championship goalie. We have seen worse - Jason Steele.

I'm talking about a good, good goalkeeper. Raya was okay, but you never knew which Raya was going to turn up. The last dependable bloke I remember was Robinson. We will agree to disagree on Walton, but I'm glad he isn't our keeper either.

Walton was nowhere near as bad as some people were making out. Good goalkeeper - no. Terrible goalkeeper - no. Bog standard Championship keeper - yes. He'll find his way down to this level again eventually. There were periods I thought he could be a Prem keeper but he's a million miles away from there. Top division keepers are the creme de la creme and are very hard to come by. In my lifetime I have been blessed to see some good goalkeepers at Rovers, but even they had their faults. I was always scared when Friedel was facing a free kick for example. Unfortunately now we're mixing it about in this league our standard of goalkeeping has dropped far greater than on any other area of the pitch. I can't remember the last good goalkeeper I saw in a Rovers shirt....probably Robinson?

Calling a professional footballer as talentless tells me Revidge doesn't play football. Any man here who plays the game will tell you that when you come across a player that level higher than you the difference is miles apart. My brag of the day: when I was younger I was mincing it about at Chasetown (I knew the dream was over) and played against a young Raheem Sterling, who at the time was at QPR. It was around 09 / 10 as I was just leaving school. He had a bad game and went off at half-time, but he was a couple of years younger and a lot smaller. You could tell he was going to be a good en though, the way he moved, picked the ball up and dribbled was just a cut ahead of everybody else. Later that year I played against Tranmere and came up against Max Power. If you'd have asked me then I'd have told you Max Power was going to play for England. He tore me a new one and it was me hoiked off just after half time. Point being you knew straight away that them two lads had more talent in their small toe than we did as a collective. And lo and behold there they are, earning thousands of pounds a week to play a game we play for free. There isn't a "talentless" professional footballer in existence.

I don't even think I need to answer that question. Obviously I'd rather have Fisher in goal than the Pope. Look, you might see it as ridiculously aggressive, but to the less snowflakey amongst us it was just a bit of a laugh. Oakley didn't take offence. No one has by the looks of it. I made a post that thanked the guy for the information, said there were a good few names and how it was nice to be seen to be sniffing around a better standard of player. What was wrong with that? Must every post be met with the exact same type of reaction? I didn't even make comment on whether or not we'd sign them. Chill yo' beans.

My beef with Totally Wicked is not the product it sells but more the name just sounds horrible. The logo is shite too. It would be embarrassing to have an Ali G like saying emblazoned across our chest. Totally wiked, init. Self involved or not they are asking me to buy the shirt and I won't buy it if it has "Totally Wicked" plastered across it, regardless of the quality of the product it sells. Vaping is just shit. Just like smoking. My comments are tongue in cheek around it all, so don't get too uppity, but I'd much prefer a lager or brewery to a weird shitty vape company with a crap brand. Gambling, drinking & smoking I don't particularly care. Your life, your choice. I don't particularly care if a well branded vape product sponsors us either. It's the tacky, cheap brand that is Totally Wicked that I don't like. In truth I don't think there will be a well branded vape company because it is centred around a tacky environment to begin with. It's all a bit too Monster for me.

Oh dear. Richard Oakley is hereby dismissed from the BRFCS Panel of Scouts. Neither does Brereton. At least Chris can write a decent tune. Talented bloke.

Ooops. Sorry, yeah, I forgot about the in vogue reaction to transfer LINKS. They are all shit, technically deficient, incompetent, not good enough, historically poor player for poor teams, not right for our style, doesn't fit Tony's mantra, not big enough, not strong enough, not good enough, terrible with the ball, no skill, can't cross, can't catch, can't play, can't walk, can't talk, awful, if he's linked with us he's shit, Tony will play him right wing, we need a pacey winger, need a ball playing defender, need a tough defender, need an inverted winger, too old, too young, hair too brown, not tall enough, his expected goals/tackles/touches/burps per game isn't eye catching blah blah blah blah blah. If saying "there's a good few names there" is now too easily excited for this topics regulars then get me the fuck out of here. T'ra.

Give me a lager over a vaping product any day of the week. I don't want to offend any vapers about but quite frankly that practice attracts a rather weird bunch. Full of stretched out ears and old festival bands. In any case, "Totally Wicked" is a minging company name. I'd take a lager or brewery company. I thought that when they have been on shirts sponsors they've usually looked ok. Copenhagen were sponsored by Carlsberg - you don't see Danish people blaming that for binge drinking or alcoholism. This country is full of virtue signalling nonsense, and the banning of advertising gambling / alcohol companies is one of them. All it does is let the people who should be solving them problems have an easy argument to have, and an easy win under their belt when it does get banned. May even get some decent beer on sale at Ewood if we could be sponsored by one too. Doubt it.

Cheers pal! Glad to see you back There's a few good names there, it is nice to hear us sniffing around some good players as opposed to the cast offs from everywhere else. Not sure if I fancy Bailey Wright though. I was excited about Lindsay because I think he's a good player, and did well when he was the main man at Barnsley. His career at Stoke may be just one of them wrong places wrong times kind of thing - they are a pretty toxic club at the moment. Cunningham and Chris Martin would be welcome additions.

The beauties of man management. That's why blokes like Roy Keane will never make good managers. They might know the game but they don't know people. We could do with a few Stephen Warnock's right now that's for sure.

At least Andrews showed a little bit of willing for the shirt though. It is the most basic requisite for a footballer but one which we sadly can't expect from them all. I was also there at West Brom when McCarthy got sent off. We were hammering them until that point. 1-0 down I think we were (or 2-1?) before Keith Andrews rifled one in the bottom corner in the last minute. The few that travelled - mid week game - went into absolute raptures that almost emptied the home fans next to us. It was a sweet moment after taking 60 minutes of shit from the epitome of a yoyo nothing club.

Waggott should be able to deliver a sponsor. He managed to find a sponsor for almost every square inch of the stadium, shirt or shorts at one point. I remember looking around thinking I was walking into a life sized, all too real middle page of a hello magazine. I only hope it isn't something tacky and horrible like "Totally Wicked". This is what he has been brought in for. UK business experience and to manage the club accordingly - if he can't find a sponsor then you have to start asking what is the point in him earning a pay cheque?

I don't think that side is relegation material at all. In fact, the bulk of that side played this season and we came 11th. What changes next year? ?

When he speaks about how professional footballers should always be motivated I get unbelievably irate. It is a joke amongst my non-Rovers supporting mates that if Danny Murphy is on tele I will eventually lose my head. Hate him commentating too, hate his punditry and in general just hate the bloke. It isn't even just the lack of desire he shown in a Rovers shirt, it is the unapologetic way he went about it and then the years upon years of hearing him bark on about desire just grinds on you. He's a joke.

Charlie Goode could be off to QPR. Mark Warburton can spot a player, and he seems to think Goode is good enough. Hehe. Right now I'll take absolutely anyone walking through the doors, or at least some sort of acknowledgement from Tony that we are on with it. If he plans on playing Wharton there then tell us because right now I'm thinking we are about to walk into pre-season with no senior goalkeeper or centre half, and a ragtag bunch to play full backs or wingers. We will not get promoted with Amari'i Bell and Elliott Bennett taking turns to play full back. Even if Bell has been improving.

Souttar is a real FM name! I had a defence with him and his brother in during a Pompy save the once. We have been linked with quite a few FM 'names' in the past few weeks, one wonders whether in the absence of a real European scouting network, Waggot has bought a copy of Football Manager and loaded the 'extended' database. Of course, the FM names mentioned are all from FM17 and before, but it's to be expected we don't buy the brand new copy as we are skint................ Sorry Davul didnt mean to quote you there

Yep. I won't criticise managers too much for their transfer dealings because it is very apparent they have a small pool from which to work in + constraints to deal with. We have a favoured agency that's for sure. Then you have the admission from other chairmen that Rovers are incredibly frustrating to deal with.

Using Nyambe and Lenihan in that is unfair because I'm certain we'd all like to see them in the first squad next season too. The rest is a sad indictment of Rovers under Venkys. Defenders will never come because there's no reasonable strategy in place, and money seemingly only available for attacking players. It is a rather skewed viewpoint that gets peddled on here that this is Mowbray's fault, but just like the Mowbray out mob cite historical tendencies as reasons why he won't achieve anything further than what he already has, they then refuse to acknowledge the historical tendencies of Venkys transfer business. I have never got myself worked up as to who we will buy in goal, or centre back of left back because I firmly believe that if we do it will be a freebie or loan. Even if we do sign one for a fee I suspect it will be nominal, and then whatever money we may have will be spent on a midfielder or attacking player, with potential for resale. Should the above not be the case I will happily be proven wrong but Venkys do not spend money on defenders.

He wasn't that calibre of player when Shrewsbury got him on loan.

You only need to look at teams like Villa who, in recent years, got promoted on the back of their good loan signings. They bought a couple of them after too.

That is a slanted view on things. Had our loan goalkeeper have been better we may have seen better results; had our loan left back not suffered a terrible injury we'd have seen more of him. It is all ifs and buts, but the idea that 2-4 good loan signings can't take this team into the top 6 is unjustified in my eyes. The simple answer is the loans haven't been as successful as we require them to be generally. Some of them have been unfortunate, others just not good enough. A perfect example of a good use of the loan market is Marcus Antonsson. He wasn't good enough for us really, but in his first few months he scored some very important goals in league 1, a poor end to the season followed and rather than be stuck with an asset we have to service, pay and eventually try to offload we walked away from our financial liability and had only paid for the service he had given us. There are of course a bad loan move for every good loan move but that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to use the market.

That depends on the loan agreement. A loan being used to cover up recruitment doesn't make it mediocre, it just means you require a further look in 12 months. I am only looking at it from a financial point of view. In terms of "building a team" it doesn't make much sense except adding quality you can't otherwise afford - and those are the arrangements which usually come with fees / stipulations. Again it is all about balancing the financial risks of owning a player vs wanting to own them. In all walks of life you want your assets to increase in value, at least increase in line with the market, but in football to do so you usually need to lay down cash up front for such an asset. In our position we are loaning players that a) we otherwise can't afford or b) risk free temporary contracts that we can walk away from if it is not working in our interests. It is a balancing act financially, one which we aren't privy too, but I'm certain that most clubs in the Championship use the loan market not because they want to but because financially it makes sense for them to do so. However which way you view it is down to yourself, but the key to all of it is ensuring that the players you do get on loan are better than the players you already have.