Didn't see another thread on this, so I started a fresh one. Rovers to play Bolton and AFC. Fylde in pre-season friendlies. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19329495.blackburn-rovers-announce-two-friendlies-including-bolton-trip/

Exactly this. And coupled with tournaments themselves only coming around every two years, a good crop of players can often have a fairly small window to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. They take responsibility for things like Rooney's red card, or wilting when it comes to penalty shoot-outs, but the fine-margins and the sheer randomness you get in football matter so much more in knockout competitions. Longer term, I look at England's lack of success in tournament football not too dissimilarly to Liverpool's barren years. Some periods when we've been miles away from being good enough. But others when we we've been very good and close to where we need to be. I think/hope we're about to enter another one of these phases now, so we just need to hope that they play near their best and hope that their luck is better than the good teams of the 90s and 2000s.

I was going to say the same in an earlier post, but then I was thinking about Maldini, Cannavaro, Nesta & Panucci. Some defence. Even then it's not obvious to me which was better, which goes to show how well stocked we were, especially thinking of some of the players we had the likes of Carragher, King and Woodgate as 4th, 5th and 6th choice. I know the settled opinion on the Sven era was that we badly underperformed, and that's understandable given the players available, but I think the manner of our getting knocked out gets brushed under the carpet slightly too much in my view. Portugal in 2004, Campbell won that game fair and square in the 90 minutes before the goal being disallowed. They go on to reach a very winnable final vs Greece. Even in 2006, we came pretty close to winning that game with 10 men if I recall. People rightly talk about how we should've got more from a midfield that good, or were too mentally weak when it came to pens etc., but we were seriously unlucky at times too.

Think you're right on the 2004/2006 team, but I think that really just shows how we underachieved in those tournaments. A defence including Campbell/Terry/Ferdinand/Cole was exceptional, as should've been a midfield with Beckham, Gerrard, Scholes & Lampard. I'd take this squad over any we've had in the last 10 years though, and I think it's miles ahead of some of those going a bit further back before the Sven era.

I think you're completely right about the street naming a few years ago. The penny was dropping when he was still playing though. I might be misremembering some of the specifics but he got a great ovation from us in (I think) his final season and he made a point of bringing that up in his programme notes the week later. Or it might have been a BBC column, something like that anyway. It seems that these days he speaks about the club with genuine, uncomplicated fondness now. It would've been a real shame if he still held a grudge from those first years after he left. A match made in heaven, for a while.

I think either of those (or a Sol Campbell) and I'd suddenly feel extremely bullish about our chances. Henderson's lack of fitness is a bit of a worry too, but all of a sudden we have a group of attacking players that other countries will genuinely fear.

The strength in depth at right back is ridiculous, but I'm with you in wanting TAA in the squad. Harsh on James who is a very good player, but I'd have Walker starting and then I'd rather have Alexander-Arnold as a different option in reserve. Loving the options we have going forward. Just a shame that it hasn't coincided with a vintage group of defenders (right back aside). Maguire and Stones are good on their day, but they're obviously a bit accident prone there's not much behind them. Far cry from a few years ago when players like Woodgate struggled to even get into squads.

I think that's right, but at the same time some of the responsibility for his inconsistency lies with the player too. He has the ability to be our best player, even including Armstrong and a fully fit Dack in my opinion, and so whilst the manager takes a fair amount of the responsibility for his inconsistency, it shouldn't entirely shield Rothwell from criticism either. Fully agree that he'll be a snip for the £1million (?) or whatever it is we'll be able to get for him. Worth a lot more than that even at his current levels if he had a couple of years more on his contract, and if he can get more consistent in his end product he could easily play in the top division.

I don't agree that he bangs on about it at every possible opportunity. As far as I can see it's come up in maybe a handful of interviews over the last few years, of which he gives several every week. I'd bet that if men who do spells on oil rigs had to give interviews every time they had a bad day at work, they'd be plenty who mention that they miss their family and if they did nobody in their right mind would say they were whinging. Anyway, I'm not saying we need to get the violins out either. Like you say, lots of others do it tough. But I find it incredibly distasteful to use this as a stick to beat him with, and imply that he's being selfish, underhand or whatever, for what is for me a very natural response. There are so many sound, footballing reasons to want him replaced, and so zoning in on this strikes me as at best unnecessary, if not quite a bit worse than that.

Sorry, that's ridiculously unfair. Mowbray is the same position as lots of people where the best way they can provide for their family is by accepting an antisocial/long distance job. Not take the job? Fine, but how else is someone who has only ever known football going to earn decent money at his age? Move his family down? Fine, but that means taking his teenage kids out of school, and probably away from literally everyone they know. These are really difficult decisions and he's entitled to miss his kids without the likes of us having a go at him for it. I wouldn't care but there are more than enough footballing reasons to want TM gone. I don't understand why so much attention needs to be paid to throw away comments he makes when someone shoves a microphone under his nose, especially when it comes to something like this.

That's pretty much how I see it. He's had a crash course in management over the last couple of years, but it's really hard to suss out how prepared that makes him for a Championship team without the resources Derby had a few years ago. He wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my list, but there are plenty of sillier options out there. We just aren't really in a position to take too much of a punt at the moment.

I'd guess that it's just a very low-traffic market, so odds changing would be hyper-sensitive to pretty small amounts of money. It reminds me a little bit of 'next party leader' markets for political betting. Hardly anyone bets on that sort of thing until there's an election on, so those that do have a flutter can end up shifting the odds pretty substantially based on small sums and (occasionally) educated guesses.

I don't know a huge amount about these sorts of markets, but I don't think they're really hinting at much. Probably more a case of them sussing that his next job is likely to be a Championship club (unless he gets offered the job at Palace) and that we're a pretty good candidate for having a vacancy in the near future. Would be an interesting choice if there were something in it though. Not sure how I'd feel about it.

To be honest, I'm deliberately leaving the subject of the training ground/academy to one side. If it turns out that Mowbray was somehow involved in trying to sell off club assets for personal gain, or the personal gain of others, then that clearly changes things and I'd have no problem agreeing with you about his character. There are questions to answer on that front (certainly from Waggott), and I'm pleased that it's not going ahead, but I don't know enough about Mowbray's role in the whole affair to to say that he was corrupt or acting against the interests of the club. Happy to be set straight on that though. On the interviews, I'd guess that I might be in a minority here, but I never saw any of Mowbray's comments as overly offensive or disrespectful to the club or the fans. Maybe a little, but on a scale from 0 to Bradley Orr, it was pretty small beer in my opinion. I'd bet we could get a collection of quotes from Sam and Hughes, maybe even Souness which could be interpreted as talking the club down just a little bit. He's been here for a good while now, and has said plenty of very complementary things about the club & its history too, so for me at least I've not been that bothered about things that he's said in interviews. Anyway, I accept that the above is a matter of opinion, but I really disagree when it comes to comparing their results record. It's true that this year we only ended up with three points more than the relegation season (which I agree is unacceptable) but this is only after taking the points we gained under Mowbray into account! Had we continued with Coyle, picking up less than a point a game as we were, that would've put us on 43 points at the end of the year. Mowbray did still take us down, but the form was pretty good - only lost 3 times to Coyle's 16. It's quite ironic actually that we were at our best under Mowbray when he was forced to be pragmatic. He did a good job initially of setting us up properly, making us harder to beat, compared to how disorganised we were in the months before he took over. I'll leave it there before I start talking myself into wanting to keep Mowbray! This is the summer that he should've gone, and I'd be very surprised if he turns it around from here. But Coyle was the absolute worst. Well, not the absolute worst, we know who that was, but you know what I mean.

I'm not sure why I'm choosing this hill to die on, but we do have a like for like comparison when they had half a season each with the same squad! I'm not even suggesting Mowbray should be kept on - on this season's evidence we've badly lost our way - but Coyle's tenure was horrific.

I accept that he was on to a loser to begin with, and some of his signings were actually pretty good considering the lack of cash (some decent loans anyway). Even taking that into account though, he was properly awful. The way that Mowbray has tried to play this year has been a mistake, and he should have been more flexible when it wasn't working, but at least there has been some thought which has gone into how we should play. With Coyle, it literally seemed as though he just stuck eleven players on the pitch and told them to get on with it.

Yes - we saw that in the same season once Mowbray took over. Take your point about Coyle having a fairly tough gig, but there's simply no arguing with the significant improvement in the team once we potted Coyle and brought Mowbray in. Sadly it wasn't quite enough to keep us up, but the difference was obvious. I would've have had any confidence at all in Coyle getting us up from L1 either, although obviously there's no way of proving that. There's no getting away from how poor this season has been - bad enough to warrant the manager losing his job. But taking a step back, Mowbray is simply an underperforming manager. We've had plenty of these and by the law of averages, we'll have plenty more. That doesn't mean they he should be put in the same category of Kean/Coyle, either in terms of ability or character.

Both have the ability to be, but I don't think you could call them that on recent form. The way that Wednesday fans talk about Reach reminds me quite a lot of Marshall in his last months at Rovers. There's no point in having the most ability in the team if you never show it.

I'd certainly be very open to having Ainsworth - very impressive record with what he has to work with. One thing in the against column for me is that he seems to have built his success on having a very direct brand of football, which I'm not against at all on principle but it's very chalk and cheese compared to how we've been playing for the last year or so. Ideally I'd be looking for a manager with a record of playing a possession-based game but more effectively and with a bit of steel defensively. I could see David Wagner going very well for that reason. Maybe that's harsh on Ainsworth, and to be fair we probably have at least 2/3 players who would benefit with us being more direct anyway.

Same team, other than Nyambe in for JRC

Have to say I've been very impressed with Joe in the last two games. I thought his performances earlier in the season were a bit of a mixed bag where he didn't always do himself justice, but against Millwall & Swansea he's been great. I just desperately hope that he can stay fit long term, both for his sake and ours.

He did - I was probably wrong to say the perfect example for that reason. Can't imagine Buckley ever picking up the number of cards that Scholes did for his 'mistimed' tackles! Still, he's an example of a player who coped fine against midfielders who were much bigger, stronger, quicker and fitter than he was - mainly by using his brain and being brave when he had to. Personally I think that's the blueprint for Buckley too, rather than hitting the weights and bulking up, although I accept that you're making a different point about his stamina. You could well be right about that, although I'm not sure that he's started enough games to be sure one way or the other!

Nasty bastard he certainly was, and I agree you can't completely change the personality of the player. Seems very unlikely that Buckley will ever have that streak in him, so no arguments there. Back to Buckley though, the Scholes example (although we could just as easily mention some of the diminutive midfielders Spain have churned out over the last 10-15 years) shows that being brave and reading the game well enough can more than compensate for being lightweight. Remains to be seen if Buckley has those characteristics, but I think we find out by playing him more regularly and then see what he's like after a run of starts. Wouldn't do him any harm to have another half a stone of muscle on him, but I don't think it's as important as it is sometimes suggested on here. Certainly wouldn't be the priority for me at the expense of developing other aspects of his game.

I was impressed with JRC on his return, but we're obviously going to have to be hyper-careful with his hamstrings. We'll be doing plenty more defending in this one too, so I'd have Nyambe in at right back as the only change.

Couldn't agree more that Scholes is the perfect example for Buckley to follow - but I think the lessons he'll need to learn are more about attitude and using his brain than physically bulking up. Scholes was asthmatic and about 8 stone wet through for pretty much his whole career, but he had a serious amount of devilment in him and was never afraid to put his foot in when he didn't have the ball. He wasn't bullied when in possession that much mainly because his brain and feet were sharp enough to avoid those situations in the first place. I think that's the template for Buckley - be sharp and brave enough to anticipate where he can win the ball out of possession (good signs on that front yesterday) and be a bit cleverer with his positioning and decision making when we have the ball (much more of a work in progress). I'm hopeful that we'd see big dividends once he gets a proper run of starts, but we'll have to wait and see.