Admiral Nelsen

Agree that there's quite a lot of sense in that move, especially if they have full crowds next season. If I were Liverpool I'd want him to start getting used to producing under the kind of pressure he'd face at Anfield - so either Rangers or a team expecting promotion would bring that in different ways. I actually think he played with a perfectly decent squad last year, just one which badly unperformed. I also disagree quite a bit with your assessment of Buckley too, but you're alrighty fighting that one on a few fronts so I'll leave it there!

Pleasantly surprised to see rumours that we are looking into taking Elliot back, but taking it with a massive pinch of salt at present. He would probably have the pick of the whole division next year if available, so I doubt that our brownie points with Liverpool would put us at the front of the queue.

Yes, no contest really. If you take transfer fee inflation into account, we paid an eye watering sum for Kevin Davies, and he signed a 7 year contract! Given away for nowt twelve months later, so he could play with the Rovers fan we also gave away for (next to) nowt, who himself played for England, was the top English scorer in the league at one point, and who himself went for fees of over £10million over the course of his career. This is before considering that playing Beattie in front of Davies could have easily been enough to see us safe that season, even if that's a bit of a speculator. Easily the worst use of money, even if we have better reasons to dislike some of the turkeys which came along later.

On paper, this one should have been the easiest one to get done. Even so, a relief to see one of them get over the line.

Partially serious counterpoint: Brentford are getting plaudits from everywhere for their success using a model which prioritises performance on different metrics over results, assuming that the results will eventually follow. The problem comes when performances have also been poor, as has been the case at Rovers.

If it turns out that we get 5 million for him, I think that's approaching getting a pretty reasonable deal.

Yes, over time there have been plenty of examples of shooting ourselves in the foot to go along with some bad luck. Sometimes in the same game, like Beckham getting sent off and Campbell (again!) scoring a perfectly good goal against Argentina. Every country will have probably their own examples, but I'd be surprised if anybody's list is as long as ours! Mainly agree that the 06 team was stronger too, although Scholes wasn't there in 06, which is a big loss even if he was starting on the left. There was a great interview with Sven on Sky a year or two ago where he made a case for playing him out of position. Wasn't totally convinced, but he was pretty persuasive. Pointed out that he occasionally was played out there for United too, so maybe that's overdone. One often forgotten area where we were slightly unlucky in 06 was that Owen got badly injured early on. In theory that should've been a very small window when both him and Rooney should've been near the top of their game, which sadly we never really saw.

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.