This might have been discussed elsewhere as it happened early this month, but Mark Hughes' sacking at Bradford City has got me thinking. I haven't followed his career much since his Rovers/Man City days but I do wonder how his career seems to have faded somewhat - though, he's had some huge jobs, prestigious clubs and will get new offers, no doubt, so he hasn't done badly at all. It does seem, not knowing the facts or context, that he took a risk by taking the Bradford job. With Championship roles coming up frequently, he could have, I guess, joined the Pulis/Warnock/McCarthy/Allardyce merry-go-round and come and gone with a few more jobs. Perhaps, he just wanted a new challenge. Would be interested to know from anyone who might have followed his career a bit more closely. I do wonder, also, whether managers can suffer the same confidence loss fate as players. Perhaps, the moment you start questioning yourself in such a role, things change. Also, I suppose, there's a big difference between managing a team with elite talent, compared to lower down the leagues.

Just chanced upon the details of Tyler Magloire's injury whilst playing for Northampton last season. He's our former academy and U23 defender and captain, if anyone's forgotten. Apparently, a relatively "innocuous collision" with another player left him with a rupture to the ACL and MCL, as well as a torn meniscus. I'm not familiar with these types of injuries but it sounds horrendous. He's expected back some time next year.

A beauty of football is it's simplicity. The more we move away from that at the elite level, the more remote it gets from fans, I feel. I do feel that the commercialisation and profit in football is partly driving this. There's a vicious cycle, huge stakes and pressure, less tolerance of human judgment and error, and increasing tinkering with the rules and technology. I have a suspicion that some of this increased tinkering is intended to prime fans for bigger structural changes intended to benefit the few. Fans have come to accept constant changes that when the expanded Champions' League or Super League come along, which clearly are damaging to the game, fans are meant to shrug. We do want better refereeing and decision-making, but there will always be human error, if we want humans involved. The ploy of defenders putting their hands behind their backs when defending, to me, shows that football's big business now have footballers trying to relieve the referee of making decisions.

One reason might be his injuries. In his last year at Peterborough he had at least three significant spells out. He also withdrew from his last Eire call up with injury. At Rovers he’s had niggles but seems to have maintained a spell of fitness recently. It’s a shame after all that that he leaves Ireland on personal grounds.

One-time promising midfielder, Isaac Whitehall, is in what I think is his second or third year injured. Credit to the club for backing him but has anyone heard of a young player with such a long lay off? And do Rovers have a more than usual problem with long-term injuries at the moment? Alex Baker and Lenni Cirino have been nowhere to be seen for a year, out, presumably, with injuries.

It's a calculated risk from them. If it doesn't go well but he does eventually score a few goals, which he's surely capable of, there or on loan, he'll retain some value and some desperate newly promoted Prem club might buy him. I think he might still come good if he sticks in there. Look at Joselu! Something of a failure/disappointment at Stoke and Newcastle and now Real Madrid's starting centre forward. Not sure where BBD is playing but a shift to the six yard box might be what he needs.

In Rothwell, the club has previous in a policy of gambling in sacrificing a transfer fee for league positions/promotion hopes. It can also be seen as a team unity move, to present the club as ambitious to its own players, especially, and not simply a selling club. However, we will go only one way if we repeatedly let best players leave on frees. Now and again, a calculated sale needs to be made. Lenihan, for example, was a replaceable defender who should have been, I feel, sold a year before he left. Perhaps, Nyambe, if a bidder could be found. Brereton-Diaz is a trickier one given his importance to the team but, in retrospect, if a fair bid came in, it would have been wise to cash in. We might have got lucky with Sigurdsson but a club like ours needs to raise income through sales if it wants to sustain its position. There is a reason that Bloxham and Atcheson are sometimes on our first team bench have barely played an U23 game or two. I don't know what the Venky's are doing but I wouldn't at all be surprised that owners (in general) sometimes are happy to let the club's self-generating finances deteriorate (eg. retail and player sales), if it means that the dependency on them increases, especially, if they see the club as not a direct profit earner but as a leverage for other business ventures.

We might miss that transfer fee we may have got for Brereton-Diaz! That is, assuming the funds would have been put to use. I've checked some reports on Buckley and it seems he's done ok as a sub but nothing more than that. Fans seem to view him as a back-up to Barry Bannan and not a starter or as the wide attacker role he's filled in at. To be fair to him, it must be challenging to go into a club at the bottom of the league and in what seems like disarray and try and make an immediate impact. His future looks very uncertain, despite his talents. I would ask, however, whether Rovers have a single reliable central midfielder? We are waiting on Tronstad and Garrett has shown glimpses but not had a run but there's no-one consistent in there. JRC is the latest experiment and we'll have to see.

Hakan Şükür Legendary Turkish forward signed for us for half a season, 2002/03, sustaining a broken leg at the start and then leaving after some sort of dispute or disagreement with the club. He scored two classy goals for us. This was the time Souness signed Hakan Unsal as well, at left back, who also left after a short spell. He was past his best but if he had stayed, it could've been fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWDc2JNv_NQ (low quality video)

I guess Dack, Ayala, Brereton and Kaminski were important and experienced voices in and around the club. I wonder who the organisers and leaders are now. Travis, I guess, and there’ll be others but not sure. A sign of our issues is the developmental wall our young players seem to reach. Dolan, the Whartons, Buckley etc. had a steep rise and still have moments but they seem to stop improving or go backwards. Is this because they were overrated in the first place and had a purple patch? Is it because there is over reliance on them at an early stage in the absence of support and guidance from experienced pros and the pressure and demands are too much? The more hopeful thought, is that if these youngsters could get back to improving, they could be really good players and lift the team.

I think this is fair. It’s very early but it must be concerning that Wharton might, like Buckley, not fulfil the potential he has as a highly technically gifted player. Not sure how to get it out of him but having good defensive support might help. Lacking pace at the back, there’s extra demands on the CMs. I recall the days of Short and Berg at the back with Stig and Lucas Neill, I think, full backs, who did well as a slow back line. But they played very deep and the full backs often sat back. It might be the case of a need to be more conservative given the general lack of pace and physicality in the team.

I do think the official messageboard forum is a miss. Supposedly, superseded by Twitter coverage, it was said, but, obviously, not at all the same service.

I wonder if there are any Saudi football fan purists wishing the exact reverse right now! The cause, of course, is commodification of human beings in a global market system where wealth is heavily concentrated in certain areas and in a system that demands instant results. Edit: About migrating footballers, former Rovers youth footballer, Rostyn Griffiths has had an interesting career, taking him to Uzbekistan, India and China, to name a few. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostyn_Griffiths

Doesn't make sense to me - a midfield of Onana, Gueye, Doucoure, McNeil and Danjuma should be strong.

It looks bad from Kaminski but if I was defending him, he is rooted to near his line when the ball comes into the 6 yard box but a defender throws himself to try to block the cross with his head and there is always a risk with that that it gets a nick and goes flying in by the near post, so, perhaps, understandable that he stands his ground. Then once it gets into the 6 yard box he's got to throw himself at it - or a defender's got to claim the ball and clear. But I'm not a goalie, so might well be well off the mark. Kaminski bought for an undisclosed but suggested £2.5m and Arsenal have a £30m reserve goalie. It says a lot about the glorious Premier League (and, perhaps, wider than that).

Brighton win against Man U with Welbeck leading the line and players I’ve not heard of before like a German international midfielder Dahoud (admittedly, probably as I don’t follow the league too closely) - and Steele in goal. It’s so impressive - albeit, it’s just the start of the season and things can flip very quickly. van Hecke seems to have broken into the first team and it’ll be interesting and somewhat galling to see how far he goes. Had we made some money on some of the players we’ve let go for free, could we have tempted Brighton into a sale when the player didn’t seem high in the pecking order? I guess unlikely but you never know.

Ben White will be a big miss if he doesn't go to the Euros because of the fall-out or disagreement with England management. International football has become homogenised in style, in that all or most teams play possession football. For England, this has been beneficial because there is no longer the gulf in styles when playing other sides. If a match wasn't played at high speed and with aggression, England were exposed. And, so often, England simply could not impose that direct game and were made to look like boys - even some of the star studded teams of the recent past. It wasn't that Lampard, Gerrard and Beckham were technically far behind the best but they were not drilled from a young age at their clubs in 'tiki taka.' The current crop are and this makes Southgate's job easier. That said, I don't underestimate the team identity and morale he has built in the camp that was seemingly lacking in the past. I recall listening to an interview with Sean Davis of Fulham/Spurs talking about getting an England call-up, entering the team hotel having a look around and walking out, rather than mixing with the squad.

Just spotted that former Rovers midfielder, Brad Lyons, is on the bench for Northern Ireland today, against Kazakhstan. He was a curious signing as he was brought in, I think, in his early 20s, so not exactly a youth player but didn't make it into the first team but was still given a contract extension, had some loan spells, and then left for Kilmarnock when it expired.

The real test is the tournament and it looks like the FA have given Southgate one more shot. Should Maguire start or Colwill, Henderson or Ward-Prowse... to me it doesn't matter greatly. What really matters is how England create a creative fulcrum that will be able to open up defences. Foden or Maddison, with their ability to shoot, pass and dribble, need to be placed at the heart of the England team and pull the strings. I don't hold up much hope, not because of Southgate necessarily, but I have never seen any England manager, in my lifetime, consistently succeed in harnessing attacking talent. Moreover, in club football, increasingly, these type of players are shunted out wide, as a mechanical game is favoured.

My feeling is that we should get our own house in order before attacking other leagues, even if they make us nervous by taking some of Europe's best players. Incidentally, I wonder if Henderson's detractors like to discuss the UK's connection with Saudi Arabia. A Guardian article from this year stated that over a third of clubs from Europe's biggest leagues are invested in by private equity firms - which exist to ruthlessly profit. When the Russian oligarchs were pumping money into the Premier League, it didn't cause too much of a stir. Now, we have the UAE and Saudi Arabia investing heavily and, again, aside from a few grumblings, there is not much protest. I read that City Football Group (majority owned by Abu Dhabi private equity, with investments from US and China), have bought Bahia football club in Brazil, this year, to add to their growing roster. Our football is being destroyed as we speak and there is near silence. I had thought that the rise of Youtube fan channels would enable debate on the fundamentals of our game but, from what I can tell, it hasn't. The climate of fear and censorship imposed by media companies like Google/Youtube, mean that these issues aren't discussed.

He's quite often described as tired on here and some hints at an attitude. I have no idea if either of these things are true or, if so, just features of being a very young player. I would, however, suggest that the trajectory of John Buckley should be a bit of a warning - not just for the player but the management too. You can have all the talent in the world but performing consistently in games takes mentality and, also, guidance from colleagues. Unfortunately, for our young players, there's not many experienced pros shouldering responsibility week in week out.

I find the Jack Vale loan to Lincoln surprising considering that he's currently injured. Rovers U23s were thrashed by Spurs today, according to their website. It's going to be another hard slog for the team this year, it seems.

Burns' former forward partners in the Rovers U23 team have also been on the move. Connor McBride, has signed for Gateshead, after a bit of a struggle to make an impression in the Scottish second tier and Sam Durrant moved to Dundalk in Ireland after being released by Sheffield Wednesday. From that U23 side that finished, I think 5th in the league, only Garrett and Batty have made an impact on the first team squad, I think. Isaac Whitehall and Lenni Cirino are, I think, still with the club and also from that era, but as far as I can tell, they are still out with long-term injuries and it looks like they're running out of time to earn new contracts.

I suspect Villarreal made the signing on the basis that if they can get a bit out of him, they have a fair chance of profiting by selling him to an English club. He could possibly hit it off in La Liga as a centre forward, with an objective to finish moves, but it’ll take a lot for him to succeed as a winger/midfielder in Spain where the demands are different. It could be a bit like Adam Armstrong in the Premier League. Albeit, Brereton-Diaz’s Chilean experience and the quality of the squad should help him. That said, he has a habit of surprising people, so who knows. He will need time to try and adapt.

To state the obvious, our squad level is low compared to previous years. The reliance on very inexperienced youngsters as starters and on the bench without senior players setting standards and taking responsibility is very risky. It does seem that survival might become the main aim this season and, perhaps, longer-term. The days of Mowbray leaving Harvey Elliot on the bench and struggling to get Armstrong, Brereton, Rothwell, Harwood-Bellis and co. to function as a team will be long behind us.