TheRoversReturn

All Ben's touches in the game against Bolivia

He should be called a lot of other names before "Tickerman". Most of them unpublishable on a family friendly website such as BRFCS.com.

After a terrible second half to the season, with: a collapse in league form, another serious Dack injury and Mowbray somehow staying as boss, this has been a heartwarming story just when it was needed. It's all absolutely bloody bonkers. Surreal yet lovely at the same time. Don't know whether to smile or pinch myself to try and get back to reality! Thanks for the information LordBaltimore and PotterLog. BB smashing one in at the Copa America. LOL!!!

Wonderful story. Barely 22 years old and scoring the winner in the Copa America while playing for Rovers. There's a player in there...it's taking a while to come out, but it's happening. Chile's own Big Ben!

You know this summer transfer window is turning out to be a turkey when you have to wade through 20 pages of posts on Jason Lowe in the transfer thread to get to a link with some academy player from Scotland.

There are plenty of awful players in in our recent past but to be the worst I think you have to hit all three criteria of; - Transfer fee. We've had plenty of terrible freebies, but at least we didn't also spunk away a big part of our transfer budget at the same time. - Performance on the pitch relative to expectations. Again, lots of awful players, but it's worse when they were signed to be a star player than if signed to be, say, a backup left back to only play now and then. - Consequences. Did the signing badly affect the club that season? Or even after that? Therefore,

People were deluding themselves. If you don't get the boot after one win in 15 league games...then, you're obviously not getting the boot. It also proves yet again that we have no ITK posters anymore. Venky's Rovers is not the beast that BRFC was pre-takeover. Nobody knows what these plonkers will do or why...

Ok, but Armstrong is a couple of years older than BB. He scored 5 goals in 44 championship appearances in our first season after promotion. Ben got 7 in 40 last year. They were probably paying similar positions, wasn't AA mostly played wide back then? As Tyrone's post shows, people find it hard to discuss BB without mentioning the transfer fee. That's fully justified of course, nobody saying we should have paid that much and there's no doubt that considering the amount this has been a colossal disappointment. Still, we should be able discuss BB without going to extremes of "bag of kak" o

Come on Mattyblue, let's not go crazy...read back and you'll see I said "in there", hence not brought out...Obviously, if he'd been able to "stand out" we would not still be having this conversation. (Who did stand out last year? AA - going to the prem probably, maybe Elliott at times - going back to a CL club. Hence, if he had "stood out" we'd be talking about if we could fend off bids for him this summer and not this type of chat). However, has he been managed well during this time? For most of the first 18 months he wasn't being played. I distinctly remember when he finally scored...we won

Not sure what your 'Witch Hunt" reference relates to.

Except that's not how it works. It fact, it veers to the fraudulent. Players exchanged don't just become frees because the clubs decide to cheat a third party out of what was agreed in good faith.

It's a slow burn with Ben but there's a cracker of a play in there. Just turned 22 and watching Messi on the pitch...ok, he didn't get on. But the lad's got potential. He might not reach it, but it's strange that some want to write him off already. Why are some like that with youngsters? Give them a chance, it's not like they're a 35-year old free transfer or anything. They're obviously not going to be the finished article.

If AA's contract is up in 2022, then it makes no sense to lose him for free after the next season. He's hardly going to fire us to promotion to the prem while we have Mowbray in the dugout. As for where the money will go...who knows? Lack of investment in the squad led us to League One, but then they also allowed TM to blow 12million on BB and Gally. No rhyme nor reason to those lot.

No, he's not a results-based manager, remember.

No. Yes.