Apologies if this is in the wrong bit, wasn’t sure where to put it. Not many this year (and I’ll probably give Millwall this weekend a miss) but for the very few games that are London/South East: is there any coordination for stragglers like me left without any match day buddies?

Nice to be back after the summer, isn’t it?

What an excellent move that was, so unlucky. Killer pass from Butterworth. He’s a long-term prospect.

Kaminski had a shocker there

I’ll say one thing: I’m a fiend for watching a side in blue and white play well and score goals. Stick it in my veins. Lots of little things that could be picked at and you suspect Swansea aren’t a barometer for doing well in this league, but it’s just nice to see us play well, so far. Again for 45, please.

Buckley looks a totally different player.

Dolan isn’t much of a focal point, just yet. Some poor decisions from rushing. Could be nerves or whatever.

Standard of set pieces from us so far has been poor. Needs to be better.

Promising opening, but Swansea will grow into this.

I’m watching via Rovers TV. I have moronically stumped up the £170 intl viewing subscription for the whole season, although works out around £4/game.

Shout me down as a madman, BRFCS, but hear me out first: Daniel Sturridge is a free agent and has been for a while. There are all the reasons in the world why he wouldn't come, we shouldn't sign him and why it might totally not work out for anyone. But as a redemption narrative, somewhere around a "pay per game"/weighted towards appearance fees remuneration and the fact that he seems to have straightened himself out a bit after definitely losing his way. So crazy it just might work..? (It's not, is it? It's just crazy.)

See what you mean, but I was thinking Travis, Davenport and this guy as the three we'll end up playing most often (again, if it comes off). I agree, I think Rothwell more likely to go than stay.

That's Buckley not getting a game, if it happens.

Looking at the most recent minutes, it’s all very softball. Absolutely no probing. Strikes me that the fans’ forum is more interested in being able to ask questions than asking questions of any consequence. Maybe that’s seen as the safer tactic, but I can’t say I see any point in a fans’ forum if it’s not applying pressure at a time like this. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course, but with a Twitter presence as it is and no working website, are they even trying?

Some bleak reading in the last few pages, but I find it very easy to believe. Owners aren’t so much asleep at the wheel as curled up on the backseat with a brick on the accelerator. A genuine tragedy if the legacy of Jack Walker was dismantled to save face of a trio of spoilt, bratty siblings on the other side of the world. I have nothing but ill will towards them. The type of things I wish for them are possibly incriminating to share publicly, but I do hope they get what’s coming to them. Having said that, Jack himself would say that no one person (or group of people) defines the club. Players, managers, owners - even fans! - all come and go. The colours, the crest, the history, the town are what last, what defines us. I think a part of me has always held onto the shred of possibility that we could be a top-flight team again, that we could go up, grind out and stay up. Before the 90s, we hadn’t been one for a while, so I suppose older posters on here can point to that as the norm for us. Is it so bad? Well, it’d be awful while these owners and the litany of chancers they’ve employed were still involved with us, no doubt. I don’t spend money with the club anymore, where I can help it. Occasionally I’ll buy a match pass to watch when I’ve the time to sit down and watch. The new kits have definitely piqued my interest. But the thing I understand about business is that - while the average consumer has very little bearing on management’s KPI’s - mass desertion (while maybe not a huge effect on top/bottom line) - works. When you have absolutely no customer base, it’s impossible to ignore. One way or another - whether the owners are still at the helm or whether they drop us in some way - it feels like administration is pretty nailed-on. There’s no way anyone buys us outright in our existing state and the owners have been unresponsive to offers, if memory serves me right. Tragic, genuinely awful. It will be absolutely heartbreaking, it will feel like a bereavement. Part of the reason I don’t spend money with the club where I can help it is I’m essentially ashamed. I love every pre-Venky’s memory, I absolutely cherish it. But I’m embarrassed to be a fan of a plaything of some of the most two-bit amateur-hour morons that have ever been involved in football, Waggott included. When it comes, administration will be mercy, essentially. And with that, comes the opportunity to move on. Agency. An opportunity to learn, an opportunity to reminisce, to bond, to share. If there are enough of us feeling that way, there will be a way to build out of it, there will be something to be proud of again. We’re all masochists for still following the club, maybe out of duty, compulsion, compassion or delusion. It’s going to be a painful watch, at times, but at least we’re all still watching, at least we all still care (to whatever extent!) and maybe we’ll one day have something to be proud of, of our own making.

I’m really not one for quoting or getting into disagreements on here but I’ve read two or three of your posts and I just fundamentally disagree with your assessments. Magloire made at least two runs into the opposition half from the back and Nyambe is a very effective forward player. If the expectation is that he’s constantly getting balls in from out wide, then you need to broaden the scope of understanding what an effective wide player is. Overlaps, underlaps and his stamina are crucial for how this kind of system would work and he does all three well enough to be effective. Not got world class delivery as an end product, but more than effective. I just don’t see how you came to your conclusions at all.

A good watch. Vale looks some way off troubling the first team. Cirino looks really promising. Pretty solid, but additions seem essential. Leeds commentators insufferable.

Have that, you nasty Yorkshire b*stards.

Very greedy play from Armstrong this half. Brereton seems to be in good shape/form.

Nice to see the likes of Nyambe, Buckley and Magloire having good games so far. Away kit looks excellent. Sock design is suprisingly effective in making it look very good. Pickering doesn’t look comfortable, but Raphinha is a pretty tough assignment. I’m genuinely enjoying this. I’ll stop short of optimism, because let’s be realistic. But so far, not a waste of 40 mins or so.

Fair credit to Magloire on his forward runs, he’s doing good work there and looks an energetic defender.

edit: immediate feelings of total familiarity that nothing happened in the end. I enjoyed the fantasy, the comedown was a bit harsh, but I’ve survived it and I’m here. In summary: keep feeding me the gossip.

If I am, they’re in no rush to tell me.

This is off-topic but it’s probably worth acknowledging that under the current guidance at C-suite and playing staff management, the fat lady is warming her vocal cords. This has happened before in football and it happens a huge amount in business. People really do run businesses into the ground and take a whacking great salary doing it. It’s never truly clear if they know they’re doing it but the result is always the same. None of us can blame the playing squad so much, really. They’re a target of ire and that’s part and parcel of their jobs, but on an operational level, their responsibilities only go so far. To an extent, none of us can even blame the manager or the executives, because their salaries are easy money. You keep dancing until the music stops and all the grown ups (if you can even call them that) have gone home. Call it what it is; we were bought by novices as a vanity project, from a family of trustafarians desperate to cash out their inheritance, allowed to descend into ‘basket case’ status and the end has all been prolonged by a seemingly endless stream of face-saving cash from owners who don’t know when to fold. It’s nice to fantasise about how things might change (I really leaned into the positive start at the beginning of the year and ate my humble pie a while ago) because we all fundamentally care so much about the club. It’s deep for us, it’s always going to be different for us. Pretty much all of us would have resigned before now if we were in Mowbray’s position, but we’re not. It’s different for us because our investment isn’t contingent on however many thousands of pounds a week land in our bank accounts. We’re all paying out for the privilege of following the team. But speaking objectively, the cracks are being papered over with money from the owners and you’ve got to wonder how low that pile will be allowed to go before the cracks are instead allowed to grow and they abandon it. In that case - if I’m right in thinking - the holding company goes into administration and therefore the club. Brockhall sale will be worth some money, hence the likely need to get it moving quickly. Goes to paying off any preferred creditors, maybe even in advance. I think Ewood isn’t that desirable as an asset, given the entire of the surrounding area’s infrastructure is basically built around it, so it probably “stays” somehow. All of this is to say that in that case, someone swoops in on a pennies-to-the-pound basis and this particular nightmare is over, although whoever picks up a former basket case club in administration better be in it for the genuine love of that particular club and with money they would otherwise have actually set fire to, because it might be a devil we don’t want to get to know. Anyway, I play the Euromillions, so if I win I promise I’ll be the total idiot who swoops in and wastes it all on this particularly cruel mistress.