Exiled in Toronto Mk2

Not that unique, focussing on EG rather than goals/wins was the bedrock of Brentford’s transformation. Mind you, given we were bottom of the EG league, it could only improve.

Here’s where I think their thinking lies: our Academy is probably going to produce players who end up better and worth more than the kind of players we have and can currently buy. Can academy players alone get us up so we might stay up - probably not - we need better non-academy players around them than we currently have, but we can’t afford them. So we need to develop and sell one or two academy players so we can buy better non-academy players, assuming the academy pipeline can keep producing. There’s lots of reasons how this can go wrong, but then there’s even more reasons how keep doing what we have been doing before will go wrong. Fans want to win every game and every season to be a promotion push. But, in my sixty years supporting Rovers, we’ve won five promotions and two trophies. So what does that make the other 53 seasons? All failures? Furphy, Smith, McKay were all failures? I’d say all were hamstrung by not being able to get good money for one or two players to be able to buy several better ones. Lee did that with the Tony Field money; Kendall did it by still being one of the best midfielders in the country and finding Crawford; Dalglish did it with Jack’s money. I’m not averse to the thinking that coming out on top of half a dozen clubs who have 5x the income requires something more than sack the manager and play Gally in the middle, but I do have big question marks over the execution, especially after this window, which looked nothing like stage 1 of a strategy being implemented,

Playing out from the back and selling players we develop for huge sums to Premiership clubs are inextricably linked though: if they don’t/can’t demonstrate they are skilled at playing out from the back, no Premiership club will buy them. There’s no big money market for players who tonk it down the channels for our carthorse of the day to chase. This, I believe, is why he isn’t playing to the mythical strengths of the current squad.

But with appalling positional and movement awareness. The players who do well against Nyambe beat him before they get the ball.

I’m sick of Brereton hiding out on the left wing, waiting for the perfect ball between the defenders, but the one saving grace keeping him there tonight is that Nyambe will be completely unaware of his runs in behind.

We did, but then we were the ones going. There were at least as many stayaways telling us (well, me at least) we were idiots, the club was a shambles, 7 years previous they’d been watching Duggie and Ronnie in their pomp with us near the top of Div 1 etc etc. Back to the current omnishambles, my money is on Broughton/JDT are already telling Waggott he can go into the Summer window with them or with Sylvester, but not both.

There’s no “ultimately” about it: he abdicated a key oversight responsibility at 5.30 and went off to a footy match leaving his direct underling in total charge. Maybe he thought Sylvester fully capable but that doesn’t matter, anything could’ve happened. What if Sylvester had had a heart attack or a car crash that evening? Waggott is no different to Captain Smith going to his bed as the Titanic went full steam ahead at night in an ice field.

Another good leader steps up. I’m beginning to see the beginnings of a silver lining coming from this, maybe even a turning point. And who knows, O’Brien might’ve done an Ardilles and got crocked straight away.

He’s stepping up as a leader and taking responsibility for the monumental fuck ups of people who don’t even report to him. My prediction: Waggott and Sylvester will get the chop at some stage for this.

Completely disagree. Broughton has been interviewed several times as to what his role encompasses, and the Company Secretary - the man responsible for registering deals - does not report to Broughton. It’s absolutely Waggott’s area of accountability. On Tuesday night he had two competing responsibilities: directly oversee the successful registration of transfers or be at a football match. Which was more important?

You don’t have the playing career like his without being a perfectionist highly intolerant of sloppiness in others. Can’t see him accepting this as one of those things.

Exactly how I see it. The Club Secretary is clearly responsible for proper submission of the paperwork, and he reports to the CEO, Waggott, who is accountable for having the correct people and processes to do this crucial task. I think it extreme dereliction for Waggott, as the man accountable, to be 100 miles away that evening, rather than being on hand to ensure the man responsible had every resource needed. Broughton, whose job was done on the transfers by mid-afternoon, was right to have been at what was an important cup tie. In any normal business, both Sylvester and Waggott would be fired for such a colossal failure, but, of course, we are anything but.

One that will pay for a significant chunk of his money down the drain transfer fee.

All 23 yrs old. Can’t possibly develop any more….

I was convinced he had no future with us when he (and his girlfriend) were at loggerheads with the manager, who’d probably never heard of Dack before he came. Very interesting to see Dack admit as much when dumped from the matchday squad a few times. His response to that has been mature and to the benefit of all. I’m particularly impressed by his seemingly overnight transformation from team cheeky chappy to mature leader.

I thought Wrexham’s front man today far better than Gallagher.

So how does the bloke with the jump on his man right by the penalty spot, powering towards goal, NOT score the rebound? Because he STOPS to watch what happens. Meanwhile, the other bloke who’d had his back to the goal while twice as far away and was double-marked, busts a gut to get close just in case… Fuck off, Gallagher, you imposter.

The most completely display of uselessness from Gallagher I’ve ever seen. Brereton not far behind. Wharton capping it off with his trademark commit and get neither ball nor man, and Kaminski fumbling two in.

Well that goal had everything: dicking around, another Morton negative assist, Khadra shot, fumbled in by Kaminski.

I’m not sure why anyone believes the owners wouldn’t have just seen it as an opportunity to not send over this season’s £20 million subsidy, as they did with Armstrong’s fee and when we were selling Samba et al. I suspect they saw the “loss of £20 million” as a £20 million bet on going up last season - not bad odds given the riches on offer.

If you are happy with 4 in 17 from your main striker.

Would that be the same Lewandowski who was afterwards quoted as saying there was zero chance he would’ve come to Blackburn? And perhaps the same Allardyce who was, with no budget, was reduced to signing Benjani on a free and thence was throwing himself at an Arab club, having been quoted as saying we were a but temporary stepping stone for him to rehabilitate his CV after the Newcastle fiasco?

The only way to understand what happens at the club is to see things from the perspective of the people at the top. We are owned by Indian multi-billionaires who, despite Mercer’s endless predictions of financial meltdown, are still here 12 years and £250 million later. Why are they still here - and probably richer now than they were then? It must only be pride. If you are driven by pride, and most likely wouldn’t even get out of bed for £80million, then a few years as a yo-yo club with more relegations isn’t going to be their goal. Time and money are completely irrelevant to these people.

Good listen. In that role trying to get the whole club pulling in the same direction, you need to be a clear communicator, which I think he is. The key phrase in everything he says to me is sustainable premier league club. But sustainable doesn’t mean what it did when Jack said it. It’s not financially sustainable - they all are thanks to obscene TV money - it’s staying there when we get there and not being a Norwich/West Brom/Fulham. So that doesn’t mean throwing $10 million in the next week at a squad that will undoubtedly get trounced every game should we squeak through the playoffs. As to the objection you can’t plan more than one season ahead, well Brentford did, plus the one thing you can say about Venky’s is they have never had a player sale forced on them. To summarize: Objective: stay there when we get there Strategy: Leverage Academy via a manager who believes in it, long contracts plus PDPs and pathways for Academy starlets, head toward a playing style that can stay up, buy better to plug remaining gaps. Tactics: Junk the donkeys over next two windows, sign up A. Wharton etc etc. One interesting omission: in a long list of name checks, no mention of the inherited coaching staff, especially D Johnson.

Exactly how I see it. It could be argued a principled manager doesn’t junk his way of playing just to make Sam Gallagher look a bit less shit.