Brereton is a disgrace. Spent all half hiding, trying to look busy while avoiding doing anything. Fuck off out of this game, out of my club.

S Wharton sent to Siberia for the Preston goal. Bare bones team, the subs will will in for us.

About fucking time SG

Every Gallagher involvement has been shit and Brereton hugging the touchline does not bode well

It’ll be 3 in midfield when we have the ball. Ridiculous that Sam Gallagher gets the key spot in the key game but, in reality, there’s no-one else. 3-0, the charge gathers steam.

More than Sam Gallagher has had this year, I’ll wager.

On reflection: Pears - in live time I thought he might have come out for the first one but then a toe-poke was all that would’ve been required to score. JRC - Not a stellar defender but he does give us something different in possession and he calls out others for doing something crap Carter - I like him but this was a bad one, not helped by his senior partner alongside him. Hyam - Got done every which way by #24, who left him for dead multiple times thanks to little feints and runs, which combined to give him plenty of time and space to flick on Slabhead’s punt for the first goal. Pickering - Best of a bad lot, seems to have grown into that role. Travis - back to his pre-benching worst. Morton - Might help if he joined in a bit. Hedges - Another I like but not wide right Sammy - Involved in what few good things we did. Brereton - Sunning himself on the left touchline - he was even there for a corner from the other flank - unbalances the team. He just doesn’t get involved enough. Donkey - I watched a lot of him off the ball and he doesn’t test his marker at all. I can’t even tell what his game is, because it isn’t holding it up, coming short, running the channels, turning his man etc. He had four clear chances - Inc. two goal line sitters - and either completely missed or mishit all of them. Maybe Mowbray had the right idea putting him wide left: at least you get the workrate but he fucks up promising situations a lot less.

Should’ve put a Mercer on it. We got crucified today, outclassed all over the pitch, all through the game. Sam Gallagher is even worse in the flesh, so depressing to watch their #24 in comparison.

Six of the Exiled clan going today, from Settle, York, Dorset and Ontario. Beautiful day to visit the Tockholes childhood home, lunch at the Royal, park outside Grandma’s old Higher Croft council house, walk down under the little railway bridge the way she used to take us to Billy Smart’s Circus. Don’t spoil my day, Sam Gallagher!

As I shall be putting in a rare personal appearance, 0-2.

It’s a strange one: hopeless for two years, half decent for six months then for the next six months pretty much every shot/header went in. This season I think he’s been no more than decent, but his increasingly common habit of sticking to the left touchline is limiting us. In his purple patch he got a lot of six-yard box goals and he is mostly too wide to get those now, with those chances going begging thanks to half-a-second-too-late Gallagher.

We did IMO. Hedges was more often than not first to confront their winger and JRC made only a couple of his trademark forays. The issue for me was the subs absolutely did not perform to the required level. But, even so, we lost because of a stupidly deflected goal and abysmally poor centre forward play - both from the same player. If Szmodics had played in Gallagher rather than vice versa, would we have scored that goal? Not a chance. I’ve been worried for a while now that Gallagher will ultimately cost us promotion.

As I recall their coaches travelled up overnight and they were all over town centre at 8am. There was green paint on walls for many years after.

I was thinking that when Sheffield’s centre half beat four players, had what seemed a very scorable position but then scooped into Pears’ arms. Was that a high probability xg? For a forward in that position, yes, but for a CH who had run half the length of the field, lost his balance beating Carter and was on his wrong foot, not at all.

I wonder if this is the price for JDT staying onboard? Huge climbdown for Broughton - maybe he works for JDT now.

You’ve nailed it, Tony. During the game I found myself wondering “Where are all the Pickering sideways/back passes onto Hyam’s weaker foot?”, the answer being he wasn’t there.

Add to that the disappearance of Kaminski and Ayala who were crap at playing it out, Smodzics emerging, JRC being signed from Boca Juniors, Thomas, the man-management of Travis and Dolan getting a run of starts.

I think there are some good clues in the agreed timeline as to the underlying problems: First document submitted at 20:28 - it probably never occurred to Broughton that a professional football club couldn’t finish submitting the rest of the paperwork in 2.5hrs. The EFL intervention lasted only 27 minutes until 21:48. Nothing was then submitted for 1hr and 6mins at 22:54, turning a tight but manageable schedule into a last minute panic. This delay was the catalyst for disaster. Because of this delay, other factors come into play: e.g. the player being at Brockhall not Ewood. While it was Broughton who took him there, he did so at a time when all looked in hand. Whatever was the delay in that 1hr 6mins, Sylvester should’ve given Broughton a heads up this was going to go to the wire so get the player to Ewood. 23:03 Sylvester resubmits form H4 in error. This to me implies he’s in a panic, making basic mistakes and, from this point, the transfer is doomed. Factor in there’s another last minute transfer going on, and events showed we clearly had neither the capacity nor capability to do two last-minuters at once. That could be because of some of, or all of, Sylvester not up to the job, hollowing out of the office admin team, poor / non-existent communication between Sylvester and Broughton, absence of their boss. Given all the above, it is beyond belief that the one man accountable for all parts of the organization functioning smoothly on the most crucial evening of the season chose to eff off to a footy match 100 miles away.

There’d have been no takers on here at the start of the season for a promotion push anchored by Pears, JRC, Carter and two blokes bought in

More in spite of than because of, given I spent most of his classes being sent to get the strap! 😂

It seems the Riverside were always hard to please…

Great stuff @Herbie6590, I love a good graph myself. Some of the things I’d look at: I think it’d be interesting to compare the average team rating versus the median player rating. Maybe ‘Gallagher-4’ drags the average down? Then perhaps compare both with results (a simple bar chart overlay with 0,1,3 points for each game?) The spread of scores for each player versus the average spread - who is more/less consistent. I could go on, and on…

I suspect there goes his chance of a contract extension, he really needed to come back and stay back.

Every player is disappointed to be subbed, but 99% of them are mature and professional enough not to publicly disrespect the manager and the player coming on.

Dacky can spend the first hour reflecting on the wisdom of shaking his head while applauding fans as they boo-ed the manager. JDT clearly has a thing about showing the right attitude. Cant wait to see the centrally-located Gallagher heading in a hat-trick of crosses…