StHelensRover

They will have smelled blood, I wonder how by how many they will be outnumbered, not loads I imagine.

My wildcard prediction for the season was that we would be knocked out of both cups by a team lower than us in the pyramid. After watching our 'strongest eleven' on Saturday, knowing it will be a weaker one tonight for the extra squad minutes, are you thinking what I'm thinking? JDT took this competition very seriously but in the last few years, his two seasons aside, we generally stink this competition out. I'm thinking of the home results against Blackpool and Morecambe and that scrape past Oldham. I think it will be one of those nights at Ewood. Nevermind, forget all that. Rovers 6-0 Bantams (Gueye hat-trick)

I really hope they at least do a one-off special programme for the match in November. And maybe put a bit of effort in, make it an A4 size one and bumper-length so that it feels a bit special and worthy of adding to our collections 🤞 Hopefully no foreward from Pasha or the owners either, unless it's to say they're leaving.

Almost 60% possession for Rovers and we dominate these stats, but it just didn't pass the eye test, we wouldn't have scored if we were playing now. If we don't get a striker (and unfortunately I think he needs to be better than any of our current strikers) then we are in bother.

West Brom missed two massive sitters, credit to Toth for making the saves, but they really should have scored at least one of those, one was point blank range with the entire net to aim at. I think the defence looked all over the place myself at times. I think if Albion had really gone for it rather than wasting time and sitting back on their lead they could have caused more problems. We looked more comfortable than we were because we had tons of possession which they were quite happy for us to have, because we didn't have a clue what to do to break them down with it. Edit - thinking about your comment, I did just see these stats, so maybe they do reflect an ok performance from the CBs, though I don't remember who made the individual tackles and clearances Total tackles quite even between the sides, their 49 clearances and our one shot on target tells the story I want to tell though, that I think we were shite.

Ismael just asked now on Lancs "Do you need any more players?" Immediately said "yes" Then said at least one more, any more than that would require players out. He expects players to come in and to leave. Asked directly about Travis going, he seemed a bit uneasy and didn't give away much, but it definitely seems like there is something still going on. Worrying.

Dont think people can cling to the "if we got that penalty"... If Albion hadn't missed two absolutely stinking sitters it would have been 3-1 even if we scored the penalty.. if we had got it. All the what-ifs aside, we were second best. 1 shot on target in 99 minutes

I'm never glad that we lose, even if we had scored an equaliser it was evident for all to see what absolute toss that performance was

Might just be hot-headed coz I'm at the ground but I thought that was simply rubbish. Very little positives to take from that other than that Miller looked alright. He was actually showing Hedges what to do and where to be. West Brom looked bang average under a new manager and were there for the taking today but we offered absolutely nowt. Brum might run through us next week.

Albion should have been 2 or 3 up after 30 mins

Two bad teams but we've definitely been worse. We look like we've never seen a set of goalposts

I believe it's their 125th year at The Hawthorns, they are almost as old as us WBA, think formed 1878.

I think the point for most current fans is that it's so hollow. There is no reveling in our proud history whilst the last 15 years of it have been a total embarrassment. The people at the club posting about our great history have spent all that time basically dismantling it. They don't get to post and gloat about it, they're ruining it.

I just checked and McLoughlin has 124 championship appearances, the other summer signings have none. We'll have to see what that means. Ohashi had never played in this division but he ended up doing alright. Gueye had never played in it and he looked a donkey for at least 6 months before he got going a bit. Fingers crossed they all adapt fairly quickly, because if they don't we're a bit stuffed! 🤞

"Expectations? An easier one to answer when the transfer window has closed. Rovers have lost more than 1,200 Championship appearances, combined with the summer departures, with arrivals totalling so far well under 150 appearances combined." Worrying stat IMO "Expectation is probably higher than this time last year when many feared relegation." They might want to ask a Rovers fan about that

Good episode guys, just listened on my lunch break this afternoon.

Yeah I agree with this. No club has a god given right to top flight football or any type of success, but if you trust the people at the top are doing their very best then you can accept when you fall short. I think Steve Gibson is the best example of this at Middlesbrough. He must have been there about 30 years now. They've spent most of that time bouncing between the top and second division, they've won a cup and played in a European final. The last few seasons they have been bang average, mediocre. But fans aren't protesting and booing him, because they know he loves the club and will do whatever he can to at least try and bring success.

It's such a tough one. Ours is a bit of an outlier case compared with most of the other shite owners. Wrexham, Portsmouth, Coventry, Morecambe, Luton Bolton, Bury, Reading, SheffWeds and probably 15 others I've forgotten to mention all had owners that were so catastrophic that they put the club either at serious risk of going out of business or out of business altogether, usually within a few years. Our decline has been so managed and drawn out over 12-13 years that it has slipped under the radar and so doesn't quite compare to the other examples. Our owners have always just managed to do the bare minimum to escape legal and media scrutiny. Kept us on life support as cheaply as possible. As long as we're fielding a team of paid players and ticking all the EFL's boxes, no one can technically say they're doing anything wrong. This is why no one outside of East Lancashire really cares. To outsiders, it looks like we're complaining at a lack of on-field success, which most clubs go through. As opposed to circling the plug hole very, very slowly, which is actually what it feels like we're doing. Fifteen years is a long time for a club of our stature to go without even a sniff of success, I don't mean winning the top division or trophies, but for the majority of our history we have been in the top flight and we should be at least aiming to return there every season. I don't remember anyone in the last decade at the club saying that promotion has been a goal. I'm pretty sure the goal of most other championship sides is to win promotion, but we never hear it at Ewood and we don't behave like it. Every season we behave like a club that has just been promoted from League One. That to me has always been unacceptable. The lack of ambition is galling. (I don't class our promotion from league one as success either, it was only the third time we'd ever been that low iirc). The 80s was before my time, but I'm aware that before Jack Walker we were skint and had low attendances, but were somehow still getting into the playoffs and trying to be ambitious. Under this lot the best we've mustered in 15 years is to have 'missed out on goal difference' which sounds better than it actually was, we flattered to deceive.

I'd love the last point you made about seeking out new potential owners to be the route for fan groups to go down, but I don't think we're at that stage. The owners are seemingly as adamant as they were 14 years ago that the club is not for sale. Ultimately, I know that everything is for sale and that if someone offered them a billion pounds they would sell us by the end of the week. But the fact that they've seemed at best stubborn or at worst hostile to the idea of someone buying the club from them has likely put many parties off. I'd be worried that they probably overvalue the club as an asset, or expect by selling it to make back all or most of their outlay. But we are a sunk cost to them and they should be looking to offload us as easily as possible (not for free obviously, but accepting that they will have to take a big hit). I sadly hear from so many fans 'who would buy us' as well and I think that's a non-argument. So many clubs are bought and sold and if we were 'for sale' I think we would be seen as a good investment. Large stadium, elite category training ground/academy, just over an hour from an international airport, longstanding history and pedigree in the game. I hope the increased scrutiny on Pasha and the constant pointing out that we're operating well within our means on a cheap and cheerful, bargain basement strategy which lacks any ambition will wear him down to the point that it's untenable and even he has to express the futility of this to the owners. I might be dreaming that this will happen.

You might be right, but I don't think even losing ten on the bounce would have produced that bizarre 'press conference' from Waggott, Pasha and Gestede or the flurry of other media appearances/interviews from Gestede, Yasir Sufi, et al. For a decade, most Rovers fans hadn't even heard of Pasha, now everyone knows he is the main man at the club and he's under much more scrutiny. For that reason alone, I can't accept that it wasn't a good idea to change tack. I had no personal involvement in it whatsoever, I've nothing to gain from saying it was a good idea btw. On the other hand, if you're right and the majority of Rovers fans don't think it was a good move, we're back to the problem of what can/should anyone be doing about the situation? I don't think people should sit on their hands and accept our lot. I don't know what much else there is that can be done which is within the law to get attention at the ground or in the media. Was it not better to try something different? I'm glad they gambled and did something else. The 'majority of fans' , 'young and old' seemed to think it was a good idea to wave inflatable snakes and boo John Eustace throughout the Derby County match. Was that a good idea, no? Was he blameless in orchestrating his move? No, but the fans deciding to target him non-stop for 90 minutes was embarrassing, achieved nothing and was the perfect outcome for the people running the club.

I think the request that Pasha, Waggott and Gestede not attend matches was a good move, in hindsight. It was an unusual and quite petty request that the fan groups surely understood would be ignored, but it was a different angle of attack to the blanket "venkys out, sell the club". It caught people running the club off guard a bit and it got media attention in the way that the last ten years of "venkys out, sell the club" hasn't. I think since then they've continued to trip themselves up when speaking on the record and showed a level of incompetence many of us expected. Every time we're able to force the leadership out in the open they continue to expose the rubbish job they've done and continue to do. Given Waggott's speedy departure and then now coming out and threatening to ban fans, I'd say it ruffled feathers more than anything else in the last half-decade

I'm going down for this game (or up? It is England's highest altitude football ground), anything can happen on the day. I was there when Richie Smallwood kept a clean sheet and I was there when Big Mak turned into Haaland there last year. Both very bizarre matches. I'm not optimistic though, I would take a draw now.

I said earlier in thread that we were much better in the second half but inevitably that didn't last. We probably played well in total for 15-20 mins of a 90 min game which is nowhere near good enough and ultimately 3-1 flattered us

I know it's preseason and players won't want to pick up injuries but I thought the same thing about Travis, he doesn't look interested. I reckon you're right about his head being turned, all his mates moving on and earning more money than he is, probably texting him about how much better everything is now they're away from our circus.