You might not have seen this but the youth convicted of the murder of a woman in Accrington last year was called Rocky Marciano Price !

Why would we sell O'Connell ? But we did.

Not all guys 6' 6" tall can get off the ground. We've already got evidence of that playing up front.

Bell, so good they named him twice.

I see he had Bothroyd weighed up. Lazy bastard.

Well I keep thinking they'll get found out eventually but it hasn't happened yet. Unfortunately there are enough teams that just don't fancy going toe to toe with a team of grafters at the moment. Some of the usual Southern Softies have lost the will to live before they step off the coach in Burnley.

I get what you and Ewood Ace are saying and I agree most of the way but Chaddy does have a point when he says Dyche has never evolved his way of playing. Big Sam started out at Bolton in a very similar workmanlike fashion but by the time he moved on he'd brought in the likes of Djorkaeff, Okocha, Diouff, Anelka etc through the team and they were nowhere near as one dimensional as some people like to make out. Given time and money I think he would have done the same at Rovers but the Chicken Chokers though they knew better. Maybe Dyche isn't allowed to go after similar players, or maybe he just doesn't fancy them ? I suspect it's the latter.

You'll go blind !

That's a bit of a pointless exercise. I'm interested in players who we can sign, not endless fantasies.

Exactly.

If you're going to play 4-4-2 with players out wide you can afford one of the players to be the more static type of " winger " like maybe Holtby but the other winger then has to be a quick, attacking player who's going to run with the ball all the time like we all hoped Chapman was going to be. Maybe Armstrong could be that player but that would seem to be a waste to me. You can't have both wingers who aren't really a threat on a quick breakout. If you are going to get the ball forward quickly inevitably not every pass will be well directed, that's why you need two to share the job of chasing everything down. You may get more out of Gallagher and Brererton by pairing them up as a goal threat but their attitude to running the hard yards would have to improve. I'd be trying these sort of formations in training in full scale serious 11 v 11 practice matches, see how it works out. It makes you wonder what they actually do.

Yeah, If we still had Stephan Henchoz and Henning Berg with Tugay playing for us we could give it a whirl, but we haven't. It's funny how a guy who was a pretty rudimentary centre half has these delusions of grandeur about playing a very expansive, possession based game.

Dyche is Big Sam without the Okocha's and Anelka's of the footballing world.

" I have no idea how Mowbray will set us up formation wise for the coming season ". Unfortunately I don't think Mowbray knows either.

Let's sign Ben White then.

I look at it like this - we were going down when he came in and we didn't go down. I think he sacrificed Rhodes on the understanding he'd get the money to spend on the rest of the team. When that didn't happen it was effectively game over for him and he bailed out. I can't blame him for that. Mowbray would have shrugged his shoulders and kept his bank manager happy. I remember at the time the two guys that came in with him, Irvine and Kelly ?, were both being touted for the managers job by people on here and yet we managed to bag both of them plus Lambert. They must have some responsibility for things not panning out yet nobody ever mentions them.

Show me a ball playing centre half at this level and I'll show you a centre half who's a defensive accident waiting to happen.

Yes but Dyche had a plan and a way of playing that he's stuck to from day one. I don't think it's ever involved ball playing centre halves, more like two guys who can get a foot or a head to most balls coming their way. He's also tried to stick to 4-4-2 and it seems to work for him. If you're going to play ale house football you need two strikers to chase down all the long balls.

I remember seeing him playing against Ajax when he was back in Greece before we signed him and he ran them ragged down that right hand side.

Well Macclesfield won't be in it. They've been relegated and Stevenage have had a reprieve.

They got relegated.

Ah well, that is the question, I can't see him fitting into the midfield 4. Is Mowbray expecting him to move on ?

Or a return to a real 4-4-2 with Armstong running off the big lad.

I'd have Callum Davidson or " Ankle Tag Boy " who's name I've already forgotten before those two.

I was only thinking earlier weren't the close seasons great in the early to mid sixties when you shut up shop in early May and came back in August with exactly the same team ? No incoming and only the young lads or old timers leaving, and absolutely no speculation about transfers ! What Chaddy would have made of it all I shudder to think.