6 minutes ago, Gordon Ottershaw said:

I wish I could agree but I think Burnley are going to have a massive War Chest available to them. Unless someone can tell me otherwise, the loan payment will be met by next season's Parachute Payment and the sale of Cornet if a club, as seems likely, meets the release clause. They are in the process of selling Pope and Collins with Brownhill and O'Neill likely to go too. That should get them North of £40m. They have a ready made keeper replacement, two strikers in Vydra and Rodriguez that have scored goals at Championship level and a much reduced wage bill. This, along with season ticket sales, sponsorship etc means, for me, that they are going to be a formidable force next season. JDT might prove himself a better coach but I'm pretty sure he will be below Kompany next May.

So they sell their best Keeper and see their three best CBs walk out of the club... 

They were never formidable in the first place - Dyche ground out wins. Kompany has a massive job on his hands.

18 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

I am not for one moment thinking he is the next Seamus Coleman but success does come from leagues like Ireland

I saw Brown at Blues and thought he looked good. He was up against Chong and Hernandez, who the Blues fans rated highly, and dealt with them well enough.

I ain't writing him off yet

Are you Irish by any chance?

12 minutes ago, goozburger said:

Bristol City fans seem glad to see the back of Kasey Palmer. Gone to Coventry on a three year deal.

Absolute waster that lad.

4 hours ago, Carbz said:

I was telling a work colleague about what Macron could do with our home shirt and he dared me to post it on here after I told him. He said it won't be well received but here goes anyway.

The Forest away shirt by Macron last season was a two colour half shirt with the fading of the colours where they met in the middle. I said "I think it would be different if we tried something like that instead of the straight cut line down the middle for a change."

That's when he dared me. Be kind please...

That shirt was awful... so your mate was right.

2 hours ago, tomphil said:

Big money for their favs/signings/ex Boro boys and naff all for lads coming through by looks of it.

Mowbray loved his pecking order and seniority dictating things.

Resigning Downing when he skipped all of pre-season was criminal.

Signing his mate's son, Pears, warranted a sacking. 

Just now, booth said:

Have we learnt nothing from January?

Oh we absolutely need a striker (two if Brereton leaves [I think he will]), I'm just not throwing Gallagher on the scrap heap just yet.

15 goals for him next season is achievable. If he does that and makes himself a nuisance he's worth keeping around - I doubt anyone is lining up to take us off our hands with his contract.

10 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

As I said, I dont see the evidence from his career or signs that hes a poorly utilised potential regular goalscorer. Hes not a natural goalscorer, he never has been and he hides behind the whole "Mowbray wasted him" narrative that ignores his flaws as a striker in the first place.

We need a new first choice striker. If Gallagher is deemed to be that man with the main responsibility, we can forget the top 6.

Again, I'm not his biggest fan, but he'll score goals for you in this league if you play to his strengths. Mowbray playing him out wide did him no favours at all.

I imagine a World Class striker like JDT can teach him a thing or two too. 

3 hours ago, Norbert Rassragr said:

As the squad stands now, I'd expect them to be around the play offs, maybe better. However, they may lose some key players, and need the money to keep things stable off the pitch. If they don't get promoted this season, the next will be really hard. And a failure after that would mean disaster.

We'll see.

It's an old squad that's another year older. I'm not sure they're up to the grind of a Championship season anymore.

21 minutes ago, RoversClitheroe said:

Mental.

Rich Sharpe said last week we would have work permits sorted.

Still not been granted!!! 

So that means pre season has started with Lowe 😂

Surely they can observe / set out instructions... if not literally 'take' the training?

5 minutes ago, arbitro said:

The other side of the coin is that in a year he is a free agent and any suitors wouldn't have to pay a fee for him. Any agent will tell you this is Manna from Heaven for them in getting an exceptional deal for their clients. It's a difficult one but my choice would be not to run the risk of this and try and sell him now but him and his representatives have all the aces here.

I suspect both he and his agent will want to strike while the iron is hot.

He runs the risk of having a mediocre season and doors closing on him.

3 hours ago, Paul Mani said:

Keep Dolan, sell BBD and buy JPvH & Khadra 👀💯🤞🏽

Brighton would be foolish to sell Van Hecke to us. I wouldn't want to buy Khadra - decent player, but not worth forking out for.

16 minutes ago, davulsukur said:

I don't rate Dolan that much, although his workrate should go a long way in JDT's set up, if we are looking at a high press.

He's done well at times but I find it hard to believe that Forest have a genuine interest in him.

He's technically an England U21 International, so I'd want more than £3m for him.

That said his end product is lacking at the moment, so I can see why some aren't fans.

32 minutes ago, Torgeir said:

Cantwell would be a shrewd signing. Didn't impress at Bournemouth and they opted out of the £11m option. With one year left of his deal I don't understand why we don't just try and sign him permanently - must be on daft wages. Loan him and potentially sign him permanently if we go up, or let him leave elsewhere (or on worse terms) if him and we don't perform well enough. Just speculating...

Lads (and lasses) - it's Nixon. There's absolutely no way he has a source at Ewood Park.

6 hours ago, goozburger said:

The number discrepancy in N05 has settled since last night. I think the club might have made some sort of error and changed around 58 seats from unavailable to available since the system came back online yesterday. No other discrepancies from what I can see.

I can continue posting numbers in the meantime.

Waggott is right that the number of new season ticket holders is encouraging. A few thousand if I'm not mistaken. It's the number of non-renewers which is a concern, which I've adjusted from 2,395 to 2,337 since last night's post.

I think your method is flawed.

I renewed my season ticket this morning, however, I had to call the club to do so. My seat was blocked out as reserved online - and obviously until about 8 hours ago it was technically empty. 

5 hours ago, 47er said:

Its a daunting challenge for any manager. We go into the new season without Van Hecke, Lenihan, we'll probably lose Big Ben and Nyambe. Ayala?( Rarely fit anyway.)

That's 4 of our very best players. We need 2 CB's, at least one central striker, 2 full-backs and additional cover in midfield. Ideally decent cover between the sticks as well.

That would be a difficult job for a club whose owners were interested, never mind us.

We're feeling optimistic because of what positivity the new management team are giving off but, in truth, they are only as good as their players.

 

You can look at it one of two ways.

If you're being negative you can say that we have a lot of holes to fill and not a lot of time to fill them.

If you're being positive you can say that JDT and GB have a lot of flexibility to shape this team.

If anything I was disappointed with Mowbray extending Gallagher - he's lumped Sam on the next manager on (I'm sure) pretty substantial wages. 

1 hour ago, martonrover said:

Poor old Tony. Not even the likes of Barnsley wanted him. He'll have to wait until Darlington or Hartlepool are hiring again.

I think he's waiting for a reply from his PSG job application. 

6 minutes ago, Andy said:

Dack has quality that almost all (if not all) of the other players lack, so he’ll be involved.

How fit he gets and how much impact his injuries have had will dictate the rest, but there’s no way JDT won’t want to utilise who was, arguably, the best player in the league before he got injured.

I think we’ll see a big season from Dack this season.

We'll see how he responds to training.

He couldn't run last season, and he was never the most mobile to begin with.

46 minutes ago, ChrisyG said:

For me, the first thing we need to address is we have no real leaders in the squad apart from maybe Ayala, but he's always injured. I'd be looking to bring in a couple of tough, experienced older pros who've been around the block to help our young lads.

I thought Travis should have been captain last season. I've never thought of Lenihan as a leader, just the most senior pro.

We'll see what JDT makes of the squad in pre-season - he might even bring in his own captain.

3 hours ago, ben_the_beast said:

I can't help but feel like Lenihan has rushed his final decision. All the noises coming out the club were that he was happy with the salary on offer, but wanted to see who the new manager would be, before committing to a new deal. 

The amount of time he did wait to sign a deal, one more week, surely couldn't have hurt. Its going to be a horrible commute for him now.

He's gone to play for an excellent manager who has chased him for years.

Fair play to him.

2 hours ago, tonyoz said:

Have we had such open access to our new manager going about his business before? Or have I just not bothered looking before?

Anyway, I like it. Letting the fans in is a good move; going from the reaction on here.

Good luck lad!

Tbf if I'm the Head of Comms I want Mowbray on camera as little as possible.

He  sucks the life out of a room on a good day.

1 hour ago, goozburger said:

The cost of living is hitting us all hard. Prices are going up everywhere and will continue to do so. It'll make people think twice about buying a season ticket at £400, especially when that's probably the extra amount needed to cover rising costs of oil, petrol, services like Netflix, and so on. It all adds up and eats into precious monthly income.

The club needs to rescue the situation. Rovers will have had their JDT boost, but I'll be amazed if we sell an average of 39 a day and get close to 9,000 unless something changes. Sharpe suggested something might be afoot with a rethink the other day. I guess we'll see.

You'd be livid if you've forked out full price and the club turn round and slash prices in the wake of JDT's announcement.

5 minutes ago, RoverKyle said:

I thought the same about Dack & Buckley. Tomasson literally looks through Buckley to engage with Travis behind him.

Shockwaves through the squad already. Shape up or get gone.

I think he engaged with the players that engaged with him - Travis carries himself as a leader so JDT will respect that. 

There were a lot of players sat slumped in their chairs and plenty more giving limp wristed handshakes. To be fair they've had 5 years of Mowbray, that'd break many people. 

Let's see how they carry themselves 6 months from now. 

I do love that he set his stall out though (paraphrasing) "All of my decisions are for the betterment of the team". Either you pull your weight or you're on the bench (and then out of the club). Can't say fairer than that.

18 minutes ago, SuperBrfc said:

It's clear that he is a fan of Markanday already. He focused on him twice there when the players were going past him. At the end it sounded like he said to Markanday "you're a really good player, you're fit to go now". Think he's going to be a key player for us next season.

I think that's what they call 'man management'. I forgot what it looked like after five years of Tone.

44 minutes ago, Tricky said:

While everyone's other halves are gushing over JDT, showed the missus Broughton doing an interview, she was not so impressed, "creepy looking, comes across very dull, face for radio" 🤐

Wait until she sees his wallet.

3 hours ago, arbitro said:

Some serious ability there.

They'd put 5 past our current team without even breaking sweat.