Barmy

Personally I think it should be restricted to club record holders rather than players we liked a lot. So things like Most England/Scotland/Wales/NI/Ireland caps awarded while a Rover. Would England be Crompton?? Duggie must be most World Cup caps, Ronnie most England captain caps?? Maybe top scorer in each division - Shearer Div I, Garner Div 2, Field Div 3??

Unquestionably. By taking ownership away from a mass of (relatively) impoverished local fans into the hands of one very rich tax exiled fan, plus running the club at enormous losses, the only possible future buyer was a very rich entity. Given that no local fan was remotely as rich as Jack, it was inevitable the buyer would be a non-local non-fan. Jack pursued his and our dream, but it resulted in our nightmare. Icarus flying too close to the sun.

And put your teeth in!

I’ll drink to that. We are not a one-man team but when he plays we are a one way of playing team.

We’re the team just up from Div 1. Yes they were a few points below us but they were a bloody good side on the day.

We do indeed. They were fast and skillful too, quite a combo along with getting stuck in.

Watching the highlights again, it’s either Travis or Evans who does a piss poor attempt at closing down the shooter: positioned too far back, half-hearted run then turned their backs. Something I didn’t notice for the killer third goal is that, when the ball loops up, Rodwell puts both his hands up clearly signalling “C’mon Raya!” then reacts late to the dropping ball. Still a horrendous clanger by Raya but a clear assist by Rodwell - Hendry/Moran/NcNamee would’ve attacked that ball and flattened the striker.

That was the biggest worry for me Tony, and it’s not the first time. There’s no-one out there setting the standard. They’ll all be playing Playstation with each other by now, and Mulgrew coming back won’t make any difference. We need a Knighton, McNamee, Speedie, Bellamy angry git.

Not sure I agree with that. There’s 6 points between 8th and 18th, all of whom could beat each other; we are in with that pack rather than being nearer the playoff pack. I think we are 4-5 players short of a genuine playoff run.

Two other things stuck in my mind, if Armstrong had put that chance away to make it 3-0, I think it would have been enough, and I agree with Mowbray about no one closing down the shooter for their 2nd, we don’t have anyone who’ll take one in the bollocks to stop a shot.

I agree with that, especially as they were passing us to death once they’d recovered from the opening goal. Personally I think far too much is made of things like game management, sometimes the opposition are just better than you all over the park, as Brentford were today. We certainly aren’t capable yet of stuffing a team like they did us. For all the angst about Bennett - and it was painful to watch - the only goal in open play down that side was when he was 50-yards upfield having just overlapped Travis.

There’s no doubt that, for all the much vaunted togetherness, this group of players are soft as shit in adversity. Heads down, shuffle back upfield for the kick-off, no-one taking accountability, no-one letting other players know they are letting the team down. Until we get in a couple of snarlers, we aren’t going anywhere.

You mean that foul to the right of our area? Where a right-sided midfielder might commit one? Sharpe called it to early, they were still getting sorted out.

Right wing actually. Fairly square peg.

Fact is they were all over us from the 2nd minute and we were lucky to be ahead at half time. Graham apparently holding the ball up somehow gave them 70% possession, but him going off is clearly why we lost. Our midfield got owned the entire game and I’m not sure Nyambe would’ve done any better at right back. At 2-2 we looked more likely to win it but Raya’s ridiculous error knocked the stuffing out of the team. The only good news is Brereton looked a proper player, arguably our best one after coming on. I don’t think Charlie will be worrying about not getting his place back.

We’d have been much better off if Travis hadn’t won it back as it made Bennett over-commit down the right. We were a man short after that, but it was still a good goal.

Two good teams today, you can see why they haven’t lost in ten. Cracking left hook by Lenihan earlier.

Not wishing to be picky, but one doesn’t judge the success of a future sellable asset on how it performs in the first few months after you have bought it, especially when you don’t finish paying for it for another 2.5 years.

Chapman and Nuttall on for the last 20 mins could get a goal or two I reckon.

That was the first team I watched regularly: Blacklaw, Newton, Wilson, Hunter, Mulvaney, Knighton, Connelly, Metcalfe, Martin, Rogers, Hill. Sub: Darling. None of this squad bollocks back then.

Details of which you aren’t sharing because.... a) Your friend will get in trouble. (Oh wait, he’s not named and is only a fan anyway) b) The real number might come out later and prove you wrong c) You enjoy winding up the credulous on here e.g selling Rhodes 7 times before he actually went; Venky’s having no money, selling the club every summer - pretty insightful for an accountant btw...;) d) You can’t remember it due to all those fine reds

I think you are conflating get the f*ck out of League 1 with put in place a medium term financial strategy to end up in the PL. Any half-decent consultants would review current practices, classifying them into stop doing that, keep doing that, do more of that, then add on new strands to make a cohesive strategy. If it’s all Mowbray, then what do you think the consultants did for their £750k?

If you can avoid chasing an immediate promotion by buying “experience” - which will have poor resale and massive wages - I think it’s a good plan: fund medium term growth through the inevitable inflationary transfer fees British players generate. Buy/grow them young and, as long as you don’t run out of cash (which they won’t), it’s inevitable you’ll eventually get a crop that can take you up.

It seems to me, from events over the past few months, that the two sets of consultants did more than was generally thought. Rather than send in a few bean counters to use red highlighters on the P&L, I think they were proper consultants who laid down a long- term financial strategy, which I think might look like follows: Previous thinking: Q) How do you stop losing shitloads of money every year? A) Get promoted to the PL New thinking: A) Transfer price inflation over time has beaten pretty much any other investment. The latest obscene TV deal will accelerate it further. Brexit will accelerate it even further for British players. Therefore the Academy, even if it got no more effective, will produce increasingly high transfer fees for the good ones who get in our team. Luckily, money was never taken away from the academy even when the first team was being gutted. The effectiveness can be increased by focusing less on finding our own 8-year olds and more on the cast-offs from the now vast top 6’s academies, because they only have one first 11, just like us, but theirs is 100x harder to get into. 99% of their youth players won’t be good enough to play for them, but a fair few will be good enough to play for us. Plus, it’s an imperfect science, some of them will prove their old employers wrong and become really valuable. Then it’s a win-win: we get more young British players capable of getting in our team . Our team gets better and, if we fail to go up, we sell the good ones for massive returns on investment. Rinse and repeat till we do go up. Transfers: buy British no matter where you are in the league. One Ben Brereton may be a bust; ten Ben Breretons will make money between them. BUT, if you are getting close to promotion, buy the best you can get no matter the nationality. £10m spent today on a top striker gets a payback of £100m if you go up. £200m if you stay up another year. Of course this approach requires very deep pockets to get it going and cover the ups and downs, but that’s the one thing our owners have. And we will still be selling our best players at peak value, say one every two years. But that’s not any different to the last 55 years ever since Vernon and Pickering went.