2 hours ago, WacoRover said:

Tomasson: “Overall, it’s a great win for us to get the project started.”

This is about the 6th time he has called the club a project. He’s right, I suppose, when he refers to Rovers as a project; but, it doesn’t sound very endearing or personal about the club. 

I guess I won’t say anything bad about him, if he leaves us after 3-4 years, & we’re in much better shape, possibly, in the PL. I seriously doubt he came to Rovers to retire. Arguably, that’s all Kenny ever wanted, he was a Red for life when we got him, he went back there, and we still love him.

I just hope that’s how Tomasson’s chapter of the clubs history reads. 

I suspect not many of us in a similar situation managing in Denmark would get exactly the right nuance in Danish. Who knows what he thinks he means but it is his second (or third) language.

14 minutes ago, Hi Mack said:

Apologies if it’s been mentioned on any thread but Dack was warming up in front of us today and there is definitely a rift. He ignored the fans and had the monk on all game. He wasn’t his usual bubbly self.

it was odd to see. I was told last week he wasn’t injured but had fallen out with JDT about his work rate and told he’d have to change to be in his team……..anyone else heard anything?

I think this is the most likely situation.

Is the pitch wider this year?

Just now, WacoRover said:

Is Ayala looking good today- apparently, he’s not off to goodness knows where? 

MoM

I’ll be surprised if Gally is still here in Sept.

Noticeably quicker in moving the ball forward, Ayala especially seems to like the one touch stuff. Brittain is so much better than Nyambe going forward, he did two things Nyambe can’t do in the attack that gained the corner. I’ve actually been quite impressed by Hedges, gets everywhere and good awareness. Ben did two things, a decent shot and a great one. I can’t see Pickering and Gallagher staying in this team long, they just aren’t equipped for what the manager wants.

12 minutes ago, arbitro said:

When they went off sale yesterday QPR had sold 1185 tickets for today and they can still be bought at Ewood. It's plain stupid in my view to isolate them upstairs in the Darwen End as it's been reported. This was Mowbrays idea (as confirmed in a Fans Consultation Meeting) so now he is history there is no reason to keep doing it. They should be doing their best to increase the atmosphere and away supporters can contribute to this.

An even better way of boosting the atmosphere IMO would be to close the concourse bars at 2.45 to get fans into their seats and able to start goading the away fans before the teams come out. Back in the day, games against Bolton effectively started at 11.30 when an endless convoy of pissed up Neanderthals clogged up the roads through Darwen and Tockholes. I seem to recall @Claytons Left Boot selflessly sacrificing his lunchtime meat and potato pie against a coach window to let the occupants know they weren’t welcome.

3 hours ago, arbitro said:

 

 

 

This is the QPR squad with some decent players but nothing to fear. I really want to see some real intensity to our play, quick, sharp incisive passing and lots of movement. Obviously winning is the most important thing but if we can win with the afore mentioned qualities I'll be delighted.

Today could be the start of a new era on the pitch for us, an era were we are entertained, were we can see a plan by the manager and see plenty of goals and points. The rest will take care of itself.

Any on the field Law changes the less alert of us might have also missed Tony?

1 minute ago, 47er said:

Got no profile has he? Should have been given more chances.

Naaah, everyone at every level gets scouted to death these days - how did Spurs know about Ash Phillips before you and me? Jacob obviously didn’t impress anyone with his games in the U23s, and paying £500k for him was rash to say the least.

25 minutes ago, Sparks Rover said:

I'm pretty sure half of those academy types are being replaced by new 1st year scholars....

I’m getting the impression the club thinks the kids given squad numbers the other day are a generational wave of first-team bound talent like we haven’t seen since the 1959 Youth Cup winners. Which would be nice.

17 minutes ago, neophox said:

Joe Rothwell - Bournemouth, free

Darragh Lenihan - Middlesbrough, free

Antonis Stergiakis - Panetolikos, free

Luke Brennan - released

Harry Chapman - Bradford, free

Jacob Davenport - released

Sam Durrant - released

Bradley Johnson - MK Dons, free

Connor McBride - released

Joe Nolan - released

Ryan Nyambe - released

Evan Cunningham - released

Joe Ferguson - released

Brandon Lonsdale - released

Tyler Magloire - Northampton

James Brown - loan

 

16 OUT, 1 IN 🙀🙀

Davenport not been snapped up, given he was cruelly mismanaged by Mowbray…?

19 hours ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Wish people would stop citing Forest as if that's likely to happen to us should we be in the bottom three by the end of September.

That sort of thing happens once in a generation AND they had to change managers to get there.

Wouldn’t surprise me if we see a Furphy/Kendall first season from JDT: dreadful start as players and manager suss each other out then a long unbeaten run to get us in the mix.

7 minutes ago, neophox said:

First team squad…waggott told that to fend off premier league clubs

Fair enough. Why wouldn’t we?

41 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Hoping you're right with the last paragraph.

I have to give you full marks for Chaddy style optimism as regards the rest of the post. Brittain might give us a bit more going forward than Nyambe but I would suggest won't be as good defensively. How on earth  have we replaced Rothwell with "better" I.e. Buckley when they both played in the same team together for most of last season?

Also disagree we're better off without players if they haven't been replaced at all, no matter how ordinary they are. Not particularly worse off maybe, but certainly not better off either.

The one "addition" I would concede is Markanday - if JDT sees him as an automatic starter that is.

Still not hearing you accept that the logical consequence of your rock-bottom opinion of Mowbray is an all-round, substantial improvement under the next guy….

Buckley was wasted as a false 9; I think he will be far more effective than Rothwell, pinging 30-yard through balls in the half the time it took Joe to complete his QE2-style turning semi-circle, and most will find their man as opposed to Joe running into five defenders. Whoever replaces Buckley’s more forward position will bag a lot more goals than our serial sitter-misser managed. I always felt Nyambe was bigged up on here as another Mowbray criticism, and it seems the rest of the football world agreed.

Anyway, just think how worried you’d be if Mowbray was still here…! 

30 minutes ago, WacoRover said:

I like Dacky, but Rothwell had 11 assists last season. We will miss him, imo. Definitely too good to lose on a free. But, so were Nyambe & Lenihan. 

Most of which came from set pieces, of which he took almost all of them. Whoever takes them this season I expect to do better - Rothwell’s were OK but not deadly, and we will be practising them this season…

2 hours ago, RevidgeBlue said:

And thank god we have rolled the dice!. I can't think of many who'd be a worse choice than the previous incumbent.

You obviously didn't read or digest the meaning of my post properly. I said we're gambling on the new manager being something rather special (due to the lack of recruitment) .

However even if he only turns out to be ordinary that would imo still make him infinitely better than Mowbray. Two separate issues entirely.

I think you are still discounting how much better the ones who didn’t leave will perform. Plus, the “10 out, 1 in” is just yet another BRFCS doom mantra imo. To my mind, we have already replaced Nyambe and Rothwell with better - I’d wager Brittan will surpass Nyambe’s career Rovers assists by Easter and Buckley, if he takes the set pieces, will surpass Rothwell’s goals and assists from last year. Markandy seemingly doesn’t count as new because of his 15 minutes at Hull, and we are better off without Davenport and that slow bearded twat. If we start with Ayala and Wharton in the middle of a back four, it doesn’t matter in the short term that Lenihan and JPVH left. We need depth but not for the first few games.

Bottom line: I fully expect that the fitter, better coached, more motivated, more cohesive team we put out on Saturday would beat a Mowbray team from last year 8/9 times out of 10. Don’t you?

2 hours ago, RevidgeBlue said:

I can't understand why people are so relaxed about the prospect of going into the season so completely undercooked in terms of recruitment and risking making a complete horlicks of the first seven games!

We won't be so relaxed about it if we get off to a desperate start and end up going down narrowly by a point or two at the end of the season.

As JH says, we're gambling on the manager being a bit special and the kids doing well enough to keep us afloat. But if the manager does turn out to be special why not give him the tools to do the job and have us challenging anyway?

Considering how relentlessly negative you were about all things Mowbray, I’m surprised you refer to the new gaffer being any better as “a gamble” - you were chief dice-roller while Mowbray was here!

So how much did Travis sign up on for four years? A tad more than £3.5k I’ll wager. Seems like we didn’t want to bust a gut to keep him, something our new manager could surely have intervened on if he had rated him. And it seems like not many others did either.

I’ve formed the impression that the “niggles” are the manager being politically correct on behalf of Dacky. I suspect he either can’t or has been too nervous to put in the intensity now required.

To those who have seen any of the friendliest: is our pre-match warm-up routine much different to Mowbray’s?

5 hours ago, arbitro said:

But we got £15m for Armstrong John, none of which was reinvested in players. We let three players with an estimated value of £8-10m walk for nothing and we are likely to spend money replacing them. Factor in their wages and it makes no sense whatsoever.

The only one that made no sense to me Tony was not taking £6 million for Rothwell at Christmas, now that was madness.

Nyambe, the market has decided, wasn’t worth much at all if the best club that will take him for free is Wigan. Lenihan I think should have moved - his last shot at a big contract. If he’d stayed and Phillips takes his place in a years time, then we’d have been paying £1.1m/year for a benchwarmer.

So many counter-factual scenarios, only one of which was selling all 3 for £10 million and that money being reinvested. Maybe we wouldn’t have spent any of it but still own the training ground, who knows under these clowns?

Obviously the outcome looks bad, but then getting a headline £15 million for a player who, it turns out, was perhaps really worth 1/3rd of that, has turned out to be daylight robbery in our favour.

6 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

The equivalent of that this season would be Gallagher scoring 30. I wouldn't say we had lost four such key performers at this stage a year ago either.

Maybe lightning will strike twice but as things stand I'd treat it as exceptionally unlikely.

The one variable in the equation is that at least it isn't Mowbray so that gives room for a good old dollop of blind  optimism I suppose regardless of the recruitment situation, or rather lack thereof.

C’mon Simon, we lost 40 goals last year with Armstrong and Elliott and Bucko was just a lightweight kid who needed a loan, allegedly. 

The biggest reason for optimism in my mind is that whoever we bring in is being brought in because they play the system the manager wants. None of the “needing to learn the way we play” nonsense.

50 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Not sure why the usual suspects, and some who should no better, are gloating about the possibility of Nyambe ending up at Wigan.

If it happens, it will probably be a bit of a disappointment for  the player. However the fact would remain that if it happens Wigan would have a bloody good full back on their hands at Championship level.

We have no-one!

This 'Nothing to be worried about" approach from some posters is getting somewhat grating now. It's almost like they are revelling in the Club's misfortune and our angst. It's the sort of thing you'd say to take the piss out of a Burnley fan  if they'd sold fifteen players and not brought anyone in.

Sure, if we make four stellar signings over the next eleven days to replace Nyambe, Lenihan, JPVH and Rothwell then come back and tell us "We told you so!" as presumably the usual raft of loanees will be coming in last minute regardless.

Until then however............

Until then however, what? Seemingly wallow in moaning on here every day? It obviously deeply matters to you who we have on the books on July 18th, but how good were we looking this day last year? Armstrong was halfway out the door, no one had any idea Brereton would score 20 by Xmas and JPVH was nowhere in sight (plus branded as an untested kid when he rocked up in Sept.)

The Armstrong hole looked a lot bigger a year ago than the Nyambe hole does today imo.

5 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Nyambe is such a strange player in that he totally polarises opinion more than basically anyone else I can remember. People now are even creating narratives of his agent totally hanging him out dry as a result of the strong link to Wigan.

Defensively, he is not far off the very best at this level one on one. Many will tell you that being a full back first and foremost is about defending (I would side towards that more) and as a result think Nyambe is absolutely brilliant. Conversely, those who don't rate him (a few of which are the usual suspects in terms of defending every move the club makes therefore this fits their narrative) will understandably point out that as an attacking full back or indeed especially as a wing back he is atrocious and probably as poor as you will find at this level, with a nod to competition for that over on Luton's left side.

In reality I would argue that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, full backs especially at Championship level will likely be either suspect defensively or very conservative but not usually to the extent that Nyambe is which means that he is very useful but equally has a limit to how far up he can play.

@Miller11 I wouldn't argue that we are stronger with Nyambe than without but I would qualify those findings somewhat by pointing out how poor our alternatives are in that position.

His big strength is defending against a winger running at him with the ball. His defensive positional awareness is, imo, poor. The players who do well against him do so because he has no idea where they are.