Disagree on all 3 counts. McFadz I'd be ok with 6 months and a 6 month extension option. His legs will go by January I suspect. Gally isn't good enough, but January showed we could probably extend and sell for a million. Even so, any wage savings will likely vanish and we won't get the funding needed to sign a bog standard forward, which is what he is. Dolan is good enough for us at this level and whilst he frustrates at times is criminally underrated. Can we do better? Probably, with more money and/or better scouting, but we don't have those things. Even if we did sign someone better, he's still perfectly good enough to be a squad player.

Might have distracted him though

That's not quite right. If we lose, it doesn't matter by how many. A Birmingham win would give them a better goal difference than us by at least 2. Sheff W wouldn't need to win, a draw would put them a point above us. And Plymouth winning would put them a point above us, goal difference won't matter. The only way goal difference could change in a way that matters is if we lose, Plymouth and Birmingham win, but Sheff W lose too. In that case, we would need to lose by 11 goals more than they did, which realistically is nearly impossible. So really, the amount we lose by is irrelevant. Also, if we draw we are safe no matter what.

The real question is if he's at a fantastic club with fantastic players and supported by fantastic fans, why have results been utterly shit?

Dunno, we managed to balls up Ethan Brierley and that cost very little.

Do you go around your ex's to see how they play then? 😂

Whilst I think he had a better record than suggests, I don't think that second statement is close to true. The current debt is about 200 mill. I don't think we were getting anything like 100 mill from selling Dack, Brereton, Rothwell and maybe getting a bit more for Armstrong (even that one is predicated on if he was fully contracted at the time, rather than the actual timing being any different). More like 35-40, assuming we didn't replace them.

Exactly. I'm finding the misinterpretation a bit baffling personally, but hey. I never said it was proactive, ambitious, etc, and I went to pains to point out that I wasn't backing Venkys, that they're incompetent, and that the need to put money in was necessitated by their incompetence. Yet still people seize on things and go off on tangents. Fact is, Venkys have spent 200 million (ish, I don't have the exact figure). They haven't put any money in since November. Their ineptness plus putting money in has put us in the shit situation we have been in. Their ineptness plus zero money being put in will only be worse (unless it results in them fucking off of course, but that's a great intangible for now).

That's what the books say.

So what's the 200 million they've injected if it's not support? Don't get me wrong, they're a fucking cancer but it's not in doubt that they've supported us financially, even if much of that need is from their own colossal fuckups. The fuckups aren't going away, so I'd like the money to come back.

True, but Wharton won't be at Palace long. Will depend where he ends up.

You think none of those 14/15 players are the keepers? Tbh I'd agree with him on that if it's the case (he seems like somebody who is happy with all the players no matter what, but I'm sure that's a facade). But I can't agree that 14 or 15 players are trustworthy tbh. And I don't think he's getting any money for keepers without a keeper sale. Even that may be optimistic given our recent history... priority will be replacing Szmodics though, with whatever crumbs drop from that sale, if any.

Come on Chaddy, you know there's nothing 'deffo' about it. Remember you've made plenty of predictions with that certainty before that have proven wrong, as we all do. Personally I think the odds are low that we recruit there. Money is likely to be limited, and we already have two keepers we spent fees of 500k upwards on. One of them got a new contract last summer and one was signed last summer. There are many areas of the pitch that need improvement especially when we lose Szmodics and the loanees. I doubt the club will see it as a priority within the constraints, and I don't expect them to move for a keeper unless they sell one. I can't see who we would sell one to.

In fairness, we haven't been battered game after game. We've mostly just had shit keepers in the sticks. A quality, consistent keeper would have had us at least 10 points higher in the league, probably up to 15 points when we consider some of the horror shows and the added confidence from them not happening, which would put us anywhere from 13th to 9th at the moment. Of course, when you take out Sammie next season, it probably puts us right back where we are! However, I would agree Johanson is likely to get far better offers than us, especially at that bargain bin price. He was being very well spoken of earlier in the season, and I think I heard he was being rated in the 5 million bracket?

Never said you said it would. Point is if he is fit enough to warm up with the first team but didn't play, he really should be in the u21s the next day. Not going to develop just doing training and warm ups.

Not sure why that stopped him playing in the u21s.

My point wasn't that it can't happen, it's that it's unlikely. The bookies agree.

I'm still standing by what I've been saying for about 3 weeks I think. We'll scrape up by the skin of our balls, primarily because other teams around us suck, and go down next season. We might enter the bottom 3 briefly on the final day, but I don't see it very likely we go down. Only need one of three shit teams to fuck up. Two of them need at least a win, too. Those same two have LL and DD results from their previous two games.

You can feel sure of that, but you can't actually be sure of that. We have said this after all of the departures you mentioned, and yet somebody always has. You do feel like eventually that luck has to run out though.

It really was stupid to keep putting him in when he kept having to be brought off the game before. Pretty obvious his body was about to give in.

Twats and cunts.

I'm not a tin foil hat type, but all the court timings have been suspicious to me. The whole thing started in a summer window and we had to change all our plans about halfway through it, with the new plan being almost nothing. Then we got the funds released, outside a window, which kept the lights on, probably paid for our minor outlays, and gave us hope these court meetings would be routine in discharging the funds, settling our nerves. The next one was set for near the end of January, so that we couldn't do much before then due to the uncertainty but then should be able to have a little splurge near the end. Instead it got delayed to March and we sold a player for 18 mill but still spent nothing. The March one wasn't suspicious as such, but did buy time agains major widespread discontent whilst giving the impression it would be sorted soon and the summer could be 'normal'. Then it got delayed again, which seemed really strange, until August. Once more falling in the middle of a window, except this time we won't be able to do anything in advance of it really. But once more it will keep some of the suckers happy with notions that it's gonna be released soon and then we'll do business. I expect another delay or even a rejection (oh but we will appeal don't worry!). Maybe we do get a small approval for it, covering what should have been the January cash injection, whilst having to wait for the newest tranche at yet another TBD (To Be Delayed) court hearing. It all makes me question whether Venkys really have made an enemy of the government or quite the opposite. The court hearings and their timings all seem perfect for owners who don't want to invest more money but would like to keep a chunk of the plebs from getting restless. I'm sure there was a comment from Waggott or the club recently claiming that all of this won't affect Rovers anymore, but that it's affecting their whole business. Which is not only an immediate contradiction, but as far as we've heard over here, the entire thing happened because of us (or at least the iffy accounting they used after buying a house over here saying it was a Rovers business expense essentially), and wholly revolves around sending investment/supporting funds abroad. Which we require, and some of their businesses may, but a lot of their business won't.

At least I might get slightly less people, when I tell them I'm a Rovers fan and mention the venkyscum, asking me in shock 'they still own you?!?' Ahhh, if only reality matched the perceived reality in their heads, where apparently Venkys fucked off years ago....

Technically even earlier than that, in 1881, though seems 1888 was when the first true electric car was made. I'd heard about these Victorian era EVs before, and that they were actually viable competitors to combustion cars for a while, but I couldn't remember how they ended up not making the grade, so I looked it up and found this article with a history of the EV: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle Some interesting highlights include setting speed and distance records early doors, notably the first road vehicle to break the 62 mph barrier, in 1899. In the 1910s there was a vehicle with a 110 mile range, although it could only hit 20 mph. And exchangeable batteries (where you just swap your drained battery for a fully charged one) were proposed as long ago as 1896 and was provided between 1910 and 1924. That's a concept that still has some legs these days, as this is what a company called Nio do to get around charging times (I don't think this one will pan out in the long term though). Also, the first crewed vehicle to drive on the moon, the Lunar Rover, was an EV. Why did they fail? I'll just give the cliff notes to avoid boring people with another lengthy post. The decline started in the 1910s and 1920s. More petrol was found. Many more roads were built, so longer journeys were possible the EVs didn't have range for. Charging infrastructure wasn't really there on the scale needed for long trips. They were best suited to cities because they were slower and couldn't travel as far. Gasoline cars overcame some of their disadvantages - they no longer needed a time-consuming and dangerous hand-crank to start, and mufflers made them quieter. Henry Ford mass produced ICE cars rather than EVs, making them a lot cheaper. Some of these same problems exist in the EV landscape now, but not as extremely, and they're being constantly worked on. There were no climate change issues to further spur this on. I can't help but think though - if the lithium-ion battery had been invented way back then, instead of lead-acid, would we all have been driving EVs now our whole adult lives? Of course, this was in the days before effective renewables, so we'd still have had a lot of (but less) pollution.

That's actually something I'm interested in myself, as I've wanted instrumentals for a relatively underground artist for something I intend to do later in the year and I don't think I'll be able to find them ready-made. I've been assuming something like that must exist, but hadn't got to the point of looking it up, so appreciate you mentioning one you've worked with that can be relied on. I see it's free too! Can it be used to keep some vocal elements in place, like if you wanted to keep the chorus, or some kind of 'background' voices etc?