I take it back. Their keeper's hands cleaned out Leonard and he's describing it the other way. Penalty squeezed under the keeper, 1-1.

I called exactly where that free kick was going. Dowling shouldn't have been stood over to the other side. His positioning gave him no chance.

This 'kids football' as RF99 likes to call it...well it seems to mean a lot more to these kids than it does in some of the first team games I've seen. The intensity is there.

Commentator doesn't seem to be a biased bellend. That's refreshing!

O'Grady-Macken shouldn't be missing that.

Looking at the stand on the opposite side, if they're the same then it's probably about as high as it can go without extra equipment they're not gonna fork out for a youth game.

That's more like it. I didn't think there'd be two young lads called Tom Bloxham playing at this level, so I didn't look around long. Not a common surname. Cheers. I thought when they named him on the stream I may be wrong, as that's not a 6 ft 5 player!

Think I read recently he's just coming back to training, so maybe. Not named in tonight's U21 team though, and I think they said something about needing to build him up for game time, so I'd assume he'll be a no for tomorrow. Shame, he was exceptional last time we played Blackpool.

Who is that on the photo? I'm bald and I've got better hair than that!

Was about to post this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bloxham_(footballer) 2 goals in 24 appearances whenever that was last updated. One of them was in the FA Cup against Stratford Town, the other was in the league. 6 ft 5 makes him a big lad for sure. But at 19, I'm not sure this one fits the profile of what we should be looking at. By that age then, unless they've been in the academy of a Championship level or above club, where games are hard to come by, I'm expecting more than 2 goals in 24 apps for a League One outfit, one of them being against non-leaguers. Sounds like another James Brown, Brad Lyons, Tom White type signing. Where they're coming in a bit too late for a youth team signing and just realistically aren't going to make it here even if they do have a bit of talent.

I find it hard to believe you read the forum for years without posting. You definitely have the posting bug now! Good to see your contributions.

Yeh it's been discussed - in the absence of actual information it's been a difficult one to understand. Nixon's original article where the claim came out was (typically) unclear, as he's not a very good writer. He basically said something like they want to know what happened in the event of relegation. This has led to speculation in subsequent articles and in discussions on what that actually means. I summed it up somewhere else in the thread but basically it could mean: 1) Would we still sign him for 10 million if we got relegated to League One this season? 2) If we got promoted and bought him, would his contract include a wage drop in the event of relegation back to the Championship? I think there was a third possible interpretation that I mentioned in my other post but I can't remember it. Both are, as you say, fucking stupid. Obviously relegation isn't promotion and from legal or common sense perspectives I can't think of any way to justify asking that question. We also aren't obliged to include relegation wage drop clauses in our contracts, so whilst there's a thin argument for asking that to help safeguard the club, since it isn't compulsory it shouldn't be used to hold up the deal. Especially since holding up the deal damages the club, and also because if we won the £170 million jackpot of the Prem we would have more than enough money to cater for LOB's high wage in a subsequent relegation, as long as we didn't blow it all in other, unrelated deals. In either of these instances I should think the EFL would be on very thin ice in any courtroom or arbitration that doesn't have EFL officials presiding over it. But it could be the 'leaked' information is incomplete, completely wrong, or means something else, or there could be another factor with more weight behind it that kills our case, so there's no point us getting too irate or self righteous until we have official information.

I was just talking in terms of the actual Brereton outlay. It wouldn't entirely pay for the outlay on another striker. That's without considering that it would be a multi-year deal. However yes it might create enough space in the budget for us to sign a striker...presumably that space would also be there the next season though after we've had another season from a lad who is almost guaranteed to notch 10-22(+?) goals in this league without even taking up the central striking berth. I'd be fine to keep him another year at those wages, as I can easily envision us signing someone else with the money who isn't any good, and unless a loanee, would burden us for more than a season if they weren't any good. The 'will he won't he' saga continuing would be an annoyance, but I'm more interested in what yields results. Another thing is it gives us more time to resolve the issue. We have ostensibly been looking for a new actual striker since the summer, presumably we will continue to regardless of BBD being here or not. Say we sign someone in the summer, it gives us a season to see if they're any good. If they are, it may reduce our desperation when Brereton leaves, if they're not, we've had two rolls of the dice by the subsequent summer instead of one. For me we should have tried to get some money for him in January, but that was only because I had given up on the playoffs actually happening. In fairness, that isn't something the club itself should be doing (although our lack of transfer activity suggests otherwise!). As for my ex...haha none of them are up for it anymore, exhausted those channels so to speak! There's only one I'd really like back if given the choice anyway, but c'est la vie!

The more I read your comments actually, the more I'm starting to see you view it as a case of 'identity' and a word to replace 'fan' in that context. That's not what anybody is driving at. Our identity as it relates to Rovers is of course as fans. Stakeholder is something else altogether, that fans are one chunk of, and whilst you're claiming to understand it, you very clearly aren't. So far at least. I don't think anybody can explain it to you any clearer than we all have though, so I'll leave it there as I'm sure it's gotten tiresome for some.

You're talking with authority there, but you have none and you're simply wrong. Being a fan does automatically make you a stakeholder. Nobody will force you to use the word in reference to yourself, but it's true. I don't refer to myself as a stakeholder (though I might in the appropriate context) but I'm aware the definition applies. It's a bit like insisting you're 'a man' and not 'a male homo sapiens'. Nobody is expecting you to refer to yourself as a male homo sapiens, but you still fit the definition anyway. I don't know why you're choosing to die on this hill, other than sheer obstinacy.

15k a week and a 750k transfer fee? What decent striker at this level would be available for that? Not to say it can't be done, but you have to take a fair gamble there. In England you'd be looking at someone washed up, or who hasn't fulfilled their early promise, and hope you can make them come good. Might be a few more promising propositions than that in Europe, but the work permit regulations make that number much smaller. To use the analogy, I'd often rather ask the ex for a quick shag than go chatting up several women until one wants a relationship and hoping she's any better than the ex! But then, I'm jaded 😂

What have Blackpool supporters got to do with anything?

I fully stand by it.

That wouldn't be the correct context for the word. Fans are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are fans. (In a way it would actually be more damning, as stakeholders refers to a much wider group of parties, so it would be like saying nobody has a vested interest in their club at all! But obviously the rhythm doesn't fit and it's too technical for a football ground 😛 ) We're both. It doesn't matter whether you like it or not. The word exists, has a definition, and a fan of a football club falls under it. No matter how much it 'wasn't like that in your day' or whatever. You seem to think it's just a straight swap word for 'fans', but it absolutely isn't. A fan is one category of stakeholder, but stakeholder is a far more encompassing term. Nobody is calling themselves a stakeholder instead of a fan, either, in a general sense. But it's a term that can have an appropriate use in the right context (a wider business context), sometimes when referring to fans. You're not going to start hearing it replace matchday parlance, don't worry. Managers aren't going to start thanking the stakeholders for being a good crowd today etc. Other people seem to think it's interchangeable with shareholder, and so it only applies if you part own the club. That's wrong too.

It's everybody affected by the dealings of a business. In the broadest use it can mean pretty much anyone, including society at large, governments etc. And in that sense it can become a bit meaningless. But it can be used more specifically and there is a whole school of thought around it, so your summation probably isn't quite right. It can be used in a legitimate context. For BRFC, the external stakeholders would essentially be fans when used on this board, or the local area, council, the league etc if used more widely. Like almost any word, it can mean different things in different contexts. Some people are definitely misusing the term here, but encouraging companies to consider stakeholders is probably a beneficial thing for society. Even if most of the time it probably doesn't make a company act any differently. Reminding customers and other groups that they have a 'stake' in what happens in a sense (not a financial one for customers or fans, other than spending money with the company for goods or services) can be empowering for them too and encourage them to put appropriate pressure on companies. Fully expecting to catch flak here from people who have finished expanding their vocabulary years ago and don't want to hear any new words or new uses of words, as though this isn't how language evolved for millennia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_theory

Probably as much chance of him doing that as there is of him stopping predicting Rovers to win every match by a landslide. I'm pretty sure he does both things to wind people up, as he has been asked many times to stop, so you might be best just not rising to it.

Like who? I can't think of two players who would come here for 15k p/w who are better than Brereton. Hell I can't think of one.

Best resource I have for that is FM20, where Sevilla's squad starts the game with 15 players earning 30k or more. 9 of them earning between 43-110k. Not gospel of course but they research thoroughly and wage figures usually seem to be ballpark. Given he is a free transfer that would ordinarily cost 8 figures, I'd be astonished if he's not being offered at least 40k. In fact if he isn't, he would really be advised to look elsewhere. There are Championship clubs who would pay him that.

We have been paying circa 20k for our top earners for a while, it's more like a 50% increase. We were also paying that (30k) to Rhodes nearly a decade ago, and we all know how inflation works in football. It's a lot for us, sure, but a one-year deal is hardly a huge commitment. It's 1.5 million on a player we were rating in the 20 million plus bracket. We could probably put him up for sale in the summer for 3 million even if he only scored another 5 goals this season, and have a long list of suitors. Moreover, as I said earlier, it's highly unlikely to be more than Villareal are offering (probably a nice signing on bonus thrown in over there too, wouldn't be surprised if that alone was worth more than our offer).

I can't see how it would do that unless we got incredibly lucky in the market.