Travis hitting the ground with his hand there after going down, suggests it might be bad...

I'm actually flabbergasted that Diaz and Butterworth up front in a two does appear to be the plan tonight. It's weird how this manager had stopped even bringing him off the bench then suddenly starts him. Shame there is zero creativity in that midfield behind them, so if Butterworth ends up having no service it will be easy to justify dropping him again...I doubt TM would do something so cynical, but it's odd and I can see it ending that way whether intentionally or not.

They have started marking articles as 'Premium'. At first I thought this meant all the Premium articles (only one so far) would be behind a paywall. But after opening it, it suggests the Premium articles are free and the others cost money, I think. Premium also reduces advertising by 80% (so presumably their end improved profit can't be much even on the people who take it up, as those will be the ones who read tons anyway and generate more ad revenue). But I'm at work so will have to read the full article about how it works later.

The other day I read an article about the Wharton brothers. It described a match for each of them, and it wasn't at all clear what matches they were talking about. For Adam it didn't even mention the opposition, and for Scott it talked about a 3-0 defeat to Manure, and it wasn't clear from it that this was our second 3-0 defeat to them recently, but in the u23 league this time. I spent quite a while on google trying to figure out wtf had actually happened (google hadn't updated the u18 results yet). There's zero chance of me ever giving them a penny, so all they're doing here is losing advertising money, from me at least and it looks like others. Their pay articles won't get opened, and over time I will probably migrate to Lancs Live, who have neither restricted the number of articles you can read, nor put up a paywall. If they can do it, why are the LT failing to make ends meet? That's the question they should be asking themselves, not how can they get more money out of customers.

They've clearly been to the Waggott School of Business. Motto: Charge too much, lose customers and lose money. Because fuck em, that's why.

Raya did it at Southport in the conference. That was half a season though not a month. Generally though I agree, non-league loans tend to worry me a bit as most of the time the player is pretty much never heard of again in any meaningful capacity. There is always a possibility of struggling to adjust to a club and a league in a short loan, especially for a young player either travelling or moving temporarily to another town, and if a player doesn't set the Northern Premier alight, then clubs in League Two who might have been keeping tabs are likely to switch off from them. I think it lowers their profile tbh. To be clear, I'm not saying it can't do a player good, I know there are examples where it has. Mostly at other clubs...

I'm confused by this, what do you mean? Is there some standoff with his agent? Why would that affect him playing, especially since we have played him sometimes? I feel it might be a joke I'm not seeing, or info I'm unaware of?

Personally I think it's different, yeh. Preston's youth players (which only goes up to u18 anyway?) aren't being showcased at as high a level. A player with the goals record Burns has this season in the top flight of the top u23s league for a team who aren't even performing that strongly in it this year should really be attracting the attention of teams at conference or even League Two level, typically. Any Manure, Chelski or City player with that record this season wouldn't have to drop to the Northern Premier I'm certain. Of course we can't force it, but we can circulate his name around teams. With the shambolic way we are ran these days, would anybody be surprised if we did no such thing and simply took the first offer that came along? Of course there are other factors, like how local the teams are, whether clubs have already sorted their forward options for the year etc. It could just come down to them not rating him if we have circulated his name, but that possibility worries me. I can only conclude Rigger is miles off in thinking he is our best attacker right now...I mean, I thought that anyway, but this weak loan move makes me wonder if the gap between his opinion and that of professionals (or semi pros in this case I guess) is wider than I thought.

I'd play the same team, except Pickering in for Edun if he is fit enough. And I'd only play Gally if he is looking fitter today, because he looked out of shape in the second half and his blunder cost us. Problem is Poveda has been crap and I'm not expecting Khadra (injured) or Butterworth (never gets on the pitch) to be fit enough. Tony will play 5 at the back though. I will be surprised (and pleased) if it's a back 4.

I think the bigger question with Burns is why the Northern Premier? Outside of the window he could still go a level higher than that. We either haven't been able to sort him a deal a level higher, which reflects badly on us, or no clubs in that league want him, which suggests he hasn't impressed enough yet (which would seem a bit odd since his goal record in the top u23 league has been fantastic this season).

Will admit I've not seen the lad play, but we could also do better, too, than bringing in a 25 year old who has only just started playing at League One level. CB isn't even an area I'd be looking to recruit next summer unless we do lose Lenihan. Him and Ayala as first choice with Wharton and Carter as understudies works for me for now. If we do recruit there to replace Lenihan I'd want someone who was either more proven or younger, preferably the former.

I think 5 at the back is going to be his standard approach now until 1) Injuries prevent it being feasible or 2) a bad run goes on for long enough that he changes out of necessity. He has always had a strange obsession with it despite it never working for us, and I suspected weeks ago that he was plotting it for when Van Hecke was fit. It was just something about how he said he wasn't worried about him being injured, and how he liked his passing style. When I combined it with how many CBs we would have when he and Wharton came back, it just gave me a feeling the 5 at the back crap was going to make a lengthy comeback. Shame, as we are generally garbage when we play it. Think it's death spiral time.

U23s tonked 3-0 by Manure (again, though this time in the league without as much experience in the Manure side). They are sat bottom third. For me, it's time Butterworth gets a game in the u23s again. TM clearly isn't going to use him much if at all - didn't get on again at the weekend despite SG and TD having barely trained, BBD having been rushed back and playing two days earlier abroad, Khadra being injured and Poveda having been shite so far. TM's comments suggested Butterworth was the only attacker who had consistently trained this week but he didn't even come off the bench. Khadra will be back shortly and DB will slip further down the pecking order. When he has come on this season he has looked exciting, but also flagged after not very long. I think he should play at least a game in the u23s firstly to build his match fitness, secondly so he can hopefully notch some goals to rebuild what I assume might be fading confidence, and thirdly because the u23s are frankly struggling and we don't want to risk dropping out of the top youth flight. Now that Burns has gone on loan they'll need the help more.

Cheers, the picture is clearer now. Yeh they will want to play up the Chilean angle, so they wouldn't call her half Chilean. Plus, she just is Chilean if she was born there and has Chilean nationality. Nearly all Chileans will be the descendants of immigrants anyway if you go back a while. And yeh, I would. I find myself wondering if the little brother in the picture is any good at kicking a ball around...

Is his mum 100% Chilean then? When the initial reports about him came out, I got the impression she was just born there or something, but now its sounding like she is entirely Chilean and emigrated. If so, it's a bit weird IMO that he didn't speak an iota of Spanish.

Cool but is he not gonna get done for vandalism?

Security?!? He's not the fucking US President, what the hell does he need security to travel to London for a game for? Anyway, can he not drive? I hope TM misspoke and means covid related security measures.

I don't know what kind of life you and Rigger lead, that you know these private jet makes and can even recognise one from a pic of the interior, but fair play.

I actually don't think we should even insure our players tbh. The one time we tried to actually cash an insurance policy, they wriggled out of it and I assume we will have had to pay the court fees. Waste of money.

I'd rather we added it to Nyambe's contract offer. Sick of seeing us plead poverty and then misallocate funds and cost ourselves money with other poor decisions (delayed and overpriced season tickets for example, and not tapping this new Chilean market). I would assume about a third of that cost would be the private jet, based on a quick google. We need him for Tuesday but I'm not sure it was too crucial he came off the bench for 20 minutes, so unless there wasn't a flight for a couple of days, this is a frivolous expenditure. The manager had even ruled him out until seemingly on the day, unless it was a ruse. I don't know if the rented accommodation mentioned is where he normally lives or some place more suitable for him to train during isolation, but I certainly don't see why he needs a 'luxury' car to drive him to and from London. Must be tons of normal taxis with perspex covid screens. If the rumour is true I can only hope some of the cost was footed by the Chilean football association as part of the deal we struck. The plane perhaps?

To put this into perspective, Rovers legend Alan Shearer, who once came third in the Ballon D'Or and blasted us to the Premiership title in 1995, had to wait until retirement before a street in Blackburn was named after him. Ben has been a Chilean international for less than 5 months. Official street name or not, it's becoming increasingly clear how mad for BBD the Chileans are. The fact the club are doing stuff all to take advantage of this is criminal incompetence.

Millwall and Barnsley we should have lost. Forest should probably have been a draw. I admittedly forget details of games after a while has passed, but from memory, I disagree on Luton. Late goal yes but not sure a draw wasn't a fair reflection. And Huddersfield probably a draw was fair. I actually thought today was a fair result too. I'd say Blackpool was a game of two halves though and we were good for a point but didn't get any luck. If you're just talking about how we should have played better rather than that how we played deserved better, there isn't a single team in the league who doesn't think they should have played better. I'm sure teams are upset with how they've defended against us, Cardiff in particular. Possibly I'm misunderstanding your point, but I think we are about where we deserve to be. If you mean the manager should be getting more out of us, I'd agree, but our points relative to squad level isn't one where I think we 'should' be much higher. I think a good manager would probably have extracted about 3 or 4 more points so far. Of course you can never know. Once or twice Tony's apparently batshit subs have paid off.

Jesus, I've just remembered Travis was playing when I read this comment!

I expect most teams in the league think they could have 6 points extra though. We could also have lost more points.

Dunno about that...our squad is thin and looking at it on paper I don't feel like it has any divine right to be in the top 3. I assume you mean if we hadn't dropped points from winning positions though. But every team does that sometimes. We would be higher than we are if we had a good manager though, I'll agree. Coventry look proof of that.