Dunno if you guys are aware of this, but it has affected me on both my laptop and phone for months now. If someone has quoted a user, we used to be able to click the little arrow on the top right of the quote box and be taken to the quote itself. This was very handy to quickly find the full context of the conversation (to see what the person they had quoted was replying to etc) and also for if we want to quote the person ourselves. Now clicking that arrow results in a page that says 'page not found' and usually crashes the tab too. Would be very appreciative if that could get fixed, would save me (and probably others) quite a lot of trawling.

I think it's a time for people to feel...however they feel about the appointment. I'm sure the poster you were talking to is absolutely also a Rovers fan that's wanting the best for the club and to see us succeed.

Ouch, that's far beyond what we can afford for a RB. Doesn't sound like he has been out of favour long enough for a significant drop in value, but transfrmarket really just plucks those figures out their arse.

1 point short of qualifying for a work permit. Would have to go to the exceptions panel.

Not sure why they felt the need to show some of those clips repeatedly through the video though. I'm sure one of the moves got shown in 4 different occasions! Looks like he could compensate for losing Nyambe's pace and stamina, with a bit more quality in the final third. Hard to gauge his defensive work though. Only 21 I see, nice! Lots of time to improve. Any thoughts what price range they might expect? Smashes the work permit points needed btw, with 28. Damn that calculator Joe posted is handy...I've bookmarked it. Also tells me he has played 62% of domestic minutes and 78% of European, so not THAT out of favour as he's getting more than any other RB they have. Unless he fell out of favour recently.

Nah, don't like that at all. Why should the 5 mins of stoppage time be treated any differently to any other 5 minutes in the game?

Just because we haven't lost those two in recent years (we are losing one right now though) doesn't mean we haven't leaked others. Dunn moved on, and I'm sure we have had at least two other u23 managers move on in the last few years. I think you've misunderstood what I meant by 'bosses'.

That's fine and all, I'm just not sure why you're telling me?

I've felt for years that something like this would be fairer and discourage time-wasting (although it should still be punishable, as some teams would still do things slowly to kill the momentum of the game). I've never understood why only injury time stoppage is added. I'd probably have said make it 2x40 mins, but then I read the article in this thread, which says research found the average Prem game only had the ball in play for 55 minutes!! So I guess even 2x35 mins would leave us all going home at least 15 minutes later each time. I also wonder if a change like this would make it harder for tv companies to schedule things, as the match length in real terms would largely depend on how often the ball went out and how quickly or slowly teams got it back in play, could add a fair bit of time variable. And we know how powerful tv companies are in modern sport...

Wow, that's dumb, I hope it doesn't get past the trial stage. The logic is dumb too. They want to do it to speed it up?! It will probably slow it down! They will essentially be free kicks, which I wouldn't say are taken any quicker than throw-ins. In fact, further up the pitch they take a lot longer than throw-ins. It's also punishing to full backs who block off a player's run down the flank with a block or interception, which is a big part of the game. Suddenly they're basically giving a corner away when they do it close enough to the goal. Why should players bother beating their man anymore when they can just kick it off them? This will achieve nothing positive. I also just found out from that article that Wenger is FIFA's Head of Global Football Development. At least his suggestion for the idea involves a 5-second time limit on taking it. But...why make it a kick? Why not just put a 5-second time limit on throw-ins?

Thanks Joe, I knew you had all this info! So the Norweigan league would be Band 6? That appears to make it borderline impossible to qualify from there unless you play for one of the top teams in the league who make European competition, and you play regularly in it. Such players will be known throughout Europe and be very unlikely to be available for a few hundred K like we like to go for. Funnily enough, I wonder if Glimt might actually be our best bet for a bargain from there, since they'll be poorer resourced. Obviously Broughton knows the players there well. I gather some are linked with fairly big moves though. Also, you'll know this, but unless it's changed there are also points available for being an international, even at youth level. I'm guessing you left that out to save space.

Wow, we really leak academy bosses in recent years! I'm going to take it as a compliment on the whole, that our successful academy draws attention to them, but we always seem to replace them with internal promotions. That can't keep working indefinitely. I hope we headhunt this time. It's also a slight concern we never seem to be able to keep them, although they're probably getting better job offers and money tbf. I wonder if it has anything to do with us appointing a new DoF with a clear focus on the academy. As Head of Academy Coaching, he was already under Stuart Jones, maybe he felt like he was going a further rung down the ladder of importance and influence on Academy issues. Maybe the timing is coincidental though. Do you know what club and what role he is leaving for?

Hmm, I would think most marketing types that football clubs employ would gain that experience at football clubs? I think it's different from most product marketing in that a knowledge of football and football fans is an important prerequisite. And I'm not sure many clubs at our level have the types of inbetweeny roles do they? I wonder if any such roles existed at Bournemouth for example (which I think is where someone said he came from), or if it was just one or more Marketing Managers underneath the Head of Marketing. If no such other roles existed there, the Marketing Manager probably does work a role similar to those, as nobody else is there to fill it. Tbh I'm not at all worried by the jump in this case, especially since our marketing was shite anyway. What concerns me a bit though is the current trend in the club to appoint people to roles they've never done before instead of hiring experience. A lot of this is internally (which stinks of jobs for the boys, as well as being cheap) but we just hired a Director of Football who has only been an Academy Director. Now that I think is a big step up and his role could have major implications for the club. People deserve chances in new roles, nobody would get to senior roles otherwise, but doing lots of it through the club risks an experience void.

We have two. We can't really say Carter is better. In their first team appearances for us, I'd say THB did better than Carter did. I'm optimistic about the latter still though. THB didn't do well at Stoke huh...probably means he is still available for a Championship loan? Probably doesn't fit the new style, more of a battler from what I remember, otherwise tbh I'd consider having him back, given our likely restraints, if we were signing a better CB too.

It's great to have the manager saga resolved, Mowbray replaced, and it not be any of the numerous losers that we were linked with (although also not one of the best ones we were linked with either). I also think the combination of foreign head coach and DoF could be the right model to go with moving forward. Whilst great players don't automatically make great managers, Tomasson has enough reputation from his playing time to command a bit of respect and maybe act as a draw for new signings. He seems a much more positive personality than Mowbray, and being early into his managerial career will really want to prove himself. This combo should expand our knowledge and contacts in Scandinavia considerably, which has often been an under-exploited market (unfortunate that Brexit now makes it far harder to exploit though). It could have been done a bit earlier, but with the way we are ran it could also have dragged on another couple of weeks and crippled us in the market. All of that said, I do have reservations. The more I think about it, my main reservation is that the DoF is Gregg Broughton. I think you can get away with an inexperienced DoF or an inexperienced (relatively) manager, but combining the two, at a club that has never used this model before, with both starting at the same time, and a lot of player trading needed, is not the best recipe for success. Either Broughton could have done with a more tried and tested manager to support him in senior player acquisition (which he has never done before), or Tomasson could have done with a tried and tested DoF to let him take charge of purely training and tactics whilst he gets used to a new club, new players and (managerially) a new country. Broughton clearly did a good job in directing the development of youngsters at Glimt, and with our own excellent academy and reliance upon it, it can only be a boon for our youth development moving forward. The problem is his experience only extends as far as what Stuart Jones is already doing, but that isn't the role he is taking up. He will have to sign senior players for us now, primarily in a market he hasn't worked in for a few years (as work permits limit what we can do in Europe, especially in Norway), at a time when we basically need to replace nearly half a squad on likely a low budget. A low budget which may suddenly bloom late in the window if BBD is sold late. The youth work is a plus, as I say, but his personal work on it could take years to bear fruit. Hopefully Gregg turns out to be as skilled at signing (and probably negotiating) for senior players as he seems to have been with youth players, and my worry is for nought. I do have some reservations about Tomasson too...not so much about the man himself, despite not having too much managerial experience yet (as he does have some and has had recent success, so it's a far cry from appointing someone like Ferguson). It's more that I worry he might not be the right fit for the club right now. From reading posts on here at least, it seems he likes to play 4-4-2 and possession football. IMO this will require more signings, as I don't think our squad is well set up for either of these things. I've nothing against 4-4-2, I think people are wrong to treat it as obsolete when it's merely unfashionable. But, we own ZERO proper wingers. Assuming he wants players who can beat a man and put a good cross in, we don't have a single player who meets that criteria. Under Mowbray we have essentially assembled wide attackers who wouldn't really work in a traditional 4-4-2. If the 4-4-2 he plays isn't the traditional one with proper wingers, this might not be an issue. But if it is, we need to sign two new wingers. Probably three so we're not left unable to get crosses in if there are injuries. We can probably 'wing it' with the 4th you would usually need to cover both being injured, from our current crop. Using the previous formations I'd have said we only needed to bring in one wide player to replace Khadra and Poveda. We also don't have the players suited to possession football. We demonstrated this amply in the 2020/21 season, although of course the personnel and thankfully the manager have changed since then. To my mind, only the following players are really capable in this style: Buckley, Dack, Kaminski. Arguably, Travis will be OK (because even a possession side needs a spoiler, and his basic sideways passing is unremarkable but acceptable), and Wharton and Pickering probably wouldn't struggle to fit in but aren't exceptional at it and of course just defenders so won't impact it that much anyway. There are two big pluses here though which make this less of a worry for me. Firstly, the new manager, who has had recent success playing that style, can hopefully implement it far better than dour TM, whose sole tactic with possession was just to keep the ball and get the possession stat at the end of the match as high as possible. He had an absolute lack of invention when it came to creating space and deliveries in the final third. I don't think he understood possession football at all. We just passed it around the edge of the box and nobody really made movement to open space, then eventually we would lose it, the other team goes down the other end and has a proper effort at goal. Secondly, the void of players is actually an advantage for switching the style. A lot of new players (hopefully) coming in means we can sign the players who DO suit the style. The core of Dack and Buckley for the middle is enough to work with if we are bringing in some quality (though talented ball players might be hard to get with our budget). We have lost Rothwell and will probably lose BBD, these were two of the players key in making the counter-attack our most effective style. So in a way it's a chance to transition approach without wasting the best qualities of two of our key players. If Tomasson knows how to do this approach properly (which, the signs are there for) and we recruit properly (that's the part that worries me as per above) this could still turn into a massive positive and the good times may return. We await the results with baited breath!

I meant what roles.

Why, what comes between marketing manager and marketing executive in a marketing operation as small as ours must be?

He quite clearly is. The post was balanced.

I can't remember a single thing Mark Venus ever said. Did he even do interviews?

I see no reason why that would be the case. I would get it if we were a multi-billion pound multinational organisation, but our marketing operation really won't be that big. It's also surely no more of a jump than from the standard marketing role to marketing manager.

It's actually more a milestone of how much we waffle a load of shit when nothing is happening. The unacceptable amount of time passed before the appointment is the milestone of negligence.

As I've mentioned a few times through this process, we are signing a manager, not a player. That said, if he knows how to translate that knowledge, particularly the movement, into tactics and coaching, it will be a plus. If he mostly played off instinct, or doesn't know how to communicate what he did, it's meaningless. Being a disciplined hard-worker is definitely a plus in a manager's psych profile though.

I agree on Hanley. His first good season with us was his last one. It was especially annoying that we had put up with him being a shite liability for years and then as soon as he got decent he went. Hard disagree on Cairney, who was clearly class and hampered by being played out of position (yet still managing to make meaningful contributions) and on Raya, who was blatantly worth a fair bit more than we got for him. With foresight, not hindsight, I said both were terrible deals for us. So they proved.

I can't see them wanting any less than 5 million for him. That said, we were told City would want something like 8+ mill for Tosin, then he moved to WBA for about 2.

The assistant manager role is free. So of course he won't have Lowe, Benson and Johnson as second in command even if he can't shunt them out.