bluebruce

If a man can fall out with Delia he will probably fall out with Venkys too...or is that the one benefit of absent owners, they're not there for people to fall out with?

Whether you rate Dolan or not (and you're wrong) you have to admit we got a good deal there. Young player with room to improve, pace, able to compete at this level when on form...for free, and tiny wages. You tend to know the Preston youth setup pretty well, any on the released list that you do rate?

Yep he's not getting any younger and costing plenty. I'd shunt for nothing if anyone was fool enough to buy.

I'm fairly indifferent, but on balance I'd probably release him. He's probably lost momentum and motivation after not being given the loan he should have had, when he should have had it. But his failure in the third Scottish tier at 21 tells me he isn't going to make the grade. If he were someone else's 21 year old player we'd be saying no thanks after that.

Was on the bench against Bournemouth.

Lol even he had to switch his type of keeper role this season, from the pass-playing sweeper keeper to the more traditional long punts and not coming as far off his line. He particularly struggled with the long punts. Although I don't fault Mowbray for that one in truth, it might not suit TK's best game, but we couldn't continue with the tippy tappy sideways crappy we tried all of last season.

I reckon he is probably better than we've seen, due to injury and being played in the wrong position a fair bit. But what we have seen certainly doesn't warrant a large outlay. I'd not be outraged by a tiny fee in our usual 200-300k ish region and modest wages, but I very much doubt either of those things would be possible anyway. With his injury record as an additional concern though, I should think we can do better for even that kind of money. As I said at the time we loaned him, we were absolutely never going to pay the rumoured 3.5 million for a right back unless we got promoted and he had excelled. We were having his club on about the possibility so they'd authorise the loan, and maybe to cover the 'promoted and he excelled' scenario.

Tbf though, the CEO could do with a good punching.

All the more reason to avoid him - we are gubbins when we play on Sky!

Selective reasoning. We are not talking about just this season, but a pattern of selection which, if I were Nyambe, would certainly piss me off. The damage was done before this season IMO. And it ignores the times he was subbed off in favour of some non-RB or other.

That's not true, most of them belonged in the tip.

Well unless they told the PR department and board members what the situation with his contract was, as well as telling them to communicate it to Mowbray, I've no idea what they're upset about. It's kinda like how Amber Heard fired her PR team after the first week of that case apparently, as if it was their fault she cut off his finger, was recorded saying nobody would believe him because he was a man, and literally shat the bed.

Nyambe has deserved to start in quite a few games where he didn't. Hopefully we can all agree on that. Whether that happened through intentional victimisation, idiotic management, or Nyambe being a nice humble lad who rarely kicks up a fuss so he is often the one to make way for whoever the manager feels the need to wedge in...it's still mismanagement, it's still unfair on Nyambe, and it only makes sense that he would have wanted to move away from Mowbray. (I'm aware the humble lad scenario could be resolved by the player kicking up a fuss rather than leaving, which is a form of standing up for himself anyway, but I've certainly met people who would rather quietly leave a place, situation or person than confront it)

Fair enough, it's a good game, I just hope he knows it's addictive, and that Sam Gallagher at RB won't work there either.

They would know, if you shared. Just saying.

Aye, DoF should never be done as 'incumbent manager moves to DoF role'. It just undermines the authority of the new manager, as the guy previously running the ship is still hanging around and has some (what often seem poorly defined) powers. There is less confusion and split loyalties when someone comes from outside with a clearly strictly DoF brief.

He does have a tendency to ramble about pointless tangents, so I was clinging to this hope also. He just waffles so much it's hard to tell what he really intends, and whether comments match his actual 'strategies' or are random brain farts he had during an interview.

Yeh, it's not, because the LT write confusingly. But on reflection (and after not finding old quotes matching on google) I think it is from now. I think they were just recalling it as a time he was out of work before and how it affected him. They need a much better editor.

No I didn't miss it. Did you miss this bit preceding the quote? Mowbray has been with Rovers since February 2017, replacing Owen Coyle in the hotseat. He had been without a club since leaving Coventry City six months earlier, and asked about missing the day-to-day involvement, he said: “Give me a few weeks and I’ll be craving organising something, or planning something, or preparing a session. “I hope to be in football management still for a long time because it’s what I do." Now I could be wrong, because the LT does write sloppy articles, but sounds to me like they're quoting him from after he left Coventry. Edit - yeh they may be new comments actually as I can't find them as old quotes on Google, it was how they read to me though. Nonetheless that isn't him confirming he will only do management, he's just expressing a 'hope' as he phrased it, and there is little reason to be rambling about a DoF's bright sides if he isn't interested. Nothing would surprise me with him, he's been caught saying words that don't match reality before. Maybe he wants to DoF for a year instead of taking a full break from the game, then go back to management, who knows. All I know is I'm concerned at the prospect of him sticking around.

Unless you're referring to an older interview or some quotes are missing, no, he didn't say that. What he said was: "All the other stuff, directors of football, I don't know, I've never done that. Maybe for a thought, it would be nice to be involved in football but not have the pressure to win on Saturday. "Obviously you want to win but it's not your fault, it's the manager's fault." Which is clearly speculating on the positives of being a DoF.

I'm really, really not liking that he is now fantasising in public about what being a Director of Football would be like. Fuck off Mowbray - if you're doing that, do it elsewhere.

I don't buy the arguments I've seen made about the manager and the contract rebels not wanting to agree anything before our league status was decided. That's what promotion wage rise clauses are for.

A fuller version of that quote: "My intention was loan players and out of contract players (won't play). "My vision is that 10, 12, 20 managers will be in the stand at Birmingham thinking they might apply for this job. They will want to watch these players and make opinions." I could be wrong, but it's crossed my mind that he could be acting spitefully in a way here. Mostly because every other season, when our season has been finished well ahead of time (usually much earlier than this) he has taken almost no advantage of that fact to blood players who could be our future, or even to drop the ones who are leaving. Suddenly he is leaving (even less reason for him to care about our future) and now we are going to focus on players who will still be here (inevitably including some youth players)? This, combined with how he immediately goes on to talk about the watching managers and who they'll want to see, makes me think that rather than looking to our club's future, he wants prospective managers to see the shell of a squad they're inheriting, which may well be accompanied with a defeat, to put the better ones off. Why, you might ask? A touch of spite at not being asked to stay on or even communicated with, and to preserve his legacy, as if we get some dosser next people will say 'see? should have kept Mowbray'. As I said, I could be wrong, I'm not stating this as fact before anyone jumps down my throat with 'conspiracy theory' shouts, as yes, it is just a theory. I just think it's suspicious he's never dropped several players before who wouldn't be here next season, once our season was effectively over, added to those remarks.

Say what you like but it's a hell of a coincidence. Less than a week after Mowbray says he is going, a contract rebel who we have repeatedly said on here doesn't get what he deserves under Mowbray, wants to sit down and talk again. Put whatever spin on it you like, but that's suspicious as hell to me and I think tells the story.

Haha! It is when you 'wonder' about it too. I heard Lenihan, Nyambe and Rothwell turned up to training today, so I guess they're signing new contracts then! Oh sorry, I mean, I wonder...