I'm sure you'll be posting your superior offering shortly.

Aye, it's a shame though. He has looked very good whenever I've seen him, and heard a lot of positives from when I haven't seen him.

What's the betting he starts tearing it up when there's a year left on that?

I know we have the two kids of course, but Lenihan definitely counts as experienced and Ayala is waiting in the wings. Nyambe is experienced by now for me, despite still being young. Pickering has over 160 career appearances. Even Wharton and Van Hecke had professional experience before now on loans in League Two and the Dutch leagues. But I was more talking in the sense that if it's important to have experience anywhere, those are the positions where having someone experienced is most effective. If Lenihan and Ayala were out, I'd suddenly be a lot less confident about a defence of Wharton, Van Hecke and Carter for any stretch of time, not that I think any of them are crap.

Agreed, it's one of those football mantras that sounds nice in theory, but the reality doesn't always match up. I want hungry players more than I want experienced ones. GK and CB are your most important positions in terms of where you need experience, and we have it there.

Why, Madame, is that you then?!?

Same. It's not just his own potential unavailability due to his stance, but the potential to pass it on to other players and have them miss out too.

Doesn't say what player would be swapped. Seems a dubious one. I guess Chapman maybe?

No. Once the window is closed, no recalls.

For 3 million or so? If we stay down, I doubt it. Maybe the BBD funds have been earmarked for it, but that's a large chunk of the likely income, when we may also need to replace DL and JR. And BBD.

Not just about this match but I'm not sure where to put this. I hope Pickering's injury is more the 4 weeks than the 6. If he missed 6 weeks from the injury date, he would be out for 8 games. We only have 21 games left, so that's more than a third of our remaining season. Then he would come back to play three rock hard games that he might not be fit for. Edun better be a capable deputy. I also struggle/dread to think who plays there if Edun gets an injury or a ban...maybe one of the new right backs could cover there briefly.

Drogheda not too happy about getting no money from us for James Brown. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19840301.drogheda-very-disappointed-blackburn-rovers-james-brown-move/ Agree with him that the rule of domestic clubs paying compensation, but not foreign clubs, is illogical. I'm sure we could have agreed to a minor sell on clause, even if only 5-10%. But in future they will still be entitled to a small development fee that we, or any of his future clubs, get for him.

Do you mean transfer rumours? The news is, we have signed James Brown and loaned out Sam Burns. I guess there's been enough about us probably signing Zeefuik now for it to be beyond just rumour. But transfer links...we usually end up with a thread where they go, most windows.

Tbh...and of course it's just highlights...reminds me of Buckley from those clips. Nicks the ball well and has a great range of passing. Physically sturdier than him though. As ever the question is, can he do the stuff on the highlights with any consistency (them all being from one month is promising though) and can he step up a level and do it against better players? For the right price though, wouldn't mind a punt. Hard to see how he gets past Dack to compete for that Buckley role, but perhaps capable of operating deeper.

Don't think anybody needs reminding of that, thanks. Other clubs dropping the ball, or having their arm forced on the odd player, does not negate our own failings. Nobody I've seen has been complaining about the moral outrage of it, just that we have allowed an unacceptable situation which has never happened to BRFC (on this scale, all at once) since the bosmans became a thing.

I'm not going to argue with you. You're not for persuading anyway, and quite frankly on this neither am I unless those contract offers and wages do become public which they won't. I'm very confident we could make them offers that they'd sign and which would give us more in asset value than they would cost, and that we are just being cheap whilst costing ourselves money as Waggott has shown repeatedly he is a short term financial thinker. I've no intention of having the board's 1,000th circular argument on this topic unless there's a prize on offer for the milestone.

Makes plenty of sense. Sell them at 18 months if they won't sign. Not BBD obviously, we are in a promotion chase. If we weren't I'd say maximise the sale. The other shocking option is to give them competitive contract offers so they actually sign. Sometimes there's no way around it but usually there is. And get them on proper contract lengths in the first place, what Nyambe was given last time was a joke.

Great is a stretch, but the sale itself was good business. Allowing him to reach the stage of his contract where that became good business though, was terrible business. After which we have learnt nothing and gone on to let it happen to more players.

I know they're just rumours, but a bit surprised nobody seems to want to discuss either. Had they already been posted and I missed it?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/footballleagueworld.co.uk/middlesbrough-blackburn-and-sunderland-part-of-13-club-race-for-defender/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.lancs.live/sport/football/transfer-news/blackburn-rovers-oriley-mk-dons-22709977.amp

We publicly name people on here who work in football all the time. It's a football forum... We even have some posters who work in football and they're happy to share their opinions. Not an employee anymore, no need for him to be cautious with what he says about one of our players. But hey, your choice.

Nothing means anything until they've played in the shirt for a while. Even then they could theoretically go all Diaz, or Gresko. Even Schevchenko flopped at Chelsea. No harm in discussing what we are aware of until then. Anybody wanking themselves into a frenzy over his youtube vids is being premature though (pun intended).

Lord above. You're entitled to your opinion of course, but no I'm absolutely not just judging him off one of the worst goalkeeping performances I've ever seen and the terribly shaky nerves he showed in that game. I'm basing it off his whole time with us so far. During which he has been crap, then average (little to do that a typical keeper wouldn't be expected to stop) and then horrific. He can't cut it here, at least not at this stage of his career.

100% we could yes. Marauding runs down the wings, crunching tackles, cut backs in the box, he has a handful of assists. Nearly scored a lovely goal once if I recall, hit the bar or something (obviously we would leave out his more pathetic efforts!). No goals and probably only one or two crosses resulting in a goal, but apart from that and a bit less aggression in the tackle, it would look pretty similar to the Dutch lad's I expect.

You surely have to do at least one constructive thing unless the ball never came near you, in order to score above a 1. He had 2 saves to make, and still conceded 3 goals. I'm more than comfortable saying he deserved a 1. Unless he successfully caught a cross or two and I'm forgetting, in which case maybe a 2, so what has he done to earn any extra points? Obviously other players made mistakes, every player does in nearly every game. But that's because they're in the play more and have more opportunities to make mistakes. If any of the others made a mistake every time the ball came their way I'd agree, but Pears was in a class of his own on Saturday and in no fucking way deserves to score only 1 point lower than any other player on the pitch. I repeat, 2 shots on target, but 3 goals. Everything he did of relevance was bad or wrong, yes. Maybe he collected a pass in plenty of space or something and didn't slam it into the back of our net, congratulations to him. You don't get points for that. It's not about what it 'achieves' to give him a 1, as you put it. It's about reflecting how he did on the pitch, which was above and beyond atrocious. I pretty much can't think of a way he could have been worse, beyond intentionally sabotaging us as above. Even if he had been paid to throw the match he couldn't have done any worse without arousing extreme suspicion.