Yep. Management isn't about just giving people what they want anyway. It's about knowing when you do and don't do that in service of the bigger picture.

If he gets injured or even if he just isn't as fresh for the next game, yes, it's very obviously a problem. I've seen enough times over the years where somebody gets kept on after they've clearly taken an injury and it just gets worse. Sometimes they make it through the whole game and seem fine, only for an injury to be announced a couple of days later. Sometimes they can make it through the next match too but then the injury becomes too severe and they're out for weeks or months. Or sometimes they just carry the injury and play through it for months but their performances clearly drop off. It was a fucking unnecessary risk because the game was won, end of. Even if we get away with it 100%, that stands. It was stupid.

That's not a remotely good enough reason to risk our best player when 4 goals to the good, he's had a knock and we're in a relegation fight.

Anyone got a good explanation for why we have kept Szmodics on the pitch?

I find it hard to find joy in anything at the club now. In recent years I'd generally have been overjoyed at today, but I find myself feeling little more than 'oh that's nice' and a bit of surprise that we have actually turned it on.

Or we could just make the least important of those subs, yeh, cool.

Actually the replay was pretty clear Gally got lucky with that one.

I don't see how we keep Szmodics, without him we'd have been relegated already. Eustace hasn't convinced me no matter how today ends. The off the pitch stuff is massively distracting and sabotaging us every transfer window. I'll reassess after the summer but my hopes for next season are very low.

There's no good reason to leave Sammie or JRC on especially. Szmodics looked in a lot of pain when he went down earlier, but he's the type of lad to play through the pain and regret it later. Even if that hadn't happened he's too important to leave on at 4 nil up. JRC is just made of glass and very good for us. Agree I'd have Gally taken off too.

Great footwork Dolan Wtf am I seeing here? Turning into a massacre

Think we'll be staying up now. And going down next year.

We really need to negotiate better sell-ons when we sell the silver. If he gets sold on for something very substantial like £73 mill, where it would be 50 mill profit, we would only see a further 7.5 mill. Something ludicrous (but who knows, the way fees inflate in football) like 123 million and our sell on chunk would still only come to 15 mill.

One of our two outstanding players.

Tbf, although it's been gutting and not the fees we should have been able to get, £18 million rising to £23 million for Wharton and £2.5 million with rumoured add ons of about another £2.5 million for Phillips are not numbers that make me want to give up the Academy. Not to mention all the current first teamers. The Academy pays its way and then some.

They have deadline day at the end of March? Might as well not have a deadline at all, it's less than a month until their final league game (though obviously the league's playoffs will continue a bit longer). Don't know anything about him, transfermarkt doesn't even have his age, he doesn't even have a profile on the Rovers U18 page (although he's played 15 games for them and 3 for the U21s...more amateur hour stuff from the website), but best of luck to him. Given the lack of data on him I'm guessing he only broke into the U18s this season so is probably 16, in which case this is an excellent loan opportunity for him to experience men's football nice and early. I don't like when we send 18 or 19 year olds to that level, but if he's as young as I'm guessing it's a good move.

I don't see any reason to think that would be the case? They've replaced one British finance guy with another British finance guy, I'm not sure why that indicates a move of the finances from here to India. The appointment in India might be more relevant in that regard, I don't know. In the other post you said Babu, but hasn't he been at the club for years now, or is it a different Babu?

'Family reasons' dontcha know...

Well he's been immediately replaced by Matt Wright, so I can't imagine it changes a thing in regards to where the finances are managed.

Already being linked with Celtic.

FFS last thing we need is more injury woes just when most players were back. He doesn't set the world on fire but he knows how to find the back of the net and we have issues with depth. A couple more injuries on the flanks and we'd be a bit buggered. I'm not trusting that the likes of JRC and Gally will make it through the rest of the season, and Dolan and Hedges have been known to have the odd problem.

I wish I had £18 million of 'nothing' in my bank account.

That wouldn't matter in the slightest. Loan players have been forbidden by the rules of the game from playing against their parent club for years now (in England anyway). Although I gather this can be allowed if the parent club expressly permits it in the loan contract. Hopefully even we weren't that stupid.

They didn't have the massive hassle of going to court every time they need to send us funds last time we went down. Further cuts would likely leave us struggling to compete in League One and they may even end up with a League Two side on their books. Surely even Venkys would realise they are less than useless to us if they can't send money. Of course, the latest public message from them is highly discouraging. You can never really predict what they'll do.

I don't know why but I have a funny feeling we sneak a win in this one, and that we'll draw if we don't. I can't really give a logical reason, it really is just a gut feeling (and I'm rarely one for excess optimism, I prefer balance and logic). Closest I can come to rationale is we have some important players back and fresher legs after the break, 2 full weeks for Eustace to finally implement whatever his preferred approach is (no, I don't rate him yet, but still), we are overdue a win and we've yet to lose against the stronger sides we've faced under Eustace. Maybe it suits his game better. No, it's not enough to predict a win or draw against a side having a much better season and run of form than us. No, I won't be at all surprised if it's a meek 2-0 defeat instead. But nonetheless, it's what my gut thinks is gonna happen.

Glad to be right on mine (well, I said our form suggested a draw or a slim defeat, not the drubbing being predicted by many). I say glad, I'm still not sure if going down would be enough for Venkys to leave considering the financial issues, and my current prediction is we will scrape enough to stay up this season, then go down next season.