On 28/02/2024 at 21:02, Upside Down said:

Hybrid the way to go.

The range of fully electric is insufficient for someone like me.

When we do road trips we'll easily smash a thousand Kms. I don't have the time to stop for three hours every 250 just to charge it up.

Wow those are long journeys! Am I right in remembering you live in Australia? Full EVs definitely won't meet the case needs of everyone just yet. Although you won't need three hours to recharge a good, modern EV. A Model S for example can charge up to 200 miles in 15 minutes at a supercharger, which you could easily fill with a piss and grabbing a bite to eat. And you could have up to 394 miles to begin with on a full starting charge. It still does mean more recharging time than you'd spend with a petrol or diesel car, but nowhere near the times you're thinking.

Of course, the issues then come in two forms: affordability for normal people, who mostly can't come close to affording a brand new Tesla (some very good options on the used market though, with more battery life left than you'd think, but still generally far in excess of many can afford for now - that said, I saw a video where a guy got about 260 miles out of a Tesla he bought for less than £9k, haggled down from £13k, and it had done 450k miles in its life!). And the supercharger network. I've no idea what that's like in somewhere like Australia, with colossal distances between cities, but I bet it's not always great. A normal charger might take you hours, and I agree that's just not practical. The supercharger networks are only going to improve though, and hopefully within a few years you'll be in a position to change your mind.

Personally, with everything I've seen about the technological advancements, I'm predicting there'll be commercially available EVs with 1,000 miles of range by the end of 2030. It'll be interesting to come back to this comment in 6 years to see if I was right! Honestly I think it could be as early as 2028.

On 01/03/2024 at 10:51, Armchair supporter supremo said:

Why did hybrids seem to go off the boil? Id have thought they'd be the best compromise 

Seems like every used prius on the market goes straight to taxi firms

I would guess it's because they're less efficient. They certainly have their advantages, but like you say they're a bit of a compromise. So it's kind of like, best of both worlds, worst of both worlds.

Thing is, if you're filling up your petrol tank, the EV then has to lug that extra weight around, so they're often less efficient than an EV with a similar size battery. If you almost always do short trips before you recharge, it's a bit of a waste. If you do a lot of long range driving, your fossil fuels are lugging that extra battery weight around, as it weighs almost the same when fully discharged. Also, fully discharging your battery isn't great for longevity in most battery chemistries (though not as lethal for them as some make out).

I think that compromise made more sense when the EV industry and infrastructure was developing, and range anxiety was more of a thing. Now, chargers and superchargers are far more common, satnavs have them well mapped, and the best EVs can almost get you from Edinburgh to London on a full starting charge (actually the best ranged, one of the Lucid Air models, could get you that distance with about 100 miles to spare, but it's not available in the UK yet). In the UK, unless you drive freakishly long journeys regularly, range anxiety is very unlikely to amount to anything real with much regularity.

I think hybrids are still a good introduction for people trying to dip their toe in the EV market though. They're cheaper and let you experiment with electric without being completely reliant on it if you're still worried about them. But honestly, I don't think you'll really see new ones made anymore within 10 years, probably less. At least for over here.

On 20/02/2022 at 16:27, Armchair supporter supremo said:

There's also the Elephant in the room of where are they going to keep finding all the raw materials from that make up the batteries on these vehicles thay they hope will one day soon be replacing the the hundreds of millions of petrol & diesel vehicles currently on the rd AND what about environmental and ethical issues that come with mining these raw materials 

It's not that much of an elephant in the room, although it may have been more of one when you posted this 2 years ago.

The price of lithium has recently been shooting down, as more reserves are found, and the processes and infrastructure improve. But most crucially, these batteries can be recycled pretty much entirely and these methods will improve too. In fact even a dead battery can fetch a nice chunk of change for this use. Once there are enough in circulation, you won't need to extract much lithium anymore, as you'll have almost a closed loop system.

There is more than enough lithium in the world to provide for this loop. You'll find different figures of course as it depends how they're measured etc, but a quick google suggests there are between 14-22 million tons of known lithium that can be mined with current methods, and '(depending on who you ask) the amount of lithium needed to meet current goals is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.3 million tons'.

There are environmental issues with the mining, yes, but there are environmental issues with mining the materials for combustion engines too, and far greater environmental issues with mining fossil fuels. From memory (I could have the number wrong) you will make up the production emissions of an EV in the first 10,000 miles or so typically, as you're not using fossil fuels. Of course this depends partially on the source of the electricity you're using, but we're getting increasingly green with our grid energy and you can use providers like Octopus who source their electricity renewably (granted I imagine you probably just receive the same electricity anyway, but Ocotupus will buy more green energy as a result and it will balance out in some complex offsetting that encourages more renewables to be built). Even if you use entirely fossil fuel sourced electricity, you'll still end up producing less emissions than you would have with fossil fuels, recouping the production difference in about 30k or 40k miles I think it was (a little while since I read it, sorry).

There are also nascent battery technologies developing. Sodium ion batteries are already in some Chinese production EVs. These are much cheaper as they don't use lithium but basically use salt. They're less efficient as they're heavier, but they're very well suited for city driving (ie people who don't really do long trips anyway but primarily commute relatively short distances in cities). Their price will also attract people, and techs like this and other non-lithium batteries will reduce the strain on lithium demands, keeping prices and resource extraction down.

Other technological improvements can have this effect on reducing lithium demands and other rare earth metals. More efficient motors that are constantly developing, along with all the other tech and efficiency improvements in these cars. Semi solid state and solid state batteries are a big one too. Nobody has quite mastered the latter yet in terms of making it production-ready, but semi solid state batteries are coming now. They are safer (already an overstated issue in the better batteries) and much more efficient. This means a semi solid state lithium battery can be a lot lighter. So you can either keep the same weight of battery and get much more range out of it, or as some will do, make the battery far lighter and get the same range, meaning less lithium used.

Apologies, sort of, looking into all these technologies has become a bit of an obsession for me in the last few months. Not sure why, I certainly can't afford an EV yet!

On 16/04/2024 at 10:56, Eddie said:

Right, so think about it. How hard were we fighting to keep players when we'd made it a standard policy to put release clauses into contracts?

Under the Walker Trust and John Williams we had accepted the idea that we had to be a selling club and turn a profit on players when possible. In some instances, this probably helped us to sign certain players (Bellamy), but we also created a culture that made that the standard approach for contracts.

I'm not defending Venkys, but they would be crucified if they were putting in release clauses at the rate that we were in the 2000s. You'd struggle to find another club that not only put release clauses in for virtually all of their key first team players, but also set them at a relatively low number. 

Just because a handful of high profile players insisted on release clauses in their contracts doesn't mean it was standard policy at the club. There might be other players who had clauses, I guess we'll never know, but I never got the impression it was standard policy from us. That would be a weird thing to do, as being a selling/trading club is one thing, but restricting your bargaining power isn't a wise way to go about that model. And Williams was a very shrewd operator. Much more likely, these particular high profile players (maybe one or two others) insisted, or rather their agents insisted, on the clauses in order to sign their deals.

Santa Cruz didn't go via a release clause, which further suggests it wasn't standard policy as he was very high profile. Neither did Bentley. The Bellamy clause is the only one that was really low (barely above what we paid for him) but it would seem he wasn't coming in the first place without it as frankly he saw himself as better than us (backed up by quotes in Robbie Savage's autobiography).  Duff and Jones, theirs were lower than we could have got, as nearly every minimum fee release clause ever triggered is (that's pretty much the point of them), but probably only by a few million in each case. In Duff's case, the contract was signed before Abramovich upturned the established order for what players cost.

6 hours ago, Eddie said:

Did we ever really do that?

I can't remember any point where we've really put up a great fight to keep players. Duff went fairly easily. Bellamy, Santa Cruz, Bentley, Jones...

It's not really anything new. 

Duff had a release clause, Bellamy had a release clause, Jones had a release clause. Santa Cruz was a terrific deal for us, it was fairly clear at the time he had gone back off the boil and was a crock. Bentley dragged on for most of the summer, culminating in the player drunkenly interviewing with Sky Sports on holiday to say he wanted out. Don't think there was much chance of keeping him without him becoming hugely disruptive.

I'm not a fan of putting in release clauses, kinda think they should be banned, but Bellamy wasn't signing in the first place without it. Possible the other players weren't signing their contract extensions without them either.

On 14/04/2024 at 16:41, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

It’s like selling Damien Duff for about £8 million back in the day. He’s a once in a generation player for a team like Rovers. Palace must be pissing themselves.

In fairness, if we had been in the second tier at the time, and that was the only opposition Duff had gotten to show his class against, that's probably about as good as we could have expected back then. I'd say it's more like selling Duff for £4-5 million from the second tier.

2 hours ago, chaddyrovers said:

Batty has clearly backwards this season and clearly not ready for first team squad duties. Maybe he needs a fresh start and first team football next season

I take it you mean a loan? I was thinking the same.

1 minute ago, wilsdenrover said:

I expect you’re right.

Nobody will ever convince me he didn't do that shit on purpose. I've always suspected someone threw him a bribe, telling him it would also speed up his move away.

8 minutes ago, wilsdenrover said:

Does women’s football count?…

It does, but not in the mens game. Has to be a record at our sort of level and above. Certainly in England, if not globally.

3 minutes ago, Dan said:

That interview makes me think he’s thick as fuck.

Not as thick as he thinks we are... imagine expecting fans to believe that a 5-0 defeat to an average side won't have any effect on our confidence leading up to playing one of the best sides in the league! 🤣

7 minutes ago, wilsdenrover said:

51 minutes 

Has to be a world record, that.

23 minutes ago, alcd said:

Hyam's performance was even worse than Shane Duffy's sabotage effort in his final appearance. Hyam looked like he was playing under the influence of sleeping tablets.

Whoah whoah, steady on! Hyam was very very poor tonight, but he wasn't two own goals and a red card poor! Which was on the back of another own goal in the previous game, which I believe made for 3 own goals in less than 90 minutes of football across both games. At least, I assume you're talking about the Cardiff game, as he actually scored a goal for us in his very last game (in the cup).

7 minutes ago, jim mk2 said:

Don’t understand this. Why would they leave if we went down? Why would one automatically lead to the other? Relegation is the worst thing that could happen. 

People assume that logically, an owner would cut their losses at 200 million in debt, unable to fund the club and playing in the third tier, with clearly none of the debt to ever be repaid. The mistake is assuming logic from Venkys.

Christ tonight was dire. Especially the second half. We're very fortunate we have this points cushion and everyone around us is in poor form instead of fighting for their lives like usually starts to happen at this point. I suspect we'll stay up, potentially we won't even need any more points, but I expect 2 more will suffice. Then I expect us to go down next season.

14 minutes ago, Torgeir said:

Three out of four of our defenders had one or more sloppy back passes. The fourth was subbed off at HT.

 

 

Totally bizarre decision. Can't think of any justification for it at all. Eustace must have been watching a totally different game.

13 minutes ago, Eddie said:

But, you just happen to believe it to be sound policy at the moment and have indicated that you would have also seen it as sound policy 3/4 years ago.

It ultimately proved to be a pretty correct assumption. 

You seem to struggle with nuance. I never said anything about a policy, nor have I implied it. I simply believe that in this current situation, we should attempt to renew the players with expiring contracts, at the right terms. I never mentioned their ages, that was all you - in fact Gally is older than the age range you said. Nor did I say it should have been a full-on policy 3/4 years ago, I was talking about a single player. It's all situational, not policy, and that's why you're putting words in my mouth by saying what you said. But what we did 3/4 years ago, not renewing the contracts of BBD, Lenihan, Rothwell, cost us an absolute fuckton in lost revenue, so even if it had been a general policy I espoused, which it wasn't and isn't, we'd still have made a lot more money on it than we'd have lost in extra contracts.

Though I should probably clarify this summer on reflection - I wouldn't renew the broken Fleck, and although after his first few games I'd potentially have been ok with a cheap further year from MacFadzean if he maintained his form, I wouldn't now. Forgot about those two when answering your question. I was essentially just thinking about Dolan and Gally, who both have 1 year extension options that I'd exercise. If Gally won't commit to a further contract at reduced terms, I'd be open to offers for him. Same for Dolan, with a bit more leeway on his contract.

Hyam, Siggy and Markanday are out of contract next summer and don't have extension options. I'd see what they want this summer, and if it's too much, again consider any offers or actively attempt to sell them.

If I were to put words in your mouth like you have with me, I'd say that 'your policy' of letting everyone's contracts expire has fucked us over repeatedly, a lot more than it's benefitted us, and we have no money to replace them.

35 minutes ago, Eddie said:

So what words was I putting into your mouth?

I thought it was pretty obvious, but: "You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts."

I never said this. Nor do I believe in that as an absolute policy.

29 minutes ago, Eddie said:

OK, which player under 23/24 do you think we should let walk at the moment? 

None from the first team squad.

2 hours ago, Eddie said:

Maybe you would have been. Maybe, that's the benefit of hindsight.

I know I didn't. In the same way that I don't want Gallagher to be offered a new contract right now. If Gallagher re-signs and we get more of the same then it will prove to have been a massive waste of money. If we let him go and he goes on to score 15-20 goals at a Championship club next season, supporters will be questioning the decision.

BBD had done nothing to justify a new deal and, by the time he did, he was too late.

You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts.  

It's not the benefit of hindsight, it's the benefit of remembering that I was relatively happy with him in that season and thought it was worth protecting our £7 million investment.

I do want to keep Gallagher, although it will have to be at the right wage level. But he has less potential to improve now than Brereton did in that season as he's a lot older. IMO we don't have the money to buy someone at a similar level but on less wages. Additionally, we were rejecting cash bids for him this January, so he does have some market value.

BBD had scored 7 goals in the league from out wide and looked like a nailed on starter who may improve and we'd invested 7 million in, to justify a new deal. At that point his wage demands wouldn't have been too high, and the understanding is he wasn't on all that much.

I'm not basically advocating that, you're entirely putting words in my mouth.

On 06/04/2024 at 21:09, Adam C said:

I think it’s more that nobody at the time would’ve thought it was a good idea to extend his contract. Nobody cares what supporters think but neither supporters nor management could’ve predicted that BBD would become such a good player. Hence “the vast majority of posters here would have been up in arms if we’d offered Brereton a new contract” 

Or to put it another way, the vast majority of people would have thought it was a bad idea to offer BBD a new contract, ie hindsight is a wonderful thing and accurate foresight is extremely rare. 

I'd have been perfectly fine with extending his contract after the 20/21 season where he scored 7 goals from out wide. In fact after the investment we had made, it was a pretty obvious thing to do.

I think we'll stay up now. Too many other teams around us in poor form who would need to all have better form than us to the tune of a few points. I'm actually more worried about next season.

16 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

We definitely should have tried to get him signed up long term, even though it was only his penultimate season in which he went from bang average to one of the leading scorers, we should have signed him up during the covid season to protect his value, Venkys seemed to tighten the pursestrings around that time so maybe that was the issue.

But even with a new deal, I dont think 20 plus was realistic. And seeing as we couldnt get him signed up for whatever reason, £8m was a substantial amount to turn down and money down the drain, a totally ridiculous decision from our terrible owners. It could have really helped Tomasson and also have left us with more of a squad longer term.

20 million for a young, fully-contracted English player scoring as many goals as he was in the Championship is perfectly normal, I'm not sure where you're deriving that verdict. We got almost as much as that for Armstrong with a year left on his deal.

The latest LT article about Finneran, with quotes from GB, makes me think very much that we'll be losing him in the summer. All of the language is about being 'hopeful' he will stay, and acknowledging a 'life-changing' offer could come in from elsewhere. I can read between those lines.

4 hours ago, Roverthechimp said:

Agree in theory but in practice having a happy Sammy is in the best interests of Rovers…

Having a fit Sammy is even more important though.

3 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Surely whoever would have come on to replace him also "wanted to come on" so that bizarre argument is invalidated.

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.