Not signed a professional contract yet? He's 20....

And if you needed someone to impersonate a donkey you'd favour Brereton? (Just kidding before anyone jumps on me)

That's damning, I hope you're wrong. If Brereton is a worse player than Nuttall and Butterworth then we really have dropped a bollock with this one. You're inferring he might be worse than one or two of the other attackers too? I can't quite tell.

I said we got Travis from elsewhere, and I know we pick up people who left other clubs, but if they've been here a while before playing in the first team then I consider them home grown. Lenihan was at Rovers nearly 4 years before he played for the first team. We developed him, and my point was about how we develop youth players. Not just how we develop people who have been with us since 10. Ultimately you get every player from someone else, that's half the point of grass roots football.

We have churned out decent defenders, mostly, from our youth system in recent years. Aside from Jones and Hanley we've had Lenihan, Nyambe, O'Connell (god that was a stupid sale), Travis (originally a right back yeh?). At one point Henley even looked a player, briefly. We currently have fringe or potential in the likes of Wharton, Platt, Grayson, Magloire. Seems like defenders have the best chance of breaking into the team from the academy. Only exceptions I think have been Travis (after converting, and nearly didn't get the chance to properly break through), Mahoney and arguably Nuttall (don't really count him the same as Travis...we picked them both up from other clubs but Nuttall was a fair bit older when we did I think, and made first team appearances quickly). I suppose if we are going back as far as Jones and Hanley there was also Hoilett.

Even Leutwiler and Antonsson wasn't really exploring the foreign 'market', as they both came to us from British clubs. Although foreign players over here are usually a bit better value for money than English ones, the real value is in foreign players still playing overseas in economically weak leagues.

Not a Rovers fan though, or it'd have been spiked with cyanide!

Never seen the point in this notion. Spending a lot of money to reduce our capacity to 8k less than we got in a game at the end of last season. Close the Riverside for now, by all means, though. Some like their cheap seats though and wouldn't like it.

I agree, it feels like the final nail in the coffin to me too. He had impressed lately again off the bench and it was a perfect opportunity. If TM doesn't trust him after recent cameos I just don't feel he ever will. Which is strange because he pursued him for 6 months. Rothwell has limitations, sure, but he has deserved a lot more game time than he has had. Tony needs to start replacing the old guard quicker. Conway has shown that his excellent showing at Sheff Weds was a fluke and he needs to be no more than emergency cover, then let go in the summer. No sense holding others back for his sake.

Do you think it would take 4-5 players to make up our 4 (potentially 7) point gap? 4-5 fairly average to decent ones maybe, but I'd say just one quality player in the right area (I'd say defence given our weakness there) could do the job.

Very well, apology accepted as long as it isn't more of that famed sarcasm. Ah shit, I'd best put my BA dual honours in the bin, no wonder I can't keep up.

Don't be too disconsolate. Better to be fucking, than not fucking.

Well, I'm not sure it was his best game, but it was his best game in a while. He had a couple of decent cameos that actually changed the game, back when he got a couple of assists. At that point he actually probably merited a start, which he didn't get. I think his confidence has been tanked since. Today he didn't impact the game quite the same, but he looked confident and keen, which has been sorely lacking. He also showed some decent touches etc, and for the first time since those better cameos, I was actually starting to think 'OK yeh, maybe there is a decent player in there'. Up to him to press on now, only he can do it.

There was no need to suggest I'm drunk or thick just because I see the mirth you appear to be deriving from others' misery. Schadenfreude. Granted, it seems I didn't pay enough attention to your exchange amidst the maelstrom of posts here to see the nuance that when you said you were here for a laugh, you were replying to the rhetorical question of whether you're a Rovers fan, and not contrasting your state of mind with the OP's when he said he wasn't OK because he was disappointed with the defeat. Also granted, I'm an intellectual amoeba in the presence of a luminary such as yourself. Still don't think that's good cause to call me drunk or thick.

'Lay off the Bordeaux pal' doesn't sound like benefit of the doubt (whatever that even means in this context). Think I'll go and actually drink something, c ya.

Stone cold sober and not been involved in your arguments. Just telling you how you're coming across. The fact you replied by insinuating I'm drunk only supports my theory that you're trolling. No intention of getting into back-and-forth with you though. Have a nice evening winding up your fellow fans.

Sorry did you basically just admit that you're here to troll your fellow fans after a gut-wrenching 5-2 defeat? Because it sure sounded a lot like that.

Not a lot of fans of other clubs have to contend with, whenever they're two goals up, knowing that not even a point is in the bag yet. I've never had that feeling supporting Rovers before.

We did it last week. 3-0 is the same margin as 5-2.

What people expect is to not be 2-0 up, capitulate, and lose 5-2.

I really don't think he is. He's dropped a few clangers, but he's also saved us a lot of points and I think he gets an unfair rep. That one today was an absolute bollock to drop though, piss poor.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/rovers/news/17405100.brentford-5-blackburn-rovers-2-tony-mowbray-reaction/ Don't think this has been posted yet. Mowbray said: “It turned in to a difficult afternoon, but for long spells we were pretty good and deserved to score more than the two we did. “We had to make a decision with Bradley and Danny who were both struggling. We decided to give both five minutes but they both weren’t right. “They are two pretty important players for us, with their leadership qualities as well, and without them we lost a little bit of that. “I think we got a bit stretched. We gifted them the second and third goals. “The second goal, we work really hard on defending free kicks and it was really disappointing that he could just roll it square and the lad shoots in to the corner, without it getting blocked. “The third goal, the goalie decides to come and try and help the defence and gets himself mixed up and it’s in the net. “We then went chasing the goal but then the game ran away from us at the end. It got too stretched and we were everything that our team is not. “We played against a good team, let’s give them some credit. They have some good footballers in the forward areas, we knew that, and I thought we dealt with that for long parts, but not at the end.”

I'll do it. I'll only need about two to three months of conditioning work to be ready.

Surely we never stopped being at the top of that? Not long ago, 50 percent of all of our goals had been conceded in the last 20 or 30 (I forget which). And there have been a lot of goals conceded.

A few have said he was injured, but I must have missed him getting a knock or whatever. I was pretty bemused by that sub. Taking off both of our goalscorers and biggest goal threats at the same time, fairly early...one was forced, the other better have been or it's a real cockup.