That's the strangest thing that's been said in here yet. There are absolutely loads. The dwindling fanbase. The fact we can protest extensively but know that nothing will likely be done. The fact managers don't get sacked here due to fan pressure like they would everywhere else. The embarrassingly long stay in this league. The total lack of ambition from the club. The lack of communication from our own owners. The fans at each others throats, with one half infected with some kind of weird Stockholm syndrome about our blatantly poisonous owners. The inability to get anybody to renew their contract for more than a snickers as a pay rise. The decaying state of Ewood. The charlatans we've let have a big say in running us. The fact Waggott is still here. Just off the top of my head. The fact some fans are still following the exploits of a local lad and fan who we built is really neither here nor there.

You're allowed to view them, obviously. I'm just pointing out it's weird and pointless to do so if you're not interested, just to come and bitch about people who are.

I meant we can know that Unleaded was only speculating. Given that's what we were talking about, I thought you were responding that we can't know he was speculating, which we can. If you meant we can't know which rumour is correct, if either, then I agree.

Why do you keep checking into it then? I think it's cringe how many people are commenting on a topic they claim to not care about, telling others they shouldn't care either. Seems to happen a lot on here though, the data thread was clogged with similarly strange input. If you don't care about it, don't come here and read about it, it's not hard.

We can know this, with an extremely high degree of certainty, because we all understand the English language, and the difference between saying something is 'maybe' the case, versus stating that it is the case.

Thanks, but he is very clearly just speculating there. He says maybe. When @unleaded knows things he doesn't talk like that, he confidently asserts.

We don't have to spend the entirety of our interest in football on purely Blackburn Rovers current issues in order to not have a tiny club mindset. We can love the club, want it to succeed, think we are a sleeping giant, and still follow the exploits of a Blackburn born, Rovers trained ex player who is a fan. The two things are not mutually exclusive. There's only so much you can talk about current club events without becoming afflicted with clinical depression anyway...

He has the potential to become a world class player. He was hardly going to slum it at this ambitionless circus in the Championship for too long and waste his career. He didn't force the club to sell him, in fact the rumours were that the club basically forced him to leave, saying they needed the money to keep running.

Fair enough, not seen that but Unleaded is fairly reliable. I think people do forget though, he is also sharing rumours, he doesn't speak directly to all (probably many at all) of the people he talks about, and isn't infallible. But believing him is understandable.

Whatever, just be dismissive about it instead of replying to the last words and sharing what the problem is.

Yes I can't think of why we would be interested in a Blackburn-born Rovers fan's career who was raised and built by our club since age 6. I wonder what could possibly cause this fixation...

I forgot, it couldn't be the club's fault.

I mean, I wasn't there, it was maybe 3 years before I got into football. But from what I infer from the moaning I see, a lot of people are holding a grudge against them for more than 30 years because a referee handled the game poorly and cost us promotion. Which doesn't sound like good reasoning. I'm sure someone can tell me what I'm missing about it.

Jesus christ that's embarrassing. With all the money we have brought in. And right after getting compo for Eustace and Ismael for no compo. Pathetic. What if that extra coaching had got our shit together one game earlier and landed us in the playoffs? This club are the absolute masters of false economy.

If that ends up being the case it would still be disappointing because with a halfway decent negotiator on our end, it should have been 40+ million. Although as has been pointed out it seemingly doesn't matter anymore anyway.

Was it even decided? They really drag their feet with these tribunal things and aren't the outcome details usually public? Or did we agree a fee with them instead?

He seems quite reminiscent of Nyambe from what I've seen so far.

Some spots being reserved for them in the overall squad I don't necessarily have a problem with. As long as they're mostly at a point we can be confident they'll contribute reasonably if called on. But that's different to setting a target of a number of minutes. If you have a strong 15-18 core like you say, they're unlikely to rack up 3,000 minutes between them on merit, using the system we both agreed on.

Saka is apparently 5 ft 10, which is average. And ACD is apparently 5 ft 7. Not sure I believe those numbers though, ACD definitely looks even shorter than 5 ft 7. Everything I've seen of Saka says 5 ft 10, but a few do have ACD at 5 ft 6. Either way, the mini part seems accurate, less so the Saka part. Though I can see the comparisons. ACD does have ability, and I think Championship could be his future level personally. He didn't look ready for it this season though other than in glimpses. Especially second half of the season he was very poor when given a chance, I think his confidence was gone.

Oh did he? My memory is playing tricks on me then, sorry. I nearly googled it to double check but then I was like nahh I'm sure he did 😂 I suppose my sense of time didn't get its head around just how young he was when he had his debut. I've just checked these scholarships too and they actually run to summer 2027 not 2026. Hopefully we get him signed up once he turns 17 and don't have another saga to look forward to in 2027.

I wouldn't get too excited, it's only a scholarship. Finneran had one of those too. Until we can and hopefully do sign him to full pro terms when he turns 17 (and hopefully without a release clause like Phillips insisted on), we haven't achieved full protection on him. It's as good as we can do for now though, but it only really kicks the can down the road til next summer and gains us a bit more compensation if he leaves then.

So you believe we should play youth players regardless of whether they're ready, to meet that target? If you don't, the target is meaningless, as it's just something we're hoping for. If you do, then we risk losing points to meet the target by playing young players ahead of better players. The strong core you mention only means lots of strong players ahead of them. If there's no injury crisis there may be no reason to play them beyond the arbitrary target. 3000 minutes btw is the equivalent of 33.33 full matches. So it's more or less like having one of the starting 11 be a youth player for 33 games of the season, and them not coming off. I know it wouldn't work like that, but the point is it's not the kind of minutes total that is likely to be reached with sub appearances even from a few young players. I'm in favour of bringing through players from our excellent academy btw, when they're ready. But unless we find we have a generational talent again like Wharton, the path looks like this to me: The best youth players are put into a development pool of sorts. They get substitute appearances when there is a need, or when the game is in the bag. They get starts and substantial minutes in cup games, especially against lower league opposition and especially at home. If in any of these appearances they display ability or form on par with the senior players, they get more substantial chances to play as they prove themselves. Results always come first. Reaching a minutes quota for the sake of it doesn't come into consideration. How the youngsters (and senior players) perform in training in the eyes of the manager does though. That's how I feel it should go.

Why would Chelsea not want him for sod all though, if in France he becomes good enough to attract a big money bid from City? Even if they're not sure if he is ready yet, I'm sure they will be at the front of the queue, and not having to pay much to, essentially, themselves, to take him if he gets good enough. And if they already think he's good enough, why wouldn't they do what KE is describing, just because they're willing to spend when necessary? It's still no reason to throw money away, and it helps skirt financial rules.

That just isn't true. Probably gonna piss you both off here... I actually agree with your point that RF99 is too quick to say youth players aren't ready. I think he has an inherent bias towards older, more experienced players and if a youth player comes in and doesn't outperform all the senior 11 he seems to want them dropped. And I understand the reason for his caution in that area, I just think he takes it a bit far. It's a bit of a fear of the unknown I guess. But Vale wasn't ready at all. He was shit for us. That's why he has struggled to make any impact here or elsewhere. He displayed entirely the wrong attitude on plenty of occasions and frankly seems lazy. I can't say that about Garrett, who I do think is good enough to be a squad player from what I've seen (though I must admit I had to miss, due to work, a few of the games around the time he got the most criticism). Wharton was actually more ready than JDT was giving him credit for, I said that at the time, and time has borne it out. Barnes, we'll never know as injuries fucked him over, and he barely played. Leonard has had probably roughly the amount of game time he deserved relative to the striking options we had, but by God we should have had better striking options. Phillips was ready for what he got, I'd argue should have had a little more but not tons. Vale though...no, not at all. After early cameos which showed promise, he was shit. You seem to think (and from many posts, not just this one) the manager doing something automatically means it's the right decision. It doesn't.

I wasn't sure if it had stopped, I just hadn't heard about it for a long time so I thought it had. I see now they loaned 4 players from Udinese last season and 'bought' 2, for, of course, undisclosed amounts, even though almost every other transfer that shows on transfermarkt has a fee shown. They also sold Vakoun Boyo to Udinese for a mystery fee...then loaned him back immediately. And he's a 27 year old so it's hardly a development thing. A player Watford had paid 5.8 million Euros for the season before. Obviously trying to bump Watford's FFP figures. Given the scale they're still doing it at, it seems clear a punishment wasn't given and the rules didn't change, or if they did they were so inconsequential as to be easily skirted.