Mattyblue

Wigan now a Monday night Sky game in February… still going to be Cat A (£30 to £35), Swag?

Oh I get that in isolation a World Cup QF is obviously a bigger event than a Championship game. I suppose for me the difference is that I have no emotional connection to the England team, I check in to watch a few matches in a tournament every couple of years, so if they lose it doesn’t upset me one iota, whereas Blackburn Rovers is one of the biggest things in my life, day in day out, year in year out, if the team struggles, the club struggles, and that can really impact the future health of our great club, so defeats and bad runs feel much more existential. England lose? Well they’ll just go again as one of the favourites next time and I’ll see how they go in 2024.

I find it interesting that folk get really invested in England every couple of years to the extent of ‘devastation’. I enjoy a tournament, especially in a summer as a distraction, and obviously I want England to get as far as possible. But literally as soon as the whistle went on Saturday night, it was an ‘oh well’ and I won’t give that team a single thought now until June 2024… On the flip side I’m still fuming about PNE now.

Yep, I bought mine in a brief pique of giddy excitement post West Ham, not sure I’d be bothering if they had gone on sale on Monday morning…

Just imagine with all the horrors and injustice we see in the world… and it’s a footballer getting lauded by pundits that ‘sickens’ you.

Nearly Christmas and they’ve lost one game and they’ll presumably spend in January. They know they need to get back up quick so they aren’t messing about.

We saw that in patches against the South Africa attack in the summer. We go gung-ho against Starc, Cummins et al and we could be in a hole very quickly. But for now let’s just enjoy the ride!

Two classics there. 2003 UEFA Cup shirt and the 125th anniversary. 👌

13 out of 15 permanent managers have been English, so obviously the vast majority of good ones are going to be… English. Not for the first time I think he missed his statistics lessons in Maths…

Happy hour is over up there… https://www.readytogo.net/smb/threads/thats-on-mowbray.1595567/

They do, but the manager has often gone before they have the chance.

Do managers that have had a distinguished career in the game not lose dressing rooms?

Two absolute shockers. We were utter garbage in both. I’m not glossing over it, the honeymoon is well and truly over for him. But that doesn’t lead me to demand his sacking when sitting third at the season’s halfway point (and no I don’t think we’ll stay there). Lost the plot some on here.

No club, never mind this one (Well, maybe Watford) are sacking managers when 3rd in the league half way through the season. With this budget and these players, should we be second, first? ‘But, but, false position’ will be the response. We probably will fall away, I imagine we’ll finish mid table. But actual demands to sack the bloke as we stand? On what grounds? Being well beaten by sides 1st and 5th? Be angry after those two debacles, certainly, but bloody hell get a bit of perspective.

Aririgo Sacchi

Most fans don’t take it literally, Masher. Just a neat turn of phrase from a great football orator about the passion we have for the game. ’The most important of the non important things’ is one I like.

Not really a fair comparison. Of course in isolation Kane missing a penalty in the closing stages of a World Cup quarter final is a bigger event than a Rovers player missing one in an early season game of which there are 45 more to rectify it. What people on here are trying to say is generally if you are the kind of football fan that follows your club avidly week in week out. Go to Ewood every other week, go away etc, then you are obviously more invested, and will feel the highs and lows much more with your club than feeling particularly upset if after a bi-annual check-in with the England team on TV they happen to get knocked out. Most club fans won’t give England a second thought now until June 2024.

It’s unlikely he’d walk because he’s under contract. But if he decided it wasn’t for him, some corporate waffle spouted at a press conference months ago won’t have any bearing on it one way or the other.

Not ‘men in the shadows’. Pasha, who is the owners’ man on the ground with oversight over the whole operation. Not a conspiracy, just how it is down there and has been for many years. I’ve never said I don’t agree it’s a new structure, that’s obvious. I just don’t think the head of said structure has power to sack managers, and neither do you, so not sure what we are even disagreeing about. Oh and Venky’s have sacked one manager, Coyle, since 2015, and that’s a spell of time in which we’ve been bang average and most Championship clubs have pulled the trigger a half dozen times. So no, I’m not expecting a contracted JDT to find himself quickly out of a job.

I said proof. In *my opinion* I’m not convinced that he has executive power to fire managers. So yes, a sizeable change in the fact the manager now has less say in elements of the club like transfers etc, and is now a ‘head coach’. That GB will be overseeing the football side from academy to scouting to recruitment etc. Fine with that, gives the club continuity and brings us into line with industry best practice. But can he sack a manager? I say, no he can’t. You think otherwise, fair enough, time will tell.

People *hoped* we would now be run like a proper football club. Appointing one bloke from Norwegian football wasn’t suddenly proof of anything.

Think you maybe giving Venky’s a little too much credit if you think they are attempting to implement some kind of Brentford-esque master plan..

Maybe, maybe not. It’s been 12 years of this lot and we’ve had many ‘new dawns’ with new personnel, supposed new structures, but it has always been window dressing and the real power has still stayed with their point man. This quickly unravels like I feel it might and we’ll find out soon enough if it has actually changed down there…

The GB appointment is the surface difference from the TM reign. So it all depends on if he has the executive power to hire and fire on the football side as he sees fit, or if the big decisions are still sent up the the owners’ man in the shadows…

Norwich and Sunderland away next two fixtures, this can all very quickly unravel…