I get that, my point was how big could a football club been in those towns if RL had never taken off there, like it didn’t in Bolton or Blackburn. We’ll never know obviously, just an interesting counter-factual.

So what if you are criticised? It’s a dead rubber. You’re the manager you play the personnel/system you think will suit the players you have and may give you other options in a tournament. What pathetically weak management.

I’ve always wondered how big a football club the likes of St Helen’s, Warrington, indeed Wigan could’ve produced without RL being so embedded. Warrington has a pretty big catchment area, for example. A Rovers/Bolton sized club? Or due to the vicinity to Manchester and Liverpool, more a Bury/Rochdale?

Why do white Brazilians only ever play in goal?

Why are Rovers pretty much *never* the Friday night Sky game after a decade in this league and there’s one shown pretty much every week? 🤷‍♂️

Of course, I judge people at this football club on results/actions, not words to an in-house video. Just like you judge a politician on their results or the CEO of your company on theirs, not whatever puff piece they put on your company’s intranet. We’ve had a decade of a lot of hot air here and not a lot of results. And so by that same barometer, GB’s results/actions have been pretty good so far and that’s all that matters.

Freddy Adu never actually existed.

Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it complicated.

Not sure what I’ve said there that can be disagreed with. I.e Businesses and public bodies employ PR, but ok.

I trust him to do his best for the club whilst employed here, and part of that employment is engaging in PR with stakeholders. Very simple concept to grasp (well I thought it was).

It’s not ‘cynical’ to understand that sports clubs, businesses, celebrities, politicians, the monarchy, you name it, spin narratives. Basic PR, indeed that’s why said institutions/people employ PR professionals. Just the way it is, but you are, of course, free to take the word of any public figure at face value. I am also free to always take it with a pinch of salt.

The naivety, endearing really. He will be telling some truth, but will also be spinning a narrative. For fans, for the owners, for the press, for the rest of the competition. And that’s fine by the way, it’s what everybody in football does. And as for the second paragraph, well, I suppose the local media are as supine as you’d expect the in-house to be anyway, so why not.

Or constantly playing him wide to accommodate the Lampard/Gerrard combo that never worked.

Then that’s a shame you feel that way as it’s our national flag and has been for not far off a thousand years.

That’s just not at all accurate. It was Union Jack draped yobs in the 70s/80s that caused real carnage across Europe, many with actual NF affiliations. Indeed, it was that bad in Italia 90, England were based on an island (Sardinia) for the group stage, to keep the hooligans away from the mainland. It has been since Euro 96 and the emergence of the St George’s flag clad fan (not that the flag itself has made any difference either way, just a change in football fandom since the mid 90s; more families, all seater stadiums etc) that has seen disorder drop markedly (miles before any emergence of UKIP etc), we now just see the small time, pathetic behaviour from a minority, as thousands of families and proper fans now also travel - that was certainly not the case in the Union Jack clad 80s. Think you need to do a bit of research into the 1980s before trying to shoehorn in fantasy modern day neo-Nazi stuff. The simple explanation is there’s a lot of young, coked up, pissed up dickheads travelling.

That’s a bit of a muddled take. Yes, there are complete cretins that follow England, but last year’s final aside it’s absolutely nothing compared to the 70s and 80s when it was the Union Jack draped hooligans causing real havoc across Europe. Since the St George’s flag replaced the Union Jack at Euro 96 it has become more more tame with thousands of families following the team home and away, something that was unheard of in the dark old days. ‘Extreme right’ etc is very hyperbolic when the trouble you still do see is largely just immature young lads with a few days off work behaving just like they do in their local town centre on a Friday night. Does that excuse it? No, but binge drinking and cocaine snorting, acting like a twat type behaviour is a major issue for a subset of our society, and football is just another outlet for it.

Well, the ‘big 6’ fans mainly.

You best knock this one on the head here ‘99. Obviously the maths lessons on percentages, fractions etc were missed 😀

Indeed, a nonsensical comment. Our worst managers have also been English - Keegan, McLaren, Hodgson, Taylor. So by that barometer we should only have foreign managers…

Only Rovers are allowed the club badge on corner flags…

Forums will always contain the collection of people we have on here. They are full of folk that spend their days banging on about the minutiae of their club, their car, their obscure hobby.

If you think brfcs is a uniquely ‘negative’ place, you mustn’t spend much time on other forums. They are *all* like this.

Ray Wilkins spent the last twenty years of his life in Wilpshire and was captain of the Rising Sun’s darts team.

The thing is most club fans pay absolutely no attention to their international side for months on end until the game is right there on the screen, so they just comment on what they see. So if it’s a load of ‘turgid, unimaginative’ shite (to coin a phrase) then that’s what they’ll remark. Then they forget about it until the next one. It certainly isn’t a ‘negative brfcs’ phenomenon…

https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/football-news/steve-waggott-tony-parkes-blackburn-17706368.amp Just the two and a half *years* on… Does Swag need help looking for it in the long grass he kicked it in to? Bet we’ll find all sorts in there.