The away day (note, ‘day’, not 3pm to 5pm) has been one of the few decent aspects left of being a Rovers fan this past decade. 

The mood music doesn’t sound good for such trips resuming anytime soon…

See my post was deleted, however I’ll re-post the salient bit. Our fanbase is well spread across a fair few constituencies these days, so it isn’t just Hollern that needs engaging.

I’ve worked in Stoke… so no surprises there.

Presume something is *fairly* imminent, looking at this.

‘Back to Live’ is the marketing slogan, then. Though, knowing this club, they could mean ‘back to live with our streaming service, as don’t know what we are selling, there’s a pandemic on’.

32 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

Only going to get fit by playing games 

In a league campaign, of course, that’s exactly how you get match fitness.

But you don’t have that luxury to carry players in a Euros/WC whilst they get up to speed, bad start, you’re out the tournament in just over a week.. Or as soon as you get a top side in the knockouts.

Why would he start? Southgate himself has said he’s largely there for giving the lads a good clap purposes.

From Beckham to Rooney and countless other examples, it’s a foolish  thing to do to take an injured or lacking match fitness player to a tournament, they just can’t get up to speed.

From the manager himself;

‘"It’s a decision we took (to select Henderson) because we have been able to take extra players and we feel he is such an important influence around the place.“

26 man squad this time, so he obviously feels he can carry a ‘positive figure around the camp’ cheerleader, especially a fairly rare senior pro in a young squad. But that quote doesn’t tell me that he’s going to be playing.

How do you know he wasn’t planning to give him minutes? The Europe angle doesn’t come into it as loads of South American international players are over here.

A fair few of England’s squad won’t get on the pitch in the Euros. Closer to home Lenihan usually gets called up but often doesn’t get minutes for Ireland, that’s just international football.

He’ll have had a jolly old time, I imagine.

Bit like when 17 year old Theo Walcott went to the 2006 World Cup and spent the tournament just wandering round with his camcorder…

Well obviously I’ll be more than just a ‘follower’ for that particular game 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 

Not sure if ‘enjoy’ is the right word, but I do find watching England much more relaxing/easier than Rovers.

I’ve poured my heart and soul into BRFC since being a small kid, I’m fanatical and see the club as an intrinsic part of my life, as do my whole family - whereas I’m probably just a ‘follower’ of the national team. Hope they do well, but not going to be skriking in the corner of the pub when we get knocked out on pens by Portugal.

I compare myself to the everyday Rovers ‘follower’ that looks out for the results, goes to an odd game, but isn’t a weird obsessive like us lot on here.

Unfortunately looking at the state of the side, looks as if the manager doesn’t understand what’s being fed to him either… or he just ignores it. Because there’s surely no data analyst promoting the deployment of SG as a wide man (along with the other non sensical decisions).

And he certainly does ignore data re potential transfers… unless there’s a ‘connection to Teesside’ parameter on their software?

And had just the five managers in that one season.

Yet the GG didn’t ever get to a semi final like Mr Blazer, so perhaps these players do have something, and I don’t think it’s a worse squad than 2018?

To be honest, I’m probably out of my depth here as outside tournaments I barely give the national team a second glance. Club over country man (well I’m getting close to being neither these days).

My helicopter view is decent set of players when compared to the 2010s, a better manager could get more of a tune out of them.

I’ll probably leave the thread to the likes of rovernout who seem far more into the weeds than me!

Not as good as Euro 96/WC98, obviously. Or on paper the ‘golden generation’, though they achieved bugger all, but surely better than some of the other teams that we’ve seen over the past 30 years? Stank out Euro 92 and 2000, didn’t even qualify for WC94 or Euro 2008. The 2010s largely forgettable.

I’d say he could have easily put a solid back line together, but like a certain other individual that has spent a lot of time on Teesside, constantly chopping and changing personnel and systems means we’ve never seen it.

27 minutes ago, roverandout said:

Hes done a fine job so far. Hes got rid of the deadwood.  Brought in youth. Hes got the second best win percentage of any England manager behind capello.  Not including Allardyce.  He just needs tactical help

Tournaments are what matter, matches the WC and reaches at least a semi final, then that’s fair enough. Though shouldn’t England be finally reaching a final after all these decades?

If we don’t, then for me that’s a poor showing after five years in charge and with this group of players.

7 hours ago, Darrenbot said:

I get the feeling Southgate probably knows if he messes up the tournament he's most likely out as coach so i can only see him going ultra conservative and trying to scrape his way through to the final.

I think we'll get out of the group then the first team we come up against with a class forward we'll lose as they make mincemeat of our defence,nothing more i'd like to see that us win something if only for the boost for the country after the shit we've gone through the last year.I hope i'm wrong but thats the way i see it going.

Unless he messes up Hodgson v Iceland style, not sure he will go anywhere with a World Cup less than 18 months away.

His corporate management speak, his creation of ‘inclusive environments’ etc has the modern day press who are terrified of being labelled the bullies they once were (this article a prime example, is his priority results or ‘creating a culture’ ?https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/57377547 ) eating out of his hands.

Plus an FA that loves a clean cut blazer type means he stays. So unless disaster he’s going to Qatar.

Anyone with Sky Atlantic or NowTV… Mare of Easttown, cracking whodunit!

All roads lead back to the owners.

The likes of Mowbray stinking the place out year after year as gates drop and drop wouldn’t have ever been tolerated under JW et al.

Putting Covid to one side, every chance we have gates smaller than Burnley, Preston, Bolton, maybe Blackpool and only several thousand up on Accy fecking Stanley next season…

Imagine your reaction if somebody had said that to you the day before this lot darkened our door. 

Doing better against fellow mid table also rans in contrast to the top sides and also those scrapping for those lives at the bottom makes perfect sense for the holiday campers down Brockhall...

Three players starting that aren’t even in the squad for the tournament 🤷‍♂️

Originally had four right backs in the squad, so the final game before the tournament... GS plays a centre half there. 😐

He been meeting up with TM for tactical masterclasses or what?

With Andrews, I suppose it was a time when the fans had high expectations and he was a lower league journeyman of the type we hadn’t really seen as a mainstay  (oh but we soon would!) of our side for years.

He’d be like the second coming with the Rovers-Twitterati now. ‘Look at the km covered’’, ‘he made 23 ball recoveries this month’. 

What really got me, was when we heard literally nothing from the Bristol City game in February being postponed until the summer, and that was a re-written EFL press release. I didn’t expect a weekly ‘diary of a furloughed club shop worker’, but nothing from the £300k CEO to the fans who put their heart and soul into the club? To the elderly fans who spent months in the dark, as they don’t have social media or forums to keep in touch with.

The whole club was literally padlocked for months... the state of Ewood being testimony to that.

But then I don’t expect anything else from that shell of an organisation .