Bit silly that Clitheroe

And these figures have been validated? PNE… and *Blackpool* with substantially higher wage bills than us? Millwall and PNE with higher wage bills than Boro? Of course we are nowhere near being big boys when it comes to salaries these days, but still dubious with the accuracy of that table.

He will go for a good amount, just like Adam Armstrong, and just like AA the team won’t see any of the BB cash either…

Good job they brought in a manager that would inspire the players and fans!

It’s ‘moo’, actually.

‘Groin strain’ according to the official website and Sharpe? Two to three weeks, he’s saying?

It was 77 last year and it certainly felt like a higher quality league last time. This feels like a season in which teams are falling over each other to miss out.

The obituary from yesterday’s Times… Paid vast amounts, celebrated in the media as superstars, represented by pushy agents, today’s top footballers may often seem to hold all the power in the game. When Gordon Lee was a manager his aim was to keep the most famous, self-confident players firmly in their place. “People keep on about stars and flair,” he said trenchantly. “As far as I’m concerned you find stars in the sky and flair at the bottom of your trousers.” His greatest disapproval was directed at players he termed “flash Harrys” or “coffee-house ball-jugglers”. When his authority was challenged by individuals such as the flamboyant Newcastle forward Malcolm Macdonald, or the maverick Everton striker Duncan McKenzie, Lee had them moved on swiftly, enraging many fans. Lee, who once signed a player for the price of a pint of shandy, prided himself on spotting young talent and running clubs thriftily. Teamwork and organisation were top priorities. Despite the lack of stars the teams that he managed enjoyed spells of success, though he never quite won trophies. He lost the League Cup final with Newcastle United in 1976 and as Everton manager from 1977 to 1981 he reached another League Cup final and two FA Cup semi-finals, as well as two top-four finishes in the First Division. Lee’s approach to football was shaped by his playing career in a world very distant from the modern professional game. He was born in 1934 in a village in the Cannock Chase area and after a promising schools career in football and cricket his first adult football team was Girton Road Gasworks. It was a tough environment. His wife Irene remembered him returning from one game: “When I opened the door, blood was pouring down his face. He’d cut his head but they hadn’t done anything to stop the bleeding and he just shrugged and said it would be OK.” The couple, who married in 1955, went on to have three children, a son, Gary, and two daughters, Sharon and Christine. Lee had moved on via Hednesford Town and National Service with the RAF to become an Aston Villa player. As a robust defender, mainly at right back, he made 142 appearances, securing a League Cup winner’s medal in 1961. In 1966 he joined Shrewsbury Town, where he began to learn the art of management as player-coach. His first full managerial role was at Port Vale, replacing the illustrious former England player Stanley Matthews. The club was in severe financial difficulties and facing relegation, but Lee began to show his ability to assemble tough, effective teams with minimal expenditure. When he signed Brian Horton from his old club Hednesford Town the fee was said to have consisted of buying a pint of shandy for the club secretary. Under Lee, Port Vale won promotion to the third division in 1970 and remained there for several seasons. In 1974 he was appointed by Blackburn Rovers and won the third division title in 1975, after which Newcastle United, a club with a great history but very little recent success, turned to him. On Tyneside Lee would have his first confrontations with big stars who did their best to resist his authority. The centre forward Macdonald did not get off to a good start by answering “Gordon who?” when a local journalist rang to tell him of Lee’s appointment, and the response became a newspaper headline. The club had some success, reaching the League Cup final in 1976 before losing 2-1 to Manchester City. However, tensions between allies of Lee in the dressing room and disaffected players around Macdonald steadily worsened. The midfielder Terry Hibbitt was abruptly transferred after one match at Derby County at which he was left behind at the ground on Lee’s orders. Macdonald, who complained that Lee played him out of position and was “absolutely anti-me in every conceivable way”, was transferred to Arsenal. For his part Lee felt “we needed to sell Malcolm Macdonald to improve as a team”. Even though he was “a god on the terraces” and one of the best paid players in England, “it didn’t cut any ice with me”. Fans upset by Macdonald’s departure were even more scathing about Lee in January 1977, when he suddenly left to become Everton’s new manager. They claimed he had been lured by a large pay rise but Lee said later that his main reason was to be closer to his children, who had remained at school in the northwest. In more than four years on Merseyside he again had some success punctuated by bitter disappointments. Inevitably he and his team lived in the shadow of Everton’s great city rivals Liverpool, a European as well as English powerhouse. He did manage one victory over them in a 1978 league derby, but in an FA Cup semi-final against them in 1977 Everton were denied a late winner by a controversial decision by the referee, Clive Thomas. Lee called it the most devastating day of his managerial life, and Everton were beaten in the replay. At Everton he also faced another public clash with a footballing showman popular with the fans: McKenzie. He was famous not only for his football skills but also his extracurricular stunts, which included hurdling over Minis. Lee was not an admirer and McKenzie was sold to Chelsea. He had his revenge by scoring for his new club at Everton a few weeks later, after dribbling the ball around several players near to Lee on the touchline. In Lee’s final two seasons as manager Everton finished in the bottom half of the first division, and he was sacked in 1981. He then managed Preston North End, KR Reykjavik in Iceland and, briefly, Leicester City, who he helped to save from relegation in 1991. He retired to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, where he could enjoy walking and golf. He had time to reflect on how football was changing utterly as the Premier League was created and TV revenue riches began to gush. “It does not feel like the fans’ game any more,” he complained. “They could relate to players getting 30 quid a week but now the money they get is mind-boggling. It puts a distance between the player and the supporter.” As for his famous clashes with star players, Lee knew how much he had upset some fans, but insisted that “management gives you a knowledge of people and an incredible insight into human nature. You either have to be a softly-spoken parish vicar or a total bastard . . . I was never frightened to make decisions, but it could break your heart too.” Gordon Lee, footballer and manager, was born July 13, 1934. He died in his sleep on March 8, 2022, aged 87

Hope they get their wish, they’ll then sink without trace

Our prices will be £400-£500+ and will finally get on sale well into the close season. We’ll sell about 8k in total, if lucky. ’Cheap as chips’, ‘cheapest in the league’, social media will declare, though the very opposite is true. We’ll still be ‘shit fans’ though…

If he doesn’t play a minute it is an even more ridiculous decision to call him up. Instead of completing his rehab at Brockhall, he’ll spend two weeks on planes half way across the world, in hotels and on team buses?

Remember when folk on social media got all giddy just because some minion at Ewood re-hashed their ‘Letter to the Fans’ for about the fifth time… but this time they *REALLY* meant it, I mean there was an 🥚 on the letterhead and everything!

Fully match fit? Next season. He’s been out pretty much two years.

So? He isn’t there to go full pelt and potentially relapse. Or to get crunched in a 50/50. It’s a cotton wool job. ‘Minutes under his belt’ That is literally it, bizarre that this still needs explaining to you.

Bored/dejected, what’s the difference? He literally spent months of last season looking just like that. TM’s demeanour when things aren’t going his way always gives the impression of a miserable bugger sat in a bus shelter after missing the last one home. He’s just an odd and petulant fecker whose ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ mask slips very quickly when results go south, and I think a few of you are looking far too deeply into it…

It’s not ‘my opinion’ to say senior pros play in youth games for fitness and recovery. That’s just a fact and always has been. Bizarre you are still banging this drum…

And that doesn’t matter one bit in a youth game fitness exercise.

Did that a lot last season, no?

Not writing him off, at all. For example lack of fitness can come in to it, struggling to adapt to a new club, way of playing, coming in from a piss poor standard of league. Loads of reasons for his poor showings thus far. Get a preseason under his belt and we’ll see where he is. But you can always get a ‘feel’ for a player’s skill and competency for a level of football from very early on and he’s a lot to prove.

Hedges has been worryingly poor so far, early days, of course, especially after coming out of the Scotland backwater, so needs to adapt, but initial thoughts, the Championship looks to be a level too high for him…

Bizarre how they put out probably the two quintessential Rovers away shirts, red/black and yellow/blue trim at the same time (plus one of the better home kits we’ve had for a while), surely sales will have cannibalised each other?

Well obviously, think that goes for most things in life!

Best close the forum in that case!

Fair enough, rigger. But others certainly don’t think that he trumps those two from what I’ve read today.

Tony Mowbray is a better manager than Steve fecking Kean and Owen Coyle. Ridiculous I’m even having to say it, but no surprise as some of of you have completely lost the plot in recent times and with it all perspective…