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?

£200000000+ to take a football club from an established Premier League outfit to this rusting shell. Bravo to all involved 👏

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.

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.

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 .

Yep £7milllion and a 7 year deal. This article from the time is an insight into the inexplicable mess the club got itself in in the late 90s... https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/1999/aug/17/newsstory.sport3

Didn’t realise until other day that the ECB are reverting back to the two division structure next season. Due to an unforeseen crisis they’ve actually stumbled across a far better set up, so a big mistake to me, but what do I know 🤷‍♂️

It’s partly because Waggott doesn’t understand the fanbase. He came from Coventry, not a particularly big club, but with a decent sized city and county (Warwickshire) to themselves with the floating fanbase that goes with it. His assumption would’ve been, 28,000 folk here today. Bang up the prices and I’ll still pick up a good few of them. Doesn’t work like that here. Substantial gate increases in one summer have only happened on the back of BIG success (not second in L1) or competitive pricing... but who’s left in positions of power at the club to inform him?

Not saying it is. Results dear boy, results. However, commercial activity and keeping fans ‘in the tent’ doesn’t become less important because the club is pissing money up the wall on a monthly basis.

I got into these debates last summer. not bothering this time, Covid or no Covid, this is the way the club is run. All major decisions signed off post an annual meeting. As we’ve seen with TM being kept on, results and commercial income are seemingly never the priority here. Bizarre, doesn’t make sense, but I’ve stopped trying to think about it.

‘Not far off’ from what? A decent Championship player? I suppose so, but a ‘high level’ player? Still far off from what I’ve seen. End of the day, he’ll be here, he’ll be playing, and AA and his goals in all likelihood won’t be, so we’ve all got to hope you’re right and he steps up.