It should be Chapman crawling over broken glass on the offer of a Championship contract, he’ll be 24 not long after next season kicks off and he’s never even started a game at this level.

The deal kicks in on the 1st July, so presumably we’ll actually have a kit ready by then for once and we won’t be playing friendlies with an Umbro logo permanent markered?

Good point VJ, a few more years competing at the top post ‘95, a few more years of building the fanbase and we would certainly have been in a strong position re attracting investment in the early stages of the 2000s. Alas, we rested on our laurels after that day at Anfield and as we know that is fatal in football.

Oh without doubt, if Andy Cole had put one of those chances away at Upton Park, Jack would’ve gone for it that summer. Cole didn’t and Jack didn’t and the club very quickly fell back, and our chances of a few years of competing for every trophy (until the oil money would eventually dwarf us) had gone.

I’m not privy to whatever chicanery was or wasn’t going on within the club at April time, but for me If he was going to go prior to the new season he would’ve gone already. A panicked sacking Bowyer/Coyle style when in the bottom 3 next term is most likely now (or he signs a new deal).

Right now Celtic and Rangers don’t have the Asian/African etc support that the likes of Tottenham, Chelsea, City have, and that’s because of one thing - PL dominance and how that often also translates into a CL knockouts presence. If those two clubs had joined the PL a decade ago with the TV money that would entail, they’d be right up there, and in all likelihood would have had an invite to the Super League. It’s the minuscule financial heft of Scottish football that holds them back, not because they are a historically smaller club than bloody Chelsea and Tottenham!

Sharpe specifically says, ‘that isn’t my take BTW, just relaying what the viewpoint is within the club’. Now you could argue he has no inside track to relay, but it is clear he is referring to what he believes are the expectations of the hierarchy, not his.

Is he not? Falling into a social media trap there of taking a small minority of loud online voices as speaking for a fanbase, which I suppose is easy to do after so long out of grounds. He is certainly well thought of with plenty of fans I come across in real life.

Always amazes me how het up some English folk with the loosest (or zero) connection with said clubs get.

‘Season Tickets 2021/2022. We have lower expectations, do you?’

We’d been in Europe the year before. The club did a ‘Premium season ticket’ that covered the extra CL games, that just didn’t particulate sell well, in comparison to the standard PL ST that we pretty much sold out of. But there were still 20,000+ home fans on, which wasn’t massively down on standard league games. We probably should’ve had a few more on, but my memory was that the group just didn’t grab the public attention.

Think part of the problem was a pretty dull group. A group with say, AC Milan or Barca would’ve really put a rocket under it all... though that being said a relatively weak draw should’ve enabled us to get into the knock outs and then face the big guns. All a bit of anti-climax, but then the club and team was treading water when we should’ve been moving forward like top clubs do after success.

Reading the Sharpe tweet, we may as well lock the thread (not that there was any point in it in the first place)... re-open in time for a Venky panic sacking when marooned in the bottom 3 at some point next season

Must be great having a boss that lets you lower their targets and expectations for you years into the role...

It won’t be anything like Kean, apart from with folk on here. He’s still a long, long way from Kean levels of dislike in the wider fanbase (well with the few left maintaining much interest out there).

‘I don’t like to train on indoor pitches’... yet moans when the Ewood pitch is then a shit tip.

Reg Rover wrote - Do Rovers play in the 2nd tier of English football ? YES. A minor miracle in itself. Is Ewood Park kept in prime condition , a magnificent stadum to be proud of. ? YES. Christ.

Totally agree. He either sounds like he’s swallowed a thesaurus (yet his sentences and phrasing still make no sense) or it’s personal blog style intros like ‘I know I talk some rubbish’, doesn’t exactly scream professionalism.

Dyche has done the exact same thing from Northamptonshire for a decade. Don’t hear him continually moaning about it. Comes with the territory.

Amazing the mental gymnastics our local media will go to stay on the fence. Crooke: ‘To Mowbray's merit he stuck to his philosophy’ Why is this to ‘his merit’ when results were poor, we were plummeting down the table and we ended up with fewer points?

So the LT is immediately running with this (fairly vanilla) statement, yet wouldn’t touch the Brockhall letter with a barge pole... interesting.

On here, certainly. But not out in the wider fanbase, and he knows it.

He has a contract with a year to run, the team is plodding along as usual. The owners just won’t see that as cause to terminate and pay off. He won’t be failing in their eyes, just an employee running a football team in a far flung outpost of their conglomerate. It’s a club and management with no targets, no standards, no expectations.

Merely play? Club Captain, Shirley?

Ah the old ‘fella at the golf club bar said...’ Done deal, obviously!