Mattyblue

Clubs of our size (and considerably smaller) take 30/40k to Wembley because it’s a day out, so the kids, the missus, the grandma, the next door neighbour’s kids all come down as well.

It is a fair amount of lapsed time when you now only have half a season to go on a contract. Hope you’re right.

Hang on a minute, you said the exact opposite for AA... you said Armstrong should sign a new contract because he owes a debt of gratitude to the club that has improved him and he likes working with Mowbray.

That article BDS posted was nearly 3 months ago, the contract has run down even further and Nyambe’s performances have got better and better... not a good position to be in from a club negotiator perspective.

The booze culture of Bowyer’s time is still prevalent at the club if the Danny Graham edition of the podcast is anything to go by. And it’s why many a talented second tier player goes no further.

So down to just two (injury prone themselves) centre halves for the season and it’s not even Christmas. Who’d have thought it?

The decline of the pitch has been noticeable since they scrapped the separate ground staff teams for Ewood and Brockhall.

No idea on average salaries, but it ain’t £30k. EFL clubs responded to a survey last season, it was then worked out that the biggest earner within clubs had an average of £30k across the league, not that that is an average wage for a Championship footballer. Which makes sense as some parachute clubs will have marquee players with enormous salaries - Mitrovic at Fulham would be a prime example. But that certainly won’t be the case at clubs without parachutes, either top earners or the rest of the squad. It’s bloody tough to compete with parachute clubs, however that can often be countered by said clubs being in a right mess on relegation. Stoke and Huddersfield are two. Though this season will be tough due to three relegated clubs hitting the ground running.

Average Championship wage is £30k a week? Is it buggery.

Colin Hendry was filming at Ewood for this the other day looking at his Twitter.

He lost his raw pace after his first injury in 92/93, but he was still quick enough. Shearer’s first season at Newcastle in 96/97 he was as good as ever, he then had another bad injury, it was after that when he became markedly slower - all credit to him that he then adapted his game into more of a target man, but kept on scoring.

Read a piece on Forest in The Times this morning, doesn’t sound a happy camp. Joe Worrall was quoted saying ‘yeah we’ve got Knockaert, Grabban, Freeman, but if we don’t try hard enough... I’ve got to choose my words carefully here, we’ve got to work harder, simple as that. ‘Us players are in a team but not friends’, which isn’t a surprise as they’ve had 5 managers and signed 70 players in three years. When asked if the constant churn is impacting the team he replied ‘no comment’.

Go on chadster with a return to the glory days avatar.

‘Progress’ can only be gauged at the end of the season, campaigns ebb and flow, all this ‘after 18 games...’ stuff doesn’t hold water for me, it’s just picking and choosing stats to fit a personal view. Alternatively, those who believe TM will fire us to the promised land could have done the same 3 matches ago with ‘look how we’ve improved after 15 games compared to previous seasons’. He ain’t going anywhere regardless this season, so you all may as well keep your powder dry.

From the Fans Forum minutes - ‘MG asked about uptake of Diamond Club season tickets. GC replied that there had been a lot of interest but in the end only a very small number had been sold.’ File that with other Waggott masterstrokes that include the surcharge, the 10k raffle and £45 match tickets

Does our budget ‘pale into insignificance’’, I.e wages and net spend, in comparison to Brentford? Or have they just spent what they’ve had smarter this past few years?

A screen grab of the screen grabber!

Can just imagine the tactical brains trust with Balaji and Venkatash as they pore over the latest xG stats.

Unitary authorities haven’t come into it - I.e the Medway towns are unitary but they’ve still gone in lockstep with the Kent County Council areas of Kent - as I said, it’s arbitrary.

It’s also about arbitrary administrative boundaries.

Friedel was the official MoM, you can see him with a lovely looking trophy on the lap of honour... Sparky was immense that day though.

I hope that’s the case, absolutely no reason why rural Lancs with minimal cases, places around Lancaster and Wyre, for example, should be tagged with somewhere like Hyndburn.

Thought all Lancs would be moved Tiers, not on a borough by borough basis, or not at all? I.e the big kick off in Tier 3 Kent which has a big variance across the county.

Getting old? Ales, be they IPA or whatever have been a British beer long before lager.

Ironic as a load of their fanbase live in (Tier 3) Kent these days...