Mattyblue

I try my best to give him a clean slate every appearance. At Villa, he did a passable impression of a footballer. Yesterday, well, it was another horrendously bad cameo. End of the day, if he was out of our academy, he’d be nowhere near the first team. He isn’t, but he’s still at a youth development squad age and that’s where he has to stay for the foreseeable, or a loan out. It can’t go on like this for the good of everyone involved.

His players, so he knows best. I just found it very strange that not a single Rovers player even had a mention in passing. He played in some fantastic sides here.

All of them probably bar Yorke, Cole and Hughes. And even Hughes was still dominating games like the League Cup final and Cole was still a far superior player than Bobby fecking Zamora! All about opinions obviously, but for him to mention 30 odd players and not to acknowledge a single one from Rovers, but a load from bloody Fulham was just very strange to me.

Where they hell. Cole and Yorke at a push. He made his debut for us in 1997 remember.

Certainly different than the rhetoric you hear from most other managers. They are usually bemoaning their lack of time and need to get results immediately as that’s the industry.

10k? That’s optimistic...

Off the top of my head - Brad, Tugay, Berg, Hendry, Cole, Yorke, Sherwood, Sutton, Hughes.

Aye, and we still kept a clean sheet...

I think it was his signing and the buck stops with him. I imagine there was some kind of discussion around the club’s obvious new transfer policy re young, English players and he remembered that ‘amazing performance’ at Forest two years ago...

Just flicking through the channels. Spotted ‘Duff’s 1-11’ was on. He picks the best players he played with. Now I imagined a fair few Chelsea players would be in there, but the likes of Richard Dunne, Mark Schwarzer, that Dembele from Fulham and Bobby Zamora as sub?! Not even a mention of a single Rovers player, he rattled through the names of about 4 keepers without mentioning Brad. Remember he played in teams that had a promotion, a cup win and two top 6 PL finishes in his time. I often feel we are the forgotten club of many of our ex players.

It always seems to take Armstrong an extra split second to get his shot off, which means they are often blocked. Another difference from League 1.

Plenty of clubs that could be going up or down this season have had them on sale for weeks/months. All the Championship top 6 for a start. I assume we have to wait for a Pune sign off.

For a dead rubber it ain’t exactly going to get them flooding in, but even if the crowd is 1500/2000 up on if it was a Cat A then great. Too much to ask for STs to be actually on sale by then?

One of those third choice English keepers that PL club’s sign to fill their ‘homegrown quota’

It’s a bit like the ‘well, at least we’ll win plenty of games’... but then you don’t.

The empty seats thing is a red herring. We will finish with an average attendance of around 14,500 which give or take a few hundred either way is pretty standard for us in this league post 2012 (Coyle season aside). Venky’s are to blame for the thousands of empty seats.

Sounds like if he hadn’t had by chance got a start against us this time two years ago he’s never have been signed. Reckless way to spend considerable club dosh, no?

Saw Charlie boy in Lytham Costa this morning. Thought he was a youth player at first glance, barrel-chested centre half, he ain’t.

Mowbray says he was allowed to sign who he wanted with the BB money, a few Championship ready players, for example, but he thought the best thing to do was to put the lot on a ‘development project’. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/rovers/news/17568308.rovers-boss-tony-mowbray-happy-with-ben-brereton-progress/

Yeah I heard that at Ewood t’other night.

Tyrers the coach company that Bolton use for away travel are making people book with them directly for the Rovers game. Obviously don’t want any of their dosh going through the club. Can’t say I remember a situation this bad at a club so far up the pyramid for a long time - Portsmouth maybe?

Reading the full article it sounds to me that it’s now Reed’s shirt to lose. But he’s doing his ‘looking after my fellow human beings’ routine in praising the other two. I await to be horrified at 2pm on Saturday...

Quick look at their forums and half of them are happy for him to go. Coyle to the rescue!

But it’s nearly Gentry Day! ?

That massive flag of theirs often fills as many seats as the fans do.