Looks like we aren't making a big marquee signing this year, so once again I think we are pinning some hope on one of the players stepping up a gear and becoming the main man. Last season Cantwell was disappointing, but he's got the ability if we can get him playing/find a system that suits him a little better. Ohashi did astonishingly well last season when you consider that he had played a more or less full (?) J league season and then immediately went straight into our team without a break, let alone the cultural shift playing outside of Japan, language barrier etc. - but hopefully after a well earned break and now he's settled in he should be able to kick on. At the moment I don't think we have significantly weakened our first 11 (squad is debatable) - so if either of them can step it up this season and give us an attacking talisman we could be in a stronger position than last season. We need someone to have that one season ala Szmodics, BBD, Armstrong etc. We've got very lucky with this approach since promotion from league 1, the wheels will fall off at some point. If it isn't one of those two I'm not sure who our wild card is, Kargbo maybe?

Both England and Spain have looked weakest against teams that have pressed and harried, been big and physical and not allowed them time on the ball (France and Sweden for us, Germany for them) - If both teams try to play 'plan A' I think Spain will win and fairly comfortably, but I think we have better players to get stuck in and be aggressive. It would mean changing our style a bit, which is something Wiegman generally does not like to do, but I think that is the way we give ourselves a chance at the win. My worry is that we've had very little squad rotation and two hard fought extra time games, so if we do try to press and harry and bully the Spaniards it has to produce results before we run out of steam...

What a weird 'article' - it reads like someone barely literate trying to imitate the style of tabloid football journalism. I do wonder if there was a rumour at the Southampton side of things that we tried to loan BBD in January though, considering that we were probably trying to loan in any out of favour prem striker we could (ended up with Dennis) it actually wouldn't surprise me it that had some truth to it. Probably putting two and two together and making five. I doubt it's something we'd actively re-visit.

1. Can Kargbo play on the right? De Neve on the left and Kargbo right has some running in it. 2. Can we try Gueye and Ohashi as a front two? Just 442 it? Even just as a rotation option it's got to be worth a go, I think against better teams playing more defensively the workrate and physicality will actually be better for us than carrying Cantwell who needs time and space to be effective.

I guess a sideways squad filler from another championship/relegated last year team like we had in the lads from Stoke and Birmingham last year - someone who will go from not playing at all because of an imbalanced squad/selection restrictions or who doesn't want to play in league 1 but their team is confident of getting promoted so want's to keep them long term (ie. someone from Luton). They might take being a rotation/cover option here over that. All the good premier league loans we have had have gone in and been first team starters from the get go, the ones who have come in as squad rotation have been generally poor.

I think the reason Cantwell struggled there last season is that playing too far forward he get's isolated and bullied - too slow to escape his markers and weak enough that they can just push him off the ball. He's got technique, passing, shooting etc. but the other team knows it and he gets marked out of the game. I don't think he can play in our current setup and be as effective as he should be at 10. I genuinely think we should shift the formation a bit so that he can play deeper and be protected by Travis and Tronstad - go from ie. Travis Tronstad Winger Cantwell Winger Forward to Tronstad Travis Cantwell Winger Winger Forward See if we cant get a Tugay/Savage type partnership going. I think he'll be a lot more effective with someone acting as his enforcer. He can still make runs from deep if the space opens up. Risks isolating Yuki, of course, which will depend a lot on who our wide players end up being. Not to mention whether we still have Travis and/or Tronstad.

In this league if you can get 350-1 or higher on literally anyone getting promoted or relegated it's probably worth a tenner at least. In recent years we've seen clubs relegated from the premiership get relegated again and clubs promoted from league one get promoted again. No Bookie is offering odds that long when there are three to go up and three to go down.

It's time for Tyjon to step up... for us, not for him. He's got all the time in the world, the squad needs first team bodies!

Do we know whether it's Ohashi at 9 and Tyjon at 10 or the other way around? Anyone there confirm? I've always sort of thought that deeper in a front 2 might be Ohashi's best position rather than leading the line.

A premier league team will see Dolan purely as a way of making a few million quid. If he's free (or tribunal cheap) and doesn't ask for much in the way of wages they will loan him out for a season or two to the championship and then sell him as a young(ish by that point, but still) English forward for a decent but not spectacular profit - the only real risk is if he does his knees or something. He might make a couple of appearances, but he won't be a regular. The way Dolan stops this from happening is by demanding too much money in wages (eats into the resale value down the line) or by refusing to go somewhere without a guarantee of first team football, and I think he may well be doing both (and I don't blame him - if he/his agent was sold premier league interest then fair play to them for pursuing it, if that interest turns out to be career stalling then fair play to them for not snatching it). The Scottish league is poor, but the old firm are in Europe every season. Impress in Europe and you get your move up the ladder. I suspect that if he goes to Turkey he will get bullied, it can be quite a physical league, but he might surprise us. I think that staying with us for another season or two will be seen as the 'safe' option, and I think he's probably decided he's rather take a risk and try to move his career on. I'm not sure it will work, but it's hard to fault ambition when we seemingly possess it in negative amounts.

Pears value to a Premier league club, particularly one in Europe, is in filling a homegrown quota slot in the squad selection whilst being happy to pick up a better wage than a starting league one keeper (which he could probably be) to turn up and train and occasionally make the bench as a third or fourth choice keeper. There are relatively few half decent keepers willing to do it, so 'big' clubs will pay (a bit) of a premium for them. £1m + 15kpw for Pears to allow you to register a £60m+ foreign centre forward in your squad is peanuts to City or Chelsea or whoever. The fact that Pears is being linked with this kind of move makes me think that his agent has put the word out that he'd be interested. It's not an impossible move. Whether he is a £1m+ keeper under any other circumstances is an arguable but probably irrelevant point here.

The thing that increasingly concerns me is how much say does the board at the FA have over the England squad, selection and tactics? I wouldn't have said it a year ago, but I was expecting (and looking forward to) Tuchel mixing things up - trying new tactics, getting a few different players in etc. Instead it's the same old players - Henderson, seriously?? - very similar tactics and very similar results. Southgate mk2. I've always thought that the England setup had a bit of a bias towards 'their' players who had come up through the youth ranks from the 'acceptable' academies - London and Manchester - it's very hard to break into the setup from the outside.

Eustace will be in for a few of our players I'd imagine, he'll know 100% how desperate to sell swag is and how low the wages he offers are.

Ideally Hedges isn't a starting player, but I can sort of understand keeping him around if only because it's one fewer player we need to sign. I think we genuinely need to be signing six or seven players minimum at this point, at least half of them regular first team starters. I think we are going to sign maybe four. If we released Hedges we'd need to sign seven or eight, and we'd still likely sign four. He works hard, can cover several positions and is cheap. He's not great, but he's not quite as bad as some on here make out. Would I trust our recruitment to replace him with a better player on a free transfer on similar wages whilst also addressing all the other gaps in the squad? I'd barely trust them to get the order right at a chippy. It's all depressing.

I had a bit of a 'if I was playing FM how would I make a tactic' moment looking at the players we have left (I'm assuming Dolan has gone) and the best I could come up with if everyone is fit was something like Toth Carter Batth Wharton Brittain Tronstadt Ribeiro Travis Cantwell Ohashi Gueye All the width comes from the fullbacks, but we don't really have any proven wide players. It would be better if we could get the Liverpool kid back for another season - Pickering doesn't have the pace to play there (He'd be left footed cover for Wharton if anything) Cantwell gets isolated and is too easy to muscle off the ball, maybe he'd play better a bit deeper with Travis to cover for him Savage and Tugay style? IDK, i'm not happy with it, but it was the best I could come up with. Dire situation really, we need at least four more players than we are realistically going to sign.

I went into this season expecting to be relegated. Our form last season was terrible, Eustace hadn't looked convincing at all and I thought we had in all likelihood weakened the team significantly, particularly with the loss of the player who kept us in the division. From that perspective, just barely missing the playoffs on the final day of the season seems amazing. However, considering the position that we found ourselves in at the start of January, we blew it. Both the lack of investment in January, but also the shocking management of the Eustace situation and the manner in which it played out absolutely cost us a play off place. To echo the sentiments of many here, I think that the playing staff and both managers did a phenomenal job. As ever, the club was hamstrung from the word go by the incompetent chancers at boardroom level. I am increasingly hopeful that Ismael is a competent manager - projected over a whole season his results are slightly worse than Eustace, but he also I think increasingly clearly inherited a squad absolutely reeling. Special shoutouts to Ohashi, Gueye, Brittain, Tronstad and Batth, all of whom have been genuine highlights and provided moments of great joy. From a personal perspective, this was also the season my dad died. I have never lived in Blackburn, or Lancashire for that matter. Neither did dad - my grandad was from the town - but he was my connection to this football club. When it came to Rovers he was a relentless optimist, to the extent that he didn't really want to believe that anyone connected to the club really and truly didn't have the clubs best interests at heart, and strongly believed that the club would rise again. I kept him away from this forum for his own safety. He loved the club. It has been very difficult through his illness to reconcile that he was never going to see the club become the thing he loved again, his last memories were of the club as it is now, the Rovers of Venkys and Waggot and the con artists and scumbags and disinterested millionaire chicken chasers. Towards the end he came to realise it too. It's increasingly hard not to resent the club for it. This summer will probably involve a fair bit of soul searching as to whether I can continue to support Rovers more meaningfully than checking the results every week, when I remember to.

My old grandad always supported Lancs teams against anyone else... Rovers first, of course

Take Cantwell off and 442 it with Ohashi off Gueye? Do we dare? We need the ball to stick up front

west brom get a 3rd, Luton surely down

Problem is everyone who could start on the left ahead of Hedges isn't fit or is just returning from injury, and we don't want to change formation on a winning run. If Kargbo only has 30 mins in him then you want him running at a tired defence, because if he's got half a yard on the fullback he can run riot. I've no idea how fit Kargbo, Dennis or Gueye are, but I have to admit it's bloody heartening to look at the bench and see a whole competent replacement front line there, I can't really remember the last time we could say that.

It looks increasingly like the way that Eustace left and the atmosphere at the club afterwards must have been an absolute rug pull for some of the players, they completely lost their heads. A lot of us, myself included, blamed Ismael for it. I'm not saying that he is blameless, a better manager would have got a handle on it sooner and might have prevented that slump from being as bad as it was. He does seem to have turned it around one way or the other though. Maybe too little too late, we shall see. Five wins, five defeats, two draws isn't far off par for the season - six wins would be slightly kinder, more wins than losses always looks good. If the results had been spread out a bit more evenly I think the atmosphere on this message board would be more along the lines of 'going to fall short' pessimism rather than the 'we might make the playoffs' optimism of a winning streak. Jury's out. He'll be here next season and he'll have to do it all again, probably with a weaker squad.

Also, might be a shiniest dog egg competition but Toth is the better keeper. I'm just not as scared of him chucking one into the back of the net or whatever in the way I am even when pears is playing 'well'

Kind of had the opposite effect of the new manager bounce, the disruption killed off the season. I'm still not convinced by Ismael, but four wins on the bounce including against teams immediately around us does buy a little breathing room.

He'll be an important player next season

Watford won't want to see Dennis, old player curse and all that