Nothing. That was my point. Disagree with your last sentence.

That’s actually a really interesting and novel idea. But I think it‘s attractive because the starting price is a tenner. It is better value for money if you buy early, which is the same logic as the Waggott Tax only the starting price is certainly a big incentive. Sadly, based on what we have seen so far it would more likely be rolled out with first 5,000 at full price then increasing thereafter. I’d vote for your model Paul. ST holders pay a little more per game than the first walk-ons (£3-ish) because they have the certainty of their own seat.

Dark humour that bud.

It’s mysterious because it came out of nowhere and so little has been said about it. The first I heard he wasn’t playing was when the club posted the weekend’s team and he wasn’t in it.

?

Well out of our price range.

He didn’t say he wasn’t counting Tosin, only that Williams was his cover (ie. Williams covers both him and Lenihan) Where is Adarabioyo and what was/is the injury? I don’t like these mysterious injuries to players. The fact he is on loan makes it more suspicious. Guardiola might be in talks to bring him back. It would be ironic if our transfer budget came from compensation for a terminated loan. Although for the money paid he has been a better signing than Cunningham. How long did it take for him to ‘get up to speed’ though?

• It won’t be like Wigan and Birmingham - honest* (*T&Cs apply) • Join our push to “do better than 15th” • Dack was overrated really • Waggott Tax Avoidance Scheme - apply at the ticket office • Avoid rip off match day walk on prices • Defenders are coming! • Goals are coming! • Elliott Bennett is committed - why aren’t you? Easy this!!

So we park any play-off ambitions this season because of Cunningham?

Well Williams can’t cover both so he had to pick one with “no cover”. Our defence is indeed in a bad state.

Confident, no, but it’s a scenario to consider when contemplating buying a player who isn’t likely to play until 2020/21. We certainly won’t be promoted if we don’t fix the defensive frailties that previous windows have left us with.

Very clever deflection, on two counts, Pb. First, Lenihan isn’t the problem - he is the best of a very bad bunch right now. That’s thanks to poor recruitment in defence. An area Mowbray acknowledged our weakness but did nothing, and still looks to be doing nothing, about. His M.O. has been to bring in understudies to try to push his loyal charges (except curiously where you should - gk) instead of upgrading our first team and worse players losing their place. (How long did it take for Smallwood to be exiled? - there is surely something more to that one). You single out Lenihan - who else could play there? I say Bennett, Gallagher, Armstrong, Bell, Williams. All keep being played despite poor performances - notably, as you lament, giving the ball away regularly. Yet they are picked game after game. Other players are even played out of position or dropped to accommodate them, e.g. Rothwell, Holtby, Downing, Travis. Bennett who should be a utility player (and from the bench) who can cover for injury anywhere on the park and do an adequate job is instead captain and a preferred starter!! These are all decisions taken by our management team - presumably because what they see in training is more important that what we all see on match days. Then he has the audacity to gesticulate at these players from the side of the pitch. Second, you say “I don’t care for Mowbray”. I have no feelings towards him as a person one way or the other. If pushed I’d say he tries to do the right things based on his book of nobility and is loyal to a fault. But what does that have to do with anything? It doesn’t matter what his personal attributes are. His job is recruitment, selection, tactics, motivation, and dealing with the press. Sadly his strength is the latter, and only because the local paper chooses not to ask any of the difficult questions! His Championship recruitment record is dreadful, with more misses than hits and we still rely on former managers’ players and, damningly our best player is Dack who was brought in for League One. The fact that he has Venkys full support is no surprise, after all he has surrounded himself with allies. Who will speak out against him? Pascha - an appalling run last season, arguably our worst post-war run, maybe ever, wasn’t enough such is the position of strength he has. It’s a dangerous precedent whether he’s a “nice man” or not. It would certainly turn football players off if a manager was not held accountable and it was all on them - no matter what rotation/formation/tactics deployed. It would not be healthy. Ultimately, all that matters is promotion while we are trapped in a cycle of debt-and-bail-out-by-Venkys. You call it ebb and flow, and probably chuckle at anyone who thinks we are in for a tough time in the not too distant future. At the same time you champion plodders like Bowyer and Mowbray when all they are doing is holding us back - until the leave of course and only then will you say they had taken us as far as they could. Bowyer had the players and wasted them. Mowbray has had the money and wasted it. It’s that simple. No need to deflect to insinuate that it is somehow personal. Sadly, we are now stuck with a bloke who takes 10 games to work out his best side and then changes things when it turns out his best side contains players he doesn’t seem to “care for”.

Don’t sign him. Sign a left back who can perform this season. 1) Can we get by without Cunningham? Not really, unless Mowbray sticks to playing Downing but even then he is likely to be in and out. 2) Is Cunningham good enough for the PL? Would we have to sign a new one? 3) Have we given up this January, despite being so close to the play-off paces? Again. Only option 3 makes signing Cunningham a good idea.

Don’t be obtuse. The players who keep making poor passes game after game, keep being selected. That’s Mowbray’s responsibility. Bennett and Armstrong are prime examples of where performances are not taken into account for subsequent selection. If Dack was so important to the club’s planning then he should have been better protected. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a player was left out while speculation of a move was underway. He has got this one badly wrong and we will now pay. And not for the first time. We should have sold Dack when West Brom came in last time. You skim over the issue with “if Mowbray can’t spend” - Mowbray has spent, and badly. The consequences of that are obvious on the pitch and for FFP but what are the consequences to him? Oh well, he’ll have to make do now with U23 players. The same ones that he singles out for criticism whenever they are given a chance. JRC should have played today instead of Buckley if a wide man was required, but it will take weeks before he can earn a place such is the time it takes for Mowbray to induct new players (regardless of their ability).

Managers certainly change games and I firmly believe that in the Championship the approach taken by the manager is the difference. It’s such a tight division that belief can give you the momentum required - even with inferior players. In my view, Mowbray doesn’t have a coherent plan, not for matches anyway. I can’t work out if the brains behind the new high tech Brockhall is Mowbray or Johnson but whomever it is, they need to be DoF planning for the long-term. Meanwhile, we need a manager who can get the best out of his squad by making a first team place something to be earned (and lost) through form rather than to try to give everyone game time.

The average life span of a manager is far less than three years. More like less than 18 months. Mowbray is the 15th longest serving manager in England; 7th in the top two divisions; 2nd in the Championship. All of the other managers are performing at a level at or above that expected or required. It’s arguable whether Rovers are where they ought to be, depending on whether one agrees with Mowbray’s assessment that we are only just over a year out of L1, or whether we should be a lower to mid-PL side (like Burnley) but for the idiots from Pune.

Signing Cunningham in January is a waste. He can’t play this season. Injuries put paid to deals all the time. Mowbray doesn’t seem to trust anyone but Dack to play number 10. He has the opportunity to do that today and instead played Armstrong and Gallagher. Playing Holtby, foolishly, as a wide player and Bennett in the middle.

You are trying to excuse the league rules with “what goes on”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapping_up Clubs don’t have to tell other clubs not to tap players up. However, I think you’re right that it goes on. So... Mowbray should not have played Dack but instead played the ‘he needs a rest’ card. We are now in big trouble if we need to make £10m - or whatever number we had in mind for Dack. Who else can we sell - the only players worth anything, and who others would want to buy are those we would want to keep... Lenihan, Travis, Rothwell, Buckley, Nyambe. Not many others.

It is providing everyone is aware that the agent is speaking with another club. Otherwise it is illegal. Strange that we played Dack against Wigan if Mowbray did know.

Maybe you are both right. Dack’s agent could have agreed a wage package, with Mowbray possibly even aware (we know how loyal he is to his players), but the clubs not yet agreed a transfer/fee?

Alan Shearer disagrees. If it’s on catch up, watch his interview with Gary Neville.

We’ve gone full circle. Again. It’s always the players. To a man, the players showed endeavour Today. However, they lack quality and belief, and do not appear to be operating to any kind of system. Once again FFP rears it’s head as an excuse but Mowbray spent £14m on a two very average players and one well-below-average player. If we fall foul of FFP or cannot recruit properly because of it then the buck for that problem stops with Mowbray. For all of our plans to hinge on selling the only player scoring our goals, our team talisman, is either nonsense, or strongly suggests that Mowbray doesn’t know what he is doing. I’d go as far as to say that if he hadn’t lucked out with buying Dack, he’d be gone by now.

Not sure we needed so many changes though.

I was only talking about the nature of the injury. It’s 25 years (ouch!) since Shearer’s injury so medical science will be even better*. His comeback will be his last chance... * assuming their injuries are similar severity of course