Sorry, this should gone in the main forum! @khod can you or the other mods rectify? 🙏🏻

So the club have said we’ve had at least one academy player in each match day squad for the last 600 games, which is quite the achievement. I thought I’d tap into our collective intelligence because I’ve a few questions that follow on from that: 1 - how does this compare to other Championship teams? 2 - what was our squad 601 games ago? I read once Ajax have had an academy player in their starting XI in every game since sometime in 1983, and I know Man U lived off the class of ‘92 for a good while so I was wondering how 600 games ranks nowadays and whether it’s only ‘quite the achievement’ in my head.

I think it was Dave Jones. Came in roughly the same time as Williamson, quite a tidy player IIRC. I mainly remember Da Vita from the BBC vide-printer after scoring for Livingston.

7.5m IIRC. Still in third place for most expensive signing (although we exchanged Davies for Ostenstad so it was more like 3.75m each. Still more than either were worth.) Agree with the second point. Henchoz was good but raw, we were unlucky with Dahlin, but only Jansen from that period leaves me with good memories. Thank goodness we had the academy bringing through Duff, Dunn, and a bit later, Taylor.

I remember Ostenstad coming to Ewood after Kevin Davies's disasterous season, in a rare example of a player exchange with no fee involved. Probably managed to look good by playing next to Ashley Ward, less so playing alongside Jansen.

If he’s not been mentioned in 14 pages he must surely have been forgotten… Per Frandsen

Just checked Marshall's career. Still only 31, playing for Stoneclough in the West Lancashire Football League division 1 (12th tier).

Been doing a wiki trawl of Rovers post-Bowyer and there's a fair few players I have no recollection of: Matthew Kilgallon Chris Taylor Nathan Delfouneso Tom Lawrence Stephen Hendrie Sam Hart (I do remember him, but I couldn't remember his first name)

The lower part of 7-13. At least I’m hopeful that there won’t be a death spiral in the new year under JDT.

Speaking of keepers of that period, he never played a senior game for Rovers, but there's our only Faeroese(?) player, Gunnar Nielsen.

Possibly that season. As per wiki, he made 15 appearences over the next two seasons as understudy to Robinson.

I heard a version of the story that would probably get me banned (it's not exactly SFW) 🤫 Neill displaced John Curtis, who was a cracking player at championship level, but quickly forgotten.

So a few reports coming out which says Punk may have injured himself again. Torn bicep. Which might not matter anyways because if Ace Steel does get fired for being bitey and throwing a chair into Matt's eye then most are believing Punk will walk anyways. Would love to have been a fly on the wall when they thought it was a great idea to unify the belts 2 weeks before a ppv. Mox drops it, now Punk is more than likely vacating it if the injury is true. Russo booking 101.

If it's a work then all they've done is overshadow MJF and anything good about All Out / AEW generally. Assuming it's real if Tony doesn't fire Punk, he's a moron. No man should be bigger than the company, even if he holds the belt. Though it smacks of the whole "leaving with the title" angle they did in WWE, I don't think it's a work. Like I say if it is, then fine - I bought it - but all people are talking about is the shit show. It doesn't elevate the company in the slightest. There's no "gotcha!" in this... they all look like fucking idiots.

Peter Enkelman (got a few end-of-season dead rubbers as understudy to Friedel) Steve Harkness (a poor man's Dominic Matteo) The mention of Goulon reminded me of Maceo Rigters and Elrio Van Heerden. I don't think either of them started a league game?

Basturk suffered from the same affliction as Johann Vogel: better than decent players who it never quite worked out for. I was under the impression he didn't get any game time with us, but it seems he got 45 minutes in our shirt. Unsal I remember getting sent off at the world cup (Rivaldo's play acting) and disappearing from view soon after. Our first and only Brazilian? Surprised to learn he had five appearances for us.

Javi De Pedro. Managed to outdo Witschge by only appearing for 45 mins. Niklas Gudmundsson & Per Pederson (Hodgson signings?)

Heard about those before we went but didn’t have the opportunity to try one ☹️ Had to settle for my own bodyweght in Pasteis de nata/belem (topped with cinnamon and icing sugar).

And one down.

Have our commentators been caught out by the train strike?

Saw this on Instagram a couple of days back. It’s everything that’s wrong with modern football 😠 bet he never gets a first team game for City.

Not confident here. Think United will target Pickering and we’ll get bullied out of the game in a 2-0 loss, plus one defensive injury.

https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2022/august/17/jdt-s-reading-reaction/ "The players have been excellent so far this season, but it was a step back tonight, we weren’t good at all, We didn’t play well, we did all the wrong things. I hate losing, it’s frustrating when you lose games and I feel sorry for our supporters. They travelled a long way, they kept supporting us and I’m sorry to them. It wasn’t a good game, we didn’t perform. We made the wrong choices, we didn’t do the things we spoke about before the game. We have to be honest about tonight, it hurts losing a game like this," I’m disappointed, the fans should be disappointed, the players should be disappointed, we’re all disappointed. We need to stick together, we have an important game on Saturday to look forward to."

We wouldn't have won this last season. Massive result - we've now got to hope that Brittain and Phillips aren't out for long.