10 minutes ago, Crimpshrine said:

I think the way Bournmouth play made for an open game and gave us, especially our two subs, the chance to play some good attacking football and we looked comfortable for most of the match. It could be argued it was a reasonable performance against a more expensive, experinced team.

However, we may not look so comfortable against teams like Luton, Barnsley, Preston etc who have much less expensive squads than us.

We are all in the same league and one thing is certain - any team that regularly ships 3 goals is not going top of it

The disparity between us and Luton/Charlton etc last season is nowhere near the disparity between us and Bournemouth though.

Either way, the performances and losses against Wigan, Luton, Millwall and Barnsley at the end of last season were completely unacceptable. We have to be finding a way to win those sort of matches this season.

26 minutes ago, JHRover said:

I get the impression from Mowbray's comments, the local press and players comments that they are quite content with how things went yesterday and that there isn't much to be concerned about.

I'm worried that Mowbray genuinely thinks that and will be telling the players the same.

If he does then we aren't going to make progress.

Bournemouth’s squad value is 7-8x ours. Lerma cost them more than our whole squad is worth. Despite all that we dominated most of the game with 5 players from our Academy featuring.

I don’t think anyone was happy to lose that game in the end. But surely you can take some heart from the performance against an opponent that was far superior on paper.

Dolan looks better than Bournemouth's whole team.

1 minute ago, SamTheLeedsRover said:

Do I have to listen to bbc Solent on ifollow or can I switch it to lancs?

Click on the Settings icon on the video, and change the 'Audio' option. You can select between Home and Away commentary.

6 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Youd prefer Bell?

Last season when we had a settled back four of Bell, Tosin, Lenihan and Nyambe we only lost a single game against Fulham (1-0). Bell was much improved in that period and far superior to Williams who is an awful LB, which is why he’s himself asked to not be considered for that position anymore.

Williams has shown himself to be a capable CB when he’s played there for us. Can you name a single game he was truly poor at CB for us?

That’s not me saying that Bell and Williams are good enough for a promotion chasing club. But they are more than capable of doing a job to get results in this league.

Wharton/Magloire/Carter look really promising but Magloire/Carter have already shown they have major mistakes in them at this level and Wharton is unproven. 

12 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Id play them both, its not ideal having Williams at LB but he is Ashley Cole compared to the alternative.

No.

21 minutes ago, K-Hod said:

The few takeaways from the last few pages of posts and my views on them all....

1- I don’t mind that we have a salary cap, I’d rather we were more prudent financially, as we are a shit ton in debt. 
2- My eternal confusion of our transfer policy is that surely, it can’t be a mystery how much players cost and how much they want to be paid. I accept I don’t work in football and have no clue about transfers, but surely, the first things you’d ask are the fee and wages?!

3- We are three days away from the start of the season and we haven’t stopped faffing yet.

The players we have gone for (Ayala and Kipre) are on wages that are within our budget, so they are seen as reasonable targets. 

What can you do though if another club comes in and offers double or triple what you’re offering in terms of wages? The player will obviously choose the better deal and we are unwilling to up our offer due to the salary caps.

I don’t think it’s really a mystery.

Our expected back four for our 1st game this season is going to be Bell, Williams, Lenihan and Nyambe.

That got me wondering how many times that foursome has played together in the past 3 seasons.

The games they played in (I’ve only included games where they played as a back four for the entirety of the match):

18/19 Season

Derby (A) 0-0 D

Stoke City (A) 2-3 W

Norwich City (H) 0-1 L

Bolton (H) 2-0 W

19/20 Season

Cardiff (H) 0-0 D

Birmingham (H) 1-1 D

So only 1 loss in 6 games and 3 clean sheets as well. Not bad!

1 hour ago, Bohinen 22 said:

Can someone ask Mowbray why are we possibly going to start our season with 3 of the 4 man defence from the league 1 opener three years ago against Southend? Defence was crap then and still is now. What do Tony and Steve do on these late nights at Brockhall when they’re trying to recruit? It’s an absolute joke. A shambles. They couldn’t run a bath. 

So you want us to get rid of Lenihan and Nyambe?

15 minutes ago, Ewood Ace said:

Swansea couldn't. 

Is it actually confirmed how much Brereton cost in the end? Articles at the time stated "up to 7m", but our accounts show 5.2m was spent on transfers that season, which would have included Armstrong, Brereton, Rothwell, Davenport and Chapman. 

7 hours ago, J*B said:

I personally think we have a club wise issue with how we recognise success. As far as I’m concerned — and if I was Chairman — I would be saying if we don’t finish top 6 we may as well finish 21st. 7th and 21st both equal the same thing. 
It makes zero difference in this league, the financial benefits aren’t the same as the PL where each position is worth X amount more money. I would rather finish 21st playing JRC, Nyambe, Wharton, Dolan, etc than finish frustratingly close to the top 6 and then have to send back our key players when their loans end and rebuild. 

Agree with you there... but it’s hard to predict the impact loan players may have on the season.

I don’t think we signed Tosin, Walton and Cunningham on loan last season to float around mid table. Unfortunately Cunningham’s stint with the club got cut short and Walton proved to be a dud. Both players could have had the same impact on our season as Tosin did though, in which case we would likely have made the playoffs.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a short term loan deal if it helps you get out of this league, as its likely that we have to reassess the whole squad again once we’re in the PL anyway. 

The long term signings we’ve made in recent times have been smart. Gallagher, Brereton, Chapman, Davenport, Rothwell, Armstrong, Dack - they’ve all signed on modest wages and are still young and have potential to develop significantly. Together with the players coming through our academy, we have a really good group of players developing and learning together. 

If we do make it to the PL, all those players will be easy enough to loan out or sell on for reasonable fees if they can’t cut it at the top level. If we don’t make it to the PL, we’re at a lower risk level because we don’t have players sitting on crazy wages and we can just try again next season.

18 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

Thats is less than 4 per team on average 

Bournemouth and Preston have made no signings so far

Barnsley, Blackburn Rovers, Middlesbrough have made just 1 signing

Brentford, Bristol City, Cardiff, Huddersfield, Reading, Watford have made 2 signings

Stoke have made 3 signings 

Derby, Luton, Millwall has made 4 signings

QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Swansea have made 5 signings

Birmingham, Forest, Rotherham, Wycombe has make 6 signings

Coventry has made 8 signings

Norwich has made 11 signings

All info from here. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/championship/transfers/wettbewerb/GB2

 

Most of the clubs buying players have either:

a.) Sold players for big money last season or in the current window, or

b.) Have been promoted to the Championship and need to make signings to compete, or

c.) Have been relegated to the Championship and still have Sky money to spend

How did Chapman not score there?? Sums him up ...

Williams deserves a mention today... he has been stopping everything today. Really good performance from him.

Magloire is ridiculously fast. He's done really well today. We obviously still need another CB, but we have some good prospects coming through in Wharton, Carter and Magloire.

Good chance for JRC there.. he's going to score a few this season I feel. Always getting himself into scoring positions.

We look well up for it right now.

Someone seriously needs to run some throw-in training sessions with the team. We look clueless and lose it every time.

We've looked pretty decent. Can't really fault anyone's performance - Armstrong and Brereton not involved enough so far, but that's about it. Williams passing has been off on a few occasions, but otherwise he's looked solid. All the youngsters have done well!

Great chance there for Armstrong. We are looking okay after some nervous moments in the first few minutes.

28 minutes ago, chaddyrovers said:

and by then we hopefully will have 3 signings in. Clearly it would be great to get every signing we want in before the first game but in football thats never happens anymore. 

Yes. That's because we keep our businesses under wraps very well these days like Thomas Kaminski. No one knew about thats one until deal was agreed with club and he was on his way here. A player we scouted for a year according to @RovingRover. 

The players we do hear about in the press are the ones that agents are trying to drum up interest for. I have no doubt that the only reason Kipre’s name had become public because his agent was using us to drive up the price with West Brom.

You can already tell which links are real and which are just agents trying to get bang for their buck.

What happened with that Slovenian midfielder that was linked? Jaka Bijol? Any chance that it’s him?

9 hours ago, JoeH said:

 

Take this goal vs Reading. Lenihan completely out of position, Obita can run into the grand open space left by Nyambe who's attempting to cover the lack of an RCB, he can cross to the open lad who Lenihan should be with, or he can aim further for the two lads who've doubled up on Hayden Carter due to Lenihan's absence. Goal ensued.

Lenihan wasn’t absent though. In the lead up to the goal he was marking Meite, while Carter was marking Baldock. As the cross is about to come in the two strikers switch sides and both our centre backs have to change who they’re tracking. I don’t think there was anything wrong with their marking or positioning... it was a good cross and finish.

The issue for me is that Nyambe was in no man’s land. Split between whether to close down Obita or mark McCleary. Travis and Holtby are nowhere to be seen, which leaves both Nyambe and Lenihan scrambling to track 2 targets. 

Travis was really poor that game and his absence left Lenihan and Carter to deal with 3 central attackers. He was also responsible for a goal about 4 minutes later as well.

Besides all that, Walton should have saved it  

45 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

They seem an overly demanding bunch. I remember one telling me Grayson had taken them as far as he could, in what I think was their first season back up from league One where he had them halfway up the league and the season wasn't that far in. I was thinking he didn't know he was born and asked what he expected.

Sounds like another club’s message board I know....

39 minutes ago, JHRover said:

He was, now Fulham have done a deal to get him permanently.

Amazing that a newly promoted Premier League side see enough to splash the cash on him yet he wasn't good enough for our midfield.

He played more games for us than he did at Fulham last season. So it’s rubbish that Mowbray didn’t think he was good enough for our first team. 

He’s gone to Fulham for £8mil, so there’s no way we could have afforded such a fee.

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