RevidgeBlue

That's been Alebiosu by some distance imo but Cantwell has been good when available. Night and day compared to his performances last season.

From Ismael I hasten to add.

That's absolute BS. You can have as many U21 players as you like. If they're good enough they'll break into the side. What he means is: "We dont want to pay the wages of 25 senior players"

I've always puzzled about how Cantwell came to be at the Club on so much more money than anyone else, especially when the general trend for wages is very much in the other direction. Paul Mani opined in the past that Eustace threatened to walk out in the 2024-25 close season after having promises reneged upon and that they had to basically bribe him to stay by signing Cantwell and one or two others. Taking that in conjunction with your post it starts to make sense. - Eustace threatens to walk and Waggott has to pull a couple of rabbits out of hats on a limited budget. - Waggott pulls his usual con trick on the Cantwell deal and changes the goalposts at the last minute. Unusually it works as Rangers are relatively desperate to get shut - Waggott manages to get the deal past the Finance Director as in this instance despite the high wages, "the flex" comes from no up front fee. - Gestede and Suhail aren't happy with the deal as his wages are totally out of sync with the new wage policy in general. Cantwell is now approaching 50 senior appearances and they both want his wages off the payroll in general and dont want to make any extra payment that will be triggered at that point. Right that's it - re-secure tinfoil hat and back to the bunker.

Do you actually think Ismael is bothered?

Possibly because the Club notified them they wanted Cantwell off the wage bill, so they secured a move elsewhere for him in Jan. Both parties agree he won't play in the meantime so from their point of view he avoids injury and in return we avoid having to pay some sort of appearance related bonus and/or an additional payment to Rangers. I can't see it's that far fetched a possibility - especially given our track record

On the 4th of December Cantwell will have been out for exactly two months - allegedly because of what was described at the time as "a kick on the knee". Something is clearly awry even if it's "only" the fact we've misdiagnosed the severity of his injury. The thing that irks me most is (in my opinion) VI lying through his teeth about it and pretending nothing is up. He's the perfect accomplice for this regime. "Just take your £600k p.a. and keep your head down"

Why sell Hyam in the last few hours of the transfer window without any sort of replacement? In the general scheme of things I'd say that's a lot crazier than deciding you needed to move your top earner out despite having given him the Captaincy (if indeed that's what's happened with Cantwell)

Exactly. I'm not sure why some people find the possibility that: the bean counters might want him off the wage bill and we've therefore come to an agreement with his advisors that he can leave in January is such a fanciful idea. A "kick on the knee" doesn't take months to heal. The best case scenario is that we've misdiagnosed the severity of his injury in which case his camp wouldn't be happy with us anyway.

For conspiracy theory purposes he'd appear to be on 47 appearances in all Comps according to Wikipedia.

Or Augustus Kargbo corner.

The worst aspect of VAR is offside. It's obviously not a "clear and obvious error" if an offside isn't given onfield but endless slow motion checks eventually conclude a player has a toe nail or an arm pit offside yet you'll get some former official or other triumphantly celebrating the decision to rule out a brilliant goal by declaring the player was "clearly" off. The offside rule wasn't designed or intended to survive such microscopic examination. At one time the attacker was meant to receive the benefit of the doubt. I could just about live with VAR if Arsene Wenger's suggestion that there should be clear daylight was adopted. However like you, on balance I dont like it and would scrap it although realistically that obviously isnt happening.

😉 Regarding Baradji don't be so bloody impatient man! There's still 37 days until Christmas yet FFS! what on earth do you expect! As far as Cantwell is concerned gut reaction dictates we won't see him in a Rovers shirt again, there feels something extremely off about both situations.

As John Cleese said on Monty Python This is all getting very silly! Anderson better than Wharton Wharton better than Scholes Rice better than Lampard In Next week's episode "Bobby Charlton - was he all that?"

Schteeeve McClaren has now resigned as manager of Jamaica after earning the dubious distinction of failing to qualify automatically for the WC as a result of finishing behind the smallest Country ever to qualify (Population 156,000)

Might have somewhere but couldnt put my hands on it immediately.

Jim Smith lived near me in a sprawling property (Springfield Cottage)which subsequently became a smallish nursing home next to the big modern one Springfield Clinic on Preston New Rd. As a kid I cheekily wrote to him at the Club suggesting players we could buy. Expecting that to be the end of it. I received back from him a beautiful letter on Club headed notepaper with his home address on thanking me for my interest and explaining why we could or couldnt try for each player. Finished off with Jim's flourishing signature in fountain pen. Can you imagine that these days? Be filed straight in the bin.

Spot on regarding the "rivalry". My feelings as well.

Yeah, no problem. But don't repeat it in the press. It probably doesn't happen as much as it used to with the advent of 24 hrs social media but it never used to cease to amaze me how often players used to sound off negatively about their Club or own circumstances when away abroad on international duty presumably thinking the comments would never be read back home.

There's also a very enjoyable documentary about King Kenny just come out. Well worth a watch. (Unsurprisingly his time at Rovers is limited to a couple of lines before the credits) In it Souness and Hansen recount that how as young "Scottish" (for jim's benefit) players in Liverpool they were always round Kenny and Marina's House for dinner etc. Souness recounted that in those days whilst Kenny was a family man with young children, as a single man, he led a very different lifestyle and had the job of talking Kelly for a walk every afternoon. This was incredibly useful as she was the ultimate babe magnet but he could say she wasn't his etc!

It was Gestede and VI who said it according to the quotes reproduced by Mark. As representatives of the Club they definitely shouldnt be saying stuff like that imo. I also remember Hodgson once making a comment about how it was more difficult to attract players to BRFC than to a big City Club because " They wanted to park their Porsches outside the nightclubs of Manchester and Liverpool". I thought that was extremely disrespectful to Uncle Jack and my first thought on hearing that was "Why would they be in a night club in the first place?" Surprise, surprise, that was also the season they went down. As for Henriksson he would probably have been better not repeating that part of what he was advised, it does nothing to dispel the stereotype of the foreign mercenary only here for the money and he's definitely done nothing to dispel that with his performances since being here. The comment about the fans not liking the owners is a separate thing entirely and I've no problem with that whatsoever.

It's certainly a large part of it though.

It might not do, but whilst brutally honest I dont particularly like the negative comments about the town, it doesn't indicate a very positive mindset from the player about being at the Club in the first place. I'll always remember Henchoz moaning in a foreign publication ( probably thinking it wouldn't be seen over here) that it was always raining in England and went dark at 3p.m. that time of year yada yada. Presumably it must be like Barbados in Liverpool by comparison and not go dark at the same time. We went down that season. I hesitate to add the word "too".

I was on a tour of Brockhall at some point in the past and Souness emerged from the showers with a towel round his waist looking as ripped as a middleweight boxer. He's had a very serious procedure for heart issues in the past and has admitted that at Liverpool his lifestyle wasn't what you'd expect from a professional footballer these days so since the health scare he's probably kept himself in tip top condition physically. Towards the end of his time at Rovers, when his decision making became erratic to say the least, a former friend of mine who'd also had serious heart problems said he didnt see how Souness could operate as a manager properly with the medication he must have been on. Whether there's any mileage in that suggestion I've no idea. I do enjoy listening to him as a pundit on Talksport although his views hark from when the game was arguably better in many ways and sometimes sound a bit dated He is always extremely complimentary about John Williams every opportunity he gets, although I understand that when he was at the Club he used to rib Williams mercilessly, greeting him with the salutation "Here's the guy who doesn't know the first thing about football" type thing when he walked into the canteen at Brockhall. I gather they were invariably at each other's throats as well with Souness saying he wanted such and such a player and Williams saying he couldnt have him. That's the way it should be. You dont want a Mowbray or an Ismael toeing the Company line and refusing to rock the boat to keep their employments safe.

I do hold against him the fact he has been absolutely abysmal since being here. I also dont like the comments from RG and Ismael advising him not to live in Blackburn but to live in Manchester. Nobody expects them to live in Shadsworth but there's nothing wrong with living somewhere nice on the outskirts of town. Wasn't VI also insinuating one of the reasons for Carter picking up an injury was him doing too much driving