He didn't do a good job overall. He did a very good job until the end of the League one promotion campaign. With the benefit of hindsight that would have been the best time to shake hands and part Company. His Championship tenure was imo pretty disastrous culminating in the fairly desperate long term situation we find ourselves in now. There has understandably been a recent groundswell of sympathy for him due to his recent health issues which were unfortunate but that doesn't mean people should rewrite history and make out he did a better job here or anywhere else he tanked than he actually did.

Ah OK. So instead of being on say £2k p.w. we'll have offered him £2001 p.w. or similar.

Not that it has any bearing on whether he's likely to sign a new deal, but out f curiosity how do you know what Dolan's agent looks like?

How are we going to get them to re-sign if we haven't even opened negotiations with them yet? Also how can you say "it matters not a jot" if we don't offer them the going rate? It's absolutely vital. No player worth his salt is going to sign for less than he's worth simply because he's quite enjoyed his time here previously. Only players with no other option who no other Club would want (Hedges?) would do that.

Do we even know if he's been offered a new deal.

Yes.

I detest Mowbray. For me he's a major reason why we're in as much of a mess as we are today. When the owners did still retain a modicum of interest following promotion from Div 1 and were prepared to put some money in he had no interest at all in pushing the Club forward and even publicly admitted he tried to dampen their expectations! Just think what we might have achieved had we had a JDT or a Eustace in charge at that time. Following that there was an interview during Covid which a lot of people thought portrayed him as "good old Uncle Tone" but it gave his game away completely. Only interested in prolonging the gig for himself as long as possible until he'd met his financial objectives, only really interested in looking after his existing group of players as opposed to doing what was necessary to succeed and replacing where necessary, yet conversely seemingly not bothered about pressurising the owners to tie down the Club's more valuable assets on new deals. "We don't want to upset the others" etc. Not surprised at all he's tanked at West Brom. Under their new owner they seem to be a proper Club with genuine direction so extinguishing any hope excitement and expectation in favour of going on another four or five year "journey" to nowhere was never going to fly there - they've sussed him out fairly quickly.

Just noticed this. Terrific article Ian. Well done.

Agents, of which Waggott was once one as Andy Cole would readily testify.

I mean who'd have thought a player who hadn't kicked a ball for 9 or 10 months might spend more time out injured than available or at least not be match fit? Thank God we have football "professionals" earning hundreds of thousands of pounds a year running the Club.

From the recent interviews it sounds like the non renewals are being dressed up as an "exciting" opportunity for VI to mould his own squad with his own type of (cheaper) players.

"Communicating to stakeholders" This is the sort of flowery tosh that is made a big song and dance about when really all that matters is doing the right thing. As supporters we don't need to know absolutely everything that's going on behind the scenes. In the contract situation all that actually matters is that our better players are signed up to new deals. If we had had no idea at all that talks had been taking place and suddenly new deals were announced for the likes of Brittain and Travis, that would be absolutely fine. The trouble at this Club is we never tie our better players down in timely fashion. The fact we're also kept in the dark about what is or isn't happening is merely an added irritant.

Don't even mention those two in the same breath! Tronstad's a slightly better version of Corry Evans.

Why should anyone give him credit for eight points from nine games and blowing our play off chances?

I'm surprised we played well and scored 4 if that's what you mean. Even though it is co.pletely pointless. Happy Easter to you too.

He won't score 5-10 next season, that's one of my criticisms of him. Why though do you think it's unreasonable to expect a return like that off him when he scored two today?. He's obviously capable of doing it when he can be bothered to make the effort. Might be irrelevant as we might lose a number of higher earners like Brittain, Hyam, Travis and Tronstad in the summer anyway.

This.

It's good news. Now we finally know he CAN do it, we can confidently expect 5-10 goals off him next season!

Pretty sick of this putting a bit of a spurt in when it's too late, after imploding when it matters. It's happened under 4 successive managers now, Mowbray, JDT, Eustace (to a lesser extent) and now Ismael. Can't be coincidental. If we can ever actually do something when it matters I'll be more impressed.

That's a collector's item Lol. Not watching, is this the advent of VI'S front foot high pressing game or something?

Toth's even worse than Pears.

I have never had as little interest in a Rovers fixture as today. I can't believe some people were giving credit to the manager and team for an unconvincing win against Luton after an absolutely abysmal run which played us well out of play off contention. Even if we won our next few games and had a mathematical chance of making the play offs going into the final day, if at any point we looked like doing it, we'd do just enough to miss out as we have done already several times over the last few seasons. I'm more interested in seeing if there's still any sign of dissent inside the stadium or whether the recent win has quelled most of the unrest. The pressure needs to be kept up on Pasha, Waggott and Gestede

Think he said before the game he predicted we'd win the last 4 and miss out on the play offs by a point. I must confess I had a little look at the table after the game. Drowning man clutching at strawa and all that.

Need Coventry to implode. Even if we win our last 4, they only need seven points from their last five games and we can't catch them. Not happening.

Pears must have shagged yours, they're both terrible. Along with Wahlsted and Walton, I don't know how we find them.