Wasnt aware of anything marking 25 years since the Prem, terrible idea, merely drives home how bad we are now in comparison, opposition fans can take the piss out of us for living on past glories and if you were going to do it, surely it should be in or around April, it's not even 25 years yet. Then, tickets for the fixture most likely to cause trouble if there's going to be any, now on sale until kick off. What's going on, has everyone completely lost it down at Ewood?

More non existent reasons being made up as to why it's allegedly virtually impossible to bring people in. It's apparently difficult to speak to people to ascertain if potential targets have the right sort of character, and wingers are apparently "flightly mavericks". Whatever the hell that means. It's also stating the bleeding obvious but it's a player's talent that primarily determines his longevity in the game, not their character. If you haven't got the talent, you're generally not going to prosper - unless you're Jason Lowe or Elliott Bennett who seem to have conned a lucrative career out of the game off the back of convincing managers they're indispensable due to their character whilst in reality being an absolute liability on the pitch. Mowbray makes the process of signing players sound so complicated it's a wonder he can get out of bed in the morning and put one foot in front of the other if he finds everything else as difficult to come to terms with as buying and selling players. It's the ramblings of a man who has if you were being kind would merely say he has completely lost the plot, if you were being a bit more direct you might wonder if he was beginning to develop mental issues due to the pressure. Either way it's way past time he was put out of his misery. I wonder who in authority at Ewood reads the rubbish Mowbray comes out with and thinks it's ok? I also wonder if the owners either don't read what he says in print or with English not being their first language read it but dont quite appreciate how ridiculous what he is saying comes across.

According to a mutual acquaintance he came up for talks in the summer expecting to join but perhaps not surprisingly we couldn't agree terms so can't see that one being a runner any time soon. I agree he'd be ideal though

Dont agree with that at all. Arguably other than Dack and 36 year old Downing, the only decent players we have (Lenihan, Nyambe, Travis and before him Raya) are or were academy products.

Not so much of the "possibly" where Bennett is concerned please. I can see it, you can, Mowbray can't. And as has been pointed out, that's not even the priority position any more now we don't even have a decent keeper or striker. So to summarise, no keeper, no LB, one centre half of our own, a RB who is more often than not overlooked to shoehorn Bennett in, eleven midfielders of which arguably only Travis you would have complete confidence in, and no decent strikers. What a mess we're in after 3 years of Mowbray in charge. This is why he needs to go imo, never mind any guff about being "only four points outside the play offs" it might as well be fourteen.

Yep. With only Travis, Johnson, Evan's, Smallwood, Davenport, Holtby, Rothwell, Downing, Chapman, Bennett and Buckley to choose from I think it's pretty obvious we need a 12th choice midfielder.

Once his contract expires, Gladwin isn't our concern. As others have said allowing him to use our facilities for free whenever required to complete his rehabilitation would have been more than adequate. By the same token, some players have a hard job adjusting to normal life once they retire. Should we offer all our former players three years wages and free counselling when they retire in case they're having problems adjusting as well? You can't go around throwing money around on acts of charity simply because a player may or may not be such a snowflake he can't cope with an unfortunate turn of events which sadly is a part of life.

You seem to be under the impression that people are suggesting we shouldnt have paid Gladwin and ignored his contract. Not the case. We paid him and presumably paid for all his treatment and rehabilitation whilst he was under contract which is unfortunate for us but fair enough. The issue is that his contract came to an end and Mowbray seemingly gave him a further deal as an act of charity because he felt sorry for him even though realistically he was never going to play for us at any point. In the fictitious example you use I doubt Rover 99's brother would have got a new contract if he'd never been any use to his employers nor was he ever likely to be. People aren't that stupid in the real world away from the insular bubble of football.

I really do disagree. I can't believe anyone can condone it. As I said the other day, if you're going to hand Gladwin a deal when there's no chance of him playing simply because you feel sorry for him then you might as well give me or you a weekly handout until the end of the season. The argument might be made that it's a sign of how well TM treats his players and other players will take note but equally it sends out a signal that if players come here they've cracked it and are on easy street. Not only do you not have to continue to perform to keep getting a new contract, you dont even have to have ever performed or even be available for selection!!

It seems to be far more pronounced since Waggott joined the Club and I did wonder if it was him trying to be clever rather than Mowbray, but you do get the impression it's an approach they're both happy with. With Mowbray the main issue seems to be his reluctance to replace or disrupt the existing players so I doubt he's too unhappy if we're sat there with bids in which are extremely unlikely to be accepted, and if all else fails and it looks like a deal may still go through against the odds, he can always kill it off with his spiel about the player only coming in as a member of the squad as it appears he did with the Bauer deal.

This approach whereby we offer less than other Clubs' valuations of their players at the start of a window then sit back desperately hoping no -one else will come in for them and that the selling Club might then take pity on us at the end and sell us said players on the cheap is a recipe for disaster. So far it's resulted in either missing out on all our main targets and then having to throw last minute telephone numbers about at players we didn't really want for the sake of getting some sort of deal over the line (Brereton Summer 2018) or waiting all window and then having to pay the original asking price anyway (Gallagher 2019). It also sounds from the interview that the opportunity is there this window to do a bit of wheeler dealing and get a few off the wage bill but we're going to miss out because we're waiting to hear first if Clubs will take pity on us regarding their players. I've no idea why we can't just select players we fancy on ability within our approximate price range and then just get the deal done which removes the risk of missing out on a player you want and frees us up to offload a few. To listen to the hand wringing from TM every window about how difficult the market is, you wonder how any Club ever manages to buy or sell a player. He makes it sound like it's on a par with curing cancer or something in terms of difficulty.

Sorry, not having Pedersen in the slightest. There may be one or two other examples but I can't recall another top player going completely off the boil at the peak of his physical prowess and the only possible reason I can put it down to is the fact he must have thought he'd done enough or made himself financially secure and effectively downed tools. His form started declining before Hughes left in summer 2008 when he would only have been about 27 and we had to endure him for a further five seasons after that. If you were to look back at the message board from that latter period I dont think many others were having him either but it seems the passage of time and maybe Shebby's comments have given people rose or blue and white tinted specs where MGP is concerned. Still if they choose to remember him for the first half of his Ewood career( which was admittedly brilliant) and disregard the second that's their prerogative just as its mine to judge his time here as a whole.

Would love it if someone stood up and asked him: 1) What he thought was the reason for him going from a superstar to being absolutely gash more or less overnight and arguably quicker than any other player in the history of football 2) Whether he felt the slightest bit of remorse for milking the Club dry whilst going through the motions in his final five seasons or so here.

× 1000. Like Evans, at some point either the fire in his belly went or he decided he wasn't going to put it in any more and was garbage for the final 5/6 years of his time here. And that was years ago. Might as well see what Shearer's up to if we're playing silly buggers.

God, you make it sound like he's made one bad signing and lots of brilliant ones, not one brilliant one and lots of terrible ones. It won't just be the Brereton signing that comes back to haunt him (and us) it will be his appalling recruitment overall. You can carry out your research on a player's character and find out what you want to know without him having played for you before. I remember reading that Man Ure did their due diligence on Chris Sutton whilst he was here and decided against signing him due to his excesses off the pitch. I also remember joking a while ago that to be a target for Mowbray the player must either have played for him before, played for Boro, or both (Chapman) I was joking at the time but it seems it's not that far wide of the mark. Combined with his reluctance to move on, or improve upon, his existing players and it's no wonder his recruitment is so abysmal.

They will still be on substantial wages though and I'd imagine our overall wage bill is as much of a problem as any fees when you're constantly bringing in players, discovering they're no good then looking to bring even more in without being proactive in offloading a few.

I thought Joe H's assessments were ridiculously generous, Mowbray has made one genuinely successful signing in Dack. Some others did a job in League 1 but as far as the Championship is concerned they'd all have to be fails thus far apart from Downing.

For me it's a no brainer the other way round. It'd be a no brainer even if we were only getting him off the wage bill, let alone getting any sort of fee for him. For me he symbolises everything that has been wrong with the Club, over the Venky's era, putting in little effort, not performing season in season out yet being rewarded with contract after contract. I understand where you're coming from with your post but if Evans did go and we got a fee for him I'd rather it was reinvested in other areas. I honestly dont think that alongside a slightly more attack minded player such as Travis, Smallwood would be any particular downgrade and we also have Johnson and Davenport picking fluff out of their navel. You ought to be able to get a decent pairing out of some combination of those four and if he is to be here for any length of time then Mowbray needs to be told he has to start getting the best out of what he's got as opposed to stockpiling players in certain positions then never using half of them. It probably won't happen anyway. Instead of cashing in on a poor player whose value (such as it is) is probably as high as it's going to get, Mowbray will probably declare him irreplaceable and we'll ward off Stoke's interest by handing him a new 5 year deal.

My god, what a godsend that would be, one of our highest earners and someone who's been stealing a living at the Club ever since he got injured in Bowyer's time off the wage bill and we might even get a small fee for him. We might then be forced to see how one of Mowbray's acquisitions, Davenport, goes on instead of just ignoring him completely and paying him for doing next to nothing as well. What a novel concept! If Carlsberg did transfer rumours............. I'll start the car, drive him down and pay the petrol myself. Sadly, I fear the rumour is way to good to be true and it isn't April 1st yet either. If however there is the slightest grain of truth in it, there's room for 3 more in the car if Stoke have in fact recently acquired charitable status!

If he's being bought in and then loaned out again straight away, what use is he to the under 23's?

Absolutely pointless then.

But not without negotiating his pay off first, everyone slapping themselves on the back and announcing the deal as being by "mutual consent". You really do insult everyone's intelligence and raise their Hope's unnecessarily by suggesting there's the slightest of chances he would walk unilaterally of his own volition without a pay off.

The same place as the evidence he's not allowed to spend money on the defence, it' doesn't exist and the poster is making an assumption. There would have been a loan fee of some sort for Tosin though, regardless of the amount. Edit: Islander beat me to it

In an ideal world Mowbray needs to be brave and ruthless this window and offload Graham, Samuel, Smallwood, Evans or Johnson, Bennett and maybe even consider loaning out one of Gallagher or Brereton. I also wouldn't hesitate to send Walton back if it was technically possible under the terms of his loan agreement. That should give us more than enough wiggle room in wages to bring in the players we need i.e. a couple of half decent strikers, a keeper and a defender or two on loan. Or at least it would if our recruitment department had the faintest idea of who they need to be looking at. In reality I predict we'll do absolutely nothing and then complain afterwards about how we've no money and how difficult it is to get business done in January etc etc

Yes, how dare he come here and play out of position, thereby knocking Armstrong out of his out of position position.