We could have played another 45 minutes at the end, and we still wouldn't have scored.

Playing 5 at the back, with just Gallagher up front, against 10 men and with us doing all of the pushing.
When we had a literal striker on the bench.

Pears managed to kick the ball and didn't throw anything into his own net.

McFadzean had a good game.

Dolan did some good work, but then totally ruined it by adding several unnecessary stepovers, before losing the ball.

Moran was about to score at the death before Gallagher got a touch and took it away from him.

Eustace has shown nothing to suggest he's competent enough to manage Blackburn Rovers.
And despite it looking fairly unlikely next week, I can genuinely see us going down.

Yeah, that was the whole deal - both Zidane and Dugarry.
Want to say £5m, but it's been a while and I may be wrong.

Zidane was well up for the move, Dugarry not as much.

He'd been playing at a higher level than Jamie Vardy (with a similar scoring record), prior to him signing for Fleetwood.

Rough diamonds are out there.
Telalovic probably isn't one of them, but it's sometimes worth a punt.

Maybe just open your eyes when you go anywhere near to the stadium? (ref the below img)

And as for the comments about 'the owners can send funds whenever they like, there is no issue and everything is rosy'.
Does he think we are all stupid?

JDT and GB have publicly stated the impact caused by restrictions placed on Venky's sending funds overseas.

Has he just blatantly lied to fans?

To be fair to Telalovic, Farke gave him his Bundesliga debut not too long before we bought him.
And he clearly has a knack for scoring goals at a lower level.

He's not the non-league waste of space some would have you believe.

I can't believe he'd have done any worse than Gallagher over the last several games.

5 minutes ago, Lucimo said:

I'll be honest I can't remember what they did last year?? What was it?

When their GK blatantly handled the ball into our net in injury time, ultimately costing us a play off place.

The same reason why I was laughing my arse off when their extra time goal against Man U was wiped off.

Coventry can fuck right off.
And their fans are weird.

52 minutes ago, Brfc Harry said:

3% increase in ST prices across the board.

If this happened, it would show how out of touch the senior leadership team are with...well, reality.

Record low sales and we would be a laughing stock.

I find it bizarre that some folk make things up for the sake of attention / causing chaos (like all of the above instances).

There must be better ways to spend your spare time.

On 23/04/2024 at 08:56, Mercer said:

Sadly, Ewood Park has never been renowned as having a hostile atmosphere which is often worth a goal start.

Highbury was once nicknamed The Library' because it was so quiet.

In the main, Rovers fans are a docile lot at Ewood Park, too little passion and too many happy clappers.

It's not in a Blackburnian's nature to be aggressive or hostile.

Grumpy and grumbly at best.

We're a family club for a reason; we're nice people up this way.

I need to reel that in a bit, I'll end up as the next manager and/or CEO.

21 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

I am 100% sure that the above squad ends in League 2. 

I'd struggle to say otherwise for the existing squad, to be fair.

I'd clear the decks and play mainly kids.

We're going to be shit either way, so we might as well give the promising kids a season to learn and develop.

Leo / Michalski

DF from:

O'Riordan
Batty
Barnes
Wharton
Duru
Davies
Acheson

MF:

Gilsenan
Whitehall
Finneran
Buckley
Edmondson
Farkas

ST:

Leonard
Tyjon
Telalovic
Nsangou

Hull away was the big one for me.

He started, played well and should really have scored 2, but it just wouldn't go in for him.

Genuinely feel that he's more of a goal threat that SG ever will be.

The most depressing bit for me is that we will likely have a few quid to play with, but who is JE realistically going to attract?

JDT was a legendary international-class player and he clearly knew what he wanted - we just couldn't afford them (or sabotaged the deals).

It would be the most Rovers thing ever if we spent £10m-£15m this summer and wasted it on a load of dross.

On 23/04/2024 at 20:15, M_B said:

I watched the first goal back and paused it just as Pears headed it, have a look.

If he doesn’t come out, their player is clear down the left channel with all the defence gone missing. He made exactly the right choice, it's Hyam who cocks up by not clearing his lines.

He made the right choice to come, absolutely.

But he then made the wrong choice in heading it to Hyam (instead of getting it as far away as possible).
More importantly, he stops then saunters back to his goal, rather than sprinting back to his line - as you'd expect in that situation.

He definitely played his part in the first goal.
The 3rd is just bizarre how we didn't stop the ball from going over the line.
The very worst case is an indirect free kick, which they're never scoring from.

4 hours ago, JHRover said:

Pretty much agree with the lot of it. What a post.

JDT by no means perfect but he had valuable assets. Ambition, drive, personality, a vision. I think back to last season, particularly August to February, and the first half of this season, and this was a guy capable of dragging this club out of the stinking cesspit that it has been dragged and into a potentially bright future.

Alas as we saw with the Allardyce fiasco, as we saw with the Bowyer/Lambert fiasco, these owners and their minions will always find a way to derail and destroy any positive momentum or progress and set the club back years. I should have known better but I admit I believed. I genuinely thought that with the Director of Football approach and JDT leading it and after the season we had, going so close in league and cup, that the ingredients were there to take the next step and crack the play-offs.

More fool me. I can't describe the disappointment I feel about the way in which once again these people have destroyed something that should have been good and positive and that fell into our lap almost by accident after Mowbray finally left.

Yes it was clear that JDT was burned by the O'Brien fiasco, yet he stuck at it and we still went close last season. It was clear he was unimpressed by the summer's shenanigans yet he stuck at it, moved his family over, accepted the constraints and we, somehow managed to get ourselves sat just outside the top 6 in December with this squad.

Then a third transfer window of nonsense, culminating in Adam Wharton being sold, the McGuire disgrace (what sort of club treats other clubs and players in such a disgusting and humiliating fashion?) and no reinvestment was the straw that broke the camel's back. Totally understandable for anyone with any self-respect to draw a line at being undermined by your colleagues.

Of course ownership and a board with any finger on the pulse would have sacked JDT once it became clear that the damage was irreparable and the direction things were going. I agree that he was essentially saying 'f... you' to them and going gung ho wanting to be fired.

Yet they couldn't even manage his departure correctly. It came far too late, even in the week it happened they took days on end to announce it.

They're just a disgrace. There's no coming back from this in my book. It's happened too many times and I won't fall for it again.

This, this and this again ^

5 minutes ago, jim mk2 said:

David Moyes on MotD apologised to West Ham fans after their 5-2 defeat at Crystal Palace

Has Eustace apologised for the debacle today? 

He hasn't and he won't.

One of the key traits of a strong leader is humility.

All JE seems capable of is sticking to a very vague script about 'sticking together', 'being competitive', or how outstanding we were.

It'd stick in the throat at any time, but directly after the breath of fresh air that was JDT (in this respect), he just comes across as disingenuous and a bit dim.

I like to think there was a bit of karma for Coventry today, for the way they cheated us in injury time last season.

12 minutes ago, NeilInBristol said:

Can some one please explain how he doesn't just catch, punch, kick it away instead of watching it bounce in to the goal?!

I've seen it a dozen times and I can't understand it at all.

He actually moves his body away from the ball, when any contact (certainly with his hand or foot) keeps it out of the net.

As incompetent as he is, I don't believe it would be intentional.
But if it was intentional, he couldn't have done a much better job of it.

I wouldn't take that Wilson bell-end, after his handball and taunting antics against us last season.

I'd rather stick Michelski in as number one.

2 minutes ago, Ewood Ace said:

I like Ayari looks like he has a bit about him. As for Markanday he seems to have been made the scapegoat by the manager for Bristol City as the other 10 starters in that game have started the two since it. And that is a big problem with the manager he doesn't seem to want to make any big decisions and drop some of the more senior players. Instead keeps faith in the likes of Hyam, Brittain, Gallagher, Dolan and far too often they fail to deliver.

Agreed - and I think Ayari has been unlucky not to start more games.
Seems to have a mix of graft and technical ability; pretty much what we expect from JRC.

Feels like JE wants to be the players' friend, rather than their boss.
And anyone who has managed people at any level knows that doing that is a surefire way to fail.

We were undoubtedly in freefall at the back of JDT's tenure, but I'd still put money on us having a higher points tally right now, had he not walked.

We're something like 15-20 games into JE's reign and we're still waiting on that new manager bounce.
Oh, and a home win.

As long as Pears isn't in the squad and Szmodics starts, the rest are all interchangeably poor.

In fact, no, Markanday and Ayari both looked like they had a bit of fight in them, when they came on - start them.

5 hours ago, simongarnerisgod said:

if we get relegated i don`t think eustace will have a clue of how to play in league one,thats a big concern,we certainly can`t go into it with the players we`ve got,we`ll get bullied off the pitch and surrender with a whimper

This is my huge concern.

Whatever you think of Mowbray's tenure here, he did a very good job of uniting the club and turning it around from the death spiral it was in, after we went down.

Can this current wet lettuce do that? His standards are as high as 'let's just be competitive' at home to Sheffield Weds.
We were anything but, in any case.

Just accept that he was a gamble that didn't work and get somebody in who knows what they are doing.

As for smiling and being all dismissive in his presser...

2 hours ago, The Mighty Chaffinch said:

Right, I’ve calmed down (just). That was THE WORST match I have ever seen at Ewood. Worse than the Wigan chicken fiasco, worse than any thumping we may have received and worse than any derby defeat. From the ultra negative 5 at the back to the non-existent midfield to the lack of creativity to the worst performance by a Rovers keeper at Ewood in memory…add in the fact that all 3 goals were gift wrapped, that we allowed the away team (and relegation rivals) to fill the entire Darwen End (too right it felt like a home game…quote Wednesday player) to the ridiculous inevitability that any substitution would make absolutely no difference to our plight and to cap it all off, nearly 20 minutes of stoppage time in a match that was pathetic from stop-start to an eventual (bloody eventual) finish. I’ve never felt so bereft at what I was witnessing…so utterly and totally aghast at the shower of ineptitude in front of me. Wednesday were a limited but powerful team, that’s all. We let them dominate, we caved in, we put up no fight, we stunk the place out and then some. Regardless of how Coventry will be after today’s epic semi-final (and didn’t they show the pluck and fight we so dismally lacked)…we won’t beat them…we don’t beat Coventry when all is rosy in the garden let alone when we’re as bad as we are now. I really don’t want to go next week, any more torture and I might have to insert my season ticket card into an unmentionable Eustace orifice. It’s Sammie Smodzics plus ten imposters. Pathetic, morose, moribund and defeated. Are we going down? We deserve to be and it’s still a real possibility. Pity the teams that finish below us 

Agreed.

But apparently it's not the manager's fault.

The guy who spent all week preparing them for the game, set the tactics and picked the team.
The same guy who hasn't managed a single win at home, despite playing some of the poorest teams in the division.

The guy is WAY out of his depth and it comes across loud and clear in his pressers.

I'd even take Gareth Ainsworth at this stage. At least he gives a shit about the club and would get them playing for the shirt.