Thats a unique situation though. Many people blamed Huddersfield for our relegation, so that cant then be followed by wanting us to throw in a scratch team for any games. I was always of the opinion that we went down because we deserved to. I do sort of agree with this, although I would stop short at saying that people are necessarily "depriving" themselves in that its not a massive miss, lets face it. But in regards especially to Venkys, they do not give a shit or a seconds thought to any of us. I've done marches, sit-ins, the 1875 protest etc, and they cleaely didnt care and arent affected. Crowds have gone down, they just dont care about us. Venkys are and always have been the problem which is why it sickens me that people actively defend them still. I also agree that Mowbray isnt on par with Kean especially or even Coyle. He is a manager who has overall done a decent job but he needed sacking at least a year ago. He is also in as good a job as he will ever have again, naturally he wont just resign, I get the frustrations leading to analysis of every word he utters, its all self preservation though and I do genuinely think that beyond that nonsense, he does genuinely want to do his best and he does try his best, he does live away from his family and puts the hours in im sure. Just as certain players try their best and themselves arent good enough. I wouldnt leave if I was him. Again, it comes down to our bastard owners. Dont get me wrong, he frustrates me as even a poor player does, well moreso as he has more impact, and the thought of an inevitable further year with him in charge saddens me.

I dont doubt that wed be better off without Waggott based on the things he is responsible for but it seems a massive stretch and doesnt make any sense for the owners to be willing to stump up yet he doesnt want them to. It says in that article: "The club were in the process of seeking external investment to afford the implementation service, with Waggott keen to place extra financial pressure on the owners, estimating that a complete overhaul would cost in the region of £2m. Ultimately that finance wasn't attained and the club have sanctioned just a standard refurbishment of all pitches at both stadium and training ground."

Seems illogical to me that the owners would have said that we can have the money to fully relay the pitches and Waggott would decline. Why would he?

https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/football-news/blackburn-rovers-ewood-brockhall-pitch-20564696 Unsure where to put this, but Venkys again making further mockery of their supposed "we only have to ask and they will sign the cheque" mentality. Done on the cheap again.

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/300912-football-fancast-single-out-“passenger”-reach-for-criticism/?tab=comments#comment-9813683 Some opinions on Reach: "playing with reach on the pitch is like dribbling past the washing line in the back garden when you were a kid." "it's like starting with 10 men" "Seen more backbone in a bag of candy floss" "The guy has ability but sadly lacks guts, determination, heart and is as soft as s**t." "I’m just glad I’ll never see the spineless waster in a Wednesday shirt again." I dont think they will miss him.

I wouldnt agree on Reach (certainly not one of the first names on the team sheet) but Bannan would be a brilliant signing. Always has been a classy player and a great passer and would give us ability on the ball that we dont have, as well as experience.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19290347.rovers-must-find-answers-transfer-dilemmas-says-mowbray/ And Mowbray says the pre-season plans are already sorted, but for the second successive summer there won’t be a training camp in Austria. “We won’t be going abroad this year. We’ve already sorted the pre-season to a vast majority,” he added. “We’ve got a lot of games pencilled in, we know where we’re going with the group, we’ve sorted out many things.” Not the work of a man expecting his P45.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19290347.rovers-must-find-answers-transfer-dilemmas-says-mowbray/ Adam Reach mentioned, seemingly very much from a speculative perspective by Rich Sharpe in the absence of any genuine information, obviously its an easy link with him about to become a free agent and coming through at Boro. A player capable of occasional spectacular goals but one who tends to do very little in the games I have watched him play in at Sheffield Wednesday. Not had the best couple of years. We do need at least one or two midfielders who can regularly get goals from midfield, our current lot dont/havent done anywhere near enough. Rothwell with 3, Buckley with 1, Holtby with 0, Travis with 0, Downing with 0, Johnson with 3, Trybull with 0, Davenport with 1 and Evans with 0. The last 4 have more of an excuse having regularly played the most defensive of the 3 but we need to take the chance to have a clear out and we do need a better sitting midfielder but we also need players who can get goals.

The most confusing aspect of Mowbray's loyalty to Johnson is the type of player he is. He has never been a technically gifted player, at his best for Norwich he was a box to box, powerful goalscoring midfielder, a skillset that has massively waned with age. We want him to sit and start attacks. I have never seen a player caught so often on the ball leading to dangerous situations.

It also implies that the striker and his quality is an irrelevance as long as he has the "team built around him" as a central striker.

I think at times he has looked decent although I thought he didnt really take his chance at the weekend. He should have been given more starts in the last few games though over players like Evans, Johnson and Trybull who wont and/or shouldnt be here next season. His Rovers career which is 3 years old has not really got off the ground and like Ayala and Rankin Costello, he unfortunately seems to be made of glass. The theory behind such deals (low fee youngsters to grow) does make sense although Davenport like Chapman has not worked out as we may have hoped. I also want Mowbray out but its counter productive if whoever the manager is has his signings made above his head.

Where is this information from? I saw since that @J*B put similar on twitter but was unsure if either of you posted based on the other, or have heard it seperately. If true, sounds a little underwhelming based on his spells at Doncaster and Coventry, and perhaps a cheap replacement for Evans. His supposed style and weaknesses make him sound like a Johnson lite version! Low fee signings of young players from big teams do make sense in theory although I suppose the Davenport deal hasnt really worked out and it has a lot of similarities.

Where is this from? I dont remember seeing him play, looking online, Coventry fans dont seem to particularly want him back, suggesting that he gives the ball away at times dithering in front of the defence, and that he seems not to have really matured from the sanitised under 23 environment. Here is a thread on him: https://www.skybluestalk.co.uk/threads/ben-sheaf-future.131648/ His future seems to be a bit of a mystery, Coventry had an obligation to buy clause in his contract, so the fact that they presumably want to get out of that doesnt bode well, and surely means that he is still under contract at Arsenal if a fee was set to change hands. Plus he has suffered a bad injury. Strange one.

Oh dear, didnt want him to stay, a liability in front of the back 4. I get that we need experience but not in the form of players not capable on the pitch. I think @JoeH suggested that Kaminski essentially wished Bell goodbye.

Kipre left on loan in January. But I dont think that anyone said that Kipre wouldnt be a squad player there. The point was that he presumably didnt go with the attitude that he would never kick a ball and that he intended on giving his all to play at a higher level. That coupled with a massively higher wage meant that it was only a biased party that could suggest that they would have made a different decision to Kipre at that time.

What did he put? Dont have instagram so havent seen what he or Kaminski have put.

Dont understand why the captain of 5th in the league would join 15th, even assuming that Barnsley dont go up. He would be better off staying or even if he doesnt he could do far better than us.

If this really was our year 3 in which we go for it, I understand with the pandemic that changes things but we spent the least last summer out of the 3 summers following promotion. I dont think that we have such a plan, it would imply an element of strategy within the club and it is an illogical strategy anyway. I dont think that Amarii Bell has possibly been too expensive for us to keep either.

Makes no sense to pigeon hole players only in a certain age range. We will be losing Evans, Downing, Holtby and ideally (although I think we will keep both sadly) Johnson and Bennett. Some experience (not too old, 30 isnt that though) would be very helpful I think. It could be particularly helpful if we was to get into a scrap at the bottom.

100%. Thats why that even if you put someone else in Armstrongs central position, say Gallagher, he would still not get anywhere near as many chances or indeed goals.

Mowbray cares not whether a player is suited to play within his flawed tactical framework anyway so doubt that would be an issue to him! I agree on the wages thing, if Stoke cant afford him, how can we? Nixon presumably talking out his arse again. As a player, whenever I have watched him he has never really stood out but he gets goals from midfield which could be important in what I expect to be a dogfight next season with most of our goals removed. He is also of a good age in that we need more experience but not players of an age whereby their career is about to end. A big issue though is the injuries, Evans is on is way out but we still have a cast of players who love to keep the physio busy already in Ayala, Davenport, Rankin Costello etc, we dont need more injury prone players.

Clucas isnt out of contract until 2022 so on a free, it doesnt make any sense to me. He is a central midfielder who gets goals but has had injury problems, and if there is anything to the rumour, you would ask why Stoke are giving him away to a team who finished so close to them.

I think that is a tough question and one id struggle to answer. Rhodes shared Armstrong's ability to anticipate chances but ultimately found himself in presentable shooting positions much less often, owing to Armstrongs pace which gives him a dimension that Rhodes never had. Conversely, Rhodes was more clinical with the chances that he did have, so Armstrongs ability to get himself into goalscoring positions and Rhodes' ruthlessness essentially balance themselves out compared to one another, and result in almost equally impressive personal seasons. Both were/are excellent performers more than doing their jobs in otherwise flawed teams under flawed managers yet were/are both grossly underappreciated, especially Armstrong.

I think this idea that our whole gameplan is to simply get Armstrong opportunities to shoot from wherever he is is our main point of difference. You are even doctoring stats to suit, I could take 5 games out in which he didnt score to make his goals per game record even better. I am unsure if its done partly to use it as a further stick to question Mowbrays approach which I do understand but that isnt even necessary, could you perhaps argue that his tiresome and boring possession obsessed tactics do not suit a striker with such pace that Armstrong has, allowing teams to close spaces in behind? I think that this idea that he just is allowed to shoot on sight is flawed and has stemmed from that game at Bristol City where I would be the first to admit that he allowed frustration to get the better of him. But that was one game. I do agree that he isnt clinical for example like Rhodes was, but as I mentioned, his pace especially (but also his anticipation and intelligence) gets him into goalscoring positions more often than Rhodes and indeed the majority of players, a large proportion of his missed opportunities are not pot shots from stupid positions but in fact very presentable chances including one on ones that as I mention have stemmed from his pace and movement regularly getting him into them positions. The likes of Gallagher and Brereton dont have those same instincts, indeed strikers that do tend to be the ones that get the goals and are worth the money. The reason that Armstrong starts as our central striker is because he is undoubtedly better than any of the alternatives (and most in the league) in that position. To suggest that a 28 goal striker has in any way held us back is just bizarre though to me. It also alleviates the supporting cast of any responsibility. I think its warped logic to look at those goal tallies and the discrepancy between Armstrong on the rest, obviously allowing for the fact that a striker will naturally have the most goals, and then criticise Armstrong rather than the rest of our attacking players and their comparatively feebly goal tallies. Assuming that our 3 primary attacking players aside from Armstrong are Gallagher, Brereton and Rothwell, I would suggest that Brereton has played in a role that very much suits him, that Rothwell has played centrally all season as he has craved, and indeed only Gallagher may have grievances as to the position he has played, but never would he be selected above Armstrong by anyone of sane mind because he isnt as good and wont score anywhere near as many goals! Armstrongs goal tally this season is very impressive and should be appreciated, and our failings this season have not been thanks to him. I suspect that we will never agree on the topic though.

Even when he lost form, he was our biggest goal threat. A striker with considerable dips in form does not score 28 goals. The idea that the teams sole purpose is to get Armstrong goals is flawed and the idea that he gets preferential treatment is nonsense in my opinion, would you have at any point dropped him this season and for whom? And do you think that other teams could have strikers on 28 goals (or more based on Armstrongs lack of clinical nature) if they had tactics to what you perceive to be the same benefit to the central striker that we do? Do you think he has had an excellent season or do you just think its the norm for any striker within our tactical framework?