roversfan99

He could then sign a pre contract abroad.

Has he said that he would be happy for the owners to overrule his decisions, which was the scenario I suggested has happened in the past and shouldnt? No.

No my point wasnt specific to Brereton although I wouldnt be surprised if he wanted to talk.

If you say so. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19477019.blackburn-rovers-boss-no-guarantee-adam-armstrong-future/ https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19496806.blackburn-rovers-putting-brakes-on-boss-sympathises-venkys/

It wouldnt be a surprise. See last summer. Also see the summer when we sold Hanley and Duffy. And other summers under Venkys. Such inconsistency is why a Brentford type model wont happen.

Unless we only get pitiful offers we cant afford to just let him run down his contract. Not even to do with FFP, it makes little sense. The thing that we should do though if it genuinely isnt a necessity to sell him is to spend the majority on a replacement. Riis is mentioned above, players like him, Adebayo, Stewart and Gyokeres are all possibly slightly beyond us but thats the sort of calibre im thinking, maybe someone from abroad if not them 4. Its a no brainer to have either Brereton for 1 season or another goalscorer on a long term deal. That should be the aim, buy, sell at profit, reinvest (usually I wouldnt even expect a majority/all to be reinvested but on the back of the Armstrong sale too) and continue. Its presumably only a lack of faith in Venkys to act consistently like that which makes people especially unwilling to think he should be sold rather than left to run his deal down and that is unfortunately why comparisons to teams like Brentford who successfully deploy that sort of policy are pie in the sky.

Living in a nice place to set up with his new family. Money. European football. Big reasons.

Watched Burnley tonight and they are very much a work in progress. Their midfield 3 of Cullen, Cork and Brownhill is the best in the league and their full backs especially Maatsen are a real threat too. Harwood Bellis seems to have matured and Taylor is experienced with both well protected by the aforementioned midfield but I would be unsure of Taylor there going forward against a more obvious striking threat and the whole line was caught out for the goal and once or twice on other occasions on the counter attack. Their biggest weaknesses might be their goalkeeper who had little to do tonight but has history of errors and made one or two mistakes v Watford and also the piecing together of their attack. Rodriguez is a lot more effective than Barnes but they still need another striker and I am also unsure on who they are best playing around that and how to go about fitting them in. Twine is the main absence and will give them a real threat but do you sacrifice a midfielder to play Twine behind a striker? And when will he be fit? Bastien looks like hes not best suited to playing so far forward nor does Vitinho who was totally anonymous. Benson was dropped but he was very loose when he came on and didnt impress the other night. Tella is really quick so totally different but hasnt really made a name for himself yet and Churlinov who I have never heard of seemingly is signing but he will he be the only further addition? Costelloe looks a million miles away from the standard too. These players are of course settling but im unsure what the plan is What is your take @longsiders1882

16 Championship goals is "not near good enough?" Not that I think that we will spend anything like the fee needed.

I wouldn't mind a "selfish" player if it meant one that scored 28 goals to be fair. Don't think Southampton will let him go, involved at the moment coming on with a very selfless assist on Saturday.

I never said he had. I am just saying that in general, lots of players pull out last minute of games when they have interest from elsewhere and they are no longer in the right frame of mind.

I think he will play but I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't. He wouldn't be the first player to become unsettled and pull out of a match due to transfer issues. It's all well and good saying he plays regardless but if he is visibly unhappy then he won't.

I don't think that the owners should over rule the manager, or if relevant, the manager and director of football. I stand by that decision. Venkys have employed Broughton and Tomasson because presumably they seem them both as being capable of performing their role, and I would hazard a guess that their footballing knowledge compared to that could be scribbled on the back of a stamp. We are undeniably short at centre back, even if you have untold faith in Phillips when no one can be sure how he will cope with a sudden batch of Championship games in quick succession. One more injury and we really are going to struggle, so it is IMO critical that we get one in as soon as we can, and if we are after 2, maybe we can get 1 in and Van Den Berg becomes less urgent. My point was not that Tomasson will come out and say "I feel let down" or even that he will feel let down if we struggle with the lack of depth across the rest of the month. I am saying that he would be entitled to do so.

Because Dack is a very good player. Reading played only one day prior in similar temperatures. We also have more comparative scope to make changes if we choose/need to, Reading had a bench full of kids. I am still unsure why you keep mentioning last season, we had a different manager, it was far later in the season, we was in terrible form, and both sides will be more than 50% changed. And what sort of logic is, we should have won last year but lost so even though we should beat them this season, I will take a draw?!

It is not just specific specialisation, but also on general ability too. If a team with good, ruthless strikers is over exceeding its xG, that could be sustainable, likewise a team with poor strikers and scoring less than xG suggests they should be. It goes back to sustainability and expecting teams to naturally revert close to their xG. I don't think that it is bollocks but I think it is an incredibly flawed concept so needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. It makes sense to want to increase the number of chances that you create. I also think that it is has become fashionable to use xG with little context in the mainstream media. Take the Second Tier Podcast, they can't and don't watch most games so they become somewhat reliant on soundbites and cliches, so xG can be used as a crutch to suggest more knowledge about how a team is doing than they actually have. What I am saying about the way a game goes beyond measuring xG before and after goals. Games early often can be cagey and once players tire etc, the game can open up a bit for one. But say Travis/Brereton don't score the goals they do, the whole game is different. Maybe West Brom score first for example and we pen West Brom in the second half in their own half creating chances. So much is reliant on the flow of a game and when that first goal in particular comes. I also don't think it makes for constructive debate to be so dismissive that people simply don't understand it.

Why is that particularly relevant? We lost to West Brom at home and Swansea away last season, but with many different players and a different manager. The guy who scored the winner last season has left. There isn't some sort of strange curse at the Madejski, it's coincidence. They are one of the worst sides in the league, have loads of players out including Joao and Meite and have the worst keeper in the Championship and the worst manager. We have won all 3 games. I don't get why anyone would take a draw.

Do you agree/disagree with my points that: - The assertion that over/under performing xG and sustainability doesn't factor in the likelihood that teams will not automatically fall back towards their xG due to either having particularly ruthless/wasteful strikers either in general or if their teams create types of chances that their strikers specialise in - The above point was a big factor in the drop off following Brereton's injury last season - As evident in our first 3 games, the first goal can hugely skew the xG especially if a first half goal is not from a clear cut chance because of the natural way that a team losing will want/need to attack more than one protecting a lead Or have they just been dismissed under the "he clearly doesn't understand what he is talking about" line?

Not from the treatment table.

I am certainly not endorsing just signing crap for the sake of it, nobody has.

But if Travis and Brereton hadn't smashed in screamers to put us 1 up, the onus wouldn't have then gone almost solely onto our opponents to score an equaliser, making them attack more. The primary reason I would suggest that we went from suddenly outperforming to underperforming last season was not even that it wasn't sustainable. Our main striker who was getting most of oru chances was injured and our remaining attackers (Dolan, Khadra, Gallagher) don't have that same level of composure.

The Martin comments were not specific to xG, its mainly the possession Swansea have that makes people give Martin excessive "patience" that his principles will come together. It was just as a comparison albeit at a slight tangent to my point about Steve Cooper's Swansea and those comments which were about xG. But the stats we quoted were on xG whereby my point is surely valid. Even so, the idea that these stats will catch up to you is flawed even if we take for granted that NSxG factors in occasions like I flagged, poor touches, players not getting on the end of pull backs etc. And I have serious issues with the idea that any metric can totally objectify such aspects. Because teams will naturally over/under perform on these stats based on the quality of their attackers who get on these chances. A team might have ruthless strikers or indeed create better chances specific to the strengths of those attackers (for example, a target man might be much more likely to score a header of the same xG than a different type of chance, say a one on one) that means that they outperform those stats in a sustainable way.

To be fair, I think I would rather play 10 than go with Magloire, but your point in general is 100% correct. We have one injury prone but very good centre back, a kid who has played 60 minutes and nothing else. Without further injuries, we are still so short and the urgency is massive, or should be. I don't ever remember him saying that he turned down permanent players, but even if he had, the £5m rumour wouldn't automatically be true. Ultimately a manager should (if given autonomy) live and die by his decisions (add in director of football too when appropriate) including in the transfer market. A sale you deem to be a bad choice does not mean that the owners should have overruled it! As it is, with a season in between of a shit keeper, Mowbray then signed a very good one but either way, if the issue is the manager (or again, director of football) making below par signings in general (and Mowbray's main faults I would say weren't in this aspect) then the owners shouldn't start interfering with individual decisions, they should change the people who are making those decisions. Sadly they don't seem to judge their employees on performance. If they occasionally need to ask for a big sale to balance the books or whatever, ok, but they should NOT be overruling decisions on individual players.

How is it not? If you go ahead in all 3 games, then the opposition naturally end up attacking more than you (more often than not) to chase an equaliser, in which case they tend to take shots to try and get that goal. Add in the fact that our opening goals in 2 of the 3 games were from low xG shots and that only makes that stat seem worse. Would you not be better telling me how specifically I am wrong rather than being patronising in a way that you would definitely react negatively to if the shoe was on the other foot?

No way can we chuck Edun in, he is a liability. I would be wary of any changes bar Dack for Szmodics. Hard to take out a Buckley or a Hedges without weakening us. We badly need more players in.

Even assuming that Ayala who has a history of injuries and Phillips who has shown tendency to break down as his body grows both stay fit, how would people feel about potentially having only those 2 centre backs available over the next 5 games if signings aren't imminent? Totally get that quality comes first but Tomasson would have the right to feel aggrieved at those above him and I would not be comfortable with having to give Phillips such a run of games.