Miller11

Shame Mowbray hasn’t been particularly bothered about picking his “strongest 11” in the previous 45 games... tonight might have meant something.

Just catching up on the last 24 hours or so of this thread, and it almost perfectly encapsulates our club under Venky’s. The expectation that Mowbray and Waggott should manage up is interesting. In an ideal world, this is exactly what you’d expect, and you’d want dialogue between them and the Venky’s to be a two way process... Unfortunately, Venky’s want slavish obedience as an absolute minimum, and ideally sycophancy. They value this far more than actual competence within a role. As a result, any time we’ve had people in the boardroom or dugout that aren’t just pitifully grateful to be there, they have lasted five minutes. @Mashed Potatoesmentioning the likes of Hunt is spot on. Look what happened when John Williams dared question them. Lambert quickly realised the situation and wasn’t having it... Time after time this happens. The choice is pretty simple, kowtow or go. To find someone in either a director or manager role at Ewood who has the right skill set, experience, ability, personality and style to start managing up to people so utterly convinced of their own superiority is a billion to one shot.

No better time to blood the youngsters than a game like this, particularly with no crowd. Let’s be honest, Mowbray making wholesale changes, or playing clearly weakened sides is nothing new, so any talk of preserving integrity isn’t applicable. No need for sentiment in an empty stadium either. I’d like to see Hilton, Magloire, Carter, Davenport, Buckley, Vale, JRC and Chapman all get near to 90 minutes. We’re going to need some of these to be regularly involved next season.

Friedel never came for crosses... but then again he had defenders who would head a ball in front of him. Anyway, we will have to agree to disagree on that. I think he was worth a lot more. And his stop gap replacement has been massively inferior.

Surely if he’s a very good player he’s worth significantly more than 3 million? We spent 7 million on a bag of shit a few months prior... Brentford got a fantastic deal.

Spot on. We are victims of complacency and mass dumbing down. Too many people just happily lap it up.

Mowbray seemingly wasn’t under any pressure to sell Raya. He wanted shut, or at the very least saw him as expendable, we got a pathetic amount for him and failed to bring in a better replacement for whatever reason. Before anyone says “but Raya wanted to go” that is absolutely no defence for anyone at the club... If players are seeing Brentford as a step up from Rovers that’s absolutely damning of the entire management setup and ownership. Mowbray isn’t our biggest issue, but I’d replace him with Pearson in a heartbeat. Sadly it’s never happening.

What a strange day! Plenty of sublime, plenty of ridiculous. Called the Brereton goal early on in this thread and won a nice little bet. I think a lot of the praise he is getting today shows just how low a bar he set for himself. There was improvement, but there was also still some comically poor play. I was really impressed with Gallaghers goal today - what a ball from Chapman (who up until that point I thought was turning in a horrific cameo). Love a bit of proper wing play. Things came off for Rothwell today. Reading stood off him and he punished them. When he gets closed down quick he runs out of ideas. Promising stuff though. Their first was sublime. What a free kick that is! No blame for Walton there. I’d actually be really happy if we went for it with these youngsters. And I mean really went for it. Regular game time for Carter, Buckley, JRC, Wharton, Davenport... Put a massive show of faith in them and built our team around them. They have all played a lot of football with each other, so any bedding in should be relatively pain free. I’m sure we’d get the odd hammering, but long term it could work. There would also be some relief of the financial burden, and it would be exciting! Still need to invest in a good keeper though.

The man is an absolute cunt. Obviously. No denying that. But I wish people would stop pretending Venky’s are an innocent party in this massive mess we have been in for a decade.

I don’t use the word lightly, but in the last few weeks I’ve seen Venky’s described as “Our guardian angels”, comments such as “John Williams was running us into the ground”, “Venky’s have done as much, if not more for us than Jack Walker”. I’m more than happy to be as divided as possible from anyone peddling such garbage. Such garbage seems to get the likes rolling in, which I think is the prime motivation for some... either that, a retweet or fantasies of a job offer.

A large section of our support are complicit in the dumbing down and ever declining ambition. Every day you see people claiming we should be ever so grateful to Venky’s because “we could easily become the next Bury/Bolton/Wigan/Sunderland”... Bury?!?! We are Blackburn fucking Rovers, and our own fans are comparing us to Bury! We could easily have become the next Wolves, Sheffield United, Leicester or Burnley. Why is that considered a pipe dream for Blackburn Rovers? Why is this never mentioned? We have a CEO, or whatever Waggotts title is, who sees Preston and Brentford as teams we should be aspiring to be like. No doubt there will be people who think this view is one of entitlement - not at all. I don’t think we are entitled to be in the Premier League, but I do think the club is entitled to be treated with proper attention and respect. And yes, I came along after the tough times Of the 70’s and 80’s, but so did Jack Walker’s influence and legacy, which has been pissed all over. The current mess we are in is akin to that idiot who pissed and snorted away his entire lottery win and ended up back on the dole. I’m fairly indifferent to Mowbray, it doesn’t look like he will ever make us into genuine promotion contenders, but he’s just a symptom of Venky’s horrendous reign.

It’s like Elizabeth Fritzl saying the same of her father.

I’ve seen Venky’s described as “our guardian angels” today. I’m not even making that up.

If he’d have played for any other club he’d be vilified to this day.

The other issue is that he’s spent 12 million over the last 2 summers on players he thought were better quality than Samuel, and they aren’t.

Agree on Samuel, but I’d keep Downing too. However, I think Covid will provide an excuse for the start of a dismantling process. I predict we will lose at least one of Armstrong, Travis, Lenihan or Nyambe (pretty much the only players who’d command any sort of fee). There will be a couple of uninspiring free transfers, and a couple of head scratching loans late on. Decisions about the out of contract players will be made based on the following criteria: Cost Sentiment Personality Ability In that order.

Mark Robins has the same agent as Mowbray (and Lambert, Coyle and Bowyer)... he’d be my choice from the HSH list

What were the activities? I’ve seen this hinted at before but I’ve no idea what they were!

Highly recommend this one folks! A brilliant listen and very interesting to hear from the perspective of a referee, which is something we never really get the chance to do. Tony’s passion is evident throughout, and some great tales... one that’ll leave you googling a certain Rotherham game! Cheers @Herbie6590 and @arbitro

So not for the first time people post tweets critical of Bennett’s performance and he finds out. Tweets start flying. He gets defensive. Everything is reimagined as him receiving abuse. The ludicrous messages of support start (I’ve just seen someone tweet him telling him he is one of our best ever signings), anyone suggesting he doesn’t possess as much ability as prime Pele is piled on by the masses, who are in the main hypocrites who have no problem slating Rovers players who don’t have a social media presence.

I expect this is the case. The one thing they are good at is toeing the Venky line. They will be rehearsing their lines already. Waggott: “The owners set me targets and I’m grateful for all the support they give me to meet them” Cheston: “You should be grateful to them for all they have done for the club” Mowbray: “They are very humble people. Not unlike the people I grew up with in Middlesbrough where I’d kick a can around the streets with jumpers for goalposts”

We will win 1-0, with Brereton scoring his customary solitary goal for the season in a dead rubber game. I had initially tipped this to come against Luton, but they will likely have survival to play for, so he’ll need to do it on Saturday. This will of course be seen as progress, as Reading are actually training and paying their players unlike the now 4th division Bolton last year. I look forward to then reading about how he has silenced all the nasty boo boys and critics, how it goes to show how amazing he is with no crowd to put pressure on him and tweet that he is shit, how £7 million quid would actually have been a bargain, but we only paid about a hundred grand anyway, and how next season is his year, and he will fire us to promotion with 30 goals.

I liked Elliott Bennett, the busy midfielder with the occasional 30 yard screamer in his locker a lot better than Elliott Bennett, the incompetent full back with the frequent rousing fist pump in his locker. Maybe he could still do a job on occasion in a midfield role, not sure. I’ve seen him described on more than one occasion as a club legend, which is an unfunny joke. K-Hod has summed him up perfectly - a reasonable enough servant. Worth mentioning his tenure has coincided with one of the worst ever periods in the clubs history. Can’t fault his effort, but he’s just become the new Jason Lowe. The horrible reality is I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see us start with a back four of Bennett, Lenihan, Williams and Bell in the first game of next season.

If we were still playing I doubt we’d have forced a save from their keeper by now.

I’d go with that line up. Maybe Davenport or Bennett in for Downing... sacrifice Downing’s quality on the ball for a bit more bite. Our full backs will need a lot more help tonight. For me that has to be the front three from the start. It’s going to be a battle. Rothwell might do some damage off the bench but I feel he’d be ineffective if he starts.