You said the same thing last January.

Hang on… are we skint? Or do we have benevolent owners who are only stopped from buying us the very best players by nasty FFP limitations?

He’s said as much. Dolan and Markanday are only ever praised for “taking less touches”. No dribbling, he’d prefer it passed back to Kaminski.

Probably the best thread to add this… I’ve just tried to sign in on the Rovers website, but having entered my email address and password I get an error message telling me to please confirm I am not a robot. Happy to… however there is no CAPTCHA or indeed any means to prove my humanity in any way shape or form. Anybody else having this issue? Shit website is preventing me spending money with the club.

Very fair point. Until there is change at the very top not a lot is likely to improve.

Maybe not John Williams level, but I think it’s fair to say many of us were pleasantly surprised to see them bring in a DOF and manager who appear competent and somewhat sought after. A CEO with a similar level of pedigree to JDT and Broughton shouldn’t be beyond us.

Most players back themselves to break into the team where they are going to. Even if they don’t, I think I’d be happy being paid a million pounds a year to sit in the bench rather than playing regularly for 300k when I’ve no emotional attachment to either team.

Brereton up top, Dack in behind. Get Hedges on the left and Dolan on the right with the instruction to get the ball in the box. We’d score a damn sight more goals than we do with at present.

Completely agree with that assessment. He’s miles off it. Not even any nuisance value and positioning is very questionable.

A couple of good crosses went in today, Brereton should certainly have converted one of them. I don’t understand why we don’t do this more often. Overall though we didn’t get into their box often enough. The one time Morton took a bit of a gamble and committed in the box, look what happened - Dack was superb for the goal, started and finished the move. We’ve got some effective players, but they seem to be playing to specific instructions where scoring goals is very much a secondary objective

Our tactics are far more of a problem than our personnel.

at least that’s the end of the Kaminski and Raya debate.

The only thing Brereton has ever been good at is running inside with the ball, or getting on to a through ball. Now all we are ever doing is encouraging him to play pass and move stuff. He’s technically really poor and gets by on his pace and power and frightens teams with his unorthodox clumsiness. His technical limitations explain (but don’t excuse) that miss too. If he’d got there before it was bouncing up he’d have bundled it in.

= a nothing player

Massive problem with modern game mindsets. People don’t give a shit about fullbacks being defensive liabilities, as long as they can pass a bit.

Nice bit of play there, Hedges did well. Brereton should be burying that.

His effort and commitment levels make Danny Murphy look like Robbie Savage. Pulls out of 70:30 balls in his favour. Got his new deal at Liverpool so can’t be arsed to try.

Hopefully Wharton’s enforced absence will have given him time to sort his head out. Dolan unlucky not to start, Markanday can feel very aggrieved not even making the bench. Gallagher can have no complaints, but toothless Vale leading the line and bollockless Morton in the middle doesn’t fill me with a lot of hope.

The fact half the squad went straight to Manchester airport from Turf Moor suggests you are right. Hopefully we can have one of our inexplicable good days.

What’s one of them?

I haven’t slated Broughton over it. The root of the problem lies 4,000 miles away. I’m slating the club, and by association them based on the real outcomes - players leaving for nothing. The club failed to accept the bid. Assuming Brereton would’ve refused to move is as hypothetical as it gets.

That’s not the argument here at all. We have turned down bids for at least 2 of the players who have/looked like they will walk away for nothing. There was definitely something we could’ve done in those situations. For whatever reason we didn’t accept the bids. I don’t understand why people assume that the players would’ve dug their heels in and stayed. It wouldn’t be a logical decision, but if they did then it’s an entirely different discussion. Can anyone offer up any examples of one of our players refusing to be sold? I’ve never advocated the “let them rot” line. Rovers do enough cutting off their nose to spite their face. It’s not a scenario that’s relevant very often as usually players are sold to further their career and earnings. In a lot of ways I’m glad Brereton is still here - Saturday showed things look pretty bleak without him! As you say the problem is our short-termism. Players walking away for nothing is a huge issue for us. The fact it is happening again is far more irritating to me than the “incessant whingeing” about it. The model/project is not a new one. Mowbray went on for years about “polishing up” players and selling them on for a profit. When the model is repeatedly failing before our eyes there is obviously going to be complaints. You are absolutely right about us needing to improve the strategy long term, and I absolutely agree with your 12-24 month timescale being a fair point to judge the new regime. I’m probably slightly less impressed with them than you on what they’ve done so far, and quite a lot less optimistic as the root cause of our issues remains Venky’s - you know my opinion on them. Fingers crossed though.

So why is it acceptable to presume he didn’t want to leave?

No it isn’t. Anyway, if we’d encouraged or accepted bids then maybe it would be a valid discussion rather than an illogical assumption.

Agents aren’t exactly known for their patience. I doubt many would be pushing him to sit on 300k per year when he could be earning £3 million. He’d still be getting a signing on fee whenever he went. It’s a massive jump to presume that a player would refuse a move, especially a hugely lucrative one to a top league. It’s a massively flawed argument been treated as fact by people trying to defend the clubs dreadful handling of the situation.