Miller11

What are Nathan Delfouneso and Simeon Jackson up to these days? Its obviously not looking good right now, but it could be worse!

Ugbo is one to be hopeful about rather than excited about. It’s evident the club are taking a very laid back, non-committal approach to the window despite our promising league position. I think we all knew it was overly optimistic we’d really “have a go”. Have to hope he’s more Gestede than Hirst. Having said that there’s no point giving him too much thought til he’s officially through the door. Can’t take anything for granted. Overall it’s looking like a very frustrating window with areas we’d all like to see improved not being looked at, but the general feeling of frustration will be lessened by a bit of a relief by adding anybody this late.

I don’t know if our interest was anything more than rumours, but if we did, it doesn’t mean it was a wise decision.

I completely disagree on your first point, and particularly on recent form. I’m not even talking about the glaring mistakes, his general play has been very poor for a while, and in certain games (Rotherham being a very recent example) he has been disgraceful. I think he’s had more games where he’s stood out as being poor than good. Very harsh to lump Johnson in with that lot. We got a couple of good years out of him. For every Goodwillie there is a Graham, Best a Downing, Stokes a Conway, Brown an Ayala, and plenty in between. Vale has a lot less good will than Wharton and hasn’t contributed to the same degree when he has had a chance, he’s also 4 years further on. I don’t think Wharton would make as many costly errors as Morton, but he has a poor game and he’s right back down the pecking order despite having shown more ability to control a game than any other option we have on occasion. I think Travis has a right to feel a bit aggrieved - he was rightly dropped for his poor performances, but a loanee retains his place when he’s becoming a liability. He’ll certainly think he deserves his chance again.

What I’ve really liked from him since he’s come back into the fold is he seems to have a bit of an edge to him. He gave Khadra a well deserved shove yesterday, and he seems to stand up for himself and his teammates rather than rolling round on the floor. I definitely agree with @Spartakfenni He did a lot of his good work yesterday in central areas further up the pitch where you’d expect a midfielder to be. I think he’d thrive there. It’ll be interesting when Brittain does return from injury, JRC is undroppable on current form so he would have to settle for a place on the bench unless there is a change in position for Joe.

I thought Wharton did pretty well for most of the game before completely going to pieces midway through the second half. Made one mistake which seemed to knock him and then several more followed.

But there are big flaws in Broughton’s logic here. Bridging the gap by replacing experienced Championship midfielders with a player with a couple of token premier league appearances and the odd second string cup game seems pretty pointless to me. Morton may well be one year further in in his development than Garrett or Wharton, but that one year is pretty insignificant when they are all miles behind Rothwell, and that 12 months of odd cameos and bench warming isn’t going to replace the experience of a Bradley Johnson. If we’d loaned Isaac Hayden, Hamza Choudhury, Jeff Hendrick, or even Callum Styles - like other teams in the Chanpionship have - the argument of short term experience works. There are loads of Tyler Morton’s (20 year old loanees with very little first team exposure) littered throughout the Championship, but very few are as integral to their parent teams plans. Compared to Hannibal at Birmingham - who played in the World Cup and is undeniably further along in his development - Morton is used far more often. Of course, 20 year olds are the cheaper option, which will no doubt have been more of a factor than all the stuff Broughton came out with in that podcast. Any loan should be a short term fix, and loaning a 27 year old to play week in and week out rather than Morton and giving him 90 minutes most games would not block a pathway any more or less. This loan is benefitting Liverpool and Tyler Morton far more than it is Blackburn Rovers. He doesn’t deserve to be in the team on current form, and I couldn’t give a toss about his development. Might as well let our own players accelerate their development and learn from their mistakes.

Not much more to it really. We were catching up with them (bit of Trust solidarity and fan led review chat) and Pascha’s name came up. One of their board had met him a few times in a professional setting. We said that was more than any of our fans had done, and if he saw him again please tell him it might be an idea to show his face.

Queues when I went in at twenty to. Which I then contributed to trying to scan my bloody digital ticket!

It was raining all game, the pitch was cutting up quite a bit, most of our players were covered in mud. At half time you could’ve took Morton’s kit, stuck it on a hanger and sold it in the club shop - it was spotless. Becoming a liability on the ball. Always been a bottler off it.

JRC could be the answer to our midfield problem. And there is no denying our midfield is a problem.

I can see kick off being delayed. They are asking fans to try and buy a digital ticket rather than turn up and get one at the ticket office. The website doesn’t work properly so I’m not sure how well that will go.

I’m trying!

Trying to get excited for this, but not really working so far. Being moved out of my seat, the prospect of there being more Birmingham fans than us, a frustrating transfer window, our poor form and playing style are all contributing factors. On the flip side it should present a good opportunity to progress in the best cup competition in the world. Hopefully a fringe player or two will give us something a bit different, and I’ll soon cheer up if we put in a performance and get a result.

Believe me, I wasn’t criticising the individual scouts. I know several of them personally.

I don’t know if we have dedicated scouts over there these days, and first team ready players might be tough to come by… Brown being a good example. I wouldn’t mind another Duff or Lenihan though. If I didn’t have concerns that our due diligence wasn’t up to scratch I wouldn’t have said it. There’s something not right in the process if we are constantly identifying players beyond our financial means. I’m not in the least bit bothered we’ve missed out on Porteus, but trying and failing to land him counts for very little if we don’t address the more pressing needs in the squad. If we’ve left ourselves time to move on to other targets, that’s ok. Too often though we end up with hard luck stories of near misses and tales of players having unrealistic demands rather than players on the pitch.

Depends where the physical scouts are being utilised. I doubt there is much data available for league of Ireland players or Mill Hill U13s. Plenty for Championship and Cat one academy players though. I remember specifically during Mowbray’s time he mentioned the difficulties of scouting players abroad due to flight costs. Perhaps we are doing things the wrong way round then? If it all comes down to finances we should be doing some due diligence and looking at whether a target is viable before committing resources to looking at them.

And over-reliant on “data”. I get the distinct feeling we spend longer looking at pages of statistics than we do watching footballers play football.

Would’ve liked Undav. None of Gelhardt, Porteus and Haikin would be the solution to our obvious current problems, so I’m not too fussed on missing out on any of them three. The worry is we seem to have put significant time and effort into at least two of these and failed to get them over the line. Hopefully this isn’t at the expense of achievable targets we actually need.

I don’t know much about him, but Thomas looks like a proper winger. Likes to stay wide and deliver the ball into the box. Quite excited about this one providing he doesn’t get the same treatment that Giles did last season from Mowbray. Championship ready players are what we need - nothing wrong with a bit of well directed short-termism to try and secure a spot in the playoffs. We do need to address the fact he’d have nobody to cross to, but that’s as much about tactics as personnel.

It’s long been the case that Rovers needed to better engage with the local Asian community. Yasir obviously has a fairly specific remit to try to engage with a very underrepresented demographic in our fanbase. He’s doing an amazing job, not only in bringing in more supporters, but also in the way he’s drummed up sponsorship for the initiative. There’s no cost to the club, aside from Yasir’s salary - and he’s worth every penny and some. Lovely to see busses full of kids heading down to Ewood, smiles on their faces, waving at fans walking to the ground, obviously feeling very excited, and importantly feeling safe and welcome when they get here. Of course the club needs to be much better in re-engaging with lost support, widening their efforts geographically, and generally trying to fill the ground again. But credit where it’s due, the Ewood Express initiative is brilliant.

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.