Miller11

The following phrase needs banishing. No Rovers fan should ever utter it again: ”(insert midfielder/centre half name) can play right back” Why is it the only position where people are happy with poorly equipped, non-specialist players playing there? Days like today show you why teams were unwilling to meet the Brereton valuation. Granted I missed his goal, so I’m basing it on his performance up until then, but he looked more like an ineffective winger today than a 20 goal a season man. Pickering is a mostly tidy footballer, but a terrible defender. His positional sense is dreadful. Wharton showed glimpses but was hamstrung a bit with an early yellow that should never have been. Lack of creativity was a massive problem today. Hedges with by far his worst performance. Dolan the only bright spark.

He gives just as good as he gets. And it’s often quite sinister how he does it. He’s also prone to a bit of poverty shaming amongst the giving it the big un.

Agree with all of that. Absolutely no apology necessary, room for all opinions and debate on here. As you can probably tell I’m one of the 15% I referenced. I think before there is any thought of them stepping foot near Ewood they need to start with some communication - and importantly remember communication is a 2 way process.

What makes you think they’d be remotely interested in doing so? Their attitude to us is like my attitude to the Netflix subscription that I have but don’t use. I think you are wrong on your 50/50 judgement. A lot of people who would like to throw a snowball/brick/hand grenade at them are gone now. As a percentage of our vastly reduced crowd, it’d be about 15%. You’d have a slightly higher percentage who would cheer them and give them the heroes welcome they’d arrogantly expect; Some due to a desire to be the superest of fan, some like the tweeter mentioned above, because they genuinely think that by lavishing Venky’s with praise they will be allowed to run the club with their old school pals. The vast majority would display total indifference though. I’ll tell you what is a shame - that they were ever allowed anywhere near our club. They should feel ashamed every day.

I think it’s worth bearing in mind that all the fees this window went on replacing the first teamers we lost for nothing. We will likely have a similar situation with Brereton next year, but I hope that in coming windows we have a bit of cash to add to the squad rather than rebuild or plug it. Would be nice to be in a position in January where we could spend a few quid and kick on for the run in. I’m praying the New Year collapse/death spirals are a thing of the past.

Best view is towards the back of the Riverside, central. The vantage point is much better than in the Jack Walker, you aren’t looking down on the pitch and get a great view of the whole pitch.

I’m glad Brereton is still here, we need his goals. Obviously the prospect of losing him on a free isn’t ideal, but I’m far more gutted at losing academy products for nothing/peanuts. I’m past worrying about Venky’s pissing money away, and they’ve pissed away far more on much worse ideas. Maybe I’m just feeling vindicated that my prediction of a few years ago - that we’d never recoup our outlay on him - might actually come true! (Joking, obviously). Dembele would have been awesome, and I think we are really light at right back, so I hope Brittain is back sooner rather than later. Jury is obviously out on signings for the time being, but I’m pretty pleased. Mola is an intriguing one. I think my excitement around Adam Wharton also paints the window in a better light. There’s a new era feeling about it all. That’s a definite positive.

Don Goodman did the summarising on Sky, he’s excellent… comes across really knowledgeable and balanced and not one for hyperbole. Described Wharton’s performance as “possibly the best debut I’ve ever seen”, or words to that effect.

Good result that. There’s only really one player I want to talk about, but I have to give Pickering credit after battering him lately. Did well tonight. Bowler a lot quieter than feared. Also really hope Brereton stays. On to the main man though. Adam Wharton. Fucking hell. What a performance. Not only flawless, but absolute quality. We are witnessing a very very special player here.

Looks like JRC is done. Bowler starting for them. Worried about that.

Selling players is definitely something we need to get better at. We seem to command rubbish fees, and maybe that contributed to why we hung on to Lenihan, Nyambe and Rothwell for too long in the end. I find it incredible that nobody has been willing to take a punt on Brereton yet at 15-20 million all things considered. I’m still really pissed off that we only got £3 million for Raya. That’s criminal really. Wasn’t helped by our then manager publicly running him down and dropping him for Leutweiler (who is now on the bench for Oldham in the Conference while Raya is a full Spanish international). There are other examples, Cairney a glaring one. Combination of a poor board who struggle negotiating, and a lingering reputation as a basket case club must contribute to this.

I’m surprised so many are ok with starting a centre back at right back, even in an emergency. The general consensus was we needed someone better at attacking than Nyambe… you certainly aren’t getting that with Carter. So early into the season we shouldn’t be relying on emergency cover anyway. Essential we bring a right back in as I think we can all agree JRC is not any sort of option and we don’t seem to have a youngster breaking through.

I’m obviously pleased we have spent some money so far. While it’s early to be passing judgement, 2 of the 3 we’ve paid a fee for seem astute business initially. Unfortunately the 4-6 million we’ve spent on fees so far has been on direct replacements for the three first teamers we lost for nothing. That’s the long term project here, to get the supposed model actually workable. Another cash signing would show there is some intent to progress, but of course the Brereton saga is the big one at the minute and nobody has a clue yet how that will play out. Every single window under Venky’s falls somewhere in the category of “Better than I feared but worse than I hoped”. Big 36 hours or so to see which end of the scale we are nearest to.

He went to Ipswich and ended up doing a short prison stretch for pretending to be Dennis Taylor’s son when he got pulled over driving while on a ban. Was the first player to play with an electronic tag. Sticking with the legal trouble theme, Lee Makel who I’ve seen mentioned a bit further up on this thread has admitted to threatening to kill his wife, according to reports today.

Wonder if we will see any late bids from Sunderland now? It’s not just Mowbray but also Stuart Harvey and a fair chunk of his old team too. Wouldn't be surprised if they tried for Dack.

Yeah, of course an option is our option. The obligation removes our ability to walk away if he’s shit/gets injured. Glen and Callum are saying two different things. Glen is stating we have the option to buy - makes perfect sense. Callum is stating we have an obligation to buy - doesn’t make sense.

But we wouldn’t be trying before buying if we were obligated to buy him, we’d be performing a pointless exercise. Having an option to buy makes sense for all the reasons you state.

Hirst may well have an option to buy (like Zeefuik), but it certainly won’t be an obligation to buy (like Brereton). If we were committed to buying him we’d just be buying him now. The only reason we didn’t get Brereton immediately and had to do the initial loan was because that season the loan window was longer than the transfer window, and the deal happened late.

Kaminski Phillips Hyam Ayala Buckley Edun Travis Morton Wharton Dack Hedges Presuming Brereton is gone and Hirst isn’t signed up in time.

True, but that would be to do with our piss poor attempts at marketing as anything else. The tiniest bit of imagination and we could’ve capitalised on it. Rovers should have been working with the council, push the town as “the home of the English game”. Get Netflix down for a follow up. They love real story behind the story content, and as previously mentioned Rovers were approached to do something on the Brereton tale. Why not use some of our cavernous empty spaces at Ewood for some displays and exhibitions, the club has (or at least used to have) good links with the national football museum. Just do something really bloody basic like make an 1880s replica shirt to sell.

We definitely “Think small” these days. Without wanting to go into too much depth and too off topic, Sunderland bring in millions through their Netflix documentary, as well as getting their brand out their to a global audience. One of the streaming services would have absolutely jumped at the chance to document the Brereton story, and apparently approaches were made to the club. Unfortunately our efforts to capitalise on his fairytale were running off a few dozen fruit of the loom t shirts to sell in the club shop and everything else was dismissed as “difficult”. Dack and his partner are already reality TV stars, I don’t watch the show so I don’t know how much he features, but you’d think there would be a way of bringing some of that audience to Ewood, even if only for one game. I’m not crazy about either idea, but things like this are becoming more commonplace. No less palatable than the chicken advert.

I just googled Richard Brown, this interview was the top result… looks like he played more of a part than any of us realised!! Richard, how did your move to Rovers come about? Weirdly enough, I was playing for Kettering Town at the time, but I was on loan at Cheltenham and I played three of my best games consecutively ever and Rovers came to watch a 20-year-old. I was 23 at the time and they took me instead of him. So my career progressed, but then I was curtailed by quite a few injuries and come the 1994-95 season I was getting released, but the club said that they’d look after me until I got myself fit. So in my first training session back after 16 months, I pulled my thigh muscle. So that took me into October, when I was going to play my first Reserve game – my first game of football in 18 months – and in the training session in the morning, prior to the game in the evening, I tore my medial ligament. To be fair to the club, they really looked after me. When it got to March, they said ‘we can’t keep paying you, we’re going to release you and Stockport want you to go and play for them’. So I went to Stockport, played one game, got injured again, so they said ‘we can’t continue your contract, we’ll let you go back to Blackburn to do your rehab there’. By this time, I’d watched virtually every Rovers game and in every game I’d watched, Rovers had never got beat. I was really close friends with Jason Wilcox, so Kenny Dalglish asked Jason to ask me whether I’d come to the game at Anfield, because apparently I’d become his lucky mascot! And then the rest is history. With all of the injuries and setbacks you had, how frustrating and mentally tough was it for you? Absolutely. I’d pretty much retired from the professional game at 27. It’s always great in hindsight, but I can remember Ray Harford saying to me that season ‘listen, we’re going to release you, just take the insurance money because you’ve had too many injuries and how do you know your body is going to last?’ and I thought, I’m only 26-27, I’ve got to keep going. So I tried to get myself fit and keep playing. What was Ray Harford like to work with? He taught me the game. He was a great man, a great personality and I loved him to bits. Especially when I compare him to some other coaches, who weren’t for me, but Ray is the person who I owe a lot to, purely because I learnt the game through him as a kid. Kenny Dalglish was very much a man manager, very tactically astute and tactically aware, but Ray was my man if I’m being honest. Was the move from playing non-league football to joining a club like Rovers a big opportunity for you? It was a massive opportunity for me and one where I actually ended up earning less money. I wanted to be a pro and I wanted to have a legacy of actually playing. Incidentally, I went on loan to Maidstone United for a month and that’s where I made my professional debut. And then when Kenny came in, I was already playing in the first team and he continued to play me in the first team, before we got promoted. You played a number of games during the 1991-92 promotion season. What was that like? Fantastic. The camaraderie of the lads was magnificent and I think that’s what got us through more than anything. Was it a really special group to be a part of? It was. There were no big-timers, everyone just mucked in together. There was no animosity around the place and it was just a really, really good time to be at the club. Even though you didn’t feature in the 1994-95 season, what was it like to be in and around the club, to watch the game and to ultimately see Rovers crowned champions? Interesting enough, when all the players were brought in, again, there was no big-timers. Kenny kept a lid on everything. No-one could step out of line, even the big players. No-one stepped out of line, It was a real team effort. Alan (Shearer) got all of the plaudits, because he was a top striker, but in the main there were no big issues. What was that historic day at Anfield like? It was weird because everybody was nervous, all day. And then when the game kicked off, there were still a lot of nerves on display, but they always believed. The weirdest thing, for me, is that everybody always believed that they’d win it. Whether it be winning the game or United losing it. I can’t explain the feeling, but it just felt like our name was on it! How do you look back on your time at the club now ?Really fondly. You don’t miss the money, you miss the camaraderie, the day-to-day, the stories, the fun, the banter, the togetherness of the players. And are you still involved in the game now? Yes. I was at Manchester City for 10 years and then I left to become an intermediary, which I’ve done for the past 18 months.

I don’t know why I remember so much about Richard Brown, but he was actually knocking about a lot longer than people realise. We signed him from Kettering and he wasn’t a kid then, he was about 23. He had a brief loan (Maidstone I think) but he played a fair few games under Kenny in the promotion season, occasionally brilliant and occasionally horrific! I remember him getting a run out as a winger the odd time too. He remained part of the squad until midway through the title winning season. He had the number 15 shirt that was eventually taken by Richard Bloody Witschge. So he was with us 5 years altogether and if I remember correctly he went to Stockport but retired shortly after. His injury struggles weren’t really publicised when he was with us as he wasn’t really in the team. He’d quite often be sat with the subs and staff on a match day though even when nowhere near the squad. He played masters football for us maybe 10 years ago, I remember he did a pitch side interview and said something derogatory about Burnley.

Absolutely. And to a lesser extent, Johnson and Davenport too. For their limitations they would get physical in midfield.

We definitely lack a hard man, or what passes for one in 2022. We also lack a lot of physicality - it was very evident against Stoke.