3 minutes ago, Ewood Ace said:

If we lose our remaining two games then Birmingham could still catch us even if they lose to Huddersfield. It will be down to goal difference then

Jeez yeah I just assumed only Plymouth had a better GD than us, but we’re the same as Brum. That makes it a little more squeaky!!

4 minutes ago, lraC said:

We were 25/1 to go down this morning. We are still 9/1 which seems crazy to me, given how bad we are.

Im clinging on to the hope that the bookies don’t normally get it wrong. 

A lot is down to the fact that Huddersfield play Birmingham. They both cannot catch us, so there is only one spot left on that basis, with the likelihood that it goes to the other of those two. 
We basically want Huddersfield to win that, which means Birmingham can’t catch us and Huddersfield would have to beat Ipswich away (assuming we lose both). Draw is next best, Birmingham win and we lose to Cov and it’ll be a sweaty final weekend 

Coventry been going well since David Brent started topping his pension up at our place 

23 minutes ago, OJRovers said:

Only 1 player in the starting XI from the last 2 transfer windows. Sums up Broughton's contribution to our current situation. 

Gets away with harsh criticism because he’s behind Venkys, Suhail, Waggott, Silvestre in terms of competence, but still a joke that he holds such an important role at our club. 

32 minutes ago, belfast_rover said:

I watch semi professional football here in Northern Ireland a lot more regularly than I'm able to watch Rovers, and I can genuinely say there are more reliable and competent goalkeepers than him working full time jobs around their football.  I don't understand what anyone has ever seen in him.

Essentially it was nepotism, with the added bonus of playing for a club whose owners were stripping of any quality. 

3 minutes ago, Ewood Ace said:

Is Wharton's heart in it? Third game in a row he's come of injured. This is a bloke the other day who was moaning about not playing the other day. That challenge for the second goal summed him up, soft.

Yeah true, perhaps I’m being generous and ‘academy bias’ there. 
I just really don’t want to be watching Pears, Wahlstedt, Brittain, Hyam, Buckley, Gallagher next season. They’re all so so so soft, and barely, if at all, Championship quality. 

If the Leeds and Wednesday results were reversed (lose to Leeds and win today) then we would be practically safe on 49 points. 

We don’t turn up when we need to because we’re spineless

Outside of Carter, Wharton, JRC, Tronstad, Szmodics I wouldn’t care less if others left. And we’ll clearly cash in on Szmodics for under his value. 

5 minutes ago, Tricky said:

Starting to consider positives going down now... 

More wins

Games v Stockport and Wrexham 

Season ticket prices falling 

And hopefully venkys fucking off 

1, 3 and 4 almost certainly wouldn’t happen (well more wins than this season, but don’t think we’d do as well as expected)

Jack Walker numbers sound low, do we know how many ST were sold in that stand?

1 hour ago, ABBEY said:

to be fair to the geordies they did.

only time its been true mind.  Can imagine sheep shaggers in the BBE will get treated a tad different than the toon lads.

A certain Man City match comes to mind.

1 hour ago, SIMON GARNERS 194 said:

Usual crap being spouted by giddy away fans I see on their forum..' we'll have fans all over the Home areas' blah,blah,blah!

 

🤪...

 

 

They'll be winning the attendance cup next year in league 1 too. Well done lads, population of half a million, 1 club to compete with and you're averaging almost 10k empty seats at home all season.

1 hour ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

Nor will any club

All that will happen is that staff get paid more, with the biggest beneficiaries being the players

Yep, unfortunately so with regards players paid more.

It has to be a watch out though. We're going to be on TV an awful lot which is another reason for fans not to buy a season ticket, as if having the 4th most expensive (it was something like that) wasn't reason enough.

From what I’ve read the 3pm slot remains blackout so there will only be 7 x 3pm Saturday matches so that means 10 championship clubs each week will NOT be playing in the traditional slot. Absolute madness. 

Worth around £2m extra a year per club? If it’s £60m seasonal uplift with 80% going to the championship (assuming it’s split 24 ways equally).

Now, will Waggott take that money off his ticket prices? (Narrator: He won’t)

Yeah Colin Murray was good, like you say it seemed he actually had an interest in it outside of the media darling clubs. 

Does anyone know what the new deal means to us financially? 

How on earth is Mowbray getting credit in that article 😂 he was atrocious at managing our young academy lads and regularly threw Raya and Nyambe under the bus and I seem to remember Travis only got called up when we had a huge injury list. 

Pretty sure Wharton never played a competitive match under him. 

10 hours ago, chaddyrovers said:

do we need alot of signings this summer? 

Current squad for next season

keepers - Pears, Wahlstedt, Michalski 

Defenders - Brittain, Carter, Hyam, Wharton, O'Riordan, Pickering, 

CM's - Tronstad, Garrett, Buckley, JRC, Travis

wide players - Dolan, Markanday, Sigurdsson, Hedges, 

no 10 - Szmodics, Gilsenan

Strikers - Gallagher, Vale, Telalovic, Leonard

I have included Dolan and Gallagher cos I expect them to sign next contract. 

I think we deffo need a pacey wide player, Striker, right back, maybe another Keeper if we loan out Wahlstedt for a season, I would use Gent at left back back up given the reviews he had there, could do with another centre back or maybe re sign McFadzean for another season. Then a replacement for Szmodics if he does leave. 

 

Looking at that squad we need:

Starting GK

LB and RB - starters / squad to compliment Pickering and Brittain

Starting CM for JRCs annual injury 

2 x Starting Wingers

Starting CAM after we sell Szmodics 

Starting Striker

Thats at least half a team of starters needed, with squad players on top of that. 

Sell/Release: Wahlstedt, Buckley, Markanday, Vale. I’d also let Hyam and Travis go if we get offers (the club won’t do this though).

Anyway in reality, the squad will just continue to get weaker and weaker and we’ll invest barely anything. 

I’d just like to add, for our goal, Sam Gallagher did what we’ve all been begging him to do for years, number 9 using his size to win a cracking flick on to Dolan. 

I wish we’d see a lot more of that when attacking

6 minutes ago, Mercer said:

The way Leeds, Leicester and Ipswich are shaping, you could see Southampton scraping into the top 2.  There's no doubt if the Saints 'hit their straps', they could win their remaining games which might just be enough.

At the bottom, think Rovers will do only what Rovers can do!  Think SW will be too physically strong and intense meaning we need at least a point from the Coventry game to avoid going to Leicester with the risk of the trap door still opening.  On paper, we beat Coventry as looks like they will be on the beach, sadly, as we saw today, games aren't won and lost on paper!

Saints still to play Leicester and Leeds too, both away mind you. If they win out then they’ll finish top 2 I’d imagine. 

2 minutes ago, Ianrally said:

It would be even better if Leicester come to Ewood having missed automatic promotion, so that would probably mean they would rest players with the play offs in mind. 

I think that’s away at Leicester. Be great to beat them and make them miss out on automatics…..considering they’re allowed to get away with no deductions this year despite the biggest FFP cheating we’ve ever seen, it’s the least we could do for the footballing world 🙂

13 minutes ago, martonrover said:

I’d hesitate to go that far just yet.

A few of the teams beneath us have winnable fixtures next Saturday.

Undoubtedly, our position now looks a good deal healthier.

25/1 with bookmakers, and they’ll have plenty of juice in that. True price probably 100/1 relegation. 1% chance of happening. We’re safe.

4 minutes ago, RoverDom said:

Sheff Weds 5 points behind us, effectively 6 with goal difference. Huddersfield 5 points behind. All with 3 games to go. You'd THINK we're home and dry now but then you'd also have thought we'd getting something at Bristol and then get pasted by Leeds. 

I feel at ease now. We won't lose all 3 of the last games which leaves Huddersfield and Sheff Weds and others needing 3 belting results. 

Exactly, and that’s not even taking account of Brum, Stoke, QPR, Plymouth who are also all below us and worse GD bar Plymouth. We’re safe and we can get back to seething about shambolic transfer windows and how little we’ll invest in the summer!

Sickeningly, I actually think I’m going to have to cheer on bloody Russell Martin. As it’ll be so so so sweet to see both Leicester AND Leeds somehow miss out on automatic promotion!

Last minute Bristol City goal gives us a lovely cushion. If we’d lost we’d have been sweating 90 minutes into the 3pms. Results weren’t looking too good. 

We’re safe now anyway, maybe not mathematically, but it’s a huge price for 5 of the 6 teams to all get to 50 points whilst we lose 3. True price probably bigger than 100/1 if I was sober enough to work it out!

1 hour ago, M_B said:

Brilliant result

D L W D L W

Considering 4 were away, and we've played Ipswich, Southampton and Leeds, we're actually showing some good form. 

Yeah fair play. Nicely summed up there. 5-0 drubbings obviously put the downers on for everyone, but we also won one 5-1 in there and just beat top of the league. 

I’m just pleased to see some fight and ‘arte et labore’ !!