Fantastic to hear that you are on the mend.  Take care and I hope that you make a full recovery soon.

Thoughts and prayers with you Paul.  Get well soon.

The Premier and Football Leagues to be suspended until at least 4th April (Situation to be reviewed on 4th April).

Given that the government are estimating the peak of this virus is 12-14 weeks away then there is the real possibility that the entire season could be voided.  Has huge implications for the football league, particularly those clubs that are already in financial strife.

I was listening to the excellent "price of football" podcast (https://priceoffootball.com/podcast/) this morning and they covered the new points based immigration system that the government have proposed and the affect it would have on football.

Rovers have invested in a european scouting network which is likely to be redundant as the new system would make it difficult to sign players from outside the UK.

Any player would need 70 points to be allowed to work here.  A job offer from an approved employer would give the player 20 points.  The club would have to demonstrate that locally they cannot get players at the appropriate skill level, if they did that then that would be a further 20 points.  The players passing an English test would give him a further 10 points and an annual salary of over £25,600 would give them the final 20 points.  

The FA are backing the new system and want to use it to ensure that clubs use UK talent rather than look elsewhere so the "appropriate skill level" is the one that they are focussing on and in initial discussions the English test that is going to be set will be at a high level so many players would fail that or they will need to start preparing for moves to the UK 12 months in advance in order to ensure that their English is an appropriate level.

The flip side to this is that the pricing for UK players is going to sky rocket, our academy has been doing an excellent job of producing players that have made it to the first team, suddenly they become even bigger assets.

I found the discussion interesting so I though that I would start a seperate thread.

Surnames with F are now complete, that includes one of my favourite ever Rovers Brad Friedel, certainly our greatest ever goalkeeper.

The sell on fee would be spilit into installments as per what Bournemouth agree with United, so if they get it over 5 installments over 3 years then we will get 20% of each installment.

However, it is guaranteed income so we can use it to structure deals for any players that we wish to sign over a similar period.

I am not sure about that, but the way it is explained to me by someone who know understands annual accounting processes is that auditors asked for these funding guarantees as a condition of them approving the accounts.

I believe that they have to make regular cash injections into the club, these were part of the gurantees that they have to give in order to get auditors to sign off accounts, this is likely to be one of those payments.

18 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Apparently we now want to follow the Brentford model, just need some with the brains to do it.

Interesting read on the model that Brentford follow:

https://www.football.london/championship/brentford-rasmus-ankersen-transfer-plan-14136285

Good progress Surnames with E completed.  Will now move onto with the F's.

Have to say that when uploading these I have learned so much about the history of our club and the players that have represented us.  It has been an education.

We have now completed all surnames starting with D.  Work on the next section will start over the next few days.

Absolutely brilliant.  Stokes is unbelievable.  Special test match.

A superb advert for why the 4 day test match idea is bonkers.

One more wicket.  Come on boys but Rabada isn't a rabbit, he can bat.

I think that it has been a decent test pitch, maybe got a bit too slow on day 5 but if you bowl in the right consistently you will get wickets.  We haven't quite been able to do that consistently today.  Root's is not a very tactically aware captain, he field placings not the best, particularly to spinners.

South Africa doing well and we seem to be running out of ideas and some concerns about Jimmy's fitness.

A few baffling fields set by Root in last session with players seemingly in running saving position's when there is no threat of them getting close to the target.  

Big final session coming up.

1 hour ago, Gav said:

I cannot stand Talksports coverage of the cricket, its appalling, more like a boys club get together than quality analysis and coverage.

Test match special can be a bit stuck up, some of the comments from Agnew and Co irritate at times but its so much better than talksport.

 

This test match is the first time that I have been listening to talksport cricket coverage and completely agree, it is awful.  Some of it is cringeworthy.  TMS is in a different league.

Just got to stay patient, keep bowling the right line and length, hopefully the wickets will come.

2 minutes ago, neophox said:

Looks like we are getting 20 year old George Tanner from Man Utd as first signing, fullback on loan at Morecambe.

He has done well at Morecombe, his contract with United expires at the end of the season so we should be able to pick him up for a nominal fee.  If we do sign him I can see him being loaned out again until the end of the season.  

I can see why some fans want Mowbray replaced, while I don’t agree with that view, I do can understand and respect their view.

As some others have said, I fully expected a mid-table finish this season and we are on course to achieve that.  I never bought into the play off talk because the squad that we have isn’t good enough to get the points required to get into the top 6.

The transfer policy is something that does need to be questioned.  TM and his recruitment team are in full control of signing players and we have spent £12 million on strikers that don’t look capable of getting anywhere near 20 goals a season, so that has to be questioned as does the decision not to look at what we lack (particularly in wide areas) which is pace.  Teams find it easy to setup against us because we cannot really hit them on the break or disrupt their defensive shape because everything that we do is so slow.

I hope that Mowbray is given until the end of the season and then we can review where we are.  The other danger of making any change is that there are still outside influences that have access to Venky’s which always brings the danger that they end up listening to the wrong advice and appoint someone as bad as Coyle/Kean which would throw the club into freefall.

Apparently this is the suspected injury which if true is 6-8 weeks.

Player Archive has been updated with all the players whose surname started with C.  

Upload has taken a bit longer than expected but I am hoping to make some good progress over the next month.

2 hours ago, RoversClitheroe said:

Who's co-commentating today? 

It was blackburn born comedian (and Rovers fan) Tez Ilyas (https://tezilyas.com/)

3 hours ago, Stuart said:

A plastic badge with Press on it. Pretty sure @Kamy100 used to get invited to the club press conferences.

We are still accreditted and I am sure if we applied to attend Pressers then we would be allowed to attend.  A few years ago when I had more time I did try to go every week.  Problem these days is finding time to go.

Just now, Ricky said:

What about Ali Syed Phil? I do recall you being very pro his bid and posting that you had seen evidence of his financial clout and generally supporting his bid for the club. You don’t seem to mention it much since he ruined Racing Santander.

Just now, Ricky said:

What about Ali Syed Phil? I do recall you being very pro his bid and posting that you had seen evidence of his financial clout and generally supporting his bid for the club. You don’t seem to mention it much since he ruined Racing Santander.

TBF Ali Syed fooled Rovers auditors, Rovers Trust and even likes of John Williams with the dcucments that he provided which confirmed his wealth, I persume that it is those documents that Philip saw and was enthuastic about the future.  Had it not been for Greenberg at the BBC uncovering his fraud while in London the club was going to be sold to him.

13 hours ago, philipl said:

I replied to the post suggesting that efforts were made to ensure the Kentaro-backed Venky's were the only bidders.

 

Very well answered Philip.  I wouldn't go any further with this one as IPSlaw (Kean's solicitors) still watch this forum and the rest of the allegations cannot be corroborated and likely to lead to one of the infamous IPS legal notices.

I hope that Preston have a good drainage system as the amount of rain that has fallen since this afternoon and there is a yellow warning for heavuyrain through the night and for most of the day tomorrow,.