Preston are a decent Championship side, nothing more than that.  They have won 1 of their last 5 leagues games.  We can go there and beat them.  Poor interview from Mowbray in the LT this morning, not what supporters want to here,

I never expected us to be a top 6 side.  I felt that we would be comfortably mid-table, however the way we are playing both defensively and also going forward we could easily be sucked into a relegation battle.

This new style of play that Mowbray has put into place is not working mainly because if you want to play a possession game then you have to push up and press the opposition so that you can dominate the ball and get possession in dangerous areas, instead we are not pressing (and don't have the players to play that sort of game) and are left passing the ball backwards and sideways in areas that pose no danger to the opposition.  The tempo that we play is so slow that it allows teams to easily deal with whatever we are trying to do.

Tony needs to get back to basics or he is going to find that we are will be in a relegation battle and as we all know once you get dragged down there it is very hard to breakaway.  Those hoping that Mowbray will get sacked, he won't be getting sacked anytime soon because the likes of Waggott and Venus would never recommend his removal, the owners may decide to take action themselves if we are in serious danger of getting relegated. 

I was sat in the trafford centre and watched it on my Sky app.  I nearly switched off when Broad was out but thankfully decided to watch for a few more overs and saw the most remarkable cricket ever, Stokes is a freak.

Like Jim, I just hope that we can now go on and win the ashes.

A few days ago @LinzLewis15 tweeted about sponsoring of the rovers ladies players, it costs £250.

Through the power of twitter and social media she has nearly got enough to sponsor 11 players. 

If you want to help reach that goal then please click the link below, how amazing would it be to have an entire team sponsored by the fans:

Rovers Ladies Sponsorship

Just now, philipl said:

I was unaware the article had been cited as an example of racism in sport.

It didn't strike me as racist but I appreciate that racism can be perniciously subversive.

As far as I am aware, a deal was done with City two weeks ago and all the issues are with the player and his representative.

For what its worth In my twenties I dealt with two young musicians (one black, one white) whose sibling "agents" were so impossible, neither ever got a second booking and they disappeared, talent totally unrecognised. That was what played on my mind when I posted this.

This is what Eddie is referring to Philip:

Raheem Sterling accuses media of ‘fuelling racism’ after alleged abuse

Made some good progress with over the last week.  We now have 103 players uploaded.  While I am uploading each players I am also learning about some of the fantastic characters we have had at our club and a bit of their backstory.  

Just now, WIR Second Coming said:

Hmm, so it's all about the money then..

I thought our owners were slumdog billionaires.?

There is an agreed amount that TM and Waggott were happy to work with, they have then further supplemented that with the sale of Raya.  

I much prefer this approach where we are spending what we can realistically afford rather than the uncontrolled spending of the past.

Personally, I would have liked for the defence to reinforced before buying a striker but these are decisions made by TM and he will live or die by them if he gets it wrong,

Just now, Give 'Em the Axe said:

Sorry lads, I know I am possibly asking something that has already been answered. But is it true to say that the expected in-comings for today are Walton and Adarabioyo?

And then, (possibly later this week?) we should be welcoming the experienced keeper and centre-half?

Walton and Adarabioyo set to sign today.

We will then look at what is left within the budget and see what we can get with the remaining budget with an experienced goalkeeper being the key and then a centre back if the budget stretches that far.

Scott Carson has been pulled out of Derby's preseason tour to USA due to  a "slight niggle".  

We do need to sign a centre back but I am also hoping that tyler magloire and scott wharton can push on this year and challenge for regular first team football.  The full back areas though are an area of concern.

If we do sign Gallagher for the reported £5 million, we will have spent £12 million on two strikers and neither are guaranteed starters if TM sticks to his current system of one up top with either Dack or Rothwell playing in a free role behind.

Having been in the private chat thread relating to the redesign and not understanding a word of all the technical jargon that the guys use, all I can say that I/we are extremely grateful that @OnePhilT and @StubbsUK plus the other technical backroom staff put in the hours and hours of their own free time to make the redesign happen.

Ditto all of our moderators, particularly @K-Hod and @Tom who again spend hours each day going through threads/responding to reports, which basically means that without our moderators the forums wouldn't be able to stay open.

I don’t think Venky’s are saying go and splash ridiculous amounts of money but more like you have an agreed budget (just like last summer) and you had a plan to spend it which didn’t work out and we were left scrabbling around on deadline day so they want to avoid that by getting business done asap, whereas Mowbray/Waggott seems to want to wait in the hope that as deadline day approaches the market becomes more realistic and we get some value for money. 

3 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

23 million? Last night? That’s some increase from the 7 million that watched the quarters...

Official figures have now been released and viewing figures peaked at 11.7 million, while not 23 million it is still phenomenal.  For reference the men's semi final peaked at 26.6 million last year.

While the names being linked at present are not very inspiring, the time to judge is at the end of the window.

As of yesterday there had been 47 transfer (including freebies and loans) and 7 teams who not done any deals yet.  I suspect things will really ramp up now that teams are back in pre-season training.  We do not have the money to compete with teams like even Bristol City who can spend £8 million on a defender, on top of signing players like Da Silva (from Chelsea) and Bentley (from Brentford).  I think what is happening is that the market is inflated at the moment so teams like Rovers are waiting and trying to get some sort of value for money as market usually does calm down (in terms of money demanded) as the deadline approaches as teams have to shift players to peruse their targets that they have.

That said, I was excited by the names being mentioned in May as it seemed we were taking a different approach but now we are being linked with the same type of player that we have been over the last 2 years which is a bit disappointing given the investment in scouting structures.

My impression is that we have an agreed budget (whatever Waggot presented to the owners) which will keep the club within the FFP regulations.  

Waggott and Mowbray are trying to spread that budget across 5 or 6 players which means our top tier targets are likely not to be feasible signings as there will be interest from other clubs who can pay a bit more.  Now rather than adjust the policy and spend the budget on signing 2 quality players, we will end up 5 or 6 players that help boost the squad numbers but not necessarily of top quality.

This is just my hypothesis on what is happening and I could be totally wrong.

I am sure that I read somewhere last year that it is Umbro who set the release date of kits as they do all the promotional activity etc and have to co-ordinate this across all the teams that they look after. 

As Matt says, time and again over the last 10 years teams have managed to get promotion on tight "budgets".  It is all about being organised in the transfer market, having a clear playing philosophy and buying players that fit into that philosophy. 

Such a shame that the world cup is being ruined by the weather and has potential serious consequences for some of the teams who may end up with 2 or 3 no results and miss out on a chance to fight for top 4.  

They should have scheduled a reserve day for all of the fixtures.  The forecast for tomorrow and Thursday is grim so we could end up with 4 consecutive matches rained off.

Yup Celtic and Fenebache can offer champions league football, I think we could compete with Celtic on wages but I have no idea about what money is on offer in Turkey.

Linked with Adam Maher (according to LT).  The type of midfielder that we need, good on the ball and will offer us something different to what we already have,

16 minutes ago, blueboy3333 said:

Cheers. That's all I asked. What happened with the police enquiry? Do you think it was the Rao's behind the threats or the Barnet ballbag?

I'm amazed this didn't get into the public domain (even just the LT). It's manna from heaven for a protest movement to have the people they are protesting about threatening to burn their house down (If that's what they meant). 

They looked into it and did take it seriously as they tried to find a link to the other threats that people had received.  In the end they couldn't find who was doing it.  The Police advise was not to go public with it because it was an active investigation and if it was just the acts of some deranged "fan" going public may encourage for more to be sent.

No idea who it was, it could easily have been some sicko wanting to scare us rather than anyone linked to anyone involved with the club, you just don't know.  The legal threats they came from the "Barnet Ballbag". 

Yup I have also heard that it is Grey and Yellow.

It won't be a custom kit, it will be one of their off the shelve ones, currently Umbro have 2 templates that offer a combination of colours, so it could be a variation of the ones below: