[Archived] Blackpool vs Rovers

[Blue blood]

Add Vukcevic who exels for the Montenegran national team, Kazim who played for Turkey a few times and Murphy who played almost every game last season for a respectable Premier League team . We'll ignore the scottish internationals...... Yet having played practically every team in this league we have only consistently outplayed Peterborough. That says everything about how good our squad, combined with our three managers this year, really is.

Berg, or whoever picks the team, has got to take a lot of blame here. Etuhu and Lowe is a disastrous midfield pairing. From the ~7 games I've seen this season Etuhu is totally atrocious and has no positive qualities. while Lowe only works if he plays at RB or alongside a creator.

Perhaps more worryingly the changes made today (Robbo out, Givet and Vukcevic in) have all been championed on this board and look sensible. Yet no upturn in results or performances

Was just starting to name a few, but you're right there were a lot more I could have mentioned. The changes comment is a sad statement about our players. Still think dropping robbo for an inexperienced keeper isn't the answer. By all means get someone in on loan (or more simply get robbo to loose weight!) but not sure it's the place to forge Kean into a good keeper.

The thing is we don't need to spend silly money to get the right people in, we just need a decent scouting network again. One of boro's best players this season has been George Friend who they picked up for £100k. Look at the players playing in the top teams in our league and they are not world beaters.

Spot on. Imagine spotting a Samba or a Nelsen for this league. Or a N'Zonzi. Despite the shambles that we are, we're still a good stepping stone for players' careers. Under the current regime I can't see us unearthing any gems.

I think Rhodes is a great finisher but I can't help but think that £8m could have been spent far better by strengthening throughout the team.

It is interesting - though not directly his fault - given our current poor form, I would be tempted to drop him to the bench and play King and CKR. Jordan's lack of pace and physical presence - means he becomes a bit of a passenger at times - given our poor form can we afford the luxury ? Earlier in the season he created goals from poor service - recently even they have dried up.

Interestingly I was thinking the same thing. We all knew 8 million splurged could have been spent better. But even now given the players we have I'm just not sure he fits into a successful version of this team. Realistically thinking on it going forwards we perhaps need to tighten up and go 4-2-3-1 and I can't see any room in that formation for Rhodes. Ideally with 1/2 quality cms we could perhaps play 4-4-2 with him, but that can't happen till January at least.

[K-Hod]

Absolutely awful. Not sure how long I can keep paying out my own money to watch that dross, and to fund the work-shy keans lavish lifestyles.

Never before have I heard the players be told 'they're not fit to wear the shirt', and the analysis was correct.

Only about 3 players in that XI gave a sh1t yesterday. Absolute shower of sh1te.

[SouthAussieRover]

Just watched the highlights, put simply you can't hide away from it we are in an awful mess.

Wouldn't have took up too much time watching the "highlights" then.

Awful awful kean.

[Roost]

Just home from the match. That was an embarrassment.

No passion, no pride, no desire, no skill.

Tactically Berg has no idea. Was it only me that noticed how shocking Etuhu was? 2199 other seemed to notice but Berg didn't.

Chance of promotion now gone. Chance of relegation greatly increased.

Shocking performance.

[tugayislegend]

Play Simon? Play givet ? Play 4 3 3? Play 4 4 2? Rhodes not suited to our play? Part of the problem is self belief and confidence. We fluked A LOT of results at the start of the season because the players BELIEVED they were good enough and the team was good enough to gain promotion! You can change the team and tactics every game does not necessarily mean we will win. We started yesterday's game well and conceded 1st goal against run of play and the players heads dropped! We are definitely lacking confidence in the team, we just need a win from somewhere, anywhere, doesn't matter how we play just to stop this bad run. It does not help there are NO leaders on the pitch, most teams have a few! We can all forget the short term and start thinking long term, give berg a chance, let's see if he brings in a commanding CM and commanding CB, wouldn't mind a 6 ft 4" beast to give us a threat going forward and help prevent so many goals conceded from simple cross ins and set pieces! Also no matter how poorly the team plays they need the supporters cheering them on at ewood. The players are STILL AFRAID to play at ewood imo that is why home form is so poor.

[Mike Graham]

Absolutely awful. Not sure how long I can keep paying out my own money to watch that dross, and to fund the work-shy keans lavish lifestyles.

Never before have I heard the players be told 'they're not fit to wear the shirt', and the analysis was correct.

Only about 3 players in that XI gave a sh1t yesterday. Absolute shower of sh1te.

And the 3 players are whom please?

[Ossydave]

Yet again our own fans were after kicking lumps out of each other too. never known anything like it. Less said about the performance the better, to say we forked out a fair bit of cash for the day out right before xmas anf then the players reward us with THAT. Yet again a crap team beat us too, I wouldn't mind so much if they were good!

[Hasta]

Also no matter how poorly the team plays they need the supporters cheering them on at ewood. The players are STILL AFRAID to play at ewood imo that is why home form is so poor.

In that case it's a good job our record of 2 wins away is so good. Shows what happens when those nasty home fans aren't there.

[Mike Graham]

It's actually December

I blame my insanity on listening to Shaggy Singh on Radio Blackburn earlier this week.

[thenodrog]

Getting this squad back to a decent standard is going to take years IMO. Getting rid of dross isn't as easy as it looks, we will have to wait until some of these contracts run down.

The curse of modern football management. The average tenure of football managers is about 2 years give or take a month or two whilst most player contracts will be 3 years so very very few ever get to manage their own squad. In fact since Dalglish left only two managers were here long enough to outstaytheir players (Souness and Hughes). One left a wealth of talent and the other left an imbalanced and disjointed squad.

[roverandout]

some people blaming the fans for our poor home form, idiot, is getting paid a king's ransom not enough to get them through that??

[thenodrog]

Salgado was making reference to Robbo being dropped. He said that is you get dropped like today after giving four years of excellent service to the club, the players will side with Robbo in thinking he's been hard done by and not put the effort in.

Doesn't stack up. Last time we dropped Robinson (for falling out with Kean) didn't we draw away to Lpool and beat MU at OT?

Don't understand the Black love in.

He fluked 9 points from 6 games but it could just have easily been four points from 6 games had Sheff Wed taken their chances and we not scraped an undeserved winner in injury time v Watford. Plus the players looked like they couldn't be arsed under him.

Agreed. We didn't deserve 6 points from those two matches.

The heart has been ripped out of the club over the last 2 years.

Players that could have kept us up last year were disposed of by the previous manager (if you can call him that ) and replaced with fancy pants passionless mercenaries.

Just imagine the steel in the team with Salgado, Samba, Nelsen, Nzonzi - just check the team in the first post to this topic and then weep.

Robinson, Nelsen, Samba, Salgado, Jones, Givet, Pedersen, Nzonzi (Andrews), Diouf, Kalinic (Benjani), Biram Diouf (Emerton)

Good point. Andrews was comfortably our weakest midfielder 2 years ago.... now he'd be our strongest and likely our captain.

[tomphil]

First the Freidal rumours would have upset Robbo then the rumours that his goalkeeping coach & friend Mimms is likely to be out the door soon is bound to have caused more anguish behind the scenes. Every bit of this club is in turmoil, except in Pune (& Zurich?) where they ignore the day to day problems.

[thenodrog]

As for Gordon's tiresome trolling re: Allardyce, change the record! The situation the club is in is a disgrace, but the decline on the pitch was coming under your idol anyway, albeit it would have been more slow. No doubt you've many years following Rovers under your belt, but I find it hard to respect your opinions when they're now formed from the comfort of your armchair/golf course.

See your sig.

[thenodrog]

Someone complained and the mods told me to take it down or they'd kill my first-born son.

I told them I didn't have any kids, so they said they'd put dog poo through my letter box instead.

Dear Mods...... I want to make a complaint against whoever complained!

[JMillZz]

Absolutely awful. Not sure how long I can keep paying out my own money to watch that dross, and to fund the work-shy keans lavish lifestyles.

Never before have I heard the players be told 'they're not fit to wear the shirt', and the analysis was correct.

Only about 3 players in that XI gave a sh1t yesterday. Absolute shower of sh1te.

Was that sung yesterday? On other side of world and stream quality wasn't great.

[thenodrog]

First the Freidal rumours would have upset Robbo then the rumours that his goalkeeping coach & friend Mimms is likely to be out the door soon is bound to have caused more anguish behind the scenes.

Odd then that the signing of Loris didn't upset Friedel don't you think? Mind you Brad is a consummate and mature professional.

[mhead]

Situation seems hopeless.

In the 70s when it was even worse something turned up.

This time?

[kingsleyamis]

See your sig.

Well, exactly! Fair play for admitting that your motivation in posting is to wind up others.

[Roversider]

Okay, after a time dwelling on this I think there are a few thoughts I would have.

Firstly, I can understand why Berg dropped Hanley and brought in Givet, Grant seemed to hit a bad patch against Cardiff and couldn't handle Helgusson so a change seemed logical. Pleased to see Simon have a chance as he has a bit of direct attacking intent that we were lacking in others. Also good to see Kaz join Rhodes up front. Dropping Robbo was no big deal as I think Kean is as good as him at the moment and probably infers he is on his way out in January, big wages so maybe that makes sense. But a midfield duo of Lowe (a ball winning midfielder) and Etuhu (a ball winning midfielder when he wants to be)? Both more defensive in mindset and too frequently looking to pass backwards than forwards and the passes a bit wayward as well. I know many people hate Murphy but without him we lacked any real quality in midfield.

We started brightly and it was against the run of play when we conceded, but Gael cleared straight to a Blackpool player and he and Dann then let Thomas get into an unmarked position, good cross well taken. Hmmmm. At that point we were still in the game but confidence is not apparent in this team. I found myself almost agreeing with Henning when he said that a lack of confidence makes players more passive and that can be construed as a lack of commitment - almost but not quite. Too many players hiding, Olsson was pretty dreadful, King's head dropped visibly, central midfield being easily outpassed by Blackpool, Rhodes surviving on scraps and Henley getting a bit of a roasting from Ince and co.

Even so Gilkes had to make some very good saves. But we can't defend corners well enough (but their goal was a very good delivery and a bullet header) and when we get them - well can someone tell me why Olsson takes corners?

Finally Henning - why wait so long to bring a sub on and clearly not change the style of play - Rochina on for Vukcevic didn't make sense to me, it was crying out for Dunn to replace Etuhu.

All very depressing, we need a very good January window and a lot of players out. More importantly we need some genuine leaders on the pitch - can't see any natural ones at the moment. As to the owners and Shebby Singh - they need to improve more than anyone, flipping amateurs!

[thenodrog]

Well, exactly! Fair play for admitting that your motivation in posting is to wind up others.

Correct..... and ditto for you trying to wind me up.

[Amo]

Dann's a frustrating one. He seems do okay one minute and then suddenly has a case of the Darren Peacocks. He was actually one of our better players at the start of the season.

[kingsleyamis]

Correct..... and ditto for you trying to wind me up.

Ha ha! Cheers, Gordon.

[EWOODACE1]

i went yesterday and it was horrible. the 1st 15 mins seemed promising but after that it went downhill fast. we have very sub standard players and a manager that seems keans equal. you could tell that the fans are on the brink of turning on berg but really dont want to after his history with us.

how he could only make 1 sub is baffling and how dickson stayed on is beyond belief. simon looked decent when on the ball but rarely recieved it and all we played was the long ball up to players that cant win a header. king was a player who berg brought in and he is clueless with the ball but seems to warrant a starting place every time.

the whole experience of yesterday was ruined by our performance and the only enjoyable part was the train journey home with all the other fans. an expensive day for watching that shower of dung

i was pleased that i started "shebby singh, your a banker" in the ground which everyone joined in on.

[Exiled in Toronto]

Situation seems hopeless.

In the 70s when it was even worse something turned up.

This time?

If MacNamee hadn't turned up we'd have gone down to the 4th Div. This time we have signed players who are the oppositie of him: skilful but no heart or spine.