v Fulham (a) - 5/3/22

[rigger]

12 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Do you have one this season out of interest and if not, why not?

If we finished in the top 6, didnt go up but Mowbray got a new deal. Which I personally would see as fair. Would that genuinely reduce your likelihood of a season ticket?

Not criticising in any way by the way, just curious. Im very much of the opinion that it is down to the club and its ticketing policies etc to get as big of a crowd as possible.

I did not renew this season, because Mowbray is still here, and I won't next season for the same reason.

[Mattyblue]

Do you think we should be doing better than 4th with his budget then?

Edited March 6, 2022 by Mattyblue

[rigger]

12 hours ago, Commondore said:

Is that down to personal dislike? I remember a group of people on here wanting Allardyce out back in the day, not because of his results but because he was a long ball merchant and a bit of a spiv, who made his name at Bolton. Is it something like that? Because wanting Mowbray out based on his results is inane. 

Was it inane to want Mowbray out because of his results last season ?

[Sparks Rover]

11 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Do you think we should be doing better than 4th with his budget then?

Good one, Matty.🙄 

Let's see where we end up, my view is somewhere similar to where we always finish...

Mogadon Out!

[tomphil]

36 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

Yeah, but our players just stood around and let it happen. As usual.
 

Fulham were in the ref’s face all the game. And with the linesman. Sooner or later that pays off.  We needed to do the same.

I think we do plenty of that normally along with a lot of niggling fouls etc. Difference is the cards come straight out for us.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

12 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Do you think we should be doing better than 4th with his budget then?

Let’s see where we end up in May.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Just now, tomphil said:

I think we do plenty of that normally along with a lot of niggling fouls etc. Difference is the cards come straight out for us.

We didn’t yesterday, it was like men versus boys.

[Mattyblue]

Well obviously it’s about where we finish in May. 

But I just don’t see what else you expect from these players and this budget. Was last season crap? Yes, shite. Would he have gone at a normal club? Yes. Did even he think he was going? Looked like it. However, of course this season is better.

I take every season on its merits, however some of you have backed yourselves into a corner and lost all sense of perspective and when it comes to TM, no idea why as he is a fairly benign figure from where I’m standing.

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Mattyblue

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

8 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Well obviously it’s about where we finish in May. 

But I just don’t see what else you expect from these players and this budget. Was last season crap? Yes, shite. Would he have gone at a normal club? Yes. Did even he think he was going? Looked like it. However, of course this season is better.

I take every season on its merits, however some of you have backed yourselves into a corner and lost all sense of perspective and when it comes to TM, no idea why as he is a fairly benign figure from where I’m standing.

 

Exactly. Is “benign “ good enough for you and will it be enough to keep us up next season when half this team leave in Summer ?

[Mattyblue]

I’m not talking about his abilities. I’m talking about him as a ‘benign’, person, just a standard ten a penny football manager from where I’m standing. Just bizarre to me that he seems to rile some of you on here to such a degree considering the chancers and scumbags we’ve seen down here this past decade.

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Mattyblue

[DE.]

We caught lightning in a bottle with Diaz in the first half of the season. With that gone our form has disappeared along with it. We're now seeing what many were predicting at the start of the season after the Armstrong sale - a team who barely look able to score a single goal in any given match.

As far as Mowbray is concerned, he is what he is. An average manager having a better-than-average season so far thanks to an in-form striker and a desperately poor quality of league. Even Coyle got a team promoted, so the stars can align every so often for things like this to happen. As far as Mowbray being benign... when the fans aren't on his back, sure. Different side of him comes out at the slightest hint of criticism from the stands though. He's pretty thin-skinned in that regard and has made some truly abysmal comments, such as inciting fans to argue with each other and accusing the fans of thinking it's still 1995. Also just ridiculous, troll-like comments such as "I don't look at the league table". 

Nobody can take away where we are in the table right now, and relative to our budget we're doing well this season. Won't count for much if we end up out of the playoffs when all is said and done though, particularly from the position we were in at the start of the year. 

[Mattyblue]

Thing is DE, I don’t give a toss to what managers say, all generally a lot of claptrap repeated ad nauseum and facilitated by weak local media. Very daft to get riled by it.

All about results, shite last season. Much improved this season, and that’s all that matters. If he is here next season and it’s back to a stale 15th, then fair enough, give him pelters - but surely that speaks to the detached ownership letting things drift once again, and letting a team and manager revert to mean, instead of being proactive.

If you were happy to call him out throughout last season because the results were crap (I don’t remember folk saying, ‘you can’t call it a crap season yet, wait and see to where we finish in May’ then), but can’t give him praise when sitting 4th in March, qualifying it with ‘wait till May’, then that says it’s got personal and no longer objective.

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Mattyblue

[matt83]

It’s absolutely a results business and something Mowbray needs constantly reminding of when things are going pear shaped because it’s a performance business then. So he can and will accept all the plaudits for us being in 4th. If we stay in the play offs come May 7th then again hats off for overachieving and if there’s then a promotion as much as I dislike the man I’ll help dig the footings for this statue.

But for me this season can be explained by one freak occurrence. A guy with 8 career goals before the start of the season scoring 20 goals in almost as many games. Goals which catapulted us up the league during an equally freakish 2 month long unbeaten run of 7 wins from 9 with 2 draws. Either side of November-December it’s been the same old crap it’s been every other season. 

[Leonard Venkhater]

I think it is almost inevitable, that old grudges re-surface, when the January window and February slide are reminiscent of so many previous seasons.

For me, TM did a brilliant job to get us to second in the table with this squad. No argument there, surely!

As someone said earlier, we saw this Feb/March pattern in the 80's. One difference for me is that this was the first time in a decade that we have made any semblance of a challenge. At the same time, if we don't make it to the premier league, we will have such gaping holes to fill in the summer, losing at least £10 million worth of on-field assets for free.

This makes our pathetic January transfer window so deflating.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Leonard Venkhater

[Mattyblue]

Yes it has been average outside those two months, but so what, points on the board are points on the board. 

However, this form carries on and we finish 9th (and it could well happen), then I would imagine it will be a parting of the ways, and he won’t be able to say he hadn’t had a good bite at it. 

However, the buck, as always, is with these owners. They turned down the chance in January to make a potential transformative season much more likely.

The ire of this board needs turning to them, not the Average Joe doing the best he can in the dugout. 

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Mattyblue

[JBiz]

1 hour ago, rigger said:

I did not renew this season, because Mowbray is still here, and I won't next season for the same reason.

Each to their own but I’d be mortified if I missed our best home form in over a decade because I didn’t like the manager.

[martonrover]

42 minutes ago, Leonard Venkhater said:

As someone said earlier, we saw this Feb/March pattern in the 80's

The irony is that we have relative riches at our disposal, compared to then, but evidently less ambition.

Not even a half arsed attempt to address our obvious deficiency during the Window.

[DE.]

59 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Thing is DE, I don’t give a toss to what managers say, all generally a lot of claptrap repeated ad nauseum and facilitated by weak local media. Very daft to get riled by it.
 

In general I'm the same, but not when it comes to things like inciting fans to confront each other in the stands. Personally that crosses a line for me, and I can't just ignore those kinds of comments. Other stuff is generally just a roll of the eyes. I have to say I'm also uneasy regarding the whole Brockhall sale saga, particularly as we know the same thing was tried at Coventry with the same protagonists in place. I don't know how much or how little Mowbray himself had to do with that whole thing, but I can't shake my discomfort there.

The rest of your post I agree with. Results are results and we have to give credit where it is due. It may be a freak season in terms of BBD's form and the division being arguably at its worst quality-wise since we returned to it in 2013, but you still have to get the results and there are plenty of other teams who haven't.

Still, I can see why Mowbray rubs people the wrong way and assuming we don't get promoted I'm really hoping he departs at the end of the season. Even if we finish in the top six, I truly believe this is just a one-off season and it'll be very much back to the norm next season if Tony remains at the helm. Possibly worse considering how many players will be out the door.

[rigger]

47 minutes ago, JBiz said:

Each to their own but I’d be mortified if I missed our best home form in over a decade because I didn’t like the manager.

I never at any time said that I don't attend some matches, mainly away from home. What I said was that I won't renew my season ticket with Mowbray still in position.

[arbitro]

3 hours ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

Mitrovic’s a cheat. I had to laugh at his attempt to do Kaminski early on when he pretended to be hurt himself. The guy’s a con man. Still he got away with it. The ref fell for it hook, line and sinker. They obviously though Kaminski could be rattled.

I wish we had a Mitrovic in our team. He was dominant yesterday in every aspect and gave an almost perfect centre forwards performance. I think when Van Hecke analyses his game he will realise he learnt a lot from playing against him. The referee was weak and allowed Mitrovic to play him like a fiddle. That's not a failing from Mirtovic but from the referee. Players like Mitrovic sniff out weaknesses and exploit them - in my book nothing wrong with that.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

1 hour ago, arbitro said:

I wish we had a Mitrovic in our team. He was dominant yesterday in every aspect and gave an almost perfect centre forwards performance. I think when Van Hecke analyses his game he will realise he learnt a lot from playing against him. The referee was weak and allowed Mitrovic to play him like a fiddle. That's not a failing from Mirtovic but from the referee. Players like Mitrovic sniff out weaknesses and exploit them - in my book nothing wrong with that.

After the first time Van Hecke tracked him into midfield and got done like a kipper I though we need to change this. Either Johnson picks him up when he comes into midfield or we just let him go and keep our shape. At least he was moving away from goal and a good way out. The same thing must have happened half a dozen times and Van Hecke didn’t get the ball once. Each time he got out manoeuvred by Mitrovic. They had a plan for playing against three centre halves right from the off and we didn’t have an answer. Solving problems like that is what you pay the man on the touch line to do.

Edited March 6, 2022 by Tyrone Shoelaces

[Leonard Venkhater]

1 hour ago, JBiz said:

Each to their own but I’d be mortified if I missed our best home form in over a decade because I didn’t like the manager.

Yeah....And I missed our FA Cup game v Utd-Graham's excellent goal -and probably our best team goal in years away at Cardiff.......because of Coyle!

Funny old game lol

[Leonard Venkhater]

10 minutes ago, arbitro said:

I wish we had a Mitrovic in our team. He was dominant yesterday in every aspect and gave an almost perfect centre forwards performance. I think when Van Hecke analyses his game he will realise he learnt a lot from playing against him. The referee was weak and allowed Mitrovic to play him like a fiddle. That's not a failing from Mirtovic but from the referee. Players like Mitrovic sniff out weaknesses and exploit them - in my book nothing wrong with that.

We had the same conversation yesterday.

We wished we had some of that Speedie, street wise shithousery in our own front line. And you are right about the weak referee.

Mitrovic is still a **** cheat though. Not sure if he plays the violin!

If Dolan was booked, shouldn't Mitrovic have been sent off? He " simulated" twice...

[arbitro]

3 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

After the first time Van Hecke tracked him into midfield and got done like a kipper I though we need to change this. Either Johnson picks him up when he comes into midfield or we just let him go and keep our shape. At least he was moving away from goal and a good way out. The same thing must have happened half a dozen times and Van Hecke didn’t get the ball once. Each time he got out manoeuvred by Mitrovic. Solving problems like that is what you pay the man on the touch line to do.

For me he is on a different level to any other Championship striker and he was too clever and good for us yesterday. He even wound lots of our fans up when Fulham scored their goals. I saw grown men ridiculously running down to the front to berate him as he ran to the goalscorers pulling a funny face at the Rovers fans.

[roversfan99]

3 hours ago, rigger said:

I did not renew this season, because Mowbray is still here, and I won't next season for the same reason.

How much flexibility is there in that statement? If we went up with him in charge, would you not renew? If we finished in the top 6 but didnt go up, would you not renew? On both accounts assuming he stays.

And also, is it him as a manager based on results that you don't like? In which case, would an overachivement/successful season not counteract a poor one prior? Or is it something deeper, a personal dislike?