Shambles. Good job we won the passing at Watford.....

Skybet pull your finger out, already missed two goals!

Considering Chaddy’s opinion on Coyle swung from week to week depending on results (well, more month to month considering how rarely we got a good result under him), I can’t imagine him not accepting an excellent manager in Dyche if by some miracle he ended up here.

Can you post a screenshot of Vale’s attributes? I know they’re slightly different to the attributes on the PC version, but still, I got about 7/8 seasons in on FM 20 and whenever I’m not managing Rovers I still keep a close eye on them. And I don’t think Vale’s stats were great from what I recall, although he did make it into the first team I think after a few years.

‘They’ve blown it’ I think I recall....

'They could have saved us'? You make it sound like we were up against it big time and despite Venky's best efforts, we fell to an inevitable relegation. Madness. Only one thing caused our decline and that's them. Our 'road to hell' in the five seasons before they rocked up: 6th (+ League Cup semi), 10th (+ FA Cup semi and Europa League knockout stages), 7th, 15th, 10th (+ League Cup semi). We were in zero danger and, as you mention by referencing Hughes, fans were looking up rather than down.

That’s the thing now. I do agree it’s been a good window based on what we’ve seen so far from our new signings, plus the reputation of those we’re going to be signing. So after a window of strengthening, Mowbray being allowed to keep who he wants (as he’s always been able to do) and two previous years of ‘stability’ - expectation has to be high.

Newcastle would have played there against Spurs wouldn't they? I am actually glad that our first match there wasn't against Spurs. At least when we do eventually play there it'll be a bigger occasion such as a cup final, FA Cup semi or a play-off final.

I still can't believe we haven't played at the new Wembley yet. Think there are only a handful of teams in the whole Football League that still haven't played there.

Indeed. In fact I've generally found that Football Manager players know their stuff when it comes to football. People brought up on nothing but Fifa, however, can be a different story at times

Or - like most of us (clearly not everyone though...) - he just wants his club to be the best it possibly can on and off the pitch. Which includes the stadium (the face of the club) not looking like a tip.

? I know, I should be able to see what he's 'trying to do' with his slow build. That said I never went on a run of 9 defeats in 11, plus I did get in the play-offs a couple of times before eventually going up, so Mogga's got some way to go to match me yet ?

Crikey, well played! What tactics are you using? It was a real slog when I eventually (had about six or seven years in the Championship after getting promoted first season from League One) got promoted to the Premier League with Rovers on FM 18, finished 17th with about 35 points.

A couple of FMs ago, think it was FM 18, JRC turned out a good player - well, his stats weren’t amazing (not really anything above 14 or 15 apart from maybe the odd physical or mental attribute) but he performed well at Championship level, got a few goals and eventually I sold him to West Ham for about £15m a few seasons in. He didn’t play much there though. Haven’t played as Rovers on FM since then but probably will do on FM 21. Hopefully players like him and Buckley will have decent potential now they’ve properly broken in to the first team. Buckley should already have some decent attributes (passing, composure etc) to work with.

Question - how did it go from this to the dark hooliganism days just a few years later in the 70s and 80s?

Phil Foden on loan wouldn’t be bad either ? Travis must have been playing as a ball winning midfielder with hard tackling to rack up that amount of cards?

12 years ago? ?

Time to move on from Evans IMO. You could count on one hand the number of good games he has a season and it feels like he’s only fit for max 50% of our games. I’d sell him tomorrow if we signed Whiteman.

Fair enough about everything financial etc, but this paragraph isn’t true at all sorry. The only criticism of a player at Ewood in recent years that I’d regard as aggressive or ‘unfair’ was Keith Andrews v Spurs in 2011 - if there’s been anyone else singled out there’s been a valid reason for it (Danny Murphy v Peterborough). You’re talking about the same crowd that somehow didn’t give Coyle any stick at Ewood until February of that season, and Bradley Orr didn’t receive anything either after sticking up for the most hated individual in the club’s history minutes after our relegation. Imagine that at a club with an actual aggressive crowd (you know a lot about Italian football if I recall - imagine the same scenario over there, crikey). Kean would have been run out of town a lot earlier too. Unfortunately Ewood has been pretty dead for a while and a few fellas shouting ‘bloody hell Brereton’ or groaning when Jason Lowe played another backwards pass doesn’t count as aggressively critical.

Love Holtby's lofted passes to the far post, all been so accurate. Good job Bell was offside, made a mess of it.

Does Cunningham think he's still playing for us?

Roy Keane is probably my favourite, but Carragher and Neville do a good job on Sky Sports and do bounce off each other well. Shearer and Sutton I like as well - Sutton upsets a few but give me that any day over someone like Jermaine Jenas. In terms of commentators, Steve McManaman is abysmal. It was painful having to listen to him night after night watching the latter stages of the Champions League on BT Sport the other month. He had absolutely zero knowledge of any European teams and was just giving it your old ‘English team good, foreign team bad’ - quite surprising given he played abroad. Although it was hilarious hearing him almost in tears when Lyon dumped City out. BT do employ some excellent presenters/pundits with a high level of knowledge of European football - James Richardson and James Horncastle in particular. Should get them involved in the main CL coverage instead of only The Goals Show.

Barely any senior football at all between those three! As it stands too if Bell got injured we'd have to move Williams to LB, leaving only Lenihan and Ayala as CBs with any senior experience (if we sold Wharton), and they're pretty injury prone themselves. I'd keep Wharton around (though I know he's at the age where he'd want to be more than, say, fourth choice CB) and, ideally, sign a first-team left back so Williams isn't needed there at any point.

Bowyer wasn't capable of getting a team promoted from this league regardless of who we had on the pitch unfortunately.

Looking forward to discussing what sell-on clause we have for Nyambe in about 2023.