Everyone was hoping for that to happen last year, but they ended up going with Undertaker instead. Whether they'll retread the idea with Stone Cold this year remains to be seen - it feels like a missed opportunity to not have one last Rock/Stone Cold showdown on the biggest stage. I suppose the worry would be that two Attitude Era stars might (again) take the spotlight from current stars.

He just isn't that good. It's why we got him for a relative pittance with little competition. He's a player who at this point can be 'decent' at this level but that's about it. Yes he's slow but Dack wasn't exactly roadrunner and he was still a thousand times more useful than Cantwell.

Vince was surely the reason it never happened in the past, despite there being many occasions to do it and have it actually mean something. It's a bit late in the day now, and a weird time to do it considering this is supposed to be Cena's retirement tour. It does make the buildup more interesting than a face Vs face dynamic, at least, but with Cena being a part timer for basically a decade at this point it's not the same as Hogan (96) or Stone Cold's (01) turn. It's just a cool moment as opposed to an industry defining event.

Cena turning heel on his retirement tour wasn't something I was expecting. I don't watch WWE nowadays but I did watch the end of EC to see how they pulled it off. Interesting to see where they go with it.

Norwich did a lot of passing without really having an end product to show for it. From talking to a few Norwich fans post match this seems to be something they're used to away from home (apparently this isn't such a problem at home). We weren't terrible, but not great either. Average performance and probably lucky to have 11 on the pitch for as long as we did. Fair I think to have expected a bit more fire for a new manager, but maybe that energy was already given during Lowe's first couple of matches. It looked like a couple of mid table Championship teams duking it out, and perhaps at the end of the season that's what it ultimately will have been. There's plenty of inconsistent teams around us, so it isn't over yet. Coventry may well break away if their current form continues, which would just leave 6th up for grabs. The opportunity is there for Ismael and the lads, but we'll need to be winning against teams like Derby. Huge match irrespective of Eustace.

It's looking increasingly grim for Derby at this point. Another defeat today leaves them bottom, and if Hull win their game in hand against Plymouth at home on Tuesday then Derby would be 7 points from safety. They will be desperate regardless by next Saturday, and we've all seen this script before. Nonetheless even if you assume the high likelihood they'll take 3 points from us, it still looks like a monumental task for Eustace to keep them up now.

I wouldn't say it's reasonable to pay £20k pw for an unfit impact bench player. We might as well have just kept Siggy!

At least Dennis is only a loan for a few months. Still a horrendous waste of money, but still, could be worse.

They were poor today, I thought. If you didn't fair enough.

Indeed, home draws against poor teams aren't really enough now regardless of when we equalise. Can't blame Ismael though, as he only just got here. As usual it's the owners fucking everything up for, what, the 4th or 5th season in a row now?

Have to gratefully take the point and fair play to the lads for not giving up. Out of the playoff positions now though.

No new manager bounce, a lack of discipline and now bombing out of the playoffs as we have a shit second half of the season. As standard as the sunrise and sunset at this point

£20k a week well spent. Cheers recruitment team 🙄

I like how the video is just called "Jason Lowe" with no description. None needed. Everything you need to know about the lad summed up in 9 seconds.

I can't say I care about any letters being written by the manager. I don't care if it was written for him or not (although some of the lines were verbatim from his introduction interview video, so we would have to assume that was written for him as well). It's fine for fans who want to get emotionally attached to a manager but I'm long past that point. For the most part all I care about is performances and results on the pitch. The media stuff is just fluff. It's nice that he's got long-term ambitions for what he wants to do at the club, but so did JDT and Eustace, and look what happened there. Without the support of the owners it's irrelevant, unfortunately. For now all that he or the fans can focus on is the rest of the games we have this season. Anything after that is at the whim of owners who have consistently shown they could not care less about the long-term future of the club beyond keeping the lights on and losing as little money as possible.

If anybody wants one of their recent posts from the previous thread moved to this one, send me a DM and I'll do the necessary.

Difficult to have any optimism after what happened with the last two managers. Or indeed, what's happened in general over the past 14 years or so. However, I'll judge him based on how we perform on the pitch. Clean slate and no pre-judgement. Let's see what he can do.

New thread opened:

Officially announced. https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2025/february/25/welcome-valerien-ismael/ https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2025/february/25/-to-be-the-head-coach-of-the-club-is-something-special-for-me-/

A long read here from The Athletic on Ismael's Watford tenure (apologies if already posted): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5311623/2024/03/12/valerien-ismael-watford-exit-explained/

Unfortunately the £600k pa salary tracks if you assume Venky's are not putting any additional money into the club. If we guess Eustace was on around £600k, and factor in his compo to be between £500k - £750k (conflicting info from different sources) you'll end up at around £1.2m. £600k and a 2 year deal (or 2 years + a few months into June) would mean a manager coming in on £600k pa essentially costs them no more than they had already budgeted for. Zero ambition, as usual.

One of the issues with the three promoted teams going down two seasons in a row is that it gives the existing Prem clubs two additional seasons to continue strengthening at that level, which in theory makes it increasingly more difficult for the teams coming up. I don't think we're at a 'closed shop' point yet, as it's always possible for an existing PL team to implode with poor recruitment, but it's worrying to see two consecutive seasons of the promoted teams all going down - as seems likely to happen now.

Weimann is a decent option to come off the bench, particularly if we need a goal as he has that in his locker. Shouldn't be starting though.

Yeah, it's scary that he'd rather take that huge risk than stay here even for another few months. Makes you wonder what's lurking beneath the surface. I don't think it can just be incompetence and lack of budget. Can't rule out the ol' snake theory though, of course.

I agree, but then there are other similar sized clubs who have really struggled under incompetent ownership. Sheff Utd and Leeds spent a lot of time in League 1. Ipswich too. We've generally bumped around the Championship fairly comfortably in spite of Venky's, 2016-2018 aside. Those clubs all bounced back in a big way eventually, however, whereas we're stuck in eternal purgatory because we have owners who refuse to release their stranglehold on the club. You just wonder at this point when will it ever end?