13 minutes ago, Sparks Rover said:

Ye makes you wonder why Wilder is bothering with Nyambe when he can go get any old League 1 full back instead, ten a penny according to some on here...🤔

I do find it curious that Wilder in particular has gone for Nyambe. He even expects his wider centre backs to contribute going forward, let alone his wing backs. 

Must think that he can get a tune out of him where Mowbray couldn't, but he strikes me as close to the opposite style of full back to what he would usually go for. 

1 minute ago, Ruaney said:

You have some strange opinions on players. He's an awful footballer.

Wouldn't go that far, he's been a very good player at this level.

Well past it now though. 

21 minutes ago, Dreams of 1995 said:

Bairstow has had a couple of hard fought hundreds away from home as well 47er

Particular stand out being the stand he made in the 1st innings at the Waca back in 2017 which was an incredible knock. We got hammered though

Think he got 100 in Australia around Christmas time too

But he has spent his career giving his wicket away too easily for my liking. One of the best white ball cricketers out there though. He's got a long way to go but he's in such a flow I wouldn't bet against him scoring 100 anywhere right now

 

Yeah, that sums up exactly my thoughts to be honest.

I hope that a combination of his age, alongside our new approach means that he can find more consistency for the next five years or so. Obviously it's unrealistic for him to sustain this ridiculous purple patch, but he's so destructive that he could easily be the player that we all hoped Buttler might've been in red ball cricket.

There could be a sense of making up for lost time too.

2 minutes ago, longsiders1882 said:

Oh fantastic news.

As I understand it he's very highly rated, but like a lot of youngsters at top clubs, find the Championship a much steeper learning curve than they might've first imagined. Obviously gets highlighted a lot more when you're a goalkeeper.

Not sure if he would be permanent or not, but we've found that a lot of players you get loan from prem clubs would be great signings if they were on 4 year contracts, but you can really take or leave them if you just keep them for a year and let them make their mistakes. You get the odd exception like Harvey Elliott or Van Hecke last year, but just as often you get a Leighton Clarkson, Tom Lawrence or (dare I say it) Harwood-Bellis who are obviously talented but need more experience before consistently cutting it at the top of the Championship. 

38 minutes ago, Gav said:

Test match cricket has moved on Jim, the likes of Boycott blocking for 4 days for a draw in 1975 don't fit with the modern game.

He's also ground out plenty of scores in the last 2 series, haven't you been watching?

Bairstow game is mainly attack, he has the technique and temperament to attack the 2 best test teams in the world in NZ and India and has been phenomenal and long may it continue. 

Happy to eat some of my words about Bairstow, his form since the ashes has been astounding. 

That said, we shouldn't let recency bias let us forget what the rest of his test career has been like. Forever giving his wicket away until he needed the occasional big innings to stay in the side. Being positive is fine and you expect a few soft dismissals as a result, but he simply hasn't delivered often enough for a player of his talent. 

Almost the first name on the team sheet now though. Long may his new found consistency continue!

40 minutes ago, JHRover said:

There's another solution to the alleged spectre of FFP other than just slashing costs and hoping the kids pull us through.

That solution doesn't get much mention on here or from the people running the club. I presume one of the reasons being that they have no intention of pursuing it and are incapable of doing so.

That solution involves increasing income and turnover, and in doing so give us more scope to invest. That is easier said than done, especially at a Club like Rovers, and requires planning, strategy, ability upstairs. We have none of those things here so instead we have pound-shop level operators cutting pounds and pence off running costs e.g. by doing away with a programme on matchdays and trying to squeeze an extra £30 a year out of hardcore fans.

So we need to stop with this "there's no alternative" other than the route being taken. There is. It just requires more effort and ability than those owning and running us are able to provide.

One glance at the 'local' nature of sponsorship says it all - some seem to think it is a good sign that we only seem to deal with local companies but I think it is just further evidence of a small scale operation incapable of pursuing more substantial deals.

I'd have a bet now that no other Club in this division of those not coming down from the PL will have slashed costs to the level we have in the last 12-18 months and even less will have had the benefit of probably 2x £10 million+ sales to fall back on.

It seems some are uncomfortable with the alternative possibility here which is that FFP is not the big issue, and that the whim of our lunatic owners is just as important if not more so.

I've said it before and will keep on saying it because I strongly believe it is key to this whole operation that the only way these owners will invest proper cash for players is if someone flies out to India, sits down with the Desai bunch and persuades them to do it. The reason the cash has dried up is purely because since 2019 nobody has had the ability to go to India and do this. So we are back into 2015-17 mode now - cutbacks, sales, scaled down budget. We know how it ended last time and I'm a great believer in learning lessons from the recent past rather than ignoring it and hoping all will be fine.

I agree with your assessment of our setup at Ewood, and that commercially we've seemed second rate for some time.

That said, I think we also need to be realistic about what can be achieved to the balance sheet by ticket sales, sponsorship and the like. Our entire commercial revenue in the last accounts I believe was just shy of £5million. A significant increase on that would of course be welcome, but we have to accept there is a ceiling to what this means in terms of FPP and the running of the club.

Player trading, buying low and selling high, is the only game in town (bar promotion) when it comes raising the revenue of the club enough that we can spend substantially more whilst staying compliant with FPP. Obviously this means a bit of spending to accumulate, and protecting assets much better than we have done over the last few years. Slashing costs with no other strategy is a certain recipe for decline, but at there's no point pretending that FPP is an 'alleged spectre' when it's clearly not, or that we could transform our finances with a bit more effort and imagination on the commercial side. 

16 hours ago, AllRoverAsia said:

Great test cricket and pleased that Lees and Crawley got runs.

The first hour tomorrow will dictate the outcome.

To save my typing let me just say that I agree with everything that KP said on Sky post match.

It certainly has!

Absolutely magnificent batting. 

33 minutes ago, booth said:

The same Sheffield United whose CEO has been desperately slashing their wage bill.

Such is the disparity in income that it's entirely possible for them to both slash their wage bill and still blow us (and most of the league) out of the water. 

6 minutes ago, Ghost7 said:

We are starting to feel noncompetitive wage wise in the Championship.

Sadly, we've been noncompetitive for some time when it comes to clubs with parachute payments burning holes in their pockets. 

24 minutes ago, Ghost7 said:

 

Respect the 20 game idea but in my opinion it's totally counter productive to rely on unreliable players. They can do a job in a fixture and are missing in the next, I find on the whole it disrupts a season. I'd rather have someone that can play every week even with less ability. Not only that he is eating up valuable wages that could be used to strengthen the squad. Get rid quickly I say if the opportunity to do so is there. He's been a terrible signing. It would be better if we didn't get ourselves in these situations in the first place by paying a transfer fee for fit defenders.

I'm sympathetic to a lot of that, if we could go back two years and make the same call again I don't think any of us would want to sign him. The fact that he's a centre-back too makes his lack of reliability all the more damaging.

We are where we are, though. If someone takes us off our hands and we can give the £15k a week (or maybe more) on a more reliable player then great. But if we get into the realms of still paying a chunk of his wages just to move him on, then I think we have to be pragmatic enough to recognise that the most value we can get for our outlay is to have a good player for about half a season and make a better decision next summer. 

I wonder if some of the shocking recruitment we made in the Kean years has desensitised us slightly to paying off players. For clubs like ours, I think they should be real worst case scenarios for the Murphys, Orrs or Etuhus who need binning off for the good of the club. Ayala's been a frustrating signing to say the least, but he's not in that bracket. 

8 minutes ago, tomphil said:

We need to 'trade' Ayala if possible not just push him out the door or pay him off.

Get a few quid from some club in a warm country and put his wages to better use otherwise lets have a tune out of him.  If he does well for a few months and helps get points on the board before the inevitable rest then fair enough.  Hopefully JDT and the gang can assess him if we can't get a replacement now there is always Jan.

Think it might be a bit ambitious to get a fee for him - but I agree that we might as well keep him if someone won't take on his entire contract. Twenty games of Ayala next season might end up being valuable, even if we can't rely on him to stay fit. 

5 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

That said I don't get too attached to anyone since Friedel left. I always thought he would never leave us for money, then he clearly did. Turned out he was in a bit of financial trouble tbf, but since then I've known any player can leave at any time, especially for money.

Yes - if I remember correctly he'd just been made bankrupt with his US based academy going belly up. Villa then offered to double his wages to £50k a year, which in his late 30s was always going to be tough to turn down. 

11 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

Genuine question - does anyone feel any sort of emotional attachment to the players these days?

Maybe it's just me and the standard being so poor - I used to love Tugay, Emerton (for all his faults!) etc.

This lot are mostly just replaceable cloggers in my eyes - nobody to get attached to. You don't feel like you're watching anything special.

At a stretch I'd say I'm fond of Travis. 

I know what you mean - but then again I'm in my early 30s so I just put it down to getting a bit older.

Rhodes stands out since relegation. Dack too I suppose.

One thing I would say is that I haven't actively disliked any of our players for a while, which wasn't always the case a few years ago! Much easier to develop emotional attachment to cloggers like Smallwood and Bennett compared to the likes of Orr or Murphy.

50 minutes ago, Exiled_Rover said:

I'd give that honour, comfortably, to Lenihan.

Bang average Championship CB on his best day. Earned the captain's armband due to seniority rather than on merit.

Game of opinions, but I disagree completely. I think he's going to be the biggest loss actually.

I would've agreed earlier in his career, but I thought he was very strong last season. Actually for the last couple of seasons, there's a massive difference between our win % with and without Lenihan in the team. 

2 minutes ago, andyroversmad said:

When you see djed spence play right back for Forest last season you can see that Nyambe isn't as great as some are making out. 

I really wish he was staying because it's yet another first team player that we'll now need to go out and replace. Having said that, he's comfortably the most replaceable out of the three that have left this season. 

On 14/06/2022 at 18:38, SuperBrfc said:

I was a fan of Jeff Kenna. Solid, reliable right back and a part of the good times.

Watching old season reviews and highlights remind me of how good Steven Reid was. I think he was underrated at the time. However, it's fair to say his injury issues held him back quite a bit. Aside from that rocket at Wigan, I loved his strong running through the middle of the pitch and his long passing was good too. His goal away at Sunderland in April/May 2006 stands out for me due to the bursting run.

Finally, the main man. Duffer. What a player. He could twist any defender inside out and was truly world class around about the 2002 World Cup time. Happy to have seen such quality and the fact that his last season was his best in a Rovers shirt in '02/03.

Agree completely about Reidy. People always remember the Hughes midfield as Savage & Tugay because of how well they complemented each other, but it says a lot about how good Reid's all round game was that he could play alongside them both and do just as well. One of the best genuine box-to-box midfielders we've had since the title win, albeit too briefly before the injuries took their toll. 

4 minutes ago, Danny O.Brien said:

I think it's like 20% sell on of any profit. I'm trying to remember back to when we signed him. Meaning if we got 20 that's 13 profit, so they would get 2.6 if my maths is right.

Would still mean that we got over twice our money back from the initial outlay I suppose (assuming the £7 million figure is broadly right) but it's a large enough slice to be annoying. 

Apart from the obvious - one thing that we have been absolutely appalling at over recent years is knowing how to be a trading club at this level. We've consistently managed to identify or develop players into proper assets, only then to squander their value by selling them for less than their value, or waiting until the last moment with their contracts running out. Compare that to Brentford and their success - night and day.

If Brereton won't sign a new contract without us smashing our wage structure to pieces, then we don't even have a decision to make. We need to let him go to the highest bidder. 

The World Cup break bookended by Burnley away and PNE at home. Potential for a brilliant or utterly depressing few weeks!

1 hour ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

Yeah but we had the “ added degree of difficulty “ that was the Chicken Chokers and Kean.

True enough, I don't really expect them to carry on a downward spiral like we did. 

I do think that their squad has some similar issues though. Collectively we had at least Murphy, Etuhu, Olsson, MGP, Dunny, Dann and maybe one or two more who were all comfortably mid-table standard players in the Prem only a year or two previously.

A combination of age, attitude and the club being a total basket case meant that they weren't able to show their quality. Burnley aren't in such a poor state as we were, but it still remains to be seen how well their more experienced players deal with going down, as it usually goes one of two ways. 

5 hours ago, longsiders1882 said:

Amen to this, except where we do the double. Not sure it will be a shock though, Taylor, Roberts, Collins, Brownhill, Rodriguez and Barnes all played in the Championship. Methinks you’ve forgotten how tough the Premier League is as well.

 

I think you're right - but then again our team was full of players with a good top-flight pedigree when we were relegated and they absolutely bombed. Some of them were perceived as good senior pros too, with experience of how tough the Championship can be. 

I'm not saying the same will happen to your lads this year, but we suffered badly from players approaching or past 30 who lacked either the desire or the physical capacity to compete at the levels they were once capable of.  I'm looking at some of the players that you mention, and thinking too about the likes of Westwood, Cork, Gudmundsson and one or two others. It's going to be a big mental and physical challenge for them to get up for a demanding season at this point in their careers.

With the unknown quantity of the new manager to factor in too, you could literally finish literally in any position from top to just above the relegation spots and it wouldn't shock me (I can't see you actually going down though, too much quality for that). 

2 hours ago, 47er said:

We know about Harwood-Bellis! Good move (sadly)!

He's a good player with massive potential. Not sure he's quite at the level for a promotion chasing team just yet though, especially considering they're losing Mee, Tarkowski and seemingly now Collins too. 

10 minutes ago, Tyrone Shoelaces said:

If you’re looking at it like that Bryan Douglas “ couldn’t run “ either. There’s  the players who are quick over ten yards like Dougie, and that’s all he needed. The ball would be gone or he’d just beat the next man. Then there are those who are fast over forty to fifty yards like Donis. There aren’t many who could both , Craig Bellamy is probably one of a few that springs to mind.

I think that's right. The trouble for Dolan is that the players who are both very small & lack serious pace usually need to make up for that with serious ability. 

He has quick feet and all the time in the world to develop - I definitely wouldn't be looking to sell unless we get a silly offer - but he still has some way to go to be able to properly compensate for his lack of size for me. Having said that I'm looking forward to seeing how he goes under JDT. 

16 minutes ago, Mike E said:

I don't think it's something to overcome. It's an asset, just like it was for Dickov (whom I envision Dolan emulating).

Fast, less of him for the 6ft+ defenders to grab, and easy to draw fouls when they do eventually send him flying.

If we can add a nasty streak to his chasing, he's Dickov.

If we can add goals, he's Jermaine Defoe.

I half agree - a low centre of gravity is useful to be sure. At the moment though, his lack of size is a definite weakness in my view. He loses the ball far too easily and his size (alongside being not particularly quick after the first 10 yards or so) is the main reason for that.

Dickov's a good example of a small player who ended up thriving after making the most of their stature - I'd back Dolan to be another at some point in the future, but it's the main thing that he needs to work on if he is ever to get near his potential. 

I often need to remind myself how young Dolan still is. He'll probably have racked up around 100 first team appearances around the time of his 21st birthday.

I worry long term about how difficult he'll find it to overcome his lack of size, but he still has big potential. I'd be much happier if this story is his agent after a new contract rather than us selling him for £2-3 million.