Just now, roversfan99 said:

I think hes always had a weakness in terms of attacking. Its like there is a brick wall before the final third. Even pre lockdown he rarely put in a dangerous final ball but he was more forceful breaking through and providing an overlap.

I think hes always been a more defensive full back.

Can't argue with that. I suppose the way that the game is going fullbacks are increasingly less likely to get away with just being good defenders and not need to offer a significant attacking threat. Having said that he has clearly developed in running with the ball and keeping possession - he probably only needs to become adequate at his final ball and other clubs might be looking in his direction.

I wonder if a player like Andre Ooijer would have had any sort of career as a right back in the modern game. Good defender and technically v. decent, but his instincts are so much that of a defender that he might've not even have been given the chance there to begin with. 

23 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

He seems to have temporarily regressed post lockdown back to the over-cautious full back he has been in the past, so reluctant to run forward at the moment and not offering a threat on the overlap.

Even on top form he was powering forward but not really doing much once he got so far up the pitch.

I cant see Premier League teams having any interest in him.

That being said, Nyambe at his worst is always a better option there than Bennett.

I like Ryan a lot but I think this is a fair assessment of where he is at present. Progressing nicely but not yet PL standard.

He does seem to be playing slightly within himself post-lockdown - not in a way which is a concern but still a slight drop off. I wonder if this might have something to do with him managing his body with all the extra games. He's talked about his tendency to pick up muscle injuries in the past, maybe the extra games in a condensed period means that he wants to reduce the risk. 

Just now, rovers11 said:

Given that he's had a lot of stick this season, it's nice to say that he was excellent when he came on today. Pace, power and end product. Set up our goal and also set up the one on one for Davenport. 

All debates about the merits of playing him wide aside, he clearly has the pace and power to make life difficult for full-backs. Good on him for making the difference today, next season we'll have to expect him to deliver a bit more frequently. 

Players who have (correctly) come in for a bit of stick showed glimpses of their potential today. Even apart from the goal, Rothwell looked as productive as he has for some time. Gallagher showing that he has the attributes to cause full backs issues, even if his position isn't out wide. 

Disappointed, as even three wins will probably see us fall just short. 

And they've just gone behind!

25 minutes ago, islander200 said:

Derby equaliser v Brentford 

Just had a look at Derby's remaining fixtures and they've still got Leeds and Cardiff to come. Even a draw today would make it difficult for them.

13 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Have we ever spent more than a few hundred thousand on a defender or keeper under this regime?

Our first choice defensive unit this season  was: Walton/Nyambe/Cunningham/Lenihan/Toisin. Not a single transfer fee. That goes up to £300k with Bell in for Cunningham.

Quite startling when we splurge £12 million on two very raw forwards.

Think we spent a couple of million on Scott Dann, but next to nothing since relegation. Suppose if you're being charitable we have actually proceeded more than our fair share of young defenders who were of a decent level in Nyambe, Hanley and Lenihan. Beyond that, you're probably looking at Duffy who was what, 400k?

11 hours ago, OldEwoodBlue said:

Cardiff lose.

Is the dream still alive ?

I think the four wins will probably be enough now that Cardiff have lost. 

Mammoth task which at the minute seems beyond us, but if should be get the better of West Brom today then I'll probably start believing again!

1 hour ago, Mercer said:

Only lost what I'd won in the previous matches!

If that's "crashing and burning"............................................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think "crashing and burning" is when you spunk £20million+ (including wages) up the wall on two strikers who couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo.

Fully expect WBA to win tomorrow with the winnings big enough to buy 2 nice quality reds for dinner tomorrow night.

That's Gally with a hat-trick tomorrow then!

9 minutes ago, ben_the_beast said:

I live in Pompey. I think a lot of people would be disappointed quite quickly with Curtis. Not a lot of pace, dribbling technique, nor is he particularly direct. Yes he has chipped in with a few goals at league one level but he would do a lot of passing it sideways and turning back against better opposition. 

Also he is very, very mouthy. Not saying it's a bad thing. But it's not a Mowbray thing

Interesting. Out of curiosity what do you think he is good at? I've never seen him play beyond the odd highlights package. At a higher level you could easily describe MGP (or even David Beckham) in a similar sort of way, but they managed to make up for it in other ways. Something similar here or is it just a knack of getting into the box and scoring?

Just now, JoeH said:

Scott Wharton clearly has some ability, and for me will have a decent career, and maybe when he's 30, he'll have played some Championship football. But if we have ANY ambitions of a top half finish, let alone top 6 or promotion, you can't start a season with a League Two defender lining up next to Darragh. If we do then we're condemning ourselves to yet another consolidation season, and proving once again that we don't have true ambitions of promotion.

Absolutely, definitely not advocating him as Tosin's replacement for next season. I don't think I caught the original post on Wharton, so I could be missing the point, but I was just saying that I wouldn't be reading too much into his lack of game time at Ewood - not so often you get a Phil Jones who can take to such a demanding position so well at a young age. 

Just now, JoeH said:

Maybe, I think his consistent loans to decent League Two sides is so he can be shifted for £250,000 to a League One team when the time comes and we can make some money on him. If he was ready to play for us he would have done by now. He will go the way of Willem Tomlinson, not the way of Lewis Travis.

Time will tell, I haven't followed him other than knowing his promotions so I can't call it either way.

Having said that, seems to me as though there's a pretty big middle ground between Travis is & where Tomlinson seems to be - there's room for Scotty to be a relative success if he finds himself in that middle ground.

Just now, JoeH said:

He debuted in 2016, the fact he's only made two appearances in a Rovers shirt, under multiple coaching set ups, isn't a positive for him - it sheds a negative light.

John Buckley, 19, thrown straight in
Lewis Travis at 19, thrown straight in
Ryan Nyambe at 19, thrown straight in

These are the players who succeed, not a 23-year old who's spent the last four years out on loan, mostly in League Two.

I can't say one way or the other if he'll be at the right level, but it's different for central defenders. There's no luxury to introduce them gradually and allow them to learn on the job in the same way that you can for other outfield positions.

I would've thought his lack of appearances for the Rovers 1st team reflects both his position & that the management think he's going to develop more playing mens football rather than them thinking that he's never going to make it. 

Just now, Claytons Left Boot said:

The DW is one mile away from Wigan Wallgate and marginally nearer the town centre than Ewood Park is to Blackburn town centre.

I think the DW was modelled slightly on Ewood. There is a lot of brickwork and the stands feel solid, unlike many of the new soulless bowls such as at Leicester, Stoke and Southampton etc. Because of the stupidity of the Taylor Report, the DW had to be built as an all seater. Were it not for that, it could have been modelled on a design like St Helens’ stadium, which is spot on. Seating down the sides and terracing for standing behind the sticks. Everyone happy and great for atmosphere.

To be fair, miles out of town is exaggerating. You're right that it's not that bad to get to from the trains, but moving it to a retail park was a retrograde step for me. There's just something a bit more soulless about having a ground in between a gym and a cinema when the alternative was a stadium with a century's worth of history, right in the community and surrounded by heaving pubs on match day.

Time plays tricks, but I believe there were plans drawn up to do up Central Park and turn it into something more befitting a modern stadium, before the land was eventually sold to Tesco. Not sure if that would have been viable if the football team would've shared the ground, but I find it really hard not to look at that decision without thinking what it could've been like. 

4 hours ago, TheRovers1994 said:

Great news! Good luck to dunny, hopefully Rovers boss in a couple of years maybe ? Dunn, damien Johnson and Gareth Ainsworth, three managers I would like to potentially take the ewood hotseat in the near future, building strong connections with Barrow they are doing a good job in developing our young and up comers so specially with dunn knowing our academy well we can continue to send players there 

Dunny's was one of my all-time favourite players to watch & I wish him every success, but unless his managerial record ends up being genuinely outstanding I would be dead against him coming back as boss, if only because of what it might do to his legacy.

You see it all the time at other clubs, we even saw it here with Berg although he was sacked before the fans turned on him. Fan favourite players returning as managers almost never works out and usually involves some bitterness at the end on one side or another.

Hopefully he finds the Barrow job less of an ordeal than Oldham was, and if he ever returns to Ewood, that it is in another capacity rather than the gaffer.

Just now, oldjamfan1 said:

Listening to him reminds me of listening to Paul Ince, and we all know how that one turned out.

He comes across like a little boy lost when in front of a camera these days. Obviously not the biggest thing when it comes to his management potential, but an amazing contrast to the arrogance he had as a player, at least in his younger days. 

41 minutes ago, Norbert Rassragr said:

Robbie Fowler, Lee Bowyer and Nigel Clough are the three favourites on Sky Bet with Craig Gardner and Lee Carsley knocking about.

People can surprise you, but I can't see Fowler being anything other than a total disaster for some reason.

33 minutes ago, Hasta said:

My gripe isn't necessarily that he brought in two expensive flops. It's that rather than cut his losses he has persevered with them, often out of position, to the detriment of the team.

Chapman has not performed for the club so has been bombed out of the squad. Other younger players get a little bit of game time, have a poor game, and are bombed out of the squad. Easy to do when they haven't cost the club a lot of money.

As he has spent so much money on these two, he has to persist in weakening us by trying to fit them into a formation somewhere rather than accept what has happened (expensive mistakes) and resort to playing either superior players (Graham) and youth players (JRC). Whatever is the reason why he has kept going with them, it's bad management. 

I'm not one of these people who blame Mowbray for relegation back in 2017. He came in with a job to do and nearly did it. It was almost a freakish points total that saw us relegated, and his haul of 1.47 points per game (over 15 games) was a very good return. The problem was being too slow bulletins Coyle rather than who we brought in that season. However 1.47 points per game would have garnered us 67 points in a season. Over a 15 game stretch in 2017, Mowbray got that squad performing at a higher PPG ratio than we did last season and probably will do this season.

Getting promoted the following season wasn't a gimme, and Mowbray did well to bring in Dack and Armstrong and get us back at the first time of asking. But the side that came back up should have been better than the side that Mowbray unluckily went down with. It was hardly a team of lower league journey-men facing the might of the championship for the first time.  I don't buy the 'but it was our first season back in the Championship" nonsense. Thats why last season I thought we under-performed and this season 60+ points is the absolute minimum I would expect.

I agree with plenty of this, including that we probably could have expected a few more points last time out given how we started.

Having said that, I still think that looking at the big picture, we have improved from this year to last, and that it's really hard to see a good case to get rid of the manager whilst that's true. 

13 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Linear progression doesnt mean too much in terms of jumping up a few mid table positions, its very rare that you keep your team together for long enough to gradually creep up the table year on year to get promotion. But obviously that Cardiff result has changed a fluid situation that will change further in the last 4 games. We are still a point off last seasons tally, before Tuesday night it looked quite likely that we wouldnt beat that 60 point tally, in which case any progression becomes difficult to argue. So it all depends by how many if any we do beat last seasons point tally.

I think the fear is stagnation and following that, regression. It is difficult to consider us a genuine play off contender this season on account of us NEVER having broken that barrier and getting into the top 6 even once. Even now, we are clinging onto the remote hope that we win 4, and numerous other teams drop varying numbers of points. Throw in the mix the aforementioned huge purchases, amounts of money it is impossible not to think what it could have done was it not poured down the drain, and numerous areas of tactical confusion and players out of position and it does make it easy to ask questions. He has been here longer than any other manager in the division, and to get promoted you need a season above expectations. is he capable of that? Unconvinced.

Some who are defensive of Mowbray are keen to make out as if we are a small fish in a massive pond, fighting against the tide with miniscule resources but that isnt true due to the reasons I outlined earlier in the thread. 

That's completely valid and a totally justified fear, but equally I think it's unfair to bin off Mowbray until that actually materialises! Especially when you could easily say the same for virtually every club in the league. 

You're right that promotion, rather than linear progression is the name of the game. Linear progress does however count for 1) an indication of how far away we are from 'actual' success, and TM's record shows that we're probably going to be reasonably closer than last year, and a hell of a lot closer than the previous 2/3/4 years. Because of this, it also matters for 2) how easy it is to attract/keep hold of the right players. Even if this means that you lose players along the way, like you say, a team that finishes just outside the 6 looks a much better proposition than one that finishes 14th.

I'm getting slightly away from my main point here; I accept that there are good reasons why some fans might have issues with Mowbray - but getting rid of a manager is an enormously unsettling thing for a football club, and for me should only happen where there is good evidence that you need to change. At present, when we're making progress, I don't see anywhere near enough evidence that we're in that sort of territory. 

5 minutes ago, 47er said:

Its marginal rather than significant? Could easily be undone by end of season churn, failure of owners to fund transfers, failure of manager to sign right players.

In short any improvement is at glacial speed and we'll all be dead by the time Tony's rebuilding programme has finished.

Hardly glacial. Remains to be seen where we'll end up this year, but promotion from L1, 14th in the Championship, and then lets say we stay where we are in 10th this year? This is more than just trivial levels of year-on-year improvement. 

A horrible transfer window/reduction in budgets could undo everything, like you say, but this is the sea in which almost every club at our level swims. Maybe the level above too. Doesn't seem like a good reason to get rid of the man in charge, especially when he has a record of bringing in players who can improve us, even if there are a couple of expensive mistakes too.

I get that there are gripes with Mowbray, the SG & BB signings being the obvious ones, but I really don't get where the clamour to get rid comes from after looking at his record overall.

Just now, Exiled_Rover said:

They've got a suite named after him, which is just pathetic.

Seriously? Proud Preston indeed. 

33 minutes ago, Paul Mani said:

Like I said. Opinions...Only Gally has failed for me. Downing, Ada, Cunningham class. Johnson has been exactly what I thought and been useful in some games, not in others and I refuse to say that Walton has been a failure, if nothing because he’s been central to our best defensive showing since we dropped out of the PL.

 

I'm with you with most of that, but I'd still see Walton as being under-par. I think our stronger defence says more about about getting a stronger partner for Darragh (and perhaps Lenihan staying fit for longer). Walton will take some credit too, and I do like some things about him, but he's made one or two too many errors. By no means a disaster, but equally I think we need better. 

Just now, Dreams of 1995 said:

Cunningham is a leap to "class". He only played a quarter of the season.

Mowbray should be given another season. At the end of the day progress has been made, we are a better team now than last, but the only problem lies in the fact that once again we are forced to have a high turnover of players. Now, we can all blame Mowbray, but name me a season under Venkys where we haven't required such a high turnover of players? Some think the blame lies solely at the managers door but surely that pattern points to another influence. The only consistent in all of this is them.

If Tony Mowbray can find a player of Tosin's class, Walton's class, Downing's class and then somehow afford the two wingers + left back we require this summer than fair play. There'll need to be a few loans again, but these loans need to be tied in quickly, and once again we will be late to the party because we can't decide on any budget until we meet the royalty of Pune.

Lastly, Mowbray needs to admit that Elliott Bennett isn't good enough for this squad. It's criminal he is still being shoe horned in to any position going on the pitch. 

 

I'm really surprised that this doesn't seem to be a more common view. Even accepting that it's going to be hard for some to get past the money spent on Gally & Brereton, I can't quite fathom how we can be in sacking territory if we're improving. I also think that the difficulties that all clubs will have this summer makes it a very risky time indeed to be chopping and changing, and will give a very short pre-season for a new man to properly introduce his ideas, even assuming that we don't hire another dud like we have in almost every other appointment post Big Sam.

On Bennett, don't think there's any point trying to hide that he hasn't had a good season, but equally I'm not at all convinced that he plays when we have anything like a fully fit squad. 

1 hour ago, Rogerb said:

I see Junior Hoilett is 30 now. His career never kicked on after he left.

Didn't realise he was quite as old as that until last night. I've been totally perplexed by how ordinary his career has been. He wasn't the complete player at Rovers but he seemed so threatening when on song.

I would have put my house on him being at least a good level premier league player in his late 20s, if not an elite one. Certainly not slumming it at a mid-table second tier team.

2-0 Baggies, the race for seventh is looking wide open!