Nah, it wasn't.

He'd just punched the ball out under pressure, then rightly kept an eye on it until it was clearly heading to the back stick, he hardly 'went walkabouts'. The header was point blank, flapping at the ball and hoping for the best is about all you can do. I'd argue he could have taken a slight step back to give himself more time to react, but that's a hindsight thing and if the lad had really bullet headered it that could have been worse than closing the space. He didn't save it, so ultimately he takes some blame, but it was hardly 'a shocking error'.

I know right? I've only seen this about a thousand times before.

I don't agree that he has.

Yep, they have some sort of fucking voodoo over us I swear. I have a mate who's a good bloke and a Cov fan, that and how they were with us that year at theirs when we mathematically lost the league, I have a bit of a soft spot for them. But these matches between us are really starting to piss me off.

And there it is. It's so predictable.

It's the most like a footballer instead of an ungainly muscular problem causer that he's looked.

No idea who most of them are tbh. Bidwell, Simms, and BTA (who fans here are split about whether we even want him) the only names I recognise. I do know they're riding their luck at the mo.

Superb cross by Dolan.

True, but the time to offer BBD a contract wasn't 2 years in, it was 3 years in with 2 years left. He had just come off the back of a decent season (7 goals from out wide and a regular in the side) and was finally showing worth. Nobody expected what came next, but even without hindsight it was still clearly the time for a proactive club to protect its investment. We did bugger all and lost it all. The Adam Armstrong situation was the same summer and should have been fresh in the club's minds, where we'd just lost 5-10 million by letting an asset we paid millions for get down to the last year of his deal. There are no good excuses for the Brereton failure, it was indeed contract mismanagement.

Who? We aren't talking about resales of 2-4 million. I assume you meant last summer not last season. So you mean Ohashi (29 in the summer), Gueye (27), and Balasz Toth (28 in the summer, a goalkeeper, and currently our second choice...keepers at this level never move for much, we only got 3 mill initially for Raya and he was good enough to go on and regularly play for Arsenal). I'd say the only one of those that could earn us in excess of 4 mill in theory is Gueye, and he'd have to get a move on slamming the goals in. He's not even established himself as first choice striker here yet, and that's the weakest area of our whole team when everyone is fit. Strikers can suddenly go on runs and become hot property, but so far there is little sign of that, and with his age...well you saw what we got for Szmodics at 28, and he absolutely ripped this league to pieces. You also mentioned Tronstad from the previous summer. He'll be 30 by the start of next season and he's a DM. He's not moving for big bucks either. Selling a player at these sorts of values doesn't cover the bills like a Wharton or Armstrong (or what BBD could've been for us). If our illustrious owners decide we need to do that again, they'll have to sell two or three, and those will probably be the two or three best players in our team, ripping our heart out. Of course we would then spend a pittance to replace them, and I reckon I know how that turns out. I just thought, possibly you meant Cantwell? He'll be 27 next month, so is maybe our best chance of a genuinely quite large fee from players we have bought the last two seasons. However, the way he is playing I don't think we'd field particularly large offers and only from Championship clubs or equivalent. Even if he starts ripping it up, clubs will be aware of his history of purple patches and promising to be worth in excess of 20 mill, then trading hands for as little as 500k like we allegedly paid. We're basically relying on a hail Mary from the Academy, and the best prospects have all been getting poached before they hit 20 in the same time period we've discussed. Only Wharton landed us a big fee and that's because he was a fan who signed a proper deal. Only prospect I have confidence would protect us like that now is Isaac Dunn, and we must be 2+ years away from yielding any appreciable fee on him (not that I wouldn't rather keep our quality youngsters). We should be relying on deals of the Armstrong profile - a rapid young player with an eye for goal in the 3 mill (including add ons) bracket. Those are the ones you can realise enough gains to repeat the reinvestment cycle (but of course we skip the latter part usually anyway).

Although in fairness, there's also an argument for continuity and understanding how we work, since we operate a quite successful academy. Plus incentive for existing coaches knowing they can move up if they do a good job. But yeh, the truth is most likely it's mostly about lazy, cost cutting options.

Elliott Jackson is already contributing to the death of journalism.

Yes. It may be called something slightly different, like privacy mode, secret mode etc. Other tips to swerve their firewall - use different browsers (and different devices), and click the 'X' if your browser has one, before the page has finished loading (usually when you open a webpage the X appears where the refresh sign usually is, until it's all loaded and the refresh sign comes back). The latter trick can also help you read articles that are fully behind a paywall on various websites. The LT page lets you read so many articles a month for free and without registering, but if you never register, use different browsers and incognito tabs, you can basically read all you like. Or as much as you'll want to anyway.

And that's why we have a forum, to discuss them.

I don't remember the last time we appointed someone from outside to one of the top two Academy related jobs. We always promote from within. I imagine we will again.

Probably not true (although you do find truthful rumours about us from foreign press sometimes), but 11 caps for Poland at age 20 is pretty impressive. They only paid 800k for him...you'd think a permanent transfer might prove shrewd, or an option/promotion obligation to buy. If we were an ambitious, non-basketcase club of course.

O'Riordan to Crewe (League Two) on loan confirmed: https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2025/january/20/o-riordan-returns-to-railwaymen-/

O'Riordan to League Two Crewe on loan confirmed.

Give over, as if we need Hilton whatsoever. He'd be the first one to go if we want another space, I'd rather play Michalski as third choice than him, and we have other older u21 keepers if he's deemed too young. Third choice keeper is almost never required and the young goalies are much of a muchness. So that's 3 signings we can make with no worries, and if we wanted more we could make permanent u21 signings- which is probably a market we should consider anyway, with the opportunity for further development and resale. Plus Siggy hasn't been much use, so as you say he could go. Oh and no, we don't need to register Wharton, at very best he will be 'fit' for a couple of weeks or so. Squad numbers are not the problem, a strangled budget and neglectful owners are.

I've had the impression from various murmurings in various windows that the owners insist on final authorisation at the end of the process. So I don't think you can rely on getting approval before steps 1-10 and it not changing again at the end.

That would be a bit random...isn't he due back in about 3-4 weeks?

'I'm confident because quite frankly, if Steve doesn't deliver a halfway decent couple of attackers by the end of the window, I'm gonna headbutt his nose to dust, and he's been told.'

Yeh I don't buy this wanted a new challenge shit. He literally just started a new challenge like 6 months ago. The smart money would be on him not having appreciated the closer company of those at the top or how they run things and there being, putting it generously perhaps, a clash of ideas.

Players that have repped both clubs...you probably knew these already, but Kasey Palmer, Derrick Williams, Andreas Weimann. They're the only ones that occur to me.