He's pretty lame most games tbf.

Covering his face with his shirt as he goes off, clearly in tears, poor lad 😥 Portsmouth fans giving him abuse for no good fucking reason. Pricks.

Beck clearly rushed back.

Good. Kick their arses. I love the feeding them their own medicine element - using the same kind of unity fluff they put out themselves. Fire with fire. Burn it all down.

In fact, if there has been a misstep, I don't think it's targeting Gestede, but I do wonder a bit about the timing. The game tomorrow (today now) is away. I feel like maybe it would've been better to release this Tuesday or Wednesday. A couple of days for it to stew and simmer before the home game on Friday would've been perfect I think, for them to get a bucket load of abuse. As it is, there is a week (and maybe a good result) inbetween, and fans may lose interest or find ways to justify it all to themselves as their Stockholm syndrome has time to kick in. I'm curious (to those who organised it), is this timing because of the Venkys court case being delayed again, or was the timing around home matches considered and there is something I'm missing?

I don't think your point is being missed. I think people just don't agree with it. Plenty of us didn't like Gestede in the first place after jumping ship as fast as he could (and forcing the move a little too cheaply in my opinion at the time...as emphasised by an interview I saw recently). Then the appointment itself was a joke as he had fuck all credentials for the role. Then he came in giving it ten about how he would improve communication with the fans...followed up by hardly ever speaking to the fans and doing it less than GB had. Radio fucking silence after the January debacle. Seems happy to do podcast interviews about his whole career and him as a person or whatever, but fuck all communication through channels the fans regularly check. It's also highly suspected he was part of the power struggles and, well, differences of opinion on player signings shall we say, that resulted in Park (again) and Eustace leaving. On top of all that, imagine that we somehow got rid of Swag and Pasha. Who would fill Swag's role? You can bet your arse it would be the unqualified bloke who still hasn't done much of note in the business side of the game, and to me and others, seems like he may be a tad sketchy and very self serving. Why root out Swag just to have a younger version slide into the role? No, fuck that. Target them all. And Venkys. Clean slate, purge the virus wherever we find it. Enough is enough.

Agreed. I'll be honest, when I read the statement earlier today, I thought 'wtf is that? That doesn't fix anything, they'll ignore it, promotion isn't on the cards and Venkys are the problem anyway'. Then I thought about it in terms of how the club would react and I realised it was very astute and had been carefully thought out. If they accepted the demand it made them look weak. If they ignored it it made them look arrogant and uncaring. I imagine it was expected they'd do what they did, and refuse to comply, with BS fluff to boot, and now even the fans groups on FB are spitting feathers at them. It's the most united against them I've seen the fanbase in ages. Well played to those involved. That was a chess move right there. Like when someone moves a minor piece in a seemingly unimportant part of the board and you think 'wtf are you doing that for'. Then the longer you look at it you realise you're fucked. Here's praying for checkmate in 3 (months, not moves).

Yeh not buying pints, food and merch there I understand, it was season tickets that I query. Though I think most of those still going after all this probably want to support the club financially too. Guess there will be some who go out of addiction or sense of duty who might be willing to swerve spending further though. Tbh though, as much as I like the general principle of trying to starve them out, I don't envision it working. They will simply spend even less on the club, think we have seen enough of them to know that. It will also devalue us to prospective buyers if they only look at the balance sheets. We know many will return after new buyers, but do they? And it's an unknown quantity either way. Personally I think negative media attention, especially in India, is key to shaming them out of the club. I suspect they're closer to giving it up than when protests etc occurred.

I'm a bit confused by this part though. If they're going to go anyway, they're spending more money by buying a ticket for every game than if they just bought a season ticket. Surely it's just boycott or don't. I'm not sure why season tickets specifically come into it?

Bunch of cunts.

Lack of investment in these sorts of areas of the club prove it isn't the old 'FFP is holding them back from spending like they'd like to on the club' stopping investment. It's apathy and a desire to conserve cash. Investing in the girl's academy, which has produced England players who have won the European Championship, costs a relative pittance to these billionaires and doesn't affect our FFP whatsoever (not even sure the women's game has FFP, and it definitely doesn't affect the men's team). Just sell the fucking club already.

I don't understand what point you're making. My picket line comment wasn't extreme, it was a glib way of pointing out nobody can stop him going. If nobody can stop him going, what are you driving at? Why do we have to think about him when considering an all out boycott? I can't see any relevance. The best I'm getting from your second post is you're worried it will upset Luke and upend his picture perfect view of Rovers? I'm sorry but if that's what it is, that's no reason at all to reconsider boycott action, we have far bigger concerns. I'm not sure why it matters that my post was liked by people who want a boycott either. Any more than it would be relevant for me to say your post has been liked by people who want to keep attending (no idea if that's true, just an example).

Sorry, but why should they? Rovers don't mean more to him than they do to the rest of us, and a boycott isn't a picket line. He can still choose to go if he likes, he's not going to be abused and called a scab.

Venkys out, this can't continue.

Surely not, we've been assured repeatedly on here that you can't expect that kind of money for a teenage midfielder with about 50 Championship appearances. Just isn't possible. I await all the excuses for how this one is different somehow.

Funny enough, I signed him as a scout from Manure for my all-conquering Rovers side on FM20 that won the Prem and Champions League repeatedly. He was a top scout on that game, with 17 for Judging Ability and 19 for Judging Potential (out of 20, for those who don't play the game). Also had Adaptability of 20, which he may need to adjust to the shit-storm that is this club...

I caught about 20 minutes of the u21 game (about 10 and a bit end of first half and about 10 of the start of the second half). Tbh the game seemed to be passing Adam by. Not in a way that was necessarily his fault, the team were playing in other areas mostly, although there was a time or two I thought he could have showed a bit better for the ball. I see he is barely involved on the highlights too. But, I didn't see the whole game. Did anybody else on here? Tbf I can see how he might not be too arsed about an u21 friendly, when he's been overlooked yet again for the main team and won't want to risk a recurrence of his injury. But if he wants to make the step up it would help to shine at this level. But it's just one game, and I saw less than a quarter of it.

We should tell them it's not the time to renew our season tickets at this stage of the season.

Excuse us if we don't believe the lad struggling to become a regular in League One is better than the lad who is a regular in the Championship.

I don't think the described model of little cheque big cheque, with no real investment in the squad, would be too successful here. Obviously you'd imagine any owner would be a step up at the moment, but what we need is also investment to improve the squad and get out of this league. Then you can get your much bigger cheque.

I wasn't there, much to my chagrin at the time, but my parents were - much to my chagrin at the time! They told me it wasn't possible to get any more tickets and they were lucky to get the two they got, which I didn't accept with grace being 9 at the time but I understand now. So I had to watch the game at home on the TV, with my grandma, auntie and uncle. I remember feeling like it was all destined to be as we went 1 up and Manure went 1 down. Then of course things changed, with both games drawing level. We kept hearing about all the chances Manure were having, knowing their uncanny propensity for scoring late winners and the refs giving them as much time to do so as needed, so things were getting edgy. Then we conceded that second goal and you knew we weren't getting the points we needed. It was all down to Upton Park and due to that aforementioned knack for late goals the red scum had, it felt like the earlier elation was just the fates fucking with us in order to deliver the cruelest blow at the death. Now the inevitability was that we had tossed it all away. Then the surreal scenes began of fans celebrating at Anfield, as the final score at Upton Park came through. My grandma, auntie and uncle (not as footy mad as the rest of us) were confused as I started celebrating, and it took me a good ten seconds of frantic shouting to get them to realise that despite losing the battle we had won the war. I went to bed a very happy lad, and woke up to see my parents had left me a souvenir scarf in my room, from the day, proclaiming us champions. With the greatest striker in world football (I'd heard about that Ronaldo chap but I really didn't get at the time how good he truly was) and with Uncle Jack's support, it seemed like the world was our oyster and we were only going to go on to more titles, maybe even European ones. We couldn't have known how quickly things were going to collapse after Kenny went upstairs and Jack stopped funding reinforcements thinking the job was done. A real crossroads moment, as serious money was on the way into the game that could have established us as a real force (especially if we'd gone for that Zidane fella) and likely meant we wouldn't one day end up in the hands of these pricks in India. Nearly every player we built that squad with was sold on for profit down the line because of the way the money trended. Serious investment back then would have made us brilliant on the pitch and future sales could have made the club wash its own face like Jack always wanted. Ah well, you can't be too beat up about it. Jack Walker gave us all our dream, and all dreams end.

19

He's also already been capped up to U19 level (8 caps, 3 goals), so no shock he's going up an age group as he ages and plays competitive football. If he was in the U21s, now that would be a big shock. But all the truly good young players are in the U21s already (and even that level, let's not forget that Jason Lowe played 11 times for the U21s and I think I heard was even captain at one point?). ACD has talent and potential. But his decision-making has been dire lately and I think his confidence is in the toilet. He also obviously lacks the genuine pace after the first few yards to truly beat his men with regularity. Unless he gets smarter and adapts his game that will probably always mean his ceiling doesn't reach too high. Probably not the right thread for talk about him though tbf. He's not part of our Academy or U21s, or even club, and plays in the first team squad.

I didn't read that as him not picking him because of the recent injury (why put him in the u21s if it's in any way to protect him?). Reads to me more like 'he's close, but I didn't think he's ready yet so I went with Henderson for his experience. I thought about picking both but we wanted an extra keeper instead'

We did in the season the accounts showed the jump. Certainly on the sheet I saw.