I think Rovers already do the 12-17 ages pretty well. It’s the price of adult tickets rocketing over the last few years and the absence of anything 21-25 that is the gap.

Get them ordered before 12:30pm or it’ll be £27 in the Riverside! £30 in the BBE! To think, £10 on a day like today would have been bouncing!

Yes, I’d have been happier if he had stated that play-offs must be our aim next season and put a little bit of pressure in Venkys to back him to get there. IMHO, that’s were Lambert’s head was: “I’m ambitious are you?”. Rather than “Are you ambitious at all, it’s absolutely fine if you’re not though”. Your first paragraph is what I’m up against though. I’m just a bloke who wants the best for this club: that means rid of Venkys. The first step for that to happen is for us to be financially not dependent on them. They can raise ST prices all they like but the only way that happens is through PL cash - especially as they won’t sell at a loss. (Although for some reason people still say “we are only in debt to Venkys, they could write it off” - they won’t, because if they would they’d have sold by now and cut their losses). The second bit in bold: I’ve not interpreted it as a 1-6 placing but much lower. Threatening the top end and not talking about the play-offs means 7-13th. No way is Mowbray talking about 1st-3rd! (In any case, 3rd isn’t anyone’s realistic aim). I suspect he is understating things so as not to upset Madame. Maybe he is being cute in order to build on the trust he built up last season but having pee’d all of last season’s budget up the wall on Brereton, he may find that Madame’s cheque book pen has suddenly grown legs. “Damn it, it was here a window ago, I just can’t put my hand on it. See you in January then.”

That would actually a better comparison. He needs to start playing youngsters though!

My point was that is the type of manager he is. WDL. Not only this season. He may raise the bar but will struggle to hit it unless he addresses key issues. However, time is not on our side and Mowbray’s bar looks to be not much higher next season... So next season’s target is “threatening the top end of the table”. He steers well clear of saying ‘aiming for the play-offs’. So another slow build season. Top half finish. He seems to have all the time on the world. Maybe the play-offs will be the aim in 2020/21 or the season after? By which time our debt will be well over £200m. I wonder if Mowbray has any ambition of his own for the club, or if he will just carry on with whatever criteria they set? We are either going to have a Mowbray era - of the type United had with Ferguson (just without the success) - or we are going to have wasted years paddling around in the shallow end.

No, no. We are now a normal functioning club because of Mowbray - James Wilkinson told his groupies on Twitter. Are you sure you’ve read it right?

What a man-child. Copying and pasting forum posts onto Twitter for likes (from Chaddy). Folk who are banned shouldn’t even have access to the site to help them avoid the temptation for copyright theft. It’d be interesting to know how Chaddy has worked out that 90% of fans are on Mowbray’s side though? The only poll I have seen was 2 to 1 against right until he started winning a few now it’s “only” 57:43 against. At least he has plenty of time on his hands now to harangue Nixon for Rovers stories every day. And James Wilkinson, so you have something else to screenshot to your 8 fans, I stand by my comment that the club is no different while Venkys are here. If you think otherwise and that somehow Mowbray has turned this club into a normal functioning one then I suggest you are the deluded one. Bought your season ticket yet?

It doesn’t make any sense then, but, if he had been going to China and that rag had written, “Rovers Chinese Takeaway”, would that have been racist? Or a hate crime? It’s nonsense!

He doesn’t call anyone a “takeaway”. I read it as he had been taken away to Taiwan from Rovers.

Looks like he has taken offence to this article 6 years after it was published. He even has a poll which tries to describe it as a hate crime, or at least racist.

Well whoever is reading can tell Waggott that it’s about time he rewarded long-standing season ticket holders for their “commitment”, “loyalty” and “fantastic support”. Early bird offers are a sham - a price rise disguised as a discount.

The money is spent - from the horse’s mouth... Mowbray says the outlay on Brereton doesn’t bring any additional pressure, adding: “The owners agreed on what the money was going to be and then it was down to me to spend it where I wanted. “I could have bought six or seven players for £1m each, whatever we paid for Ben, or we buy a talent that we think is going to be a massive asset for the football club down the line. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/rovers/news/17568308.rovers-boss-tony-mowbray-happy-with-ben-brereton-progress/ Unless he comes good, or the gaps we have are filled somehow, people will consider this a waste.

Nothing wrong with Zulu. He was pretty fair. Don’t remember the tango dude though.

I think people lose sight of this. What’s wrong with a bit of moaning about the football/tactics/recruitment? ??‍♂️

You’ve got a point. I think his good runs and bad runs have polarised opinion, yes, but as I’ve been saying for some time, Mowbray - like Bowyer before him - is a WDL-man. Over a season that amounts to 61 points and a 12th-16th place finish. Mowbray’s own target is 60 points. ? He needs to raise the bar.

It’s not that strange. We should have strengthened in January to support a play-off push when we were still in with a decent shout at the half way mark. Instead we weakened the team, left out key players for long spells, and the season has seen us limp to safety, to an extent thanks to some very poor sides at the bottom. Yet now that we are safe is Mowbray for some reason trying to finish as strongly as possible by playing those players, with nothing of any value at stake. It’s too late for that. The cracks for me are poor recruitment and poor decision making. Even now the decision-making should be about getting youngsters some experience, in preparation for next season but he is doing the opposite. Let’s say we win all of our dead rubbers (Bolton down, Norwich already promoted, Swansea safe) and finish on 65 points, just 7 or 8 shy of the play-offs. Does this mean it has been a good season and sudden we don’t have any gaps to recruit for? Because on the face of it, that’s exactly what happened in January. Aiming for some arbitrary 60 point mark just seems pointless if it comes at the expense of Davenport, Buckley or others getting some first team game time.

Best post I’ve read for a while. Cheers.

Us finishing in the top half this season really will paper over the cracks. Sadly, it is likely to take another injury to demonstrate to TM that we need to recruit. Bauer will come in given how long he has been public ally courted and we will get a new reserve keeper and that will be that. I honestly hope that I’m proven wrong on this btw!

Not in my opinion, and it’s rather rich to even suggest that after the way both have been treated. Johnson and Dunn get the credit for Trav, whereas Rothwell is a good player in spite of Mowbray. The latter will be dropped at the earliest excuse - probably for not tracking back to avoid exposing our shaky full backs. Now, if he can build a team around the two of them, bringing in a new CF, CB and GK then just maybe he has woken up. However, I don’t believe he will and the fact that we have needed the CB and GK for the last two windows and haven’t looked at either suggests Mowbray doesn’t see it.

He has done a decent job. In spite of the advantages in his favour last season, a complete novice would probably have mucked things up. Any decent manage would have got us up though. However, I do not see him taking us any further and because of his own stubbornness will probably stick with most of this season’s team which could well see us in a relegation battle. Notwithstanding he has finally seen the light with Rothwell and Travis, there are still a lot of areas in the first team which needs upgrading. What is your yardstick as to whether he has taken us as far as he can? Or would you only make a change if it looked like we could be in danger of relegation?

So why is everyone still afraid of a worse replacement if Mowbray was to go? Same Venkys, different day.

*a jury

That’s a really cheap post. Disrespectful to fans to bring in a couple of Rovers youngsters? It was more disrespectful to play a goalkeeper who is leaving in the Summer. What was that all about- reward for his patience? What if he had cost us those important points? (He certainly cost us a goal). Once again the counter to a reasoned, middle-ground point is to go to invent an extreme opposing view to then shoot down. There’s a phrase for that but people don’t like to hear it. As it happens, Mowbray took Davenport and Chapman and didn’t even name them in the squad. But why those two when there are others in the squad who have shown they deserve a chance? Well, could it be because Tony signed them both? Of course you (or someone) will turn this into “well Mowbray IS giving the youth players some experience then what’s the problem, always moaning” however the fact that he has taken those two in particular is another sign that our home grown lads have a very slim chance to get in to Mowbray’s plans. They have to wait for a dire injury situation, hope Mowbray doesn’t prefer to play someone else out of position, and then perform out of their skin when they get there. Every game. At least until preferred players are fit. Travis is the only player who has managed to be successful but it took longer than it should have as Tony dropped him for 10 games following an early red card. Then when he came in away at Newcastle he showed why he deserves to be in the side. Then we had the January run which saved our season but still it seems Mowbray doesn’t trust him. But, no it’s just the core of BRFCS posters who have nothing positive to say about the club. Such spite. Hard to fathom the backlash towards disappointment in Mowbray not bringing some of Johnson’s men into it - at this stage. If I were Johnson I’d be taking my skills elsewhere. They are wasted under this manager. Much like our transfer budget. But hey, we won a dead rubber.

The thing is, this was my only beef yesterday yet I (and a few others) have been goaded to death about “negativity”. I wanted a couple of U23s to get their chance yesterday, yet for some reason I’m supposed to say “never mind that we won!”. If anything, having to put up with the giddy abuse after a few wins is even more galling. It doesn’t matter if we win the next 3 games but if we do we’ll be on 65 points and that will suddenly become evidence of how great Mowbray is. Rather than show what could have been if we had strengthens in January. What is even worse is that it will paper over the cracks - just like it did in January - and may just stop us recruiting for the positions we all know are required. And we won’t even know if they can be covered by youngsters. Aiming for those wins now is too little, too late. Still as long as Mowbray gets to his self-imposes and arbitrary 60 point target he will have “achieved”. Frustrating is what it is. And we’ve already been through this process once with Bowyer.

But you and your ilk aren’t “enjoying wins”, you are enjoying the opportunity to score points. Well, make hay while the sun shines. Do you think any of our young players should be given a chance in the first team before the end of the season?