RevidgeBlue

He's bloody talking about bringing "one or two to help the group" again though I.e. squadfillers as opposed to a couple of stand out performers in the defence. He'll never change. Either no-one will come in or a couple of peripheral signings will come in who aren't what we need.

He isn't. I still don't think Bell is quite as bad as people make out but he wasn't particularly good today. I think it's a common theme though that you can look at the defence after the game and individually no-one has had a stinker, (except when Bennett is back there) yet we've conceded 2, 3 or more goals. We just don't defend well as a defensive unit or when the ball breaks free on the edge of our box.

Brooks not starting for them is a surprise, I think he's a great player. The team is pretty much what we expected I suppose, no surprise to see the likes of Wharton, Dolan and Buckley not starting despite impressing.

? Good to hear from you, hope all is well.

As another poster said the Raya deal could well turn out to be the worst bit of business we've ever done. Regarding sell ons in general, didn't Philipl allege at one point Shelfy sold off all our sell on clauses to get some cash in. Had Shelfy gone by the time King was sold, or was that simply not the case?

Spot on.

Maybe but if (and I'm not saying we will) we lose the first 3 or 4 games due to the fact we didn't get our ducks in a row in time for the start of the season that's a huge obstacle to overcome. And it seemingly happens every year, not just this one.

In terms of winning it outright Betfair appear to have us about 17th in the pecking order at 45/1 if MP is so confident Swag is right. Fill your boots!

Exactly this. Some posters seem to be judging our activity on players we allegedly narrowly missed out on. You can only judge us on players who come in not one's who don't. It doesn't matter if we were after Messi and Bale or Kipre and Ayala if they don't come in, a failure to land them is still a failure. On the question of our finances, if funds are limited you have to cut your cloth accordingly and hopefully be a bit smarter with your recruitment than anyone else and unearth hidden gems. Twas ever thus. You're not telling me there aren't up and coming youngsters in the lower leagues or across large parts of Europe who wouldn't be happy with the £10-£15 k p.w. we can offer or others who might be relative bargains due to their contractual situation and who would improve us.

I note this morning that having failed miserably in the transfer market Waggott is claiming in the LT "stability could be our key asset". You've got to give the bloke 10/10 for having a brass neck I'll give him that.

He's probably learned not to trust the usual opening day feeling of hope over experiences! Which usually tends to have evaporated by about 3.30 p.m.!

? Nice one!

You talking to me or Paul? Or both! ?

Apologies. As the father of two girls who are now grown up I can sympathise with your pain!. ? I do try usually not to drag a thread off topic. Hope you enjoy the result today.

Eh? We're obviously NOT going into the game with said players so strange comment. I agree with you about the possible potential of the youngsters, the question is, will this manager play them? If he does I'll be delighted. Don't usually go with the easy start / hard start analysis as you have to play everyone sometime but this could actually be a good time to catch Bournemouth. I can see us nicking a 1-1 or 2-2 draw.

Thanks for the response, I didn't accuse you of being a plant, I respect the contributions of both yourself and unleaded who both seem to have some genuine insight as to what is going on at the Club but who again seem to have very differing opinions about the same situation. As a minor aside I would say we have actually had pots of money" to chuck around in recent years but this manager in particular has largely wasted it and I also appreciate the urgency of our financial situation and the unfortunate fact that we are completely at the mercy of our often unpredictable owners. To my mind that makes success on the pitch a far more pressing necessity than if we were debt free and arguably stagnating or worse.

The fact you say you will never ever whinge and moan no matter how bad things get indicates to me that in the final analysis you couldn't really care less what happens to the Club. But hey ho. I'm sure no-one else wants to carry on reading you insulting my point of view and me being forced to respond or us two sniping at each other. New season ahead, Let's see what the season brings and I rather suspect it won't be the the last time we disagree over the next 12 months.

Come off it , does he heck. If he sets a target of automatic promotion and fails to meet it, he potentially gets the sack before he's on Premier league wages. Far better to try and muddle on indefinitely until its time to retire trying to con people into thinking there's a slow build or long term plan. Since we got promoted, how many lrime age established Championship level players has he brought in to go straight into the first team? Arguably none. That tells you all you need to know about his intentions imo.

I watched my first Rovers game at Ewood against Sundererland the end of 1970 at the age of nearly 7 in the season when we got relegated for the first time ever. We lost that game 1-0 and it should have put me off for ever but for some reason I've been strangely hooked ever since. Back in the day when we genuinely had no money, we had managers like Furphy, Lee and Kendall who would knock the spots of Mowbray. The current incumbent isn't in the same League. Subsequently we had Don Mackay who again had to make do on relatively limited resources but again was a vastly superior manager to Mowbray imo. Got us into the play offs several times but we didn't quite make it. That wasn't good enough for Jack when he came in, poor old Don couldn't attract the top players so King Kenny was brought in. The following 3 and a half years were history. In later years I was invited to write a fans piece in the LT for a couple of years after our promotion back to the Premier League under Souness and the Worthington Cup win. I was very critical about various things about the purchase of Grabbi, the manager himself and the general direction the Club was heading in. Although in my view hindsight proved me right, this earned a lot of flak from various quarters at the time (particularly my old mate USA Blue). So here we are all these years on after all that and personally I haven't particularly enjoyed following Rovers since Mark Hughes was here. There was the brief relief of a promotion from League 1 which you might argue we shouldn't have been in in the first place given we've been under the control of successive billionaire owners for the last 20 years. I note from one of your previous postings that you started following us in 1994/5. I do suspect you're a Club plant who only pops up at transfer window time to promote the Company line but even if not and you're genuine I think you'd have a better perspective of what is and is not possible with limited resources had you been a fan pre Jack.

Not at all. Play Wharton.

Please sign him before tomorrow's game!

No mention of medicals from either Sharpe or Mowbray in the LT article outlining the collapse of both deals but fair enough if you've seen it elsewhere.

That is exactly how it reads Parson, there is no indication that a non Corporate punter will definitely be able to get a seat in JW upper at all. What were the previous arrangements for people who had a deal entitling them to use the lounge then watch the game from the JW? Were they dotted about everywhere or put in the posher seats in the middle? Can't for the life of me see why there's any need to drastically change what was done previously as Corporate demand will drop off a cliff I'd imagine.

I know 50p head Derek will probably get the nod alongside Lenihan tomorrow but that sort of comment really infuriates me. Wharton has gone out on loan for experience and done all that can be asked of him in the meantime yet people still claim he's unproven. "Can't pick him he's unproven". Yet he can't prove himself for the very same reason that the manager won't pick him! And on and on we go. Wharton can't win.

Were medicals done? If you're on about Kipre and Ayala I didn't think either deal reached anywhere near that stage, just "we thought we had an agreement with the player" etc.