Eddie

You know what, that's OK. If they actually start accumulating talent and spending money, then I'm not going to be critical. We're not 1 or 2 pieces away; we are 7 or 8 pieces away. Get talent in the door and work from there.

There are drugs for that.

He's part of one of our problems. Our biggest problem is the owners and the incompetence of our senior leadership. Until that problem is solved, we have no chance of being a properly run football club. However, we now have a second problem, which is a lack of quality in our manager and our playing squad. Both of those have been caused by problem number one, but we saw under Eustace and JDT that a good manager can reduce the impact of the bad ownership and senior management. Any good manager will eventually leave, but we don't have to be totally resigned to the fact that we will have awful managers until our owners change. Ismael is an awful manager. The tactics he sets us up with never work. Our players don't seem to be on the same page. He also never makes substitutions or changes during a match that positively impact the outcome. In fact, most matches he just stands on the touchline and watches matches drift by. He shouldn't get a pass just because our owners and various 'heads of' are sinking the ship. He is watching the ship go down, and, instead of throwing lifevests into the water, he is standing at the helm steering us directly towards an iceberg.

If Ismael isn't sacked after this, then we will have to accept the fact that he is unfireable.

A lot of our players sign reasonable contracts. 2-3 year deals with an option are pretty standard these days, but we just can't get them to renew. We seem to be operating with a mindset that players will routinely renew within the final 6 months of their deal on similar terms (if not worse terms). That just doesn't happen these days.

Except you should be. That's just kicking the can down the road and completely goes against the approach that our leadership claims to have. We should be using every window to sign young players, especially in a period with an ever-closing P&S window. Based on everything Gestede says, we have the same budget for every window. That means that we can never expect a future window where we will realistically be able to sign 6 or 7 players. In order to build a good squad, we have to sign 2 or 3 players every window. Each time we don't we set ourselves back 12 to 18 months. Not only that, but if the focus is on signing young players then we have to accept 2 things. The first? It takes time for them to develop. The second? Some of them will be misses (as is the case with any signing, but the risk is exponentially greater with younger players). So, what you're endorsing is a pragmatic approach for a club that is sensibly run. But we aren't sensibly run and we can't be pragmatic. We will lose more players this summer on free transfers. We will be faced with having to sign 5 or 6 players JUST to get our squad back to the numbers that we started this season with. If the club had any sense about them, they would know that every window requires 4/5 signings and they would plan that out weeks and months ahead of time. But we can't be giving them an out by saying 'the sensible thing to do is to bring in a couple of players to get us out of a relegation scrap'. To be perfectly honest, if the commitment is to implement some kind of quasi-Bournemouth/Brentford/Brighton model, then we shouldn't even be that concerned about relegation. The focus should be on squad building, amassing young talent, and knowing that, in the long run, that will deliver results on and off the pitch. I would actually find that messaging somewhat refreshing. The problem is, we don't have a strong enough commitment to anything. Our strategy is determined by whichever way the wind blows based on a bit of public pressure, the right agents making calls, and whichever side of the bed a couple of key people wake up on. But signing a couple of quick-fixes to a relegation scrap this season guarantees problems next year.

This is the problem, and it is why the situation in which we find ourselves is so dangerous. I can see how the model can be sold to the owners. I can even see how it leaves them confused as to why the supporters are so unhappy. Reduce the wage bill. Invest in young players. Make a profit off of those players. Reinvest. Build a good squad. We've done the first bit. We've kind of done the second bit. We've definitely done the third bit. We've never done the fourth bit. And we've never been further from the 5th bit. What worries me is that our current senior management will spin our current predicament and leave our owners feeling as if they are on the right path. They'll call the fans ungrateful. They'll say the players who have wanted out are ungrateful. But they're here to steady the ship and guide us on our path. If you didn't follow football much, knew nothing about the sports, and had minimal to no interest in a relatively small investment within your portfolio...well...you might just buy it.

Gudjonson can't play for another club until the start of next season. He made appearances for Gent in August before his move.

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I don't want to derail the discussion, but it's very different. By going and playing in Saudi Arabia, or joining LIV, participating in a comedy festival there, or doing a host of any other jobs in KSA you are being paid directly by the authoritarian regime, benefiting from their restrictive policies, and existing within infrastructure that is built using slave labour. There are lots of reasons to be critical of the US Government and many American companies, but playing for Inter Miami doesn't mean that your salary is literally coming from Donald Trump, nor are you playing in the Raytheon Arena, and you aren't living in a society that has been built (recently) by slave labour. It's very hard to have a clean life where you don't tacitly endorse certain activities, but you can put in some degree of effort to distance yourself from them. Banking with HSBC means I use the same financial institution as many organizations and individuals I disagree with (many of whom HSBC is even investing in), but that isn't the same as taking money directly from those groups. It's disingenuous to imply otherwise.

No, but a better argument would be that we could point to several Rovers' legends who never won our POTY. Ryan Nelsen never won POTY, but Andy Todd did. So Andy Todd was the better defender? I know this isn't your argument, but using POTY as some kind of indicator of how good a player was is so dumb. Scholes is light-years ahead of where Wharton is now. Wharton will probably close that gap and maybe (there's a very slim chance) could become a better player (he certainly won't have a 'better' career). The one thing Wharton could realistically achieve is being a better and more important player for England. Scholes was criminally misused and underused by England.

This is one of the dumber arguments that has been used on here.

I've always been fairly positive about midtable finishes in the past, but it is hard to see how this season is heading towards anything other than relegation. The worst part? I'm not sure that I even care anymore. I've tried. I tried to get in to all of the signings in the summer. I saw it as exciting, I hoped things would improve. But they're mostly crap. The side is awful. The manager is useless. All this talk about 'defending together, attacking together'. We lose together. That's all they do. I feel sorry for some of the players. It isn't their fault that they are here and a few of them are better than this, but these owners have sucked the soul out of the club. For those wishing for relegation, I think that's a mistake. It won't force the owners out. It won't force change. It will just make us that bit less relevant. We're heading towards League One football with crowds of sub-5000. It won't be pretty.

Chiesa was pretty special throughout that tournament. Injuries have set him back a lot, but in 2020/21 he was one of the best attacking midfield options in Europe.

Not sure on the best fans in the world stuff, but his criticism isn't of England fans in general or how well they travel. It's specific to the atmosphere at England's home stadium. It isn't great there; there are lots of reasons for that, but I understand his observations.