One of either Oldham or Accy won't even be in it....they play each other in a preliminary round Bolton would be decent, wish they'd have come up last season tbh but they went tits up.

The problem with that is it needs highly competent people running the club and identifying players to pull this off. Whilst you are waiting these "few years" for your academy players and cheap prospects to be 'built up', you need to not be shit enough to go down. If we sold Brittain, Travis and let Dolan and Baath leave, and replaced them with people who needed a 'few years' then we would be worse as a team and probably go down.

If a loan player is not used, then in my opinion it is a poor loan. I am interested in what the Rovers get out of the loan, not what the player gets.

I don't think Ayari was poor, just wasn't really used for some reason. It's quite impressive he managed to breakthrough to the Brighton team the season after, certainly can't be based on his time here. Now valued at over 20M.....

Apparently, the last half dozen Tests at Headiingley have been won by the team fielding first. Statistics or common sense, which would you choose?

Stick a massive promotion add on in there then do everything you can to hamper promotion. A foreign team having a quick gander at our league finish last season could easily think a promotion bid is a possibility this season too I suppose....

Its about time the club start doing this right get travis out the door as soon as possible for the best price now. Buy cheap prospects build up if possible over a few years as well as academy players sell in prime or for a good price rinse and repeat this is the club we are now

Early days yet in the window but just wondering from the business already done that there may be less reliance on the loans market this time round.? 3 permanent signings, certainly you could imagine that rather than giving Forshaw another 12 months they could have considered a youngster on loan. Maybe they have come to the conclusion that at the end of the day it's just wasted money ? Certainly, apart from centre halves, the loan market hasn't been that great for us. Tyler Morton, Leighton Clarkson, Andy Moran, ACD, Ayari, were all disappointing midfield signings. As I say, but early yet but maybe a change of thinking ?

Yep a deal 'up to 2 million' can mean any number of things and it's most likely it's a few hundred grand per year then a load of add on's IF he hits certain targets' Still they've committed about 2 and a half million now over the next few years including the Belgium lad so that IS re-investment although we all still dream of a 5 million pound striker ! These lads wages will be low and i'm on the other side when it comes to how these are paid for we don't spend unless there's been some sales or room made on the wage bill so i fully expect by summers end the buys v outs will balance somehow.

I’m still holing out hope that its buckley jrc dolan pears but I fear its a biggy going. I genuinely believe Travis wants to stay but I don’t see our board breaking their useless wage structure

I will be pleasantly surprised if Travis stays - for me it is all about the fee now. Personally I would want £3m for him plus add ons (huge promotion add on).

Still playing for Chorley, had a few unfortunate injury problems that hampered his league career but the signing of a 5 year contract on 5k a week so young did him no favours at all. I doubt Batty has had that luxury yet.

Also, specifically sent to Forests sister club, where he was a regular starter. Would imagine the logic in that was to get him playing regularly and get his confidence back after a difficult period at Porto, with a view to integrating him into Forests squad this coming season, not to flog him to Rovers at a loss

So far they seem to be buying players of a certain physical profile who have potential to improve. It is a high risk approach - coming from different leagues and countries where settling in is a bit of an unknown. Of course, there is no guarantee they will improve - and we will have to wait to see them play t judge whether they are already good enough for the Championship or not.

Do you know what I was thinking about the other night.. The amount of players we've had with names that either match or rhyme.. Duff, Dunn Henley, Hanley Olsson, Olsson Tavares, Travis There's more, I remember there being a few in the academy- minds gone blank though,

I wish I shared your optimism but the writing is on the wall….whether it’s Dolans possible comp fee or the sale of Travis/tronstad I just don’t see a world when it comes august 9th where we still have all the untied players along with new recruits. Bare in mind we still need 2/3 more

Plus Powell coming through who looks to be really good.

Tbh, despite all the hype, Batty has hardly been a sensation at Accrington. Bit disappointed he hasn't signed a new contract, but if he's going to be like that let him go.. Anyone remember Adam Henley?

Rodwell was consistently injured played less than 50 games in 3 seasons (which was played out publicly) and was frozen out - granted he actually did well for us but it’s not the same Carmo signed for forest and they immediately sent him on loan how/why not sure but he went to a team in Europa league so if you deem that move more relevant it’s still a million miles away from rovers status

Relatively excited at the prospect of spending a reasonable amount of money on a player .. absolutely terrified of the thought that Travis now likely to be leaving

The 2m must be heavily weighted in add-ons, can't imagine we have paid more than about 800k for the transfer, which itself would be spread across the 3 years.

Now we've got Ribeiro, Pickering and now De Neve for the left hand side, Batty is probably thinking his chances will be very limited.

Absolute madness, wasn’t it? They’ve a mountain to climb now, too.

Ok, I’ll address the elephant in the room….we’ve just spent (upto) £2m on a player!? Wow, was not expecting that! I don’t believe that it’s because we’re selling Travis either, not because I trust them, but because that’s not the way they / we work. We don’t spend money that comes in (as shown by the Wharton, Szmodics sales). We certainly don’t buy a player ‘in anticipation’ of selling a player either. Based on everything that’s been made public, my belief is that they’re pushing ahead with plans as per VI’s wishes. It’s been documented that we were after a box to box number 8 and they’ve gone and got one.

Out of contract guys not expected back for preseason, no surprise there and don't expect we resign them anyway. Interesting that Batty hasn't resigned though, assume he wants to go get1st team football somewhere.