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Average ‘pump’ first 5 years was £22.46 million Average for last 10 years was £10.77 million. The first figure will be ‘skewed’ by the initial purchase costs.

I think worse would have been a nightmare long journey away with no novelty factor - Brighton, Southampton, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Norwich, Swansea, Bristol City. At least with Hull it's not a difficult afternoon out for those who want to go.

Will HMS Rovers depart today?

I come here for the weather forecast. The football is incidental.

Looks highly likely to be off again this, but postponed rather than abandoned. If all other fixtures in the area are on, it will put more spotlight on the club and added pressure hopefully.

It's been really windy and rainy in Coventry so the weather en route from Oxford will be fun for any high sided vehicles. There may be accidents. I'm going to say the game will either be postponed or abandoned half way through. And I don't care about any point deductions, VI resigning or relegation. The club is a disgrace.

Midweek games for our loanees Tuesday 19:45 kick off O'Riordan - score/update Barrett - score/update Wednesday 19:45 kick off Olson & O'Grady-Macken - score/update Edmondson - score/update Boggan - score/update - this will be his final game unless his loan is extended

The club are introducing half season tickets. They aren't like the standard half season tickets though. With these, you're guaranteed to see half a match before it's rained off.

It would be interesting that is for sure , what would be more illuminating is to find out, who exactly is on the payroll. Plus, why don't they want to sell the club?? The answer could be the names on the payroll?

Yeah its absolutely rancid out there, worse than Saturday was for sure.

5:10am It's whacking it down

I agree. The more I stew on this, the more I think it's a complete con job. The Club were finally absolutely on the ropes with this one, no excuses whatsoever, even with the overwhelming majority of the LT brigade. Then after being holed up for a couple of days, no doubt desperately wondering what the fuck they could say, up pops Ismael to save the day by saying "It's all right lads - take it out of the transfer budget!". As RF 99 would say, they deserve no credit whatsoever for fixing the pitch. They have no choice but to do that now, otherwise we won't be able to fulfill our fixtures.

The worst. Of no real interest whatsoever combined with a fair chance of going out.

I bet there'll be quite a lot of the fan base on the LT comments section end of the scale who will be perfectly content if they see transfer activity reduced even further to fund pitch improvements because they saw that Ismael said it was ok.

They do or certainly did before the Court case "pump in" £x m p.a. I know they didnt and still don't deserve massive credit for that as it was only really covering losses at the level they chose to run at at the time. However you seemed to trivialise that financial support to the point where you almost pretended it wasn't occurring. They could for example have chosen to fund the Club from the very beginning at the sort of subsistence levels we are seeing now. I mean quite some time again now they were paying Mulgrew £20 k p.w to play for various League 1 Clubs after Mowbray fell out with him. Now we seemingly have a blanket wage cap of £10k p.w. for new players, even for the best first teamers. What you seem unable to grasp is that whether you like or loathe the owners, and no matter how calamitous their ownership had been previously, that original level of financial support provided was very significant and not to be sniffed at. Not many owners would have been able to provide that level of support without blinking and had we had better people on the ground over the years it should have yielded far more success. Responsibility for not employing the right calibre of people lies fairly and squarely with the owners of course. So ultimately any respect for the amount of money they were putting in is largely cancelled out by the fact they were ultimately pissing their money up the wall. Yet there was always that faint hope that if they could get the right people in........ What we needed was a JDT or a Eustace in for a decent period on Mowbray levels of support. Unfortunately it never quite happened and seemingly never will now under their ownership. I know we dont agree on this, so there's no point going back and forth endlessly like you and chaddy do. As you are uncomfortable with me at times, I'm similarly uncomfortable with your seeming desperation to exonerate anyone on the ground from any blame at all. Imo we've had a number of people in key positions over the years who were either only in it either for their own ends or who were fully "aligned" with whatever the project was at any given time. So for me, whether you're Pasha, Anderson, Kean, Waggott, Mowbray, Venus, Broughton, Gestede, or Ismael, imo you're fully on board and a willing accomplice. You don't get to evade all blame for the ultimate destruction of the Club, you signed up for it and went along with it for varying degrees of time. Edit: Anyone who was ambitious, railed against it, and tried to stand up for what was best for the Football Club as opposed to what was best for the owners or their lackeys (JDT and Eustace) should be lauded.

Yes exactly!! He is safe he is fine he he can actually say whatever he wants as long as he gets the message out that there will be no investment in the squad because the money is now needed for the pitch, no doubt this will be used for a few windows. The club will have to fix the pitch now either to avoid fine or further negative attention, further abandonments, which will probably be costly especially with the injuries etc etc so they will be forced to repair the pitch or at least spend money on investigating and reports etc which he and Rudy etc can now justify why we have no money for transfers getting VI to make it seem like there is now no money for transfers is genius from their perspective Don’t fall for the BS that comes out of the club

"If I can influence something, if we need to save money in the transfer market to add money to get a new pitch, I will be the first person to [do] it because I want to see fans coming into the stadium to make sure they can see the game. "If I have to make that sacrifice for the better of the club, I will do it." sorry I don’t buy this BS why VI do we have to sacrifice our transfers? Why is that an option? Are are you saying the club doesn’t have money coming from the owners? Why not? They are not under embargo so not the same excuse as last year we sold so many players recently why are you making it about players vs maintaining the pitch both are equally important and both are the responsibility of the owners

He is a yes man and he knows and the club knows that they can use this as an excuse as to why not invest any money into players and he’s making it sound like he is sacrificing the needs of the team for the club to have a playable pitch, like we can’t have both!! Joke He knows there isn’t he is using this as an excuse! Once we buy no players they can say it’s because we used money on the pitch repairs which he said he was happy to do it’s all a con Yes he knows they won’t give him a transfer budget hence saying he would be up for sacrificing it for the pitch repairs- all a con Exactly!!!!

Boring draw for us

But I dont think its an unfair suggestion to say that you have defended and deflected away from the owners over the years. You often become too fixated with individuals and then anything that happens, you pin it all on them, even at times if theyve left the club. The perfect example is how often you say that they pump x amount in a year, but dont respond when questioned on it. Them raising shares or incurring debt to offset standard Championship losses is mandatory, it doesnt correlate with willingness or ambition. Repeatedly suggesting/speculating that the owners havent been asked for things pins most of the blame on an individual employee. It seems a far reach to think that so many different people simply all didnt ask for money at various stages. Suhail is different to the various other members of staff that have been here over the past 15 years, in that hes essentially an extension of Venkys. He was a Venkys person before he gained any power here. His primary focus is to support Venkys objectives, which focus on cutting losses and conflict with Rovers objectives, and he knows his job is always 100% safe. All of the others have been employed specifically as Rovers employees, none of whom could have 100% job security. The others, no matter how incompetent do not fall into that same dangerous category. No matter how incompetent they are or were, and regardless of if they ever tried to strengthen the stabilitt of their own job. I think you misconstrue what I say as me sticking up for Waggott, for Mowbray, for Broughton etc. Its not what I am doing. I am not comfortable with giving them such big chunks of the blame in a way that alleviates the blame away from the problem and the common denominator throughout these 15 years. Suhail has been the biggest symptom of all but even he isnt THE problem. An excuse to who though? If anyone defends the owners for again cutting costs on account of a throwaway comment of a pissed off manager stressing the importance of not having a pitch in working order, then they clearly are not very bright.

The Beatles - Let It Be

The Head Coach has made public the view that he doesn't mind if funding is diverted away from transfers and into sorting out the pitch. Of course it's an excuse they'll latch on to.

The suggestion that Pasha doesn't like bothering them has been made numerous times on here by various individuals. Neither of us know for certain whether they have or haven't been asked at specific stages. That's not deflecting blame away from the owners, they should be hands on and invested enough in matters to be broadly aware of what's going on at the Club without having to be told everything that happens by Pasha. However I suspect that apart from a brief burst of enthusiasm after we got promoted from League 1 that's never really been the case. Im surprised you think they're particularly hands on, I suspect they set a budget at the start of the season and apart from receiving routine briefings that's the extent of their involvement unless an emergency crops up.

Its not in any way an excuse. It wouldnt excuse cutting the budget somehow even further. My issue all along is that you consistently look to deflect away from the owners. You do criticise them at times to an extent but there are often mitigating circumstances. One being the suggestion that its just that they repeatedly havent been asked for money, year after year. By numerous individuals, numerous times.