The January 2026 Transfer Window

[JHRover]

Very easy to see why Cadamarteri ticks all the Venky regime boxes.

Wages unlikely to be an issue with him only recently emerging from the youth team at cash strapped Sheff Wed

Transfer fee likely to be manageable buying from a club struggling to pay the bills and needing anything they can get

Age 20 so a good season or even half of one will see a profit to be had. 

As others have questioned it really does lead to the question of why sell Harry Leonard if we are going to go and sign Cadamarteri for a similar amount. But then Leonard was 100% profit in and they'll be reckoning Cadamarteri can double or treble his valuation if he scores a few.

Remember the percentages.

Such a flippant attitude to our league position. Is solely investing in youth and projects really the approach of a club on the cusp of relegation?

[rovers11]

50 minutes ago, Emerald Isle Rover said:

Think I said it the other day the only small positive is this really shows how far out of his depth Rudy is - promised the world and delivered on nothing 

Why is that a positive? Rudy's incompetence will take us years to undo. Worst squad in decades.

He'll leave with an even bigger bank balance than he has now and will get a nice role at a French club.

[Exiled_Rover]

24 minutes ago, MarkBRFC said:

Brandon Powell set to join Barron on loan.

Can only presume they didn't want De Neve.

So he turns out for the first team a few times post January, doesn't look out of place - indeed has an assist - and we shuffle him off to Barrow?

Meanwhile Ribeiro and Pickering still can't get a sniff. 

Make it make sense. 

[Emerald Isle Rover]

18 minutes ago, rovers11 said:

Why is that a positive? Rudy's incompetence will take us years to undo. Worst squad in decades.

He'll leave with an even bigger bank balance than he has now and will get a nice role at a French club.

The fact he leaves will be a positive 

[Mashed Potatoes]

27 minutes ago, JHRover said:

Very easy to see why Cadamarteri ticks all the Venky regime boxes.

Wages unlikely to be an issue with him only recently emerging from the youth team at cash strapped Sheff Wed

Transfer fee likely to be manageable buying from a club struggling to pay the bills and needing anything they can get

Age 20 so a good season or even half of one will see a profit to be had. 

As others have questioned it really does lead to the question of why sell Harry Leonard if we are going to go and sign Cadamarteri for a similar amount. But then Leonard was 100% profit in and they'll be reckoning Cadamarteri can double or treble his valuation if he scores a few.

Remember the percentages.

Such a flippant attitude to our league position. Is solely investing in youth and projects really the approach of a club on the cusp of relegation?

The issue with Leonard was his dreadful injury record. I know very little about Cadamarteri but I see from Wikipedia that despite being over 18 months younger than Leonard he has managed to play significantly more first team games. Additionally from the above it seems that at least one other Championship team are interested in him whereas Leonard had to drop down a division to find a club.

[Kjell]

14 minutes ago, Mashed Potatoes said:

The issue with Leonard was his dreadful injury record.

The issue with Leonard was that we sold him rather than proceeding with the initial loan agreement. End of.

[roversfan99]

Another transfer window is turning a total mess.

We dont even know what formation we are going to play. Certain things made sense about the change to a back 3 prior to injury. None of our wingers are competent, our threat from wide comes from Alebiosu so it frees him up. Our strikers (although Ohashi isnt very good full stop) both benefit from having a partner. And with Hyam and Batth leaving, our centre backs need an extra body as they arent good enough individually in a 2.

So surely the window should have been about improving the team and the squad to make it more suitable to that formation. Either that or commit to 4231 and sign proper wingers. We have abandonded trying to get a right wing back and seemingly wont bother with a left wing back. We have signed a small left footed centre back who was already moved to left back and a "versatile" forward who has also played in 2 different positions in his 2 starts.

Now we seem keen to sign a young striker who hasnt come close to showing that he is Championship ready, for peanuts.

[...]

59 minutes ago, JHRover said:

Very easy to see why Cadamarteri ticks all the Venky regime boxes.

Wages unlikely to be an issue with him only recently emerging from the youth team at cash strapped Sheff Wed

Transfer fee likely to be manageable buying from a club struggling to pay the bills and needing anything they can get

Age 20 so a good season or even half of one will see a profit to be had. 

As others have questioned it really does lead to the question of why sell Harry Leonard if we are going to go and sign Cadamarteri for a similar amount. But then Leonard was 100% profit in and they'll be reckoning Cadamarteri can double or treble his valuation if he scores a few.

Remember the percentages.

Such a flippant attitude to our league position. Is solely investing in youth and projects really the approach of a club on the cusp of relegation?

What would his wages be compared to Cleary the Barnsley lad

[Ghost7]

The other glaring issue and arguably the bigger problem is the wage cap.

Better players absolutely back themselves with higher wage demands. Particularly if they're a striker. Whoever implemented the wage cap shouldn't be at the club.

Again a low wage cap increases the odds of you having to spend another transfer fee to replace the poor player. It's completely counterproductive.

What is does do is protect the club from having to spend the money needed to compete at this level – while still appearing as though they are trying to. Any player costing £3m+ that's worth their salt will want wages above 10k per week at this level; so offering that kind of transfer fee to anyone at the moment isn't real and is a complete waste of the players time.

Suhail Pasha and Gestede shouldn't be anywhere near the club, they're complete charlatans. Further to that the even more enormous issue is the fact that the owners are allowing someone to operate this way, if they had any interest in Rovers having success they wouldn't.

The fundamental issue at the club is who owns it. All the failings come back to them, everyone else are just natural symptoms of detached ownership.

On wages, look no further than Hull, Suhail, they had a transfer ban but a good wage structure in place. Wages alone sees them 4th with a chance of the Premier League, while we are 22nd.

Maybe send Rudy to shadow some management teams at this level again, and tag along. Since you have absolutely no chance, or interest in building your own.

[yankfan]

3 hours ago, Ghost7 said:

Predictably Brian de Keersmaecker has had a good season at Oxford, seems important to them and is already being linked away for profit.

Meanwhile we need to buy Tavares, Henrikksson and De Neve replacements and can't move them on anywhere.

As I said in summer, buy cheap buy twice. Or in the case of our summer scouting, buy cheap buy 6 times which is what it will ultimately need to be.

Along with a Tronstad replacement...

Sack Rudy Gestede and Ismael now!

And people are out there saying “we need to deregister players before we can sign anyone”. There are more than enough substandard names that could be dropped. Hell we deregistered Siggy a few years back and I take him over just about 3/4 of our squad. 

[Mercer]

1 hour ago, roverblue said:

Let's hope Ismael does us all a favour and walks like JDT/Eustace did. Every cloud and all that...

Doubt he will.

Had far more trust and confidence in JDT/Eustace.

I wouldn't trust Ismael as far as I could spit.

[yankfan]

3 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Doubt he will.

Had far more trust and confidence in JDT/Eustace.

I wouldn't trust Ismael as far as I could spit.

The other two absolutely had options waiting for them. I don’t see anyone lining up to bring Ismael in as gaffer. 

[KentExile]

20 minutes ago, yankfan said:

The other two absolutely had options waiting for them. I don’t see anyone lining up to bring Ismael in as gaffer. 

The other 2 were also not "aligned" to anywhere near the same extent as Ismael is

He is far from our biggest issue, but he is at the very least complicit in the past years demolition of a squad that challenged for the play offs past year

Maybe he would not be so aligned if he had other options?  But his performance/the teams form since he joined has meant that he has no other options.

If he stays quiet and doesn't kick up a stink after what we all know will be a damp squib of a transfer window, then I think he will be here until the end of his contract (barring a remarkable turnaround in form which will see hum suddenly gain a voice and shortly thereafter depart for greener pastures)

Edited 51 minutes ago by KentExile

[Emerald Isle Rover]

Agreed Val is a yes man tbh eventually found one 

[Torgeir]

Ismael seems outspoken but changes his wording as things transpire. Best chance to get on board with the fans is to be truthful and speak out against the 'regime'.

A few days left, so I will pass my final juddgement when the transfer window is shut but it's not looking too bright is it.

[B16Rover]

Where are we on ESC slots, have we registered Toth? 

[KentExile]

6 minutes ago, B16Rover said:

Where are we on ESC slots, have we registered Toth? 

I think Jorgensen would have needed an ESC slot, Baradji & Henriksson also take up one each (neither of those can be switched until the summer)

If Jorgensen is an ESC player, they must have switched Toth to a GBE, Wilsden was also of the opinion that Kargbo could have been switched over by now too.  Without doing the maths, I will take him at his word

So we either have one left (if Kargbo has been switched), or none, if he hasn't

Edited 46 minutes ago by KentExile

[B16Rover]

2 minutes ago, KentExile said:

I think Jorgensen would have needed an ESC slot, Baradji & Henriksson also take up one each (neither of those can be switched until the summer)

If Jorgensen is an ESC player, they must have switched Toth to a GBE, Wilsden was also of the opinion that Kargbo could have been switched over by now too.  Without doing the maths, I will take him at his word

So we either have one left (if Kargbo has been switched), or none, if he hasn't

It'd wager that's why we're only after the Sheff Weds lad, beyond being generally vultures. 

I'm still thinking about experienced league one striker suits more, but in the words of Stevie V

 

 

 

Money talks, money talks 

[wilsdenrover]

7 minutes ago, KentExile said:

I think Jorgensen would have needed an ESC slot, Baradji & Henriksson also take up one each (neither of those can be switched until the summer)

If Jorgensen is an ESC player, they must have switched Toth to a GBE, Wilsden was also of the opinion that Kargbo could have been switched over by now too.  Without doing the maths, I will take him at his word

So we either have one left (if Kargbo has been switched), or none, if he hasn't

My calculation for Kargbo had him ‘scraping through’ by around 20 minutes playing time**

Clearly this is well within the margin of error for me having messed up the maths!!

** it might even have been closer than that.

Edited 40 minutes ago by wilsdenrover

[yellowsubmarine]

1 hour ago, ben_the_beast said:

It just goes to show there really was no plan at all. Jorgensen seems like there is logic to his signing but all the messages from Mr alignment (Ismael) before the window was that we needed a number of bodies and there was plenty of talk around them needing to fit into a 5-3-2.

Now we're here at the closing of the window and center midfield hasn't been strengthened which was critical, then most of all a left wing back. The 5-3-2 simply does not work without someone who can play there. 

Conversely if we're switching back to a 4-2-3-1, it makes a little more sense, but why has Ismael be persisting with 5-3-2 for so long. 

All in all, we're told repeatedly there is a plan when in reality there isn't. 

In Rudy's world, all the returning players from injury are like new signings, why do we need new signings?

Guess what, once the transfer window closes, these players will be injured one by one and we will be back to square one.

[M_B]

28 minutes ago, yellowsubmarine said:

In Rudy's world, all the returning players from injury are like new signings, why do we need new signings?

Guess what, once the transfer window closes, these players will be injured one by one and we will be back to square one.

 

1 hour ago, Mashed Potatoes said:

The issue with Leonard was his dreadful injury record. I know very little about Cadamarteri but I see from Wikipedia that despite being over 18 months younger than Leonard he has managed to play significantly more first team games. Additionally from the above it seems that at least one other Championship team are interested in him whereas Leonard had to drop down a division to find a club.

Good points, Cadamarteri would offer youth but also some experience. We've also been linked with him before so it looks like he was already in their thoughts. 

[harryhealless1928]

We could easily  create more space in the squad by buying up the contracts of Tavares & Kargbo and giving them free transfers. Not gonna happen, but it should.

At least(according to what I see) de Neve & Henriksson are putting the effort in, albeit not good enough at this level.

Any spare spaces go to the best performing academy lads. 

BTW where is Jake Garrett?