Yep. The leaked letters showed that an agent was running the transfer side of the club and over-ruling the board, completely against FA rules, and yet they turned a blind eye. When they ignored something so blatant, that told me the authorities have no appetite to get involved with problem owners breaking their rules.

In my opinion last years success was down to:- - Baath proving a better centre half and better organiser than we had. - Tronstadt & Travis proving a stern partnership. - Eustace making us difficult to break down, hence the string of 1-0s that shot us up the table. A manager who knew how to get results with the resources he had. Baath going is a huge blow and I’d like a direct replacement. If we were to get another centre half and a striker (and they could be loans) I’d be happy with the squad if we kept Trav and Tron, and Toth actually proved himself to be decent (still unknown). The fear is we lose Brittain and one of the midfield T’s, and we don’t add a centre half or striker. That would leave us struggling. I’m not displeased so far, but the whole window will be shaped by outgoings.

Baath clearly hasn't been replaced. And time will tell if we have replaced Weimann's "goal every 210 minutes" contribution from last season. But I'd be surprised if we have.

Tronstadt has been with us for two years and yet most Championship fans know nothing about him. Cos he’s not flashy and doesn’t garner ‘stats’ he flies under the general fans radar.

At least hitting Rudy’s target of 3000 academy minutes will be achieved relatively early.

Looking at fees paid on ‘’unknown gambles’ the last few windows I’d say Ohashi is the only one who I’d say has paid off. And not spectacularly. He’s just better than what we have, because we have very little up top. Gueye has been mediocre so far except for one spell. Toth unproven, but benefits from Pears being not good enough. O’Riordan, Wahlstedt, Telalovic, Kargbo, Edun were the unknown punts who haven’t proven worth the cash, albeit 2 still have time. The better transfers over recent years have either been buying the ‘better’ players from teams below us - Hyam, Sammy, Pickering, Brittain. Also picking up previously proven quality with Baath and Weimann. Rebeiro was decent but free with Championship experience. That’s the worry. The recruitment team are now forced to operate into the area which has been our least successful area of recruitment. Cheap foreigners.

It’s ‘only’ around £16.5k to £20k a week which for a free transfer is probably realistic.

No last summer, after someone else had initially broke the interest, was when he said Ohashi was in Manchester and having a medical, and it turned out he was still in Japan and hadn’t even travelled yet. He was miles out on that one, literally.

I take it back then. As Rovers haven’t posted it or quoted it, it doesn’t show on the your feed unless you follow Liverpool as well.

I mean Portugal women played in the euros and all football clubs (including rovers - who didn’t even acknowledge the tragedy) continued posting on social media. But yeah don’t release a fixture list.

Price for Rovers non-season ticket holders - £12 Price for Everton fans - £10 🤷‍♂️

I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for for Andrews. Just promoted from league two and plucked by Ince for the Premier League. If we did that now we’d be skeptical. The weird thing was that he ended up playing over 30 times in two consecutive seasons. I imagine he was a bang average Championship midfielder who we were putting up against Gerrard and Lampard.

Who’s going to post the traditional “I’ve heard our opening day fixture is…..” on Wednesday? None of those rumours have ever been right in 25 years of internet messageboards.

Absolutely not the same thing. They are two separate statements. In my opinion one is true and one is potentially false.

I didn’t disagree until you mentioned FFP. We have plenty of room with FFP. We just have billionaire owners that won’t spend. Of course we need to sell assets and re-invest the money, but the model will only work if you spend a significant portion of what you bring in on the right blend of players. You can’t fully rely on kids and the unproven. You mention Baath, but that was quality experience. That has to be part of the plan. You mention Brittain but he was a 24 year old with proven League experience who cost over a million. No problem with that. If you blend those sort of players with kids and cheap prospects then the model has a chance. You are relying on holding your players to contract and selling for peak market value, and also recruiting the correct players in the categories above. That’s where you need the right DOF and scouting team. We cant get anyone tied to a contract atm, and the recruiting in January was woeful for the position we were in.

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.

Family moved to Leicester from Portugal when he was 9 months old.

Yep. That’s the Rovers attitude alright. I’d prefer to think if we were in the premier league again under new owners and tickets priced sensibly, then with the modern boom in football attendances and a connection with the local population, we could get back to previous levels. Think big.

Tavares family moved to Leicester when he was less than one year old, so he’ll probably come across as more English than Portuguese. Article here.

Cos we brought Forshaw back and added a relatively expensive (for us) midfielder. I was scathing about Forshaw resigning but if we keep Tron, Trav and add Tav then I’ll be ok with midfield in general. But history tells us that’s not how we operate.

At first glance he looks like he could be a decent punt. He is Nani’s cousin apparently

He’s meant to be on £20k at Stoke and we were rumoured to be paying Siggurdson a good whack (£12k to 15k) due to how we got him from the Russian club. With Dennis and Woodrow there clearly was money to target a better midfielder. We just didn’t identify replacing Baker as a priority and ultimately it cost us massively.

All I said before was replacing baker with Forshaw was “fully on rovers”. However Pompey reportedly paid £6500 per week for Isaac Hayden. What were Baker and Siggurdson costing us combined? £18k? How much did Dennis and Woodrow cost us? So there clearly was some money to play with. Once Baker left, that should have been a priority.

I don’t know as I’m not paid to find them as a job. The club surely knew recalling Baker was an option so you think they would have had a plan. But if rovers had any statement of intent with the position they were in then pay the matched bond and bring Hamza Choudery in. Middle ground would have been Lewis O’Brien Failing that be cheaper and get Isaac Hayden. All three moved on loan to the Championship in January. The ‘restraints’ we are operating under are fully self inflicted.

Replacing our 3rd choice midfielder, who had started the last 4 games and was likely to get a lot more game time as the squad creaked towards the end of the season, with a guy that couldn’t get in the Plymouth side was fully on Rovers. Huge drop off in squad depth.