Yeah, assistant seems to be the one position that can be added to. Mowbray brought Venus, JDT brought Remy Reijnierse and now Eustace has brought Gardiner with him.

Eustace is probably one of the best options when our criteria is out of work and won't want to bring in their own staff. Good luck to him - as others have said, he's going to need it. Honestly Glen, the meeting as a whole was unfair to all in attendence except one man.

We hired an inexperienced manager for a specific 'project' - his attributes at this point in his development as a coach seemed to match what we needed. The owners then change the project entirely, slash all promised budgets and the club becomes a chaotic mess. Inexperienced manager then struggles to stabilise the situation as things fall apart. Shocked Pikachu face. If you hire someone lacking experience to do a specific type of job, you can't be surprised when you change all the parameters and everything goes pear-shaped. JDT knew this wouldn't work for him and offered to resign. Our idiot owners refused to let him leave. As always they got it wrong.

I mean, if that's the best they could come up with they probably should have tried harder. It basically boils down to "we relied on the word of a person known to have messed things up in the past, and instead of double and triple checking everything was OK we ordered a curry to celebrate despite there still being two hours until the window shut. We were all in the building and none of us thought to double check anything. All one person's fault though."

It really is pathetic how glacially things move at Ewood - except outgoing transfers, oddly enough. Those seem to go through without a problem. We've probably been negotiating with Eustace since he left Birmingham but have only just got around to sorting the contracts out.

Imagine after all of this dragging the players in front of fan groups to try and spin that some scattered boos and Venky's/Waggott Out chants are the problem. Shameless.

Understand mate and I very much appreciate your candid explanation, as always. I just disagree with the "The fault of this lies solely with the secretary" line. The fault of the initial mistake, absolutely, but GB told us checks and balances were put in place to ensure this kind of thing never happened again - but clearly if this was done it was not done in a remotely satisfactory way. In my view the fault lies with everyone involved at senior management level, as they seem to have persisted with a lax and unacceptably casual attitude to checking everything is done correctly before celebrating their success.

Indeed so, after last January if I'm in Broughton's shoes I am not trusting anybody involved with last year's fiasco. I'd literally be checking every single detail myself to make sure nothing had gone wrong, as opposed to ordering celebratory curry, especially if the deal had been supposedly concluded at least 2 hours before the deadline. That is a lot of time to make absolutely and irrefutably sure that nothing had gone wrong. Whilst it's true that the mistake is ultimately made by one person, I'm gobsmacked that nobody in the building thought it wise to make absolutely sure everything was completed correctly.

Any idea who was feeding The Athletic the story that the transfer had been cancelled mid-flight, Glen, if indeed this was not the case? They're usually spot on with their stories, so it's surprising they'd say this without having a good source. Understand what you're saying in regards to one person making a mistake, but at the same time if I'm GB I am double-checking everything after last January and not taking anybody at their word.

JDT: I'll leave without compensation. Venky's: No JDT: OK, can we come to a mutual termination? Venky's: No

Just waiting for us to release Greg's clip from last year saying mistakes are made but it definitely won't happen again, with any mentions of "Lewis O'Brien" dubbed over with audio of Gregg saying "Duncan McGuire".

Would have been playing it whether he signed with us or them tbh.

#OnwardsAndUpWards #GetBehindTheLadsFFS

Got to feel for McGuire. Should have just signed for Wednesday instead of giving us a second chance. Still, I'm sure he'll be well up for signing a pre-contract for the summer 🙄

Mowbray never had to deal with the financial and recruitment insanity that JDT has had to put up with. JDT could only dream of having £7m to spend on a handful of players, let alone a single striker. JDT's biggest issue was an inability to adapt his tactics - but he's a rookie manager, you have to accept that he isn't going to be comfortable or confident enough at this point in his career to rapidly and decisively change direction when things aren't working. If he had been given the backing for the 'project' he had presumably been promised before joining, he would have likely been able to learn slowly by tweaking his preferred tactics as opposed to having to massively alter them due to the squad being repeatedly downgraded. He did make tweaks to his tactics here and there, obviously believing in himself and his methods, but too much damage had been done. You can't bring in an inexperienced manager, dump all of this garbage on them and expect everything to somehow work. It was inevitable that things would end this way. At a more stable club with stronger backing JDT will get his chance to grow and learn. Here he will have learnt some much needed lessons too - albeit mostly centred around how incompetence and neglect can torpedo any chance of success.

As Rev says, the 'reasonable notice' part would surely invalidate that clause, as I can't imagine such a hastily cobbled together meeting, that didn't even have an agenda, constitutes reasonable. I'm also not sure if supporters groups constitute sponsors or commercial partners in the context of the clause, either. Regardless, what would Waggott have been able to do if the players had said no? Tell them he was very disappointed in them? Oh well. I don't see how he could have the power to make them attend something like this, and honestly the lot of them should have said no way, that's a bad idea and we aren't interested. I am baffled as to why they didn't, particularly as they looked like they'd rather be anywhere else.

Maybe we gave Dunc that role as he won't be able to actually play for us.

I'm curious as to why the players didn't refuse in the first place. It's surely not a contractual obligation for them to be forced to talk to supporters in a random meeting with no agenda. Just points to there being no proper leader in the dressing room who would stand up to Waggott and say 'no mate, that's a fucking stupid idea, we aren't doing that'.

Which I believe was the Millwall match last season where the pressure was effectively off as at that point we only had a slim chance of getting into the playoffs. The same thing we saw under Mowbray - comfortable as underdogs, uncomfortable when there are any expectations.

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the loyalty bonus is only voided if the player specifically asks for a transfer listing. There's no indication Adam did this, so yeah, whether it's a typo or not the entire thing is nonsense and if we did refuse to give Adam his loyalty bonus then it's yet another shameful episode in what has been a ruinous week for the club.

I've said my piece on the players' complaints and stand by it - I trust Josh and Glen to have made the situation clear to them, even though I highly doubt they weren't already aware. Ultimately they shouldn't have been dragged in front of the fans in an unscheduled meeting. It's incredibly unprofessional and I struggle to think of another situation at any other club remotely similar. It's embarrassing, and that's solely on Waggott.

It is, and the players know that. As far as I'm aware there were no "you're not fit to wear the shirt" chants in the QPR match, just chants against Waggott and Venky's. It was, as far as I'm aware, extremely obvious where the anger is aimed. The players probably felt like they had to say something like this to try and defend themselves - but they simply should not have been in a position where they needed to do so. Not now, at the height of a club crisis, with barely any forewarning. Wrong time, wrong place, and any CEO with an ounce of respect for the players or fans would have known this.

If we've not only pushed Adam out the door against his will but also presumably preyed on his love of the club to give him less than he was due then that really is unforgiveable. I really hope that isn't what happened - but why else would Adam compromise on something he was contractually owed?

Don't really understand the reasoning in that post. Waggott's reason was that Wharton didn't want the move? Isn't that the whole point of paying a loyalty bonus - if he's sold against his will and hasn't asked for a transfer?

Quite ridiculous really as nobody comes out of it looking good. If Waggott thinks it takes some heat off him then think again, as this seems like a very transparent ploy to put some of the heat onto the players - who shouldn't be in a position where they are sat down in front of supporters in an impromptu meeting in the middle of a club crisis. Absolute madness.