RoverCanada

https://theathletic.com/1579893/2020/02/04/barrow-national-league-rooney-guardiola/ Nice article on Barrow's (so far very successful) efforts to play possession football in the National League. Both Platt and White on loan there at the moment and playing regularly, although no real specific mention given to either as the focus is more on the manager, Evatt. (And apologies if you're stymied by the paywall!) Could be a sign of a good loan opportunity - teach them possession-style football in a tough-and-tumble lead. (Not necessarily Platt and White, who are both probably major longshots, but future non-league loans...)

Thought this could help elucidate the FFP 'consequences' of the Brereton+Gallagher transfers, to focus everyone's minds a bit (and I was just curious myself!) Quick reminder: for the sake of a club's profit + loss accounts, a player transferred in is treated as an 'intangible asset', which is amortised over the course of its 'useful life' like any other asset, e.g. a piece of machinery. For a footballer, that is determined by the length of the contract they sign. So a player purchased for £2m and signing a 4-year contract has an 'accounting' cost of £500k/year for 4-years, even if the 'cashflow' cost may be £2m in the year he's transferred. Parameters: Brereton was transferred for £6m in January 2019 and signed to a 3.5 year contract. Annual amortisation: £1.71m. Gallagher was transferred for £5m in July 2019 and signed a 4-year contract. Annual amortisation: £1.5m. I've simply assumed Brereton's wage is £7k/week (£364k/year) and Gallagher is on £20k/week (£1.04m/year). Obviously purely guess work, that would have to include NI, etc etc... but just to have a 'reasonable' number for the sake of scale. I wanted to see how these costs actually fall within all our 3-year FFP windows. Also, for sake of 'scale', I've compared the total amortisation and wage costs for the two to a rough estimate of our annual turnover (£16m/year, assumed to be static but may rise a bit over the years), FFP-exempt allowances for academy + community spend (£2m/year), and allowed losses under FFP (£13m/year): £93m total, i.e. how much we can actually spend on everything within an FFP window. Key to note that this excludes potential player trading profits, which would directly tack on. Yearly costs (by accounting year): 18-19: £1.71m amortisation, £0.18m wages, £1.9m total (all BB) 19-20: £2.96m amortisation (£1.71m BB, £1.25m SG), £1.4m wages (£0.36m BB, £1m SG), £4.37m total 20-21: £2.96m amortisation (£1.71m BB, £1.25m SG), £1.4m wages (£0.36m BB, £1m SG), £4.37m total 21-22: £2.96m amortisation (£1.71m BB, £1.25m SG), £1.4m wages (£0.36m BB, £1m SG), £4.37m total 22-23: £1.25m amortisation, £1.04m wages, £2.65m total (all SG) Cost by FFP window 2019-21: £7.64m amortisation (£5.1m BB, £2.5m SG), £2.99m wages (£0.9m BB, £2.1m SG), £10.63m total or 11.4% of 'total spending allowance' 2020-22: £8.89m amortisation (£5.1m BB, £3.7m SG), £4.21m wages (£1.1m BB, £3.1m SG), £13.1m total or 14.1% of 'total spending allowance' 2021-23: £7.18 amortisation (£3.4m BB, £3.7m SG), £3.85m wages (£0.7m BB, £3.1m SG), £11.03m total or 11.9% of 'total spending allowance' 2022-24: £4.21m amortisation (£1.7m BB, £2.5m SG), £2.44m wages (£0.4m BB, £2.1m SG), £6.66m total or 7.2% of 'total spending allowance' 2023-25: £1.25m amortisation, £1.04m wages, £2.29m total (all SG) or 2.5% of 'total spending allowance' As a quick note, with the way player trading profits work, suppose we were to try and flog off Brereton in the summer and "cut our losses", for say £1m. We would then need to book the rest of his transfer amortisation in the year of his sale and the £1m would have to be netted against the remaining £3.42m of amortisation on his transfer, so that would actually be an 'accounting loss' of £2.42m for that year. However, we would also no longer be on the hook for another £800k or so of wages. Just from my own POV, I think a) £5m for Gallagher really isn't that ridiculous in today's market for a young striker with 'some' pedigree, particularly spread over 4 years b) at the very least, he's shown he can be 'effective' at this level, it's just a matter of consistently coaxing that out c) as the above suggests, it's his probably high wages rather than his transfer fee that deserve more scrutiny (I should perhaps also reveal a slight bias as Gallagher is an "acquaintance-of-a-friend" and apparently he's a 'good egg' ) As another note, I thought it was interesting that transfermarkt's 'market value' for Brereton at the time we bought him was £4.5m: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/ben-brereton/marktwertverlauf/spieler/426192 I'm pretty sure transfermarkt's market values are purely based on regressions of historical transfer data against various explanatory variables. So, an 18/19-year-old striker with 8 goals (1 a pen) and 7 assists in 3,326 minutes of Championship play and 1 goal (a pen) in 273 minutes of Cup play would be 'expected' to be worth £4.5m. They now have Brereton down at £2.7m. Obviously looks to be an example of why "top-down regressions" should be treated with extreme caution when evaluating players and the 'eye test' is still needed (particularly for a pretty basic statistical approach haha), but I thought it was an interesting idea of what his 'expected value' was at the time given an 18-19-year-old with goals in the Championship are relatively rare!

Bit of a tangent, but I was thinking about that Smallwood contract. It is an odd case if he's still around at the end of the window. He's obviously keen to see out his current contract (which is fair), but if it's been made clear to him he's out of the squad picture, it's hard to see why we couldn't at least loan him out for a portion of his wages to cut costs a bit and get him some lower league game-time. I'd imagine Smallwood would have to push for such a move himself too, so it is curious if he's not keen on it given a whole year with only 2 appearances hardly looks good on the footballing CV! Perhaps Rovers are playing hardball with lower league clubs hoping to take him on loan at zero cost (Mowbray briefly alluded to that about potential loans out) or Smallwood only wants to move for a guaranteed contract for next year. That would potentially mean sacrificing some of his current contract, but even then, Rovers could maybe subsidise his wage a bit for the rest of this year as long as it's still cutting our wage this year, effectively making it a subsidised loan for the rest of this year and then a professional deal lined up for next year... No signs at all that he's a 'bad egg' in the dressing room and I can't imagine he's on prohibitive wages, so not a big deal in the end, but very curious from Smallwood's POV. In terms of Smallwood being wrongly handed an extension, 1) he did do a hell of a job for us in L1. There is some sense/honour in rewarding him accordingly (and I don't recall many complaints about it at the time). 2) If you look back, there is evidence that we did hold the line on his extension. Smallwood hinted that the negotiations dragged a bit and that he wanted a longer-term deal (who could blame him): https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16354537.signed-lifetime-contract-rovers---smallwood/ Perhaps in retrospect a regrettable extension, but having said that, I took a glance at Smallwood's games last year, and our results were surprisingly effective with him in the lineup at first. Up to, and including, 10 Nov, over 15 games with Smallwood in the lineup, our record was 6-6-3, a 74 point pace. However, for his last 17 games in the lineup, our record was 2-5-10, a 30 point pace... Now, obviously can't attribute all those results to Smallwood, but as a quick control, compare that to our season split: front 23 games, 62 point pace; back 23 games, 58 point pace. Perhaps those results were more in spite of him instead of because of him, but there appears to have been an initial delay in Smallwood being 'found out' at the Championship level (again) and, then eventually (probably too long), by Mowbray. Aye, The Athletic had a great read on this recently too (excuse the paywall if you can't access it!): https://theathletic.com/1536639/2020/01/17/brentford-b-reserves-scrapped-academy-premier-league/ Apologies if this repeats what's in that article above, but some general notes from the Athletic article: - Brentford essentially concluded that running a Category Two academy was not worth the cost, as players very rarely rose from the u13s to the pro level, and even when they did, the compensation for Category Two development is not nearly high enough (the article suggests Brentford only got something like £30,000 each when Ian Carlo Poveda and Josh Bohui went to City and Liverpool). - However, I'd note that this doesn't quite apply to Rovers' Category One academy. For one, I don't know the specifics, but I think the compensation is much better for a player coming through a Category One setup (I'd be interested to know what we got for Callum Wright, for example). Brentford mentions the difficulty of grabbing youngsters with all the top London clubs next door, which technically applies to Rovers as well, but I suspect we wouldn't lose out to too many of the Manchester catchment area clubs on facilities-alone (which sounds like was the case for Brentford) - There's also a 'sunk costs' element to it, with us already having top academy facilities that should still be utilised. It wouldn't be as simple for Rovers to suddenly decide to liquidate the academy and start up 'Blackburn Rovers B'... - Instead, Brentford have opted for a roving B team of 18-21 players, shunning the PDL leagues as insufficient prep in favour of travelling against international reserve squads or even top-league squads looking for a tune-up (the article mentions they got to play Slavia Prague's 1st teamers as they prepped for the Champions League). It gives these 18-21 players, perhaps not ready for Championship football stiffer competition than the PDL leagues can provide (kind of reminds me of Chelsea loaning out an army of footballers each season rather than putting them in PL2 year after year... except Brentford is keeping them all within one team) - Should be noted that Brentford's efforts have not been welcome, given they're essentially sticking their nose up to the EPPP and PDL, and it evokes the possibility of B teams starting up in the lower leagues... - Lots of Scandis in that age range have come over, with some breaking through and others on the cusp. However, this is of course linked to their owner also owning FC Midtjylland (some of whose players have been loaned to Brentford B, and vice versa). Definitely could highlight the need for creativity in scouting Europe. - One bit that I think we do follow to some extent is trying to poach the cast-offs of other top academies. Brentford, apparently, offers to buy top teams' youngsters for a low fee, but with heavy sell-on fees. Apparently the case for Maghoma, who was just brought in from Tottenham. For us, see Travis, JRC, Butterworth, Thompson, Hilton, or even someone like Hart, as recent, generally successful-looking, examples. (Considering how much I just wrote, you might as well just read the article Kamy posted haha...)

In fairness, that is comparing to essentially our peak last year. Game 28 was the 3rd of a 4-game win streak, which put us into 10th place. The game 29 win had us in 8th, on pace for 68 points, and 3 points out of the playoffs... We then went on that horrid 1-1-9 run (our season cushioned somewhat by the 4-1-1 run-in...) Ugh, I'm remembering now how things were looking so promising at Brentford in game 30: Graham scoring to make it 2-0 in the 7th minute, which I would guess would've had us 1 point out of the playoffs at that point in time. Brentford pulled back one... then Maupay, Benrahma, and Watkins tore us apart in the 2nd half... (From my recollection, it was more a case of those 3 being simply unstoppable than us being particularly 'bad' that half!) We're on pace for 66 (ok, 65.7...) points at the moment, compared to 60 last year. Not playoff pace, another huge win streak obviously needed for that, but technically still on pace to 'progress' from last year. Link for reference to last year's place by game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018–19_Blackburn_Rovers_F.C._season#Championship_season

Rovers only 'officially' announced it yesterday: https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2020/january/cunningham-returns-to-cardiff/ I would guess that the option could only be exercised as of yesterday. Similar to how apparently Mulgrew's recall option was set to expire right before he returned.

Aye. It's one thing for clubs' highly-paid lawyers to run rings around the EFL (I see it all the time in my line of work with respect to poorly paid and overworked regulators!), but once other clubs' own highly-paid lawyers start lining up on the EFL's side... We're also seeing that with clubs complaining to the EFL about Bolton's relatively lenient treatment in missing fixtures. It's not just the club facing sanctions but the implications for other clubs fighting for promotion/relegation. Easy to get frustrated with the EFL's failings and all the fighting going on, but I actually see it as a welcome re-balancing. Maybe some self-policing is needed if the EFL isn't up to it. Thinking longer-term, at least as an interim measure if the EFL needs some time to retrench and improve its internal capacity after being so exposed. Maybe a couple of the clubs will get away with the stadium selling gambit (it's actually kinda clever, and it's also important to keep in mind that it also raises running costs due to introducing stadium leasing costs. It only really helps within the 3-year FFP window that the profit is realised), but Derby claiming they sold their stadium at an 'independently-valued' £80m after having it valued in their accounts at £41m looks particularly egregious (good luck arguing for £39m in 'intangibles' there!)

https://www.inbrief.co.uk/football-law/footballers-transfer-in-season/ Going by this link, Mulgrew can only play for a third club this year if it's a league with overlapping seasons, i.e. he could potentially still move to MLS, whose season starts at the end of Feb. Alternatively, the Swedish and Norwegian leagues start up in early April... I saw one tweet suggesting he was told at Wigan that he would be way down the pecking order after coming back from injury. (The tweet said he'd be '5th choice'; I can't be bothered to actually count their CBs!). If playing time is his priority, I suppose being 4th choice here is better than 5th choice at Wigan. Who knows what his long-term ideas are, but he deserves some respect if his priority is still playing time (and maybe thus still being in the loop for Scotland caps). Mutual termination wouldn't surprise, at least in the summer. Doubt Wigan was paying all that much of his wage anyway, but doubt this makes our budget any better... On the positive side, we probably were in need of another backup CB, with Grayson injured and Platt/Magloire out on loan.

Shockingly I've decided to make a post in this thread ? Now, let's wait until Waggott's comments are clarified in the minutes... but having said that, I shall speculate haha Whether we're in breach of FFP this year really depends on how our 17/18 losses in L1 (£16.8m) is accounted for, which fell under the EFL's 'SCMP'. As far as I can tell, the rules do not define that those losses are considered in the FFP 3-year window. So, potentially, we started from a blank slate in 18/19, but I'm definitely not sure of that myself! A lot more attention is paid to the allowance for clubs bouncing between the Championship and PL... Another consideration is FFP makes some exceptions for academy and community-related expenditure. This could be some £2-4m/year for us (based on estimates I've seen for other clubs), so that widens our FFP 3-year losses cap to something more like £45-51m, or £15-17m/year, under which we might be squeaking by... Next year is where I'm more convinced that we'll be up against it and a sale or two would be necessary (and a Dack sale, sans injury, should surprise no one). I'd guess we're looking at another £20m loss this year and the amortisation of the Brereton/Gallagher transfers will start to bite, although it's ultimately more to do with our large (relative to our turnover, not the Championship!) wage bill than our transfers. Gallagher's wages are part of that issue of course, but, from my POV, wage expenditure is what's separating us from the Wigans/Barnsleys/Rotherhams... is it sustainable? Maybe not, but let's not pretend cutting the wage bill won't affect the playing squad. Another note: according to the VLL accounts, our net player trading effectively netted out this past summer, so Raya + Nuttall appears to have paid for the Gallagher purchase, if you prefer to think of it that way... From my rough arithmetic of the £8,862m 'intangible asset acquisitions' in the recent VLL accounts, I think that includes Brereton, Armstrong, Rothwell, Davenport, and Chapman, plus other misc. So, depends on your assumptions for the latter purchases, but probably puts Brereton around £6m, as the LT seems to have settled on reporting of late. Not the £7m commonly bandied around on here, although certainly higher than the ~£4m+ that some have rather hopefully suggested! Also, as a quick point on what was discussed above on the £4m in maximum liabilities on transfers, I think that covers any performance/promotion-related add-ons, not 'transfers payable'. Possibly linked to Gallagher and Brereton (hopefully more the latter...), but also keep in mind that Armstrong's reported fee was £1.75m up to £3m, and maybe some more add-ons linked to the Dack purchase or anyone else we've purchased in the past few years... If anything, let's hope those liabilities are realised!

For sake of argument, thought I'd check out a couple recent estimates of the aging curves for forwards and wingers. Plenty more estimates out there, but to quote a couple: https://statsbomb.com/2016/07/player-aging-attacking-players/ - Main conclusion (obviously generalised from the median number, so you can't blindly apply to everyone...): wingers peak at 26, forwards at 27-28 - Shot, key pass, and 'scoring contribution' rates remain fairly steady from the early 20s through to the late 20s, but they start to drop a bit from 28+ for forwards, while they drop fairly steadily for wingers from 26+ - However, the curves for dribbles, fouls suffered, and crosses all drop pretty steadily from the early 20s onward for both positions, suggesting aging players learn to still generate chances from know how over raw athleticism. So it may depend on the 'type' of striker/forward. - Key caveat is from what I can tell this is filtered on players who played a minimum amount, so there will be some 'survivor' bias as the worse older players drop out, but you can maybe assume that the rate of aging-related decline for top players is similar to that of the mediocre, and this may only be more of a problem when looking at players in their 30s+, where the true athletic freaks start to stand out. https://www.espn.co.uk/football/blog/tactics-and-analysis/67/post/3056495/soccer-age-curves-show-goalkeepers-and-central-defenders-peak-latest - The charts annoyingly seem to be missing, but going by the text of the article, the analysis gets around the 'missing old players' problem by first looking at minutes played (wingers peak at 23, the text doesn't mention strikers on this measure...) - Looking at a time series of individual players over time (seems like the obvious way to measure this to me given the data's freely available, so I'd say this finding trumps the rest!): strikers' shot rates decline steadily over time, but they make up for that by taking higher quality shots, peaking around 26-27, and then declining from about 29 onwards. - The study ranks positions from most to least 'age-sensitive': wide attacking midfielder, central attacking midfielder, full-back, central midfielder, striker, center-back, goalkeeper (generally fairly intuitive, I would think) Interestingly, this recent study, as part of showing the average age of Champions League teams has gradually been rising, shows that the average age of forwards has shown the steadiest/strongest increase: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6360147/, but that may just be a comment on how truly elite strikers have been developing rather than strikers in general (the above studies are looking at PL strikers, so perhaps the numbers do not generalise to lower leagues)

Valid concerns/complaints, but it's the reality of being a low-revenue Championship these days. As our recent losses show, we're still trying to keep up a decent wage budget (though at £23m, that'll still be well below average in the Championship, let alone what the parachute payment clubs pay...). It's part of what has helped us avoid becoming a Wigan/Barnsley/Charlton-type since promotion, at risk of yoyoing between L1 and the Championship, despite having similar revenue, but then we essentially have to be a selling club at some point too. Frankly, managing to sell Dack for a decent amount isn't necessarily about finding a like-for-like replacement. If we're skirting FFP or Venky's decide they're not keen on £30+ million losses over 3 years, selling Dack is more about not having to sell the likes of Lenihan or Travis. (edit: should maybe add that we could also sell Lenihan/Travis to keep Dack around! I'm assuming a case where part of it is Dack agitating for a move... but all very speculative now)

If we can still sell Dack for £5m at some point, that would still be a pretty huge profit for us! His transfer will be fully amortised, so that would be pure profit (ok ok, Gillingham would get a small share...) That'd be ~33% of our annual turnover, and a big boost to staying under FFP... Anyway, it's all baseless speculation and let's not get too hung up on my completely made up £5m number. Who knows where he'll be at. I was purely commenting on how the fact that we have an option year gives us... options *ba dum tss* What I was getting at is what if we did not have an option for 2021-22 and he was fully out of contract in summer 2021. Suppose he is starting to come back to fitness in December 2020, maybe in training but uncertain if/when he'll be fit to play (hypothetically, bear with me). So highly unlikely there'd be any prospect of flogging him in January. But, maybe he gets some game time in the spring, he surprises and shows some of his past sparkle... suddenly him being out of contract in a few months is a nightmare. If he's still looking to be in rough shape (obviously a good chance of that too), we can decline the option or maybe renegotiate on a lower wage and see if he can make a comeback. Maybe he appreciates Rovers helping him recuperate all year and he's worth signing to a new contract, even if he's not quite his former self. Whatever the case... I still don't understand your reference to our transfer policy at large haha. I guess my overall point is let's hope we can salvage whatever we can from Dack, as a player, transfer asset, or both, and having an option year helps that!

Uh... may I humbly suggest that my complete guess as to how much we could recoup for Dack in a scenario where he has only recently recovered from a ruptured ACL (who knows what player he'll be when he returns), he has 12-months left on his contract, and perhaps is agitating for a move and thus we're trying to get what we can for him before he leaves on a free is unrelated to Gallagher's reported transfer fee (I'm honestly unsure if I'm completely overlooking ironic intent in your post or just not getting your point haha) I would agree that we should try not to buy assets who grow in value exponentially only to suddenly rupture their ACL, throwing into doubt their transfer value just as they are approaching 18 months left on their deal (But now it is good to know that we essentially have Dack 'under control' for 30 months!)

LT article for reference: https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/18142237.bradley-dack-undergoes-surgery-acl---plus-contract-update/ I suspected that was the case, but a nice relief. Certainly changes the accounting of the value of our playing squad and how we manage FFP. Dack potentially leaving on a free next summer would've potentially been disastrous FFP-wise. Selling him for, say, £10m would've essentially counted as pure profit and would add a lot more room under FFP. Maybe we can't assume an 8-figure transfer fee anymore, but managing to sell him for, say, £5m with an option year left on his contract would still help a lot. (All very dependent on Dack's recovery, of course, but let's look for silver linings here...) (And excuse my very finance-centric view on the news . Also obviously good news that we may still see him in a Rovers shirt beyond Summer 2021!)

A few points: - Those appear to be 'operating losses', which excludes player trading. Most Championship clubs make fairly hefty player trading profits. Villa, for example, made £16m in profits in 2018. Middlesbrough and Forest have made significant sales in recent years too. Bristol City has been running under the 'benefactor model' for years, but then made huge sales in 2019 (they actually netted a profit of £10m last year after player sales). Leeds have been roughly breaking even the last few years due to player trading. - FFP is a 3-year window, so how much those individual season losses matter depends on the context of the 3-year window, which may include the higher allowed losses of the PL (see Villa and Stoke). (Villa's 2019 numbers will be interesting to say the least... they were quite fortunate to get promoted! Although sounds like they also went the stadium selling route) - You also need to consider promotion bonuses, which are de facto excluded from FFP (I think due to a combination of it being unfair to punish clubs for rewarding players/staff with a share of the coming PL windfall and EFL not really having that much teeth to punish clubs once they're promoted) - applies to Wolves, Norwich, and Fulham - I think that leaves Derby (who did the stadium selling trickery), Sheffield Wed (who are due to have the book thrown at them this year for seemingly bungling their own stadium selling chicanery), and Reading (who appear to have benefited from a number of 'exceptional' accounting items, such as property sales and the realization of a grant). Reading's the curious one for me. Apparently they had a 'soft' transfer ban this past summer, whatever that means... - Bit of a side point and not as significant as the above, but you also need to consider FFP exclusions for academy and community expenditure, which applies to many of the above clubs. With our significant facilities, I suspect that gives us another £4-5m of FFP room per year (hence why our 'other' operating expenditure is relatively high for the Championship at £8-12m/year)

I suspect the Rovers accounts (which usually arrive in March) will be a touch better as the media income is lower than I would expect, suggesting the Championship TV payments continue on through the end of the year (not having been exhausted by March, where these accounts end). Similarly, last year the Rovers accounts displayed worse accounts compared to the VLL one given more time in League One in the former (£17m loss vs £14m loss; although looking now it's pretty much impossible to predict how the two differ!). Some other observations: - With £8.9m in outlays, that should be the combined initial cost of Adamstrong (initial £1.75m?), Rothwell (£300k?), Davenport (£200k?), Chapman (£100k?), a few youngsters (Durrant, Annesley, Lyons: maybe £50k, who knows...), and Brereton (inferring from the rest, he cost about £6.5m), perhaps plus any loan fees (if anything on top of wages for Reed and Palmer) - Struggling to think how we booked £1.3m in player trading profit over that period. I can't think of any major sales over Mar 2018 - 2019 (before Raya, the last significant outgoings were maybe Wright in Jan 2018 and Steele and Mahoney in July 2017...). Perhaps some clauses in previous sales came good. - Mentions our player trading in the summer 2019 was essentially a wash, so the sales of Raya and Nuttall may have been a bit higher than previously estimated given the apparent £5m outlay for Gallagher. - While hardly significant in the grand scheme of things, our match income shows a decent improvement on the last time we were in the Championship: £3.6m vs £3.3m (vs only £2.9m in L1), reflecting fairly higher attendance. I also wonder if this could be higher in the Rovers accounts for the full year, but, again, I'm not sure how the accounting periods between the two differ! - Staff costs right where I expected them at £23m, which puts our wage outlay as firmly below average in the Championship - Our commercials aren't a game-changer, but bouncing back to £5m (after falling back to £4.4m our last year in the Championship) is a decently positive sign. £5m is actually relatively impressive for a low-revenue club (for example, looking at 2017/18, Sheffield United was only £3m, the likes of Barnsley, Millwall, Brentford, etc. only scrape £2m). I think this is due to relatively impressive work from our commercial team (decent shirt sponsorship) and Venky's pumping in what they 'fairly' can as advertising revenue - Our 'other operating expenses' seem to fluctuate all over the place year-to-year, and at £12m these accounts' seem to be on the higher end, but looking back they appear to generally be higher for VLL, so that could be down to more like £10m in the Rovers accounts. - With respect to FFP, I'm not sure how much our League One results 'matter'. I took a look a while ago and couldn't find any clear wording. It's clear for changing between the PL and Championship (£39m/year loss allowed for the former; £13m for the latter, excluding academy + other costs), but I don't think L1 is officially subject to FFP, as they run their own system where essentially any losses were fine as long as owners covered them (plus overall wage caps in L1, but they don't quite apply to a team coming down with Championship wages...). In sum, we may have more headroom than our £17m loss in L1 and apparent £19m loss last year suggest (plus we probably have a fair bit of our losses excluded due to academy expenditure) - As some above are realising too, despite the devastating injury to Dack, we still have a decent amount of saleable assets: Lenihan, Travis, Nyambe, we'd still be able to recoup some for Gallagher in a fire sale (if perhaps at a trading loss), Rothwell if he picks it up a bit, some may snicker, but Evans would probably go for a decent six-figures, plus a few youngsters that could probably recoup okay amounts (JRC, Buckley, Butterworth, Davenport, etc. Although if we're suddenly selling them at well below their potential - excluding cases like Wright where it's off to a PL club - that would be a sign we're in trouble!). Maybe not the 'get out of FFP free card' that Dack represented and it would be a terrible sign if we're suddenly flocking a lot of the above, but we're not completely barren asset-wise (as we were a couple years ago...)

Ah yes, should add I picked up the Sabrina hire via her linkedin page! So I suppose it's a combo of those four.

Great video. Certainly a touch of propaganda to it (haha), but also does highlight that there has continued to be proper investment in the facilities. And a cheeky insight on some inside knowledge (Gladwin at the top of 'hamstring strength' - I suppose he's had nothing to do but build strength!) Interesting 'stats wall', including tracking the xG of each shot. Probably tips off the coaching staff that we have been a bit 'lucky' this year (the latest xG table has us in 18th place: https://experimental361.com/2019/12/21/expected-goals-table-championship-20-23-dec-2019/...) Curious who 'Sabrina' is: Sabrina Gabriella. Looks to be our main analytics analyst hired this summer, who previously worked at Spurs and Man U. (Looks to be Rachel Hindle operating the drone). Maybe she's brought some PL knowhow to our approach to 'advanced' stats. Definitely seems we've got top IT too.

Am I the only seeing that Walton also seemed to take a forearm/elbow to the face from the Hogan on the Stoke goal? See the extended highlights. His head cocks back just as he's going to jump for it. (Although I'm doubting my own eyes a bit given Walton doesn't seem to protest it after...)

??? A £14m wage bill would've put us at the 3rd lowest wages in the Championship in 2017-18... I suspect we're well above that. (But still below the median Championship wage bill, which is probably around £30m or so) (Burnley's latest reported wage bill is £81m) (Not to say I'm giving those bizarre wage numbers above any credence haha)

Sharpe speculating that Hart will be in the matchday squad: https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/17973653.rovers-full-back-make-first-matchday-appearance-14-months/ To make a rather bold (and perhaps hopelessly optimistic) proposal: could this be his chance to breakthrough? I know he didn't impress all that much in his limited appearances a couple years ago, and some have thus already written him off (I have sympathies both ways: writing off a lad at 21 years old is harsh, but fans can also be too forgiving of youngsters when they simply don't have 'it'), but he did impress in preseason and a total of 32 appearances in League One (where it seems reviews of him were generally positive from Rochdale and Southend fans?) is actually decent pedigree for a young player... Hardly ideal to rest our hopes on him (I guess we need to muddle through with Hart and Bell until January...), but I just have a feeling that Hart could take this opportunity... Aye. Those five (five!) Portuguese youngsters were quite a low point. In fairness, I recall Fabio Nunes was actually half decent (and it seems he's the only one managing a semi-decent career, currently playing in the Portuguese 2nd tier after a decent run in their 1st tier) For the curious: Fabio Nunes is currently in the Portuguese 2nd tier with Farense (with stops in the Italian 2nd tier, Portuguese 1st tier, and Greek 1st tier) Paolo Jorge is currently in the Portuguese 3rd tier with Espinho (with stops in the German 4th tier and Romanian 2nd tier) Edinho Junior was playing in the Portuguese 3rd tier with Ferreiras last year (with stops in the USA 2nd tier, Portuguese 2nd tier, the German 4th tier, and the Romanian 1st tier) but currently appears to be without a club. (Note his only two appearances with us were in the Championship and League Cup back in 12-13) Diogo Rosado was playing in the Romanian 2nd tier last year, but appears to be without a club. (Has had stops in the Portuguese 1st tier, French 2nd tier, Cypriot 1st tier, the Angolan 1st tier (???), and the Romanian 1st tier) Nuno Henrique is playing in the Portuguese 3rd tier with Lusitania (with stops in the Portuguese 1st and 2nd tiers and the Polish 1st tier) Dare I suggest dodgy agents may have had a hand in their careers... While Brown's overall production was obviously atrocious, Dare I suggest he actually managed a few decent appearances as a hold up striker? I have a vague recollection of him doing some excellent work against Charlton away, as one brief shining example... Not to defend his overall tenure, but I wouldn't put him down as the worst we've seen! (okay, I'm done making daft suggestions )

As always, apologies for sharing a paywalled link (I think they'll let you look at one article, if your cookies haven't already logged a view), but The Athletic's latest 'Perfect Player' feature has Jansen describing his 'Perfect Blackburn Rovers Player': https://theathletic.com/1224181/2019/10/05/perfect-player-matt-jansen-tugay-would-smell-of-tobacco-in-the-dressing-room-then-run-the-show-for-45-minutes/ If you can't access the link, in short (it's actually a fairly short article): Tugay's right foot and intelligance, Duff's left foot, Gillespie's speed, Short's heading, MGP's engine, Flitcroft's tackling, and Reid's 'niceness'.

Have we ever gotten a final number on the Brereton transfer? £7m seems to be regularly bandied about on here of late, though the latest reference I've seen to the fee in the LT is £6m. Furthermore, my rough extrapolations from the 17-18 accounts suggested the initial outlay was about £5m. I'm still hopeful we'll get something out of Brereton in the end, but I wonder what performance components there may be to the transfer. Maybe it's something like £5m initially, another £1m in instalments, and then another £1m depending on performance? Purely guessing. Probably not on pace to trigger many of any performance clauses at this point in time... (I know I'm splitting hairs...)

Hahaha... oh shit. Surprised I forgot about that! I happily take back my previous sentiments

Huddersfield's an odd case. I couldn't find the exact numbers with a quick search, but I roughly recall that in their original promotion season, in which they made it to the playoffs despite a negative goal differential and then won promotion through two penalty shootouts, on 'expected goals', they were more like a mid-table team. Then, they avoid relegation despite having the 2nd worst goal differential in the PL, and expected goals again had them as deserving relegation. Finally wore off last year and now they're in freefall. Either Wagner was performing some magic voodoo that eventually worn off or they may have gone on one of the luckiest two-season runs in football history... Essentially managed a promotion and two years of PL football with a mediocre Championship squad. Overall happy for their run and their fans, and hopefully puts them on much firmer financial footing going forward.

Seems we've had a very welcome revival in our youth pipeline. It felt like we hardly had anyone pushing through the youth ranks during our first foray back in the Championship. The likes of Tanner, Daly, R. Hanley, Edwards, Morris, O'Sullivan, Rittenberg, Preston, Fernandez, etc. all failed to break through or had to find their feet at a lower level. There are exceptions like Lenihan, Nyambe, and Henley (haha, I kid...), or cases like O'Connell who we prematurely jettisoned or Mahoney taking off, but in general it turned out to be a fairly poor youth crop, particularly for a Category 1 setup! We've now seen Travis come through, and some apparently justified excitement surrounding the likes of Buckley, Rankin-Costello, and Butterworth, plus a few wildcards (let's see how Vale, Fisher, Grayson, Magloire, Wharton, etc. turn out...), and maybe another one will soon emerge from the u18s (I think Durrant has gotten some hype?). Also can't ignore Wright and Winterbottom being snatched by PL clubs, and while a debatable move, Raya was a great return on investment. Perhaps I'm falling victim to overly optimistic projections of youth players, as we always do, but there does seem to be a lot more general optimism about our youth ranks the past couple years. I recall Mowbray a while ago questioning whether the £2-3m spent on the academy every year could perhaps be better spent on the playing squad (bit of a complicated financial question though, as I think most academy expenditure is exempt from FFP, so Venky's closing down the academy would first and foremost be a question of their financial commitment rather than FFP concerns). I suspect recent developments have tamped down that talk.