Yeah, fair point on them essentially being converted midfielders, although you'd think they'd have well adapted by now. When I wrote they should be a strength in the air, I meant because they can both be quite good individually in the air, yet they've been struggling to organise between themselves in the box. I suppose the naive thought is that Mulgrew and Lenihan can be a solid combo: Mulgrew dictating and passing, Lenihan the physical bull. Yet Mulgrew's been pretty disappointing in the air this year (hardly our biggest issue, and he's still an automatic pick, but he seems to escape criticism for his defensive work this year on here...), while Lenihan's been all over the place. They were solid enough in L1, but they're getting exposed this year. Downing always seems seconds away from an individual calamity, but we did seem more organised with him back there being a career-long CB. Anyway, I'll have to see the highlights again before going off of too much of a tangent on those two, who I do like individually... not 100% sure they were really at fault today. At the risk of putting my head above the parapet, despite the injury time collapse I thought we'd acquitted ourselves quite well until then against one of the league's top sides away. There are some positives to take from this one... A win would've been a steal, but I thought we well-deserved a point. (I'm aware it can feel like I'm saying 'yes, we had to amputate your leg, but your cholesterol is looking good!'...) Worth pointing out the bottom 3 is pretty poor at the moment and are looking on pace for ~40 points. So we're not looking at a year like when we got relegated with 51 points.

Yeesh. And just when I was starting to think our defending was quite admirable throughout the second half... Kick in the stomach. Mulgrew and Lenihan need to sort themselves out in the air in the back, which should be a strength of ours. And Williams has me jumpy every damn time he's trying to defend...

Frankly don't give much of a shit about Sunderland, but their disastrous season made this an interesting, morbid watch haha. Especially because you could tell this was designed to be an uplifting, phoenix-through-the-flames documentary, yet I wonder if Netflix knew what a mess they were walking into. I also wonder if this would have been a better watch if you had no idea what was in store for Sunderland... It was kind of funny how many times they set the footage to make it like 'and here was the turning point game...' or desperately trying to find some green shoots of optimism (Coleman's arrival, Honeyman breaking into the 1st team, Fletcher finally scoring, Williams scoring on his return - okay that last bit was definitely a feel good moment!), yet if you look at Sunderland's year in whole it was pretty shit from start to finish haha... Grayson simply came off as out of his depth. Maybe didn't realise what a mess of a squad he had inherited until it was too late. He's had enough success elsewhere that I find it hard to believe that he's just been lucky before this, but you wonder about his career now after Bradford too! Coleman certainly comes off as likeable, and probably like Grayson was doomed before he started, but that brief McGeady interview is probably the most damning bit of the whole documentary. Steele came off as likeable too (hard to hate on a family man haha), but pretty clear he continued his decline... his transfer (£1.5m?!) to Brighton is pretty mystifying. Perhaps there is some value in a 3rd-string, good locker room keeper and PL teams have plenty of cash to throw around... The editing obviously wasn't too favourable to Rodwell (seemed a bit unfair when they showed that locker room shot of a muffled voice asking Rodwell if he was playing on the weekend and Rodwell laughing 'not a chance', completely out of context...). Rodwell's Sunderland contract, and his subsequent performance, is a fair punching bag for 'what's wrong with modern football', but what else was he going to do when he probably didn't have any outside option. It would have been interesting if we were shown Sunderland offering him, say, £1m to tear up the remaining £2m of his contract and Rodwell having another contract lined up with another club, but instead all we see is the CEO's 'be a man and tear up your contract' nonsense.

A few thoughts related to the accounting/FFP angle on this: Transfer fees are amortised over the course of a player's contract. So, if Brereton cost is £7m and he signs a 4-year deal (?), the accounting cost is £1.75m per year. For argument's sake, say Brereton is sold for £15m in year 3 of his contract. For that accounting year, that would work out to a £13.25m player trading profit (which is versus the remaining value of his transfer fee). That kind of one-year windfall would go some way to making up our revenue deficit versus some of the bigger budget clubs in this division (particularly those receiving parachute payments) and it can almost serve as a 'safety valve' if we're at risk of non-compliance with FFP. You see that with a lot of clubs now, gambling with significant losses for a few years but then having throw in the towel with a couple major sales to balance the books if promotion doesn't happen. You thus spread the financial hit of a transfer over many years and then can profit from it all at once, potentially in a time of 'need'. Now, Brereton's certainly been a disappointment so far (although I think some of the criticism has been over the top: he's shown some flashes, should have one goal, and was doing something right at Forest...) and my £15m sale example is wishful thinking at this point in time, but it's pretty clear to me that the Armstrong, Brereton, Davenport, and Rothwell signings from this past transfer window (and Dack and Samuel last year) are all part of a general strategy where transfer money is set aside to identify young players with appreciating value. A 'young player transfer kitty', if you will. There will be some misses (Samuels probably, Armstrong blows hot and cold - mostly cold of late, Davenport's been unfortunate with injuries), but the year-on-year accounting cost is relatively low and you only need an occasional big hit to recoup it all (Dack). It may be why they're rethinking the academy, which is costing £2m/year but maybe it's better to spend that £2m on more proven young talent developed elsewhere than to hope something comes up through the academy. I don't think this has necessarily been at the expense of experienced players. New contracts for Mulgrew, Bennett, Evans, and Dack wouldn't have come cheap. Whittingham was a flop, but that was a similar idea of paying good wages for 'proven' experience, but not necessarily transfer fees. Conway's legs are fading, but he's obviously been kept around for his experience/leadership. Now, Brereton's obviously a much bigger swing than the others and there's certainly a legitimate debate about whether that money could have been better spent on some experience this year, but it still strikes me as part of a coherent financial strategy. His transfer reflects that we do have a major financial backer that is willing to flex its financial muscle, but we want to stay within FFP and have relatively low turnover in this league, so we need to focus our investment on so-called 'intangible assets'. While Rothwell's opportunities have been limited, and I agree he should be given more of a look, I don't think it's right to say he's been ignored. He's made appearances in 18 of our 26 games this year. The actual minutes are low, but that doesn't suggest to me that Mowbray doesn't like him or sees no role for him at all. As some of his past comments have suggested, Mowbray thinks he needs to work on his defensive duties first before trusting him over 90 minutes. That's debatable, but it suggests he's a player Mowbray wants to develop over time rather than a player's given up on.

It might have been our FA Cup loss to Hull last year where I (and I think many others) saw that Tomlinson was pretty badly exposed after a few decent sub cameos. That would've been his first start against non-lower league competition. You obviously don't want to judge a young player too quickly, but I remember being surprised at how bad he looked. (Or I may be thinking of his sub appearances against Northampton or Rochdale...?) Travis outshone him soon after and he only managed that short sub against Lincoln since. Add in apparent off-field issues and this really isn't all that surprising. Hope it works out for him, and maybe we can get a minor fee + sell-on.

Essentially, everything I've written, or that anybody writes, about our financial situation must be prefaced with "As long as Venky's are willing and able to cover our losses...", and I totally understand if someone can't read past that. My point is that doesn't make us all that different from many other football clubs who are operating under a similar model. I was referring to attendance this year, which is currently averaging 14,351, or 12% up on 12,832 last year. All things being equal, we're then back to £3.3m of matchday revenue. Actually kind of impressive we managed the same attendance in League 1 vs our last year in the Championship! But hardly enough to make a major difference to our finances. Crazy bit with Sunderland is they're only in their second year of parachute payments, so they're getting £35m from that alone this year! Then another £14m next season. Quick google says their players' wage bill is down to £11m, plus £5m owed to Djilobodji and Ndong (however that worked out in the end...) and other staff compensation. So probably depends on what costs they've had to incur on write downs.

Turnover should be back up to about £17-18m this year with Championship TV money. Attendance is up about 12% this year, but, yes, that would need to go much higher to make a difference. TV money is what really matters... Plenty of clubs non-promotion-payment-receiving clubs in our situation. No such club is sustainable and at least reasonably competitive at this level without occasional major player sales (which makes the latter more difficult!). We already had one round of that with the Duffy, Hanley, Rhodes, etc. sales. Probably a sad reality that Dack will be the next one sooner than we'd like. And not to open up a whole other debate, but that's probably the strategy with the Brereton signing. But of course agreed that promotion would change all of that quite quickly!

Can't disagree, but that's par for the course for football, particularly the Championship. Show me a team trying to break below the PL and I'll show you a team getting relegated We're just "lucky" to have owners like Venky's who are willing/able to eat the £10-15m/year losses. Where that leads 5-10 years from now... certainly an interesting question! The £7.9/wk figure suggests as a benchmarking exercise that we're not too out of line anymore after our financial horrorshows in our first few years in the Championship. Our financial situation is never going to look "good", but that's the case for every Championship club. I'll take the positive that we've recovered from a yearly financial disaster to merely being a yearly financial blackhole

Obviously, but we're nowhere near an average player wage of £14,000/wk, and player wages would be anyone's point of reference. (I may have misread what you meant by 'subsidiarising'...) There's 96 admin/grounds crew/commercial staff. I think directors compensation is £150k. Assume the rest of the staff's total costs are £30k each. So that's £3m. 128 players and management staff. Let's say 25 are senior players. Maybe £1m total for Mowbray and all his key staff? Remaining 90 are coaches, trainees, u-23s... let's say £15k each, depending on how full-time the coaches and staff are, what we're paying youth players.. So that's £1.4m. That leaves £9.9m for those 25 senior players. Works out to £7.9/wk. High by L1 standards, and clearly still leads to fairly high losses, but suggests we may have finally cut our cloth on the player front. And that's a fair bit lower than the Championship where average wages are starting to approach £15-20k/wk. If you're advocating for more cuts to our behind-the-scenes staff or liquidating the academy, I'd be interested to hear it.

No real surprises. Big losses, but more 'manageable' than before. As long as Venky's are fine with £10-15m losses per year going forward, and they appear to be comfortable with that (and not the £30-40m losses of yesteryear...), we'll keep treading water as is... Have a long flight today, so might give the accounts a read-through and will see if I can pick out anything of interest. Note these accounts are up to March 2018 as they're for Venky's London Limited, not the Rovers accounts that cover up to June, I think. So I think this will still include a couple months of our last year in the Championship. So all the numbers may be slightly deflated a bit. (Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that!) Yeah, noticed our commercial revenue stayed constant at £4.4m. It's actually stayed relatively constant at around £5m since our Championship days. I can't remember the details at the moment, but I recall reading somewhere that Venky's have been propping up our commercial revenue too, presumably via self-sponsorship, as far as you're allowed to do that. What year are you referring to Bolton having £30.8m in turnover? Their accounts say £8.3m of turnover when they were in League One in 16/17: https://www.bwfc.co.uk/siteassets/documents/bwfc-football-and-athletic-company-limited_2016-17-accounts.pdf Note the £15.7m covers wages, social security, and pensions for all Rovers staff, including admin, grounds crew, etc. So would need to make some assumptions to work out what our squad's weekly wage was last year. One bit I noticed on first skim is our playing and management staff dropped from 143 to 128. I think that includes the academy too. That's been on a gradual decline for some time now.

A friend of mine is a big Ireland fan and he really talked him up when he joined us on loan. Honestly hardly remember him when he did play for us, but remember being underwhelmed in general... I do recall that game where he looked great against us with Oldham, but Tyrone Shoelaces may have a point that it was partly due to him facing up against Willingham... Just read that article where he's deflecting blame on to everyone else for his fall... he probably has a point having joined Coyle's circus and it sounds like Oldham was generally a mess last year, but failing to break into two poor Championship squads in us and Wigan, there apparently was an 'off the field' incident at Oldham, and then he could hardly get in an appearance with Kilmarnock. You would hope he'd look at himself in the mirror a bit too. Speaking of players from that transfer window, Stokes is knocking them in in the Persian Gulf Pro League haha...

Out of curiosity (note: I haven't checked about any possible injuries to the below): - Scott Wharton's made 5 league starts (seems to make the bench otherwise), with 1 goal, plus 3 starts and a sub appearance in cup competition for Lincoln City so far. That's out of 19 league games and 4 cup games. Been on the bench for the last 4 league games, but has started in their FA Cup games in that time. - Matt Platt hasn't made any league appearances for Accrington and only occasionally makes the bench. He's started in all four of their EFL Trophy and EFL Cup games, but he's been stuck on the bench for their two FA Cup games. - Sam Hart's started 11 out of 15 league games since his arrival at Rochdale, plus starting in both their FA Cup games. Generally seems to be a regular there. - Lewis Hardcastle has 2 starts and 4 sub appearances for Port Vale out of the 15 league games since his arrival, plus 3 EFL Trophy starts (Was on the bench for their lone FA Cup game). Seems to mostly make the bench in league play. - Jack Doyle made 7 league starts and 2 cup appearances with Maidstone in the National League before his loan was cut short by an ankle injury. Wharton's scant appearances is the one surprise after he seemingly was a fan favourite at Lincoln last year and set for League 1. Shame Platt doesn't appear to be getting much of a sniff at Accrington. Forgive me for not looking into Mansell, Thompson, Byrne, or Albinson's loans. Reporting on Doyle's loan was already a stretch! https://www.afcb.co.uk/news/club-news/mahoney-compensation-package-finalised £425,000 initial fee, £100,000 for hitting each of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 1st-team appearances (I'd guess that's league appearances only. He's only made two League Cup appearances for Bournemouth so far), £250,000 if he every makes an England appearance, and 20% of any profit on future sales. I recall that. So bizarre.

He looks absolutely gassed tracking back on that one. Which is bizarre for a player playing CB who was subbed on at halftime... I suppose it was like a 'tallest midget' award for that year, but always struck me as odd he was given our player of the year award in 16-17. Seemed to be awarded for him managing to be our consistent (and mediocre) LB that year while everywhere else was such a shitshow... We had worse problems that year, and I think 'awful' is harsh, but I agree he was hardly a bright light! Williams has always been a Jekyll-Hyde player for me... I'd argue he's actually had some pretty solid games as a CB, he generally looked good in L1 last year (against generally poor opposition, as you said), and it's nice to have his LB/CB flexibility as a backup, but I've never been convinced by him as a LB, defensively or offensively (despite his best efforts on the latter...) and he's very hit-or-miss as a CB. I don't mind him as a backup option, but not a starter at this level. I'd hoped him and Bell competing for the starting LB spot would end up producing a decent LB for us this year, but both have disappointed so far. Bell more so as I expected him to run away with it.

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1059376131340677120 Swiss Ramble with an (as always) digestible Twitter thread on the Bristol City 17/18 financial results. Their 16/17 and 17/18 results illustrate the need for occasional big sales in this league (Kodjia in 16/17, Reid and Bryan this year) without parachute payments, even if you're trying to keep wages somewhat sensible (and despite relatively impressive revenue growth too!). And you ultimately need an owner able to cover £100m+ losses over the long-term if promotion to the PL doesn't happen... Bit depressing to think with their financial results (and merely okay results since their return to the Championship) Bristol City are something for us to aspire to ... managed to improve their revenue to £27m, crowds to 20k+, an owner willing to make some significant investments, etc. (Although I suppose we'd be starting from a heavily-indebted situation...)

Yeah, definitely grouping together a mishmash of signings in my post. Meant more transfers that happened around the early years of Venky's' tenure, incoming and outgoing.

It's interesting/funny/depressing how so many of the castoffs from that era flourished after leaving. Kalinic and Nzonzi, of course. Dann had a couple excellent years with Crystal Palace. Modeste had a few starring years in the Bundesliga after his bizarre loan here. Petrovic managed to resurrect himself in Turkey, but seems to have struggled since moving to Sporting CP. Seems he's fallen off a bit now, but Nick Blackman had a nice run with Reading that led to a £3m transfer to Derby. Random one, but Jamie Maclaren's managed to fashion himself a career after never breaking through the youth ranks here. Goodwillie's been quite productive in Scottish League Two and the Scottish court system haha... That random man of the match performance by Ribeiro cracks me up in retrospect too... Not quite a 'castoff', but good on Hoilett for his comeback with Cardiff (and for finally serving for Canada too!) edit: slightly later than the above, but Bryan Dabo is another one who has managed okay for himself after his bizarre 0 appearance loan here...

Indeed. 1 goal in 20 appearances since he chose to leave. Birmingham's offence has been unstoppable this year. (It was a nice strike. Congrats to him on his first ever professional goal...)

Davenport, Travis, and Downing among those suiting up for the u23s vs Blackpool in the Lancashire Senior FA Cup (currently 3-0 on two goals from Grayson, one a pen earned by Mols, and Buckley, going by Rovers Twitter) Something I noticed earlier and Sharpe pointed out (https://twitter.com/richsharpe89/status/1055053890280919040) looking at today's Blackpool roster, the amount of Rovers connections currently at Blackpool is pretty crazy. Blackpool's roster today includes former Rovers Chris Taylor and John O'Sullivan, plus Ben Heneghan, who is now on loan at Blackpool from Sheffield United, who we were linked with before he chose Sheffield United and we had to fall back on Downing (that worked out nicely for us!) Yet further to those three, Blackpool also has Nathan Delfouneso, Jay Spearing, and Liam Feeney on their current roster. I suppose it's not all that surprising (nor anything necessarily nefarious going on) given Bowyer was the manager and now it's McPhillips, and there's bound to be players drawn to playing in the Northwest to some extent, northwest-based agents, etc... but thought it was a bit funny to see six recent Rovers connections on one roster! Perhaps just a sign that we liked signing cheap players as much as the Oystons do haha... Blackpool's managing along at mid-table in League One, which is probably where most of those players roughly belong anyway.

Cheers, guys. Yes, definitely wanted to stress I was looking at it purely from a revenue perspective! I was curious about the 4.5% vs 8.8% drop tonygreenbank quotes from the Times. While a notable drop, my first thought was that's pretty small fry from a revenue perspective. To summarise, when our matchday revenue is probably only around £5m, and our overall revenue is probably around £17-18m this year, a ~10% or so boost in our revenue is hard to turn down relative to seeing a 5-10% drop in attendance for 8-10 games a year, particularly as a relatively poorer club in this division. I was using tonygreenbank's numbers from above. Perhaps it's part of the recent increase in central distribution payments rather than a specific revenue item? I'm not familiar with the deal at all, so I used those numbers by trust. Yes, going forward it could certainly get worse. Although from my numbers, the attendance would have to get a lot worse for it not to make sense relative to the extra £1.7m in coming years. Again, only looking at revenue... Something to worry about if midweek attendances start regularly falling to, say, 7-8,000, even if the finances still make sense on paper, compared to drawing 13,000 instead of 14,000 today. Yep, always fair points. It's particularly the case for Premier League clubs where 70-80% of their revenue comes from broadcast revenue now (or even the parachute-payment receiving clubs now too). I suppose some are terrified at the prospect of relegation and losing that broadcast cash cow some day, but anything that makes it harder for attending fans or that reduces the crowd atmosphere for the sake of an extra £1-2m is ridiculous. (Having said that, we currently do not have that comfort, so I have some sympathy for our management's own efforts to raise revenue...)

Just looking at this purely from a Rovers' revenue point of view, if we are getting £1.2m extra a year out of the deal (£88m/72), rising to £1.7m... I count 8 Rovers home games outside of 3pm on Saturdays. 10 if you include holiday games. Suppose we usually average home attendances of 15,000 for 3pm Saturdays (optimistic I know, but let's suppose high away travel like the Leeds game). 9,000 of which are season ticket holders, 6,000 walk-up/away travel. Assume £24/ticket (excluding discounts, but let's say concessions make up the difference...). So, £144,000 revenue per game from walk-up/away ticket sales. If such midweek/non-3pm games had an attendance drop of 4.5% last year, then that revenue drops to £137,500 per game. Or, £1.1M over 8 games, £1.38M over 10 games. If midweek attendances are now down 8.8% for midweek games due to Sky red button, the walk-up/away ticket revenue from those games is down to £131,328 per game. Or, £1.05M over 8 games, £1.31M over 10 games. So that's £50,000/£70,000 (maybe a bit higher if you add concession losses from slightly less season ticketholders showing up) of lost revenue attributable to Sky red button versus £1.2M of additional revenue. So, looking purely from a revenue perspective, and if those 4.5% vs 8.8% figures are correct, it looks like no-brainer, no? Happy to be corrected on any of the above as it's a very quick-n-dirty calculation done out of curiosity

We certainly didn't look 'great' out there from about the 20th minute onward, but I thought we largely held Bolton from any particularly great scoring chances. It was a bit frustrating to watch us try and park the bus for so long, but I honestly didn't feel all that nervous watching. In the end, it's hard not to be pleased with a 1-0 away win. One big positive for me was Rodwell. He wasn't exceptional and the game had started to go by him when he was rightly substituted, but he showed some real quality with the ball. I wouldn't bet on it just yet, but there's a chance he could turn into a really shrewd pick up. I'd be interested to see a Evans-Rothwell pairing going forward.

Sure you can question the wall, but sometimes you just need to admit the beauty of a free kick. Hats off to Hourihane on that one. Lenihan was brilliant in the air today, but anything on the ground seemed to trouble him (had a couple of slips that were almost costly). I don't think you can fault Smallwood's effort today, and he's looked better the past couple games than the first few. But Reed's appearance made it clear Smallwood's days as a regular starter may be numbered. (On the note of him looking lethargic coming back on occasion, I think it's more that his general lack of athleticism gets exposed in a straight line sprint). I do like having Smallwood as midfield option though. Certainly not keen on getting rid of him. Nice work by Bell and Nyambe on the wings. Armstrong had a couple sparks... I'm not sure whether I'm hopeful that he's poised to break out soon or I'm worried that we're witnessing his (historical...) limitations at the Championship level.

I remember being quite surprised at his lazy manner the first couple times he played for us... You've got to wonder if he had that same lethargic style when he starred for Swindon in L1 back in 2015. Perhaps lost his head a bit after his big money move to QPR. Oh well. Probably didn't cost us too much in the end and he was always more of a punt than a player on which we were looking to depend.

I wasn't too fond of Nyambe two years ago. I liked his physical potential and a certain amount of slack needs to be given to an 18-19 year-old cutting their teeth at the pro level, but a team tumbling towards relegation isn't the place for a mistake-prone youngster learning the trade. It would have been ideal for him to have spent that year on loan in League 1 or 2, although we weren't exactly teeming with RBs that year... But anyone denying the immense improvement he's shown over the past year or so is out to lunch. Easily a Championship-calibre footballer now and he's still only 20. One thing that's actually really impressed me lately is his ball skills and dribbling. His passing and crossing still need some work, but surprisingly, to me at least, he's emerged as quite a tricky dribbler along the wing. Not the only player he's made similar comments about...

...the plot thickens...