If we did bid up to £8m for Bereton, that is certainly a sign of Venky's being willing to make an aggressive, risky splurge, but I also think it's clear we've largely tried to go for some potentially under-valued targets. Armstrong has clearly been out of the first-team picture for Newcastle for some time and there are/were question marks about his abilities above League One. Trapp is on a Columbus Crew team that is currently in turmoil. Bauer's contract is running out on a Charlton team that's in financial and ownership disarray and he appears to be agitating for a move out of League One. Chapman and his injury history would fall under this category as well if he has been a legitimate target all along. Rothwell was out-of-contract, and thus cheap and has potential. Davenport obviously blocked at City and eager for first-team football, so he's another cheap, high-potential buy. £4m for Freeman may be somewhere in-between, as that's probably a 'fair' price but QPR is looking shit, they've got a transfer embargo next window, and they're financially handicapped for years to come. All of those strike me as pretty good 'value' targets, its just a shame they haven't come off for whatever reason. Or to put a negative spin on it, it looks like Mowbray and co. thought they had identified some bargains but ultimately under-estimated what the selling clubs had in mind themselves... Also, agreed with some posters that it'd be nice to hear we were looking overseas a bit more beyond Trapp as there must be some bargain signings out there too (but not guaranteed, remember Koita and Petschi!) (£8m is obviously a risky signing for a 19-year-old with a limited track record... yet it should be kept in mind that a 19-year-old having any sort of track record in the Championship is pretty rare. For an in-house example, Nyambe obviously had some growing pains in the Championship as a 19-year-old a couple years ago, but just look how much he's improved over the past year and to start this year) As a side note, while the new riches of the PL are the ultimate cause of football's elevated expenditures tricking down to the Championship, I also can't help but think we were the catalyst in this trend with our Rhodes signing. £8m for a striker with only a League One pedigree (albeit an exceptional one!) was quite the splash at the time... Certainly set the new bar for top Championship strikers.

Obviously wasn't a hit in the Premier League, but he has been an absolute beast for TFC for a few seasons now (with some injury concerns of late). (I know, I know, it's only MLS...) He's also a designated player earning the equivalent of £75,000/week, so one we can safely file away as not happening

Don't forget Rhodes I think we made profits relative to the initial outlay (not in accounting terms, which would be higher profits!) on King, Olsson, Judge (WOOO!!!), Mahoney, possible Steele (haha...), Rochina (if you ignore agent fees.....), and Koita (haha) Anyway, the profits made on Cairney (albeit too low in retrospect in what seemed to be a panic sell), Gestede, and Duffy were pretty sensational, as player trading goes... I don't think that fee has ever been reported/rumoured, but I vaguely recall a poster saying Mowbray said at a conference that it was free + add-ons...

I draw your attention to the Twitter thread SwissRamble recently posted summarising all the 16-17 Championship financial results, covering in more detail what that BBC article touches on: https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1026375049580826624 Always a good source! FYI, he recently did similar for League One's 16-17 season too: https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1026738429260906496, where I'd guess our accounts for 17-18 will look similar to the likes of Millwall, Sheffield United, and Bolton (minus the latter's major loan write-off of course).

I vaguely recall last window that our signings (Downing, Harper, and Hart) weren't announced until at or just after the window ended, yet it was clear from the pictures that the deals had been done much earlier in the day, so I'm guessing Rovers' social media team will keep us in similar suspense this time haha

Yup, definitely. Wages (along with "onerous contracts", as we're well acquainted with!) tend to be the major expense for any club. Though they can also book most of the profits of a transfer this year, while amortising expenditure over multiple years, which is quite important for FFP purposes... I was just getting a little irked by the multitude of "they're spending £8m??? HOW?" posts, whilst that team has also sold a bunch of players... ... Don't know Wil Trapp well, but Columbus have often been a scrappy club that has punched above their weight wage-wise, so poaching their captain could be a decent move if so! He's also captained the USMNT. Sounds like a legit source that we've made a bid if it's coming from Crew's coach, which does make you think what exactly Mowbray has in mind for our midfield!

I was curious about the net spend of Championship clubs so far given a lot of attention is being paid to the big fees being paid out for merely decent Championship players, yet a lot of these same clubs have taken in quite a large share of transfer fees themselves (e.g. Middlesbrough reportedly getting £18m for Traore today), so they're bound to be spending some of that. Link: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/championship/transfers/wettbewerb/GB2/saison_id/2018 Note transfermarkt will obviously be incomplete, imperfect, and not 100% up-to-date. So they don't have AV getting £30m+ for Grealish just yet, they won't be counting Norwich paying a couple million in Rhodes' loan fee, etc... As always, wages should be a bigger consideration. Nevertheless... Parachute payment recipients for some added context: ***£40m, **£25m, *£14m (I think). Ordered by net income. Swansea*** +£33m Norwich* +£30m Aston Villa* +£14m Middlesbrough** +£13m Bristol City +£10m Sheffield United +£6m QPR +£4m Brentford +£3m PNE +£3m Ipswich +£2m Sheffield Wednesday +1.5m Rotherham £0 Bolton -£200k Millwall -£1m Wigan -£1m Blackburn -£2m Hull** -£2m Birmingham -£2m West Brom*** -£3m Leeds -£4m Derby -£4m Reading -£5m Stoke*** -£7m Nottingham Forest -£23m Forest is the only ridiculous net spender so far this window (and they had a net transfer income of £10m last year). The Championship is generally a selling league, and that's still true this transfer window (to the tune of +£60m net income so far this window)

I think having one of Smallwood or Evans in the midfield is fine, and I'd take Evans over Smallwood, particularly when he's on his game (which can be frustratingly rare), but both of them isn't exactly an inspiring midfield pairing. Hence, I like the sounds of this McGinn link, even if it does sound a bit fanciful... Otherwise, let's hope Rothwell or Davenport turn into a dependable creative midfielder (or maybe even a Whittingham resurgence... fat chance, I know). Given his inconsistency, it'd probably be nice to get Evans' wages off the books, but he's certainly not a sunk cost and more than worthy as a squad player at least for the last year of his contract. Happy to have Smallwood around in at least a depth role too. (And Travis can nip at their heels if he's not loaned out!) Here's hoping we at least manage to loan out Caddis and Gladwin, plus Tomlinson as he's probably too far down the depth chart.

What on earth makes you think we're not capable of spending €25m+ and €75,000/week on Kalinic?

Thought I'd take a quick glance at Derby vs us out of curiosity... (I may have been beaten to the punch! Although Dreams of 1995's numbers appear to be from 15/16. not 16/17) Rovers are probably looking at a base revenue (i.e. before considering player trading) of £15-17m this year. Derby's base revenue is more like £30m+ (for 16/17, they had £8.7m in matchday revenue, £7.9m in broadcast revenue, and £12.4m in commercial revenue). Derby's revenue has grown pretty respectably to, from £15m back in 2013. Suppose Derby's owners are fine with £13m losses on average per year. That puts their spending at £43m in a year (before player trading, which has generally been low for Derby in recent years, but it spiked to a profit of £16m last year - the main reason they appear to be within FFP at the moment - which would theoretically increase that number to £59m). Now, suppose Venky's are only comfortable with.... £3m losses in a year (and this is a number you can debate endlessly - should they incur £13m losses because they're billionaires and they owe it to us after their misdeeds, etc etc., or is that last thing we need heaps of more debt? Is Venky's capable of adding so much more debt?). That puts our spending at £18-20m, which is £25-27m less than Derby's (before player trading...). Venky's could lower that gap to £15-17m if they decide to incur £13m of losses. (You can also exclude some infrastructure, academy, and charitable spend under FFP, so that increases those numbers by another few million depending on the club. It'd probably be a decently high number for Rovers given our category 1 academy) --- Another important consideration - at least for looking a single year's transfer expenditure - is that player trading profits can be booked immediately. Fee received minus a player's amortised book value. Suppose a player is bought for £10m and signs a 4-year contract. The amortisation cost is then £2.5m for each year of the contract, so a player signed today doesn't immediately cost £10m in accounting terms; they're added to the costs over a period of time. Suppose that player is sold at the start of year 4 of the contract for £10m - that's considered a £7.5m profit vs the remaining book value of £2.5m. Taking Derby's recent activity as an example, if they've bought Marriott for £2.5m on a 3-year contract, that's a £0.83m cost for this year and the next two years (Derby's amortisation costs have been steadily rising over the years)... While they bought Vydra for £8m in 2016, signed him to a 4-year contract, thus putting his book value at £4m this year. So, if they've just sold him for £10m, they can book a £6m profit this year. (Derby had player trading profits of £16m in 16/17) I find it odd some are ignoring some of the huge sales some of these Championship clubs are making in this same window. As was posted above, based on the estimates out there, few Championship clubs are actually net spenders so far this window. Something we don't have the luxury, or to put it more positively, we've decidedly not cashed in on the likes of Dack, Lenihan, etc. In sum, you can't look at reported transfer fees in any individual window in a vacuum... Amid all this are wages, of course... which deserve more attention than headline transfer fees.

Villa finding some new funding sources isn't directly connected to FFP... They've certainly been lucky to find some new owners/funders willing to cover likely losses of £10m+ every year. You make that sound easy! Good for them, but this doesn't change that their parachute payments are dropping from £33m last year to £15m this year. Villa had two separate problems: being on track to breach FFP after two seasons of high losses and their parachute payments running out, and Tony Xia apparently running into some difficulties in accessing his funds back in China to meet ongoing financial obligations (or so has been reported, who knows what exactly is going on with his finances...). This apparently solves the latter problem. Selling Grealish for £30m+ should pretty easily get them in line with FFP (that's a pretty major departure to sweep under the rug!), along with some other less dramatic cost-cutting (e.g. Terry). Parring losses down to £13m in a season, or £39m over three seasons, shouldn't be that difficult when you're able to book a £30m profit in player trading when needed. The issue is when you don't have such a selling windfall lifeline to bail you out and/or the investments you've made in the past don't turn into a highly valued player like Grealish... Now, if Villa end up not selling Grealish and somehow still stay within FFP... that would be interesting indeed!

My post was a bit tongue-in-cheek (that Travis has come up in the system as a RB who caught Mowbray's eye when deputising as a CM doesn't strike me as all that controversial!), but he does go on to mention Whittingham and Rothwell in the next couple sentences: "People will have to compete with Jacob for a place in the team, and the competition is going to be fierce. Corry, Richie, Lewis, Peter, they all have to compete. "Rothwell can play centrally too. We want as many good players as we can get at this club." I imagine if he was talking about our midfield options in-depth, he'd have gone on to mention Bennett can serve as a backup option, Tomlinson will be given a chance to impress in camp (although he's clearly the first candidate for a loan), hell, he might even mention Gladwin haha (who I imagine they're looking to offload if the opportunity arises), etc. (I've always found it a bit odd how literally some take manager quotes, although I do understand the interest in gleaning some insight from them for debate of course!)

http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16331825.jacob-davenport-got-guaranteed-a-rovers-starting-spot-says-boss/?ref=mac "Of Davenport, the Ewood boss added: “He’s got to compete with Smallwood, who was one of our better players last year; against Evans, who’s an international player; and against Travis, who we think extremely highly of." Ooo, the plot thickens as to Travis' natural position.

Haha... To take a more optimistic view, sounds like he can serve as backup to Dack in the no. 10 role whenever he's not in MF. Hence he sort of replaces Payne.

Or Nixon is full of !@$%

Our embargo lasted several years? Am I missing something? Venky's certainly turned off the taps on transfer expenditures for awhile, but that wasn't directly due to FFP... Wednesday was fine for FFP in 16/17, but they've been projected to breach it in 17/18, hence one to keep an eye on... and if they breach in 17/18, they get hit with an embargo that lasts until they're back under the threshold... no FFP transfer embargo is likely to last that long as a few significant player sales will probably be enough in most caess, but I don't see it as something to be blase about. We certainly could try spending £6m this year and spread it out, but you need to expand a bit on what kind of strategy you actually have in mind. Do we spend £6m every summer? Then our amortisation will eventually rise to £6m/year, which is a hefty expense when our turnover is only ~£15m. Or do we spend £6m this year and hope those purchases are clever enough to be all that we need to purchase for several years? You roughly know our turnover and operating expenses, and now know how transfer expenditures are amortised. It shouldn't be too hard for you to do some arithmetic and propose what kind of wage structure and transfer expenditure you're hoping for going forward. The short answer is yes, we could obviously spend a lot more than Waggott/Mowbray/Venky's have decided on and stay under FFP if they're only looking to spend maybe a couple million on transfers and keep our wage bill under £15m. But that would mean a lot more losses, which means potentially a lot more debt for Venky's (and we're ultimately at the whims of what they're willing/able to fund). I'm not saying you're wrong for proposing that but anyone arguing for that should also not then whine about how indebted we've become to Venky's (not suggesting you've been whining yourself, just in general)

I think you need to take a closer look at those clubs' accounts. Sheffield Wednesday and Wolves are certainly the current cases of teams that may be at the threshold of FFP sanctions and ones to keep an eye on, with Villa perhaps trailing after them. Forest, Leeds, and Derby, not so much. As I already pointed out, a few years of significant net sales by Forest have enabled them to just escape FFP sanctions last year and have given them significant headroom going forward. Also, as I said before, FFP is concerned about accounting losses, not cash losses. Hence, while Forest is set to spend £13m on Carvalho, supposehe signs a 4-year contract, that £13m is amortised so that it's a £3.25m expense this year and for the next three years. That appears to be part of how clubs gamble for promotion: spend a lot in 1-2 years and then amortise the costs over multiple years. That's part of why Sheffield Wednesday is getting close to FFP trouble now as they had £6m in amortisation expenses last year. as their years of net expenditure is now catching up to them. It's also an issue for Aston Villa, who had £24m in amortisation costs last year. The different treatment of sales and purchases is also what helps enable clubs to fairly quickly get out of FFP sanctions, as sales are booked in total when they occur. I assume that's part of how we got out of FFP sanctions fairly quickly despite losses of almost £80m over 13-15... You also brought up administration before, which is not what FFP is really about (at least sanctions-wise)... Administration is a potential result of significant, FFP-flouting losses over time, but FFP-sanctions don't mean administration (if anything, they may save a team from itself in avoiding administration!) Transfer embargoes are the main threat, and I don't think that should be dismissed so lightly (remember our transfer embargo window...?) Hence why I've repeatedly asked you to propose what amount of investment (and thus losses) do you want Venky's to incur now? Do you think they should look to lose £13m/year? Or even more so, and risk FFP sanctions? I think it's an entirely reasonable argument to propose we spend a lot now that our losses in the past few years have been fairly low, giving us a fair amount of headroom under the £39m max losses over 3 years threshold for a couple years. However, if that's the case, I'm also curious whether you're also comfortable with our debts to Venky's climbing ever further (perhaps a more relevant question is whether Venky's is comfortable with that!). It's a bit of a Catch 22... (This would be a rare case of a fan complaining that teams in the Championship aren't spending enough money!)

Villa's potentially making some pretty drastic cuts this year... yes, something to keep an eye on... But they appear to be a case of gambling for a couple years with parachute payments and losing. I'm not sure why you're so confidant they won't be making such cuts. I think our embargo was only the summer window, no? Missing out on any transfer window is a pretty significant penalty. I wouldn't be so dismissive of the possibility given it's happened here before and in multiple other cases. (You're right about Bolton, my mistake mentioning them) Yes, Forest did just make a significant transfer splash, but that's after net transfer spend of -~£7m in 15-16 and -£11m in 16-17, and they sold Assombalonga for £15m this past year. They've cushioned their post-14-15 losses with player sales. FFP is over 3 years - they just squeezed under the FFP limit in 16-17 and that was largely due to the large losses in 14/15 - they've built up a fair amount of headroom for the next couple years. Forest's underlying revenue is about £5m more than us. Suppose they're willing to average £13m losses a year and stay just under FFP. If we're looking to only lose, say, £3m this year, that roughly gives them a £15m advantage over us (and maybe even more than that for the next couple years as they only had a loss of £4m in 16/17). Also, transfer purchases aren't booked entirely within the year they're incurred. They are amortised over the length of the contract, giving them further flexibility this year. Hence, lessening my original number, I was curious if you were advocating losses of, say, £10m-£13m/year, just staying under FFP, rather than the the single digit losses Venky's appears to only be comfortable with now. We only had an accounting loss of £5m over 15-16 and 16-17 due to our significant player sales. Barring whatever our League One losses were, we theoretically could spend quite a bit this year and stay within FFP. (and potentially even more so due to FFP allowing for excluding academy expenditures). But it obviously wouldn't be sustainable for multiple years. However, those advocating for that (and it's a fair proposal!) shouldn't then afterwards complain about how further indebted we'd become under Venky's...

Setting aside what clubs have or haven't flouted FFP, out of curiosity, are you advocating for Venky's/Rovers to incur, say, £20m+ losses again, under the assumption that FFP is unenforceable/if we get promoted it doesn't matter/the resulting fines will be pithy? The latter may be true to an extent, but it is certainly a gamble... While the likes of QPR (still in the courts...), Bournemouth, maybe Wolves this past year, etc. have escaped with relatively light FFP sanctions, there have been quite a few transfer embargoes of varying severity (us, Bolton, Cardiff, Nottingham, Fulham). I think some can be a bit brazen in their hand-waving of FFP restrictions. (And the clubs you cite do have base turnovers of £25m+ compared to ~£15m for us, so even many non-parachute payment receiving clubs have a significant leg up on us)

LT reporting that the option is appearance-based: http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16283240.Danny_Graham_signs_new_deal_to_stay_at_Rovers/?ref=mac Very sensible. As great as Graham was the last half of last year, you have to be a bit wary of his fitness going forward. Certainly glad he's back for the coming year at least!

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/1003542814293143552 Thought I'd share that the ever excellent Swiss Ramble posted a Twitter thread covering Rovers' latest accounts. He does an excellent job of distilling club accounts into easy to digest charts and figures. Enjoy the always rather grim reading! (If there being a slight glimmer of hope now!)

Well, even in our last year in the PL we weren't all that profitable, with a profit of £4m on the back of $14m profit in player sales. We actually lost £19m in 2010/11. As has been well-covered, we dropped out of the PL at the worst possible time. Our revenue then was only £54m compared to the lower PL clubs earning £120m these days. Parachute payments help, but they weren't as lucrative for us as they are now. (Off the top of my head, I think they were about £40m over 4 years for us, while the first year of parachute payments is currently £40m!) It all sounds like quite big money adding up the parachute money, player sales, etc., but you can easily tell the same story in the other direction adding up our outlays since 10/11. £245m in wages and salaries, £88m in other expenses. Intangible fixed asset trading has been a net loss of about £5m over those years. Accounting losses of about £115m. Perhaps there's a story to tell within those numbers and I'd of course be keen to read evidence of specific wrongdoing. I don't doubt there were overpayments to agents sprinkled throughout, Venky's stooges enjoying oversized salaries, etc. I'd have to listen to that BRFCS podcast again regarding the split between share capital Venky's has pumped in and debts, and how that adds up to over £200m... I recall the general story is that share capital is the most efficient way to cover ongoing expenses going forward rather than taking on further loans. Our interest payments have fallen accordingly recently. All I'm saying is given our specific circumstances and how common huge losses are across football, I'm personally not all that surprised by how much Venky's have ultimately had to pump into the club, whether in cash, share capital, or debt. While we're still a loss-maker, like pretty much every football club, all signs point to our cost structure finally being reset to a reasonable level (while still having relatively high expenses for a Championship/League One club due to Ewood, Brockhall, etc.). Hence, I suspect Venky's are perfectly happy to continue to hang on and incur losses that are manageable to them now (unlike the 12/13 - 13/14 £70m loss horrorshow), and maintain some perhaps vain hope that we'll scrape out a promotion some year.

You mentioned in a previous that the sums had been done before and there's ultimately some unexplained hole somewhere in the accounts. Could you point me to the analysis you're referring to?

It sounds like Wharton's been impressing with Lincoln City. He apparently went down with an injury at the end of the first leg of Lincoln's playoff, so hope he's okay. I'm struggling to find the link now, but I saw in an aggregation of ratings submitted by fans each game, Wharton was in their top 3 for the games he's played and it seems they're well aware he's a step above League 2. I suppose the question is do we keep him around as a backup CB or perhaps loan him to a League 1 club next year. The latter may make sense, particularly if we do sign another CB. Otherwise, he'll still likely be behind Mulgrew, Lenihan, and Downing, and Williams can serve as cover after that. edit: Found the player ratings link: https://lincoln.vitalfootball.co.uk/april-player-ratings-momentum-mid-rhondda-and-a-moment-in-time/ 3rd highest rating for April and 2nd highest for March.

Our losses by season according to the latest accounts: 12/13: -£36.5m 13/14: -£42.1m 14/15: -£17.3m 15/16: -£1.5m 16/17: -£3.8m Not sure where he's getting his numbers from... Losses by FFP's standards may differ if it's looking at profit/loss before trading or there's some issue with Venky's capital infusions or commercial revenue contributions. We were under an embargo for the start of 15/16 and then got out of it, so you'd think only 15/16 onward would be applicable... Very odd.