RoverCanada

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...

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.