He'll keep on going as long as the gravy train is still rolling and then he'll disembark just before it hits the buffers. He will be in a strong position to see the buffers approaching as well. That will be with either relegation to League One or financial Armageddon approaching. It seems for now we've managed to head off both of those possibilities thanks to good management in the dugout and a couple of big sales/sell on fees. He'll fancy heading off the latest fan unrest, by the looks of things most of that job has been done for him thanks to a few wins in the last few weeks, and then he will set about shaving another £20-30k off the wage bill by offloading another few assets and a few million in and that's him secure until this time next year.

Contract length is another important issue. Batth will be more than happy to sign for an extra 12 months and will probably be prepared to wait through much of the summer for Rovers to get around to sorting it. Remember that JDT wanted him after he left Sunderland and it dragged on all summer long because 'they' wouldn't sanction the 2 year deal he was reportedly after. In the end he went to Norwich for a year and then eventually we got him on board last summer when a 1 year deal was possible. Travis, Tronstad, Brittain, Carter and Hyam (and Dolan but he's already gone) are all quite rightly going to want and expect 3-4 years of commitment. That's not unreasonable or unfair. It is par for the course for players who have proven themselves to be good Championship players and have worked hard for this club. Unfortunately this disgraceful regime is constantly 'on the take' be that from supporters, staff or players. They are of the mindset that everyone owes them sacrifice and commitment but they offer very little by return. I suspect there will be £25k a week of wages tied up between Travis, Tronstad, Hyam and Brittain. The corner shop operators will be eyeing another round of cuts to qualify for their bonuses and will fancy replacing those four with a couple of academy lads and then a couple of 12 month loans/last contracts at £5k a week. All of a sudden you've 'saved' £15k a week on wages, made no commitments beyond the next 12 months and provided you survive in the Championship no harm done. That's their mentality and one I cannot accept.

Waggott and his low hanging fruit again. No problem doing the easy and cheap ones where the players will be delighted to get an extra year in the Championship, but total silence and excuses on the ones that rightly expect long term decent deals and can simply move elsewhere. Always the cheap and easy route with this lot. Anything complex, difficult, expensive or requiring serious commitment from the club's side - forget it.

I still don't think people realise how bad things are at Rovers and fail to recognise that a move to just about any other club in this league would be a major step up in terms of getting a solid competitive contract as opposed to whatever derisory terms the stooges have concocted whilst having one eye on their own interests and cost cutting.

The only people attempting to suggest that he isn't a goner are the Club via their media sources, those being the Venkygraph and Radio Lancashire, who continue to push the narrative that the ball is entirely in Dolan's court, that there remains a good offer on the table from Rovers, that he might yet sign it but that he wants to 'explore' his options out there this summer. I think everyone else realises what we are dealing with here and I suspect the club's 'efforts' to persuade him to stay have been derisory given the approach they have taken to other key players and the general running of the club. They don't take any facet of being a professional football club seriously except cutting corners wherever they can so why anyone thinks Dolan is getting different treatment is beyond me. The meek acceptance of some to the situation - a mere shrug of the shoulders at the suggestion/expectation that he will be walking off to a Championship rival in the summer for nothing, potentially a Derby County who were in administration not long ago (look what we'd become if it wasn't for Venkys) is all sickening and unacceptable to me but hey ho I'm a negative moaner.

When you see that list of names as basically the entire management of Blackburn Rovers in 2025 it really is scary.

Me too, panic stations. It will be interesting to see how hard they are pushing tomorrow. In theory the last major chance they have to capture attending fans for renewals.

Which is precisely the reason I'd rather we never sold another player again and why I've been saying for years that it is pointless discussing the merits of selling X,Y or Z because all it does is help Venkys with their bills, it does nothing to help the transfer kitty or manager. Sell, sell, sell, % for Adam Wharton, Raya - end result is Venkys' injections are reduced/stopped for a while. That's all there is to it. Some fans still don't get this - I see stuff on Twitter all the time about selling X because the money is too good to turn down or is all he's worth etc. But we aren't a normal club functioning with normal thought processes. All that happens here is the money goes into the black hole and the stooges collect some extra salary as a well done for helping the Indians save. Manager is left scratching around for frees and loans.

Yep, Gregg carried the can for the two January fiascos and when he'd watched them sell Wharton from under him and JDT and it was obvious the money was going elsewhere, together with JDT's departure, it was the end of his project and he knew it. Personally I don't believe for one second that the 'admin errors' they claim were responsible for the January fiascos were anything of the sort and nothing to do with Gregg or other staff down there, but of course as usual when the shit hit the fan they wheeled him out and he had to say something remotely professional to explain what had gone on and took responsibility for it as a senior staff member. Unfortunately some of the more gullible of our fanbase they conflated him publicly accepting responsibility for the fiasco as being the same as him being the issue/problem that caused the fiasco. I'd suggest two very different things. One being the head of department and public speaker doing the professional thing and taking the ultimate flak for the failings of others, the other being in my view other shadowy characters and middlemen doing their level best to scupper deals as part of a money saving and power play strategy.

I suspect Gregg was employed and remunerated on targets other than saving the Indians money wherever possible. I suspect the two stooges that have been here throughout this whole rotten period are tasked with saving the Indians money wherever possible and this neatly explains the contract situation.

The only 'model' that is acceptable under Venkys is the 'benefactor model'. The only use they have ever been or can ever be to this club is putting money in. If the plan is to break even then fine, but not with Venkys remaining in charge. Might as well put me or anyone else on here running it if it has to break even. We could do a better job on the operational side running it in our lunch breaks.

Beyond the AI generated rubbish they went with in their promotional material I see they are now reverting to the tried and tested marketing approach of sticking a microphone in the hands of supporter(s) who can tell us all about what having a season ticket means to them. Very predictable and quite tiresome but I suppose when they've openly admitted that they can't offer us anything to look forward to in terms of what happens on the pitch the easier approach is to hand it over to the supporters to do their bit based on habits and traditions

I find it strange that after hearing directly from Travis, Tronstad and now Batth in the last couple of weeks that despite being happy here and willing to stay the club has made zero effort to even speak to them about new terms, that we are supposed to also believe that they are busy at work trying to persuade Dolan to accept a new offer. Deliberate, planned demolition of the squad and gutting it of proven quality assets. We know how that ends.

Gestede knows that his golden ticket to a long and lucrative career at Rovers is to go down the 'project' route. It serves him no purpose or benefit to talk about getting to the Premier League or delivering a return that can be measured in terms of promotions, points, positions, because all that is doing is setting a bar against which he can be judged in the near future. It is far, far easier to instead promise jam tomorrow at some unspecified future date when the grand project will come to fruition but that will never be today. As long as every couple of years a player is sold for a healthy profit or someone else emerges as a project from the academy he can keep everyone going. Mowbray played that game as well. It seems to resonate well with the Indians. What is doesn't do is take into consideration changes in circumstances. Like the owners being investigated in India for dodgy financial activity, Court restrictions, Covid, waking up one day and deciding to do something a bit different, all of which have happened in the last few years and have seen the Mowbray/Venus project come and go, the JDT/Broughton project come and go, the Eustace/Park project come and go and now the Gestede/Ismael project come.....he's an idiot if he thinks he's getting years and years to build some grand project and that's before the instatiable appetite of the owners and their minions to sell our assets off wherever they can. There cannot be a project or long term plan in these conditions. The only route to success we had was on a Eustace or similar type galvanising the squad and forging a strong team and unit out of experienced signings blended with the remaining tight knit dressing room we had last summer. The spine of a solid side added to with valuable experience in Batth and Weimann etc. They made sure that wasn't going to be allowed to work and having gone close to the play-offs twice in the last three years they need to quickly dismantle the rest of this squad otherwise we might go close again. All that serves to do is put pressure on them to spend or do something remotely ambitious in January which they don't want.

Wears a nice suit and has the textbook hand gestures sorted though.