JHRover

No club can ever rely on FFP as an excuse when it has watched £20 million+ worth of players walk for nothing in the space of two transfer windows. Apparently the way around this inconvenient reality is that we should forget everything that happened prior to this season and that now we have Broughton in place this sort of thing won't happen again. Not sure how or why I should believe that when fundamentally it remains the same ownership and board with the same financial approach running things

It's an incredible balls up even by our standards isn't it? - Spend huge money on a teenager from Forest, electing to allocate millions on a project/development signing rather than ready made players - Spend years showing patience and perseverance with the player when many would have given up or signed someone else. Fair play that patience pays off and he comes good. - Fail to address the contract situation (sound familiar?) meaning just as he comes good we are behind the curve on tying him down to the longer term - Fail to sell him for big money in the very narrow window of opportunity we got to do so - He gets to head off somewhere on a free transfer, leaving us about £10 million down on our outlay and at least the same again on a potential fee we could have had - We've had 2 years of Diaz Mania with half of Chile taking an interest in our 2nd division club and done nothing to market or capitalise on it End result? Still in the Championship, out of pocket, an asset not realised and bemoaning our luck. Why did we bother? The signing was never going to fire us to immediate promotion, it was always a medium/long term investment but we then let the contract run down. Senseless. Trouble is that to repeat the trick we would probably have to pay big to get another rising star from somewhere like we did for BBD. Only we won't be spending anywhere near that sort of money and these sort of players don't emerge very often. The only way we can limit the damage is by getting promoted this season. We'd still be out of pocket but with the cash bonanza coming in could cope with it.

We could really do with boosting that turnover part. How about we get some stock in the shop to sell?

I didn't say they weren't spending. I said they don't want to spend more than they need to. I don't want to pay tax and bills each month but I do because I need to. I think they see Rovers as similar - a burden that they have to meet but don't really enjoy doing. Didn't we make a profit last year?

Some clubs treat FFP with the contempt it deserves and do whatever they can to work around the restrictions it imposes, knowing promotion to the PL is the priority and confident that if the League did ever try to impose a sanction they could either sell a player or two to get out of it or fight it. Other clubs treat FFP as a welcome excuse to justify cost cutting and budget reductions. An ideal 'boogeyman' to convince supporters and local media they would love to chuck more money in but can't because of nasty rules. Best of both worlds - don't have to spend and the blame for it lands elsewhere. It's a shame many have been suckered in by it but as I keep on pointing out - the state of the Club and stadium - neither of which are constrained in any way by FFP - stand as clear evidence that the owners don't want to spend. If they did we would divert some funds into making sure the ground was cleaned or the pitch looked after properly.

Without wanting to get stuck into JDT we only have to look at the way the Club approached the summer managerial appointment to see what a sh1t show it still is down there. Now Waggott, as CEO of the organisation, should take responsibility and the blame for that, but doesn't. Waggott has been here for over 5 years now. He knew Mowbray's contract was up in the summer, he had months to prepare for his departure, in the end we got another joke recruitment process, which lasted far longer than it should, apparently saw us wanting a D of F AFTER the head coach, then saw JDT appointed 2 weeks before pre-season only once Broughton had got the job. Fiasco. I also believe that the criteria for the head coach were not suitable. It seems we wanted someone to focus on the academy, someone who would work with the existing coaching staff, someone who would be happy to embark on a 'project'. Would have been better to identify a manager we felt could get us promoted and allowed him to do what he felt was necessary to deliver that. I've no issue or problem at all with a D of F structure and the noises coming from the Club as to appointments to recruitment departments etc. all sound good and positive. But the D of F should be tasked with first and foremost getting us promoted, not values into individual players.

I personally doubt that Venkys themselves - the Desai couple or the two brothers - have any plan or strategy. I doubt they'll have ever heard of a Director of Football, probably haven't even met or spoken to Broughton or JDT. What we have now is 'layering' - in the past Kean, Bowyer, Mowbray were able to jump on a plane to Pune, go to the top table, talk them into releasing funds for players and on they went for another year. As the budget has been cut (nowt to do with FFP they just get bored of putting more than they need to into the club) they have become more distant. I also think as time has gone by they have either learned or become more willing to allow others to run the club for them e.g. Pasha within certain parameters. I think the current structure is a brainchild of Pasha, probably due in some part to realisation that he and Waggott aren't up to the job but also to further muddy the waters and distance himself from any serious scrutiny. 'Don't look at me, ask Gregg' who can now handle all media issues. I think Pasha has just been told to get on with it and do the best he can with the relative crumbs they are prepared to release when a decent business case can be put forward to do so i.e. Hyam and Szmodics. The telltale giveaway on this front is the way they have handled the Rothwell and Brereton sagas. Both situations arose because of the owners failing to ensure their contract situations were dealt with in good time, as a result it makes sense to sell before they go for nothing, but authority for such sales still rests in India, which cannot be secured. So for all the talk of sustainability, reinvestment, assets you have the ridiculous scenario where major assets wander off for nothing completely at odds with that.

I like what I have heard from Broughton and I strongly believe having someone upstairs between ownership and the dugout to oversee things is essential to provide some sort of a plan and direction, otherwise we just end up with another Kean/Mowbray scenario with the manager the only one who knows what is happening and essentially unsackable. Now whether Broughton is good at his job or not only time will tell, but for me he deserves this season and the summer. But if he isn't given a proper budget to work with or doesn't have the power to make changes it's a waste of time.

JDT doesn't escape criticism from me, but I think he is merely a cog in the Venky machine. He might not be a great manager, he might be a bad manager. But get rid of him and nothing really changes, we will try to find another 'head coach' who is going to 'play the game'. Right now he's probably wondering where the backing and funds are to address the issues we face. The answer, once again, is there is no money. They can pretend that the lack of action is due to January being 'difficult' or because we are following a grand plan of development but we aren't. There just isn't enough money to sign the players we need which is why we will sit around through January waiting for generous PL clubs to agree to send their players here for little cost, in return for which we 'agree' to play them regularly and develop their players for them. The game doesn't involve promotion. It involves working for owners on the other side of the world who have no interest in anything, an assortment of unqualified suits beneath them tasked with cutting costs and managing things on a budget, dollopers like Steve Waggott only interested in hitting their personal targets come what may and this fundamentally flawed policy of a 'project' relying on youth which is just a fancy way of saying 'cost cutting'. Rivals must be laughing at us as for the second year running we watch the chance of promotion slip not because this is a really tough league that we can't compete in but because we fail to be proactive and address deficiencies in our squad at a key time. It is worrying for me how many of our players seem to be hitting poor spells of form. If we go back to August, September, October there were times when we played poorly or struggled but there are numerous senior players who seem to be going backwards and quickly. Scott Wharton has struggled having been an integral team member, Travis the same. BBD has hit a barren spell, the defence looks shakey. Adam Wharton a breath of fresh air, now not getting a look in. Too many changes and chopping around. The only one to go against that trend seems to be Dack who has gone from the forgotten man to a regular. Until these owners feck off or at least start investing and taking more of an interest it will continue like this. JDT or someone else, they will be hamstrung by invisible owners, cost cutting priority and instructions to work with the academy lads and loans every year.

I think JDT has overachieved with his results so far. But he seems further away than ever from a settled side or solutions to conceding first or stopping these atrocious away performances. We are that bad at times and that short on options I think we are a bad managerial appointment away from a serious relegation battle. You look at the ease with which dross like Rotherham, Wigan, Cardiff have overcome us and the business being done by some clubs down there it is worrying. All hail the project, which now appears to involve more loaning

Many clubs - Huddersfield, Hull, Wigan, Birmingham examples - have gone into the market this month and added proven quality Championship players. We won't do that because Venkys won't even back the side to that level. It is viable - they're just opting not to do it.

Well at half time, knowing how things were going, I promised that I would leave the minute Rotherham scored a second goal. And so I did. Straight into the pub for the last half hour of the game. The earliest I have ever left a game but with the way it went I'd say entirely vindicated. I've better things to do with my time than watch that. Simply terrible. Nothing really to add on that front. At HT I'd have brought Dolan and Travis on as a minimum, to start the second half with no changes was ludicrous. Most of us have known for some time that the owners and their dogsbody haven't any intention or plan of getting promoted. Even then I thought they might take some interest and add to the squad in January. Seems it is groundhog day.

In the desert of decent away fixtures of late Rotherham probably by far the most attractive even at an early kick off. Take out the Norwich treks, Sunderland early kick off, Dingle hassle and Coventry midweek you've to go right back to October to find a Saturday away game, reasonably priced and not a complete pain to do.

So there we have it from the man himself. He is only here to hit the owners' financial targets and he's doing his job perfectly well on his figures. He'll be able to trot off to India in the summer with his 'highest revenue take since the club were in the PL' line and the money men out there will be happy. Of course that won't factor in medium to long term factors such as a rapidly diminishing support base, desolate atmosphere and shrinking of our ST numbers every year, nor will it factor in matchday takings for food, drink, merchandise, but he won't want that to come into the equation. We can now see the latest excuse of 'infiltration' of Burnley fans in the home ends as the excuse for giving them a massive allocation in the DE. That's just nonsense as you can easily combat that with database only purchases and severe sanctions for anyone who buys for a Burnley fan. But hey the decision has already been made on that front all the other talk is just keeping up appearances to make people think serious thoughts are going into their allocation. It will be £30 a pop and as many as the police will permit. We'll even open the Legends Lounge and offer them a luxury option.

Fortunately we have a manager in place now who I believe wants promotion asap and will do everything he can to try and get it. I don't think he's here to sit around in mid-table for 4-5 years waxing lyrical about 'next year'. He's here to move up the footballing ladder one way or the other. Of course he's done plenty of talking about 'the project' which you would expect from any manager particularly one in his first season working under a new D of F. But there's no incentive to him to sit around here for the prime of his career. Unlike Waggott and Mowbray who knew they weren't getting a better job than here.

I've no problem with Broughton and JDT needing time before they are judged and the summer was far from ideal given what they walked into. I accept January is a difficult time and I like what I see and hear from Broughton. So who is responsible for the fact they both arrived late and were limited as to their capabilities in the summer? Why, when Mowbray's contract situation was known to everyone months beforehand, did a new manager not arrive until mid-June? Meanwhile those same people are still lurking in the background and I worry undermining any good work JDT and Broughton want to do.

Unforgivable when you look back at it especially that the 'powers that be' sat back and allowed it to happen. Mowbray should have been axed after that Derby game, firstly due to his insane team selection nearly seeing us lose to the bottom club at home, secondly due to a half time player revolt and thirdly due to his appalling behaviour in the dugout in the second half. The writing was on the wall then if not before and they should have cut his time short and got Warnock in for the last 10 games. Might never have a better opportunity.

The way I see it is that in the absence of Mrs Desai or Balaji picking up the phone and throwing 'big' money at it we are crunching the numbers and balancing the books each January. I think they authorise a budget in the summer, which invariably is mostly used up by the end of the summer window, so by January we are left having to generate whatever we can from the existing pot of cash, which isn't very much. The departures of Hirst, Annesley and others soon to follow I don't think are any loss but from a financial point of view put them all together and you might be looking at £10k+ a week off the books for the next 6 months. This gives us something to play with on the wages front, albeit not much in the scheme of things, if we are lucky we might get a couple in for that. When it comes to paying out transfer fees I think there is authority to do something provided it is a 'manageable' figure both in terms of fee and wages. Which is why we get lots of talk about money being available but when it can only be spent if the player in question fits into our wage structure or doesn't get a better offer elsewhere it is difficult or even impossible to get it spent. These owners don't care that we are 3rd or have a shot at promotion. I don't think they will even think about us until their annual summit meeting. People like Waggott are here to keep up pretences and make us think all is well and normal and a big part of that is the FFP line - the perfect cover story - when really even before FFP was introduced they took zero interest outside of the summer meeting and spent very little in January.

I think if he's on £4.5k a week at a PL club he needs to find himself a new agent. I think Waggott is on well over that. If the claims are true and we were offering to make Lenihan the top earner and we are paying Ayala a large whack it makes no sense to anyone that Van Hecke is on that at Brighton and is out of contract soon. How much of Poveda's wage did we pay? I've no idea. Are Blackpool on a similar deal? Unlikely given they don't spend much money.

Khadra confirmed at Birmingham, I wouldn't have minded him back here to be honest. He chipped in with a few goals and assists last year and I think we could do with someone this month who is going to contribute there. He would have been an easy and cheap one to do and knows the team already. Sadly I suspect that even he is out of our price range these days. My belief is we only got him and Van Hecke at the 11th hour because Brighton were happy to send them here to play regularly and were content to subsidise it. The moment other Championship clubs start coming along they will offer more than we will which means we are waiting until the last week to see what happens.

Our record against Wigan is OK at Ewood, it's the games at their place that we don't usually turn up for and crumble. If we can't be confident of beating them at home with our home record and their recent results we might as well give up. I'm most worried about the Bristol City one because we've found wins at Ashton Gate hard to come by and they've had a good run against us recently, but I saw yesterday that they are winless in 8 at home. Again we have to be going there for a win but I'd probably take a draw (we have to have one eventually). Watford away is looming and that will of course be tough, so it would be nice to have a good chunk of points on them going into that one. Rotherham ought to be a different animal to years gone by with a different manager who after a brief honeymoon seems to be struggling. Fundamentally they aren't a good side although they will be battling but we should be disappointed with anything less than 3 points.

And wages? After all, we're supposed to believe we made Lenihan a top earner offer here which they subsequently blew out of the water. He won't be top earner there I wouldn't think so care to calculate how much they are shelling out a year each year on wages. As clubs know all too well having a few thousand extra bums on seats every other week for 25 days a year doesn't pay that much in the scheme of running a football club.

3 questions 1) Why is it that their crowds are so much higher than ours? They weren't before 2) How much per year do you think they make from those extra fans? Enough to spend millions and millions on new signings every window? 3) How much of that extra money is already eaten up by a higher wage bill and bigger spending over the last few years? As I've referenced many times before, there's no evidence Rovers are doing anything to combat FFP - one look in the club shop proves that - which suggests to me it either isn't an issue or is a convenient excuse to hide behind

All I've heard so far are reasons why we can't do things and will struggle. No prizes for excuses and hard luck stories in this game. Tomasson will rightly expect backing in January. If not now then when? Meanwhile at Middlesbrough no worries about FFP they just want promotion and will back their manager to get it.

A pleasing display. Another clean sheet to follow on from Cardiff which was important after conceding a lot against dingles, PNE, Forest. We won't win many admirers or plaudits for it but we certainly know how to get the job done in games when we get our noses in front. Compare to the days gone by where if we held on it seemed more down to luck than anything and often we would let precious points or wins slip by in games. Defensively very disciplined although again some of their most dangerous moments came from us playing ourselves into trouble by going backwards. Happy with the draw in the next round as we have to be confident of progressing at home.