JHRover

Sunderland offer to play Brighton a larger portion of his weekly wages to play regularly in the Championship. We aren't offering as much or are dilly dallying hoping that Brighton reduce their wage demands at the 11th hour out of desperation. I think it is as simple as that and whilst the people running Rovers think it is clever or impressive as it saves a few quid it leaves us in a mess in the last few days of the window,

The good thing about 'projects' is that they postpone any analysis of performance or results. Like so many other things it can be dressed up as a multi-year process, the end of which never arrives. A shite transfer window, or poor results, can just be brushed off with "oh well, this is a long term job so don't expect more at this early stage" As above it keeps the gravy train going and kicks the can down the road to a later date. Very convenient.

I'll be filing that in the same folder as his girlfriend won't move to Blackburn or he wants to go to Sunderland because they have a regular ferry service to Holland so he can pop back when he wants.

We are an established Championship club, that narrowly missed the playoffs last season. Sunderland are fresh out of a 4 year spell in League One. Added to that Van Hecke was here last season, loved it, loved by the fans and popular with the players. Add to that we have needed a new CB for months and that need has become chronic in the last 2 weeks with injuries to Wharton and Carter. If he goes to Sunderland it is because they are paying more. Nothing more to it than that. Cheers Venkys

At the end of the day Broughton will have secured the job here on what he can deliver for the owners, or perhaps more importantly, their friend in the shadows. He will not have got the job here on the basis he is going to go out into the transfer market, spend £10 million, increase the wage bill and bring in a load of ready made proven players. He will have got the job here on the basis he is going to smooth the 'pathways' for the academy players into the first team, bring in a head coach more willing than Mowbray to play the game and hand over responsibility for spending money to others, cut costs and wages and increase value in low cost investments. Everything that has happened at this club since 2020 points towards a reduction in costs and investment, so expecting millions to be spent in the next 10 days is foolish, imo. Waggott got the job not because he was going to grow or improve the club or deliver a long term strategy. He got the job because they needed a figurehead/fall guy and because he promised to save them money. Broughton got the job because he convinced them that he would deliver more for their money on players and get more academy products through the system. The club suffers through all of this.

It COULD work. But for it to do so you have to retain those players who go on to develop. You have to be very, very good at what you do and be willing to pay the going rate once those players make the grade. And even then you have to top the squad up with external quality, not just a couple of youngsters on loan every year. Instead, as we've seen this summer, what actually happens is we put the time and effort into developing them and then they head off to places like Middlesbrough instead. We seem to expect academy developed players to stay here forever out of blind loyalty and get away with paying them bottom end wages. So it is a never ending saga. This summer for example we look likely to replace Darragh Lenihan, club captain and proven Championship quality, either with a loan from Liverpool, nobody, or Ash Phillips who is 17 and has never played 1st team football before. In no universe is that progress, development, a plan or sensible.

If Liverpool won't release him the deal isn't done.

The obsession there seems to be with putting value into individual players by way of giving them game time will derail us, no doubt about that. I'm increasingly concerned that there is more interest in putting value into Phillips, Vale, Dolan and co. than there is strengthening the squad and bringing in players who might knock them down the pecking order.

So their loyalty comes before their wish to get promoted then. So they don't really want to get promoted because if they did they would stop at nothing to do it. Including removing a manager who was delivering relegation form and stinking the club out from February onwards.

Course it was. Yet we never spend it. Strange that.

Maybe true. And brings £0 financial return to the club. Which begs the question why we keep on doing it rather than investing in players on permanent deals that will deliver us a financial return

And yet despite being in the top 2 in January they spent a couple of hundred grand and let Mowbray take us on another death spiral before stinking the place out with his behaviour in the last 10 games. Could have fooled me.

So we have to miss out on quality players, gamble the season away and 'guarantee' a 17 year old first team football to try to persuade him to stay? Get rid if that's the case.

Because they've made him a proper competitive Championship standard offer and we haven't?

Hold on a minute. The original point was that another club could offer a CB an immediate place in the team. So no we can't factor Wharton in, nor can we factor in Carter, or Barnes, because they aren't available to play. The very same reason another club might want a player we are after - they get injuries which escalate the need and urgency. It would be lunacy to persist with the current situation. Absolute lunacy. We have a young kid who has never played first team football before and has a lot to learn, and a class player but one with an appalling injury record in the latter days of his career. To try and get through the next few weeks, let alone months, with these options is nothing other than negligence. We have an immediate, urgent need for defensive reinforcements. Any prospective signing would know they are immediately in the team if they sign. I'm not aware of any other club with only 2 CBs to call upon.

But Wharton isn't fit now, and we've at least 3-4 games to go before he might be, so pointless discussing that. If he's not as good as Phillips then we are looking in the wrong place. And as I said, we know Ayala is going to be getting injured soon, so then there's no choice in the matter.

In what circumstances would a new signing not walk straight into our first team? We've only 2 CBs available, one of which is a 17 year old from the academy and the other is going to get injured very soon. If we can't offer a potential player first team football nobody can.

Nobody guarantees appearances at this level or any other. Just like PNE were not guaranteeing Patrick Bauer a place in their XI every week. If a player goes to Sunderland or elsewhere rather than here it is either because they are paying more, or because they have been more persuasive, or because the loaning club feel it is better for the player to go there.

I see the 'promotion bonus' thing is still getting a mention. Ludicrous, IMO, to suggest that one of the owners suddenly decided mid-season to offer massive new bonuses to the squad to get us promoted. Even more ludicrous is thinking that this would be permitted or that such an agreement could be arranged without entering into new contracts with the entire squad - bonus provisions need to be set out in players contracts. In this day and age you can't just chuck a load of money on the table and divvy it up between the team. These things have to be covered with contracts, be watertight and above board. The contract has to be sent to the League. There may well have been a substantial bonus pot in the event of promotion, but this will have been what the players all agreed to when they signed their contracts, not some special reward one the of the Venkys suddenly decided to do in January.

I don't think it is difficult to work out what has happened on budgets. Venkys have always moved up and down with their backing and investments, probably depending on how 'up for it' they are or how persuasive the manager/others are. There was a massive cutback period from 2015-17 following a reasonably healthy spell under Bowyer. Those cutbacks decimated the squad and saw us plummet out of the Championship. Then Mowbray came along and went to India in his first summer and got the backing and investment. After 3 years that changed. Maybe due to Covid, maybe due to cutbacks, maybe due to FFP, maybe due to Mowbray failing to deliver what they expected, either way cutbacks came again and have continued up to this summer - very little if any outlay on transfer fees, a few big sales and the money goes into runnings costs, slashing of the wage bill. Thankfully due to the productive academy and more sensible recruitment we've so far managed to avoid the fate of the 2015-17 era by remaining competitive in the Championship. It also seems there is a bit more sense somewhere along the line as to what we need in terms of structure and backroom staff with Broughton and JDT rather than Coyle and Cheston. But fundamentally the key points are that Venkys remain in control, that we are in another lull in their financial input, that there have been no India visits which means no extra cash from Mrs Desai. I'm afraid those thinking that these owners are going to hand Broughton and co. a £10 million warchest after what has happened to date are at the extreme end of the optimism scale. There clearly is some money, but this is limited to specific wage levels and strict criteria.

Bloody hell, I'm sure the Szmodics fee rises by £500k a day! I'd be very surprised if we have paid over £1 million for him at this juncture. Of course it ''might" get higher in years to come if certain things happen. We just don't know on that, just like we don't know on what the true fee is. Brittain came from Barnsley who aren't in the Championship. A good signing on the evidence so far yes but still one from the model - young, developing, mainly experienced in the lower levels.

He's working for Venkys and the shadow man.

Actually reinvesting the proceeds from sales rather than it disappearing towards 'FFP compliance'. What a novel idea.

Actually it's going almost exactly as I predicted it would. I said we would do similar to recent windows which is to sign a few younger end or from League One for a few hundred grand each like with Markandy, Davenport, Pickering and Edun. Looks like we've continued that with Brittain and Szmodics. Also continuing to rely heavily on loans which makes a mockery of the building claim. All this goes hand in hand with continued talk of good budgets, and rumours of big names being targeted, but at the end of the day little to no evidence to back that up with results. This summer it is the lad who went to Sheff Utd and Styles/Van Hecke. Previous years it was Assombalonga, Kipre and co.

Will be delighted with a point here but can't see it. This lot are a pain particularly at Bramall Lane where they have had a very good record over the last 12 months. I'm still not over the defeat there last season or even the one before that when we had them on the rack before Smallwood got sent off and we collapsed. I'm very unhappy at the failure to bring in reinforcements especially in defence following Wharton's injury last week. It leads me to question how seriously the 'powers that be' are taking things when they seem content to risk derailing momentum and a good start through a failure to strengthen.