JHRover

I'd rather we guarantee Championship survival and have an outside chance of promotion - which will both happen with Diaz at our disposal - than be destined for a season of struggle and potentially relegation without him. That might sound like an overreaction but it doesn't take much to slide down this division and selling your only goalscorer a few days before the window shuts isn't going to end well. Championship status is worth more than the fee we get for him. PL status is definitely worth more.

Time and time again people think the money will be reinvested and that we will come out of this better off than before. It just doesn't happen here - another reason we will never 'do a Brentford'. When Brentford were forced to sell Ollie Watkins to Villa they landed £30 million for him, because he was under long term contract, and immediately reinvested a large portion of that on Ivan Toney, along with a few others. We know from experience that won't happen here. Even if by some miracle the owners allow some of the money back into the pot, it will be limited to a couple of million and our wage structure will prevent that being put to much use. Meanwhile the vast majority of the cash does nothing to benefit the team or club. Just like the Armstrong, Rhodes and Gestede money didn't.

The vast majority of the debt is to the owners. It is interest free with no date for repayment. It will only ever be paid back if they decide they want to try and claim it, which isn't going to happen. It has absolutely no bearing on our ability to sign players right now. Low turnover - admittedly a big problem - but one which the Club and owners have done next to nothing to address for going on 10 years. The reciept of £15 million from AA and soon to be £15 million for BBD in the space of 12 months comfortably outweighs any hindrance we have from lower income and turnover than rivals. I didn't say it was easy to identify these players. But the club is employing 'experts' on huge salaries to run this. So the self-pity its ever so hard line I don't buy. We can offer much more or at least should be able to offer much more than dross like Blackpool, Luton, PNE, Wigan, Millwall and the like yet it appears not. The alternative to not getting the 'right' player is not to sign nobody at all. I see you are a 'jam tomorrow' member - so now we can't judge the summer window because it is too early for the new super structure to be measured on? Carry on at this rate JDT will walk - he's obviously getting fed up - and then we can start from scratch again next summer and it will be too early then to form opinions. Speaking of half baked conspiracies - what would it take for you to believe the simple yet seemingly unpalatable possibility that our problems are simply a result of disinterested owners who have turned the money taps down to such a trickle we can barely operate at this level? Instead it seems preferable to believe in every other possibility going - club reputation, FFP, turnover, debt, too early for Broughton, poor us

Can you elaborate on this point, and explain to me how with a scaled back wage bill, squad consisting predominantly of kids and academy players, with a recent major sale of a prized asset and it seems likely another one to follow, that our 'specific financial state' and 'current reputation' means we are incapable of signing any players to fill massive gaps in the squad? Anyone else in the Championship finding it this hard? Current reputation - we've just assembled what appears to be a professional and thought out structure led by an ambitious head coach. We were in an automatic promotion race until March and narrowly missed the play offs. Not aware of any other Championship clubs with a net profit on trading in the last 12 months of over £10 million and likely to hit £25 million if BBD is sold whilst ALSO having billionaire owners in place.

Age old transfer strategy. Do very little until the last day or two hoping that the PL boys agree to send a few loans here at low cost to Rovers or potential permanent signings/selling clubs drop their demands at the last minute and we can land a bargain. Sounds clever but it isn't.

Surprising. Could be good for us, could be bad. Doubt a new manager will be in place in time so it might be a caretaker job which could go either way.

Vague as ever. You'll be satisfied and arguing all is well if we only sign 1-2. How do you define 'quality'? No matter who comes in you will be on here saying they are good additions and that nobody can question or criticise them until they have had a run in the team.

But to say he was never going to sign a new deal isn't right and suggests the club could have done nothing to avoid this situation. They could- if they had dealt with contracts in the lead up to summer 2021 whilst other clubs were doing such things. As with Rothwell a deal was there to be done and the club did nothing but rely on 1 year options and time remaining on existing deals. As for this summer zero ambition has been shown to improve or better on last season. Despite managing to land what looks like a good manager he hasn't been supported up to this point and we are now in danger of momentum being lost and of him becoming disillusioned. The warning signs are there.

Never? How about summer 2021 or before?

If ever there was an opportunity to persuade BBD to sign up to new terms or hang around for the season our winning start was just that - momentum, positivity, new manager. Sadly the failure of the Club to back up the momentum and positivity with strengthening the squad in any way shape or form and allowing the situation to drift without even managing to add a single player to the ranks shows just what the intentions really are - the PL is not the ambition - if we had 'gone for it' over the last few weeks with 3-4 decent signings then that might have suggested we were serious about trying to maintain our form. What we have done shows we are not.

So its come from Waggott then. As predicted. He is paid by Venkys to protect them and shield them. We've signed 2 players and a loan for RELATIVE peanuts yes. Liverpool will be delighted that we are playing Morton every week and aiding his devlopment - they are not going to be charging us a lot to do this for them provided we keep on playing him. The other two have been signed from relatively impoverished League One clubs who need to make cutbacks following relegation. Nothing wrong with that sort of policy if they are good enough but lets not make out these are big complex expensive deals, they are straight forward things that happen when a club gets relegated, needs to raise cash and a player wants to stay in the higher division. So despite Venkys being desperate to invest and prevented from doing so only by those nasty FFP rules we are not going to be voting against the proposals and I don't expect we've ever done anything to try and have the rules removed at the League AGM either. The rules have been in place for 8 years and during that time other than short term 'embargoes' only 4 clubs have suffered a points deduction for breaking the rules and many have beaten the system and got promoted. Some of the biggest offenders have got away with it - QPR, Leicester, Bournemouth - so if they can't even get to grips with that they won't be expelling anyone. It would make a mockery of their competition.

Other than what you have read in the papers you have no basis for those figures. The £10 million figure is one that wasn't mentioned anywhere until it appeared on this forum a week or so ago and in the time since has seemingly become fact as to what our budget is. The £3 million outlay we have supposedly made this summer appears to be based on what Barry Fry (one of the last blokes in the world I would rely on) said to people at Peterborough's end. He's hardly going to say they've accepted a low fee for one of their most popular players when they are aiming for promotion is he? The 'problem' with wages is simply that Venkys and their chauffeur have decided this is the area to target to achieve their desired cutbacks. So be it, but we won't be getting much decent business done if they stick to it. Pretending it is forced by FFP is just making excuses for them, IMO. Any 'new rules' aren't yet in place and if they do come in will be voted on by League member clubs. So if we don't like it I assume we will be voting against it...doubt we will hear much on that front.

National media, if they can be bothered to report on us, pick their figures from local media. Local media these days consist of Rich Sharpe and Elliott Jackson who I don't think can run anything without first someone at Rovers giving them the info.

That's short sighted. Our opportunity to address weaknesses in the squad lasts for less than a week. Then the opportunity is gone until at least January (but we know from history that other than loans we will do very little in January so it will be next summer before anything major can be done).

What's your source then? What good old Steve and Barry Fry (that bastion of honesty) have had to say?

So any news on Gregg's good budget regardless of BBD? Or are we all now supposed to fall for the one that we can't get players unless we sell BBD and get some of the money to spend?

BBD will follow the Venky textbook. They will delay, prevaricate and hang on until the 11th hour. Partly because they are trying to drive a hard bargain, partly because they are just inept and will only deal with business when it suits them. The fans, and even those on the ground at Brockhall, will be tempted to accept a sale on the basis this is suddenly going to release substantial funds to enable us to bring in these much needed additions that we have been starved of. There will also be a dollop of we can't keep a player who wants out, we can't keep him given his contract situation blah blah blah. Only the sale will come in the last few days of the window, making time extremely limited. Then they move on to phase 2 of the performance which is to try and convince everyone that poor old Rovers have been the victims of an injustice, how we are powerless to do anything about this, about how we can't keep a player who doesn't want to be here, about how the owners were determined to keep him but once he made it known he wanted to go that was that. Most importantly they will try to persuade us that good new players were lined up, feasible, ready to go but sadly due to various ingredients out of our control we couldn't get the business done before the deadline. Probably a few red herrings thrown in like 'links' to foreign players who would never get a work permit so a waste of time. The sum total is this - Brereton leaves, £15 million finds its way into the coffers, our small outlay of £1 million or so this summer comfortably covered, the wage bill substantially reduced again, no incomings other than a couple more loans and the circus rolls on, all whilst convincing swathes of the support base that nothing more could be done. When you are run by con men you get conned.

Well it's either that or we just aren't doing any business. Based on the last 5 years I'll guess its the second and we are struggling to get anything done with a dysfunctional club sticking to a wage structure that prevents us competing for decent players.

I quite enjoyed it tonight. I expected the worst with the team we were going with, our obvious lack of depth, probably scarred from years past where the League Cup hasn't been a happy place for us. I thought the team played some really good stuff at times and outclassed Bradford pretty much from start to finish. My only criticism would be failing to get the third and finish the game off and I was worried we would pay for that with them converting a late free kick or corner. Fortunately not. Good to progress and good to see the younger lads getting the job done. Thought Morton's quality was clear even at CB which sums up where we are at as a club when we can't even find our own CB from our U23s to play so have to chuck in a midfielder on loan to play there. Get it sorted and quick.

Due to negligence on recruitment and contracts we seem to always reach this stage in the League Cup. What should be an opportunity for us to progress in the competition against a 4th division side is now seen as an unwanted distraction and a risk owing to our threadbare squad. I will be going over expecting us to struggle as we field a team of kids. Maybe one day we will be able to actually go for it in the cup, but think we need rid of these diabolical owners and friends for that to happen. Until then we will face the same situation every August - not enough players as we've let a load go and haven't sorted our recruitment out. And before anyone says 'that's just the way it is in the Championship' - no it isn't - a glance at the other sides tonight will show that.

Won't, not can't

We aren't paying Lucas Joao's wages. End of story.

And at what point will you judge the window to have been a poor one? Because I know full well that when we fall short of making the number of signings required or of the calibre required, or when we fall short of this '£10 million' budget you're now repeating as though it is fact, you'll be on saying that we shouldn't judge after 1 window, about how this is a multi-year process, about how we couldn't spend money because of x,y,z, about how we haven't had enough time, or how the Diaz situation is causing problems, and so on and so forth. You'll just move the goalposts again.

Allegedly. Please remove.

That's the problem. I don't. Some money spent yes but there aren't many clubs in the world of professional football that don't at least spend something. It is quite obvious the budget is unsuitable for the numbers and standard we need.