And to make matters worse there is a major item on the agenda that wavering fans might want to see the answer to before they commit to such a substantial outlay - this being the managerial situation. Appoint a bold, ambitious, exciting manager before the end of the month and sales could be boosted. Do nothing or make yet another ridiculous appointment and many will just not bother. Imagine another dismal Venky appontment followed by a £30 price hike in June - who in their right minds is going to renew or sign up then?

Personally I expect bringing in Ainsworth, even if we wanted him, would be extremely unlikely under our regime. First off we would need to tap him up and see if he wanted to come and have some informal discussions with him and see if it was a goer. Only then would it be worth a formal approach to Wycombe and with it agreement to pay compensation at whatever figure they have provision for. We are the club that keeps coaching staff on rather than pay them off because it is cheaper to do so. So coughing up the best part of £1 million to lure a manager away from another club, along with probably his coaching staff, and then offering him a package significantly better than the one he is on, I think is alien to Waggott and the cheapskate regime we have. I would also be surprised if Ainsworth has formally applied for the job or made overtures towards Rovers at this point given his commitment to Wycombe and their play-off involvement. It would be extremely unprofessional if he had done so. Is this important? Probably, because it sounds like our managerial 'search' is one where we sit back, wait and see who applies and then try to work out the 'best' option from that list. This probably rules out most, if not all, of those options currently in work.

Sunderland a decent away day but then again we rarely take many to Middlesbrough which is similar. If Wycombe had come up every man and his dog would want to go as it would have been a new ground for most following Rovers. Waggott will also be hoping Leeds come down then he can have the return of the annual hand Ewood Park over to the away club routine.

As I say I will believe it when I see it but these sort of steps would fly in the face and contrast with everything they have done to date during their 'stewardship' of the Club. I have no problem with the head coach / sporting director model. In fact I have come to the conclusion that this is necessary and probably the only way things will work out here with owners who refuse to come to the UK and who operate in such a bizarre way. People will say they have learned lessons and will now do things differently. I hope so. But it is worth remembering that under Mowbray very recently we still had the old fashioned structure with him basically running everything at the club from the top down and even, at least for some time, was more powerful than the CEO. So it will be quite a drastic turnaround to simply appoint a head coach. To me the owners have shown no desire nor interest in putting in place a sensible structure that will enable the club to progress without its fortunes being tied directly to the presence of a particular manager. It was the same under Bowyer - left to do it all himself - did a reasonable job but when the time came for a change it was a huge upheaval. We don't tend to approach or bring in anyone who is employed elsewhere. My interpretation of things is that one of the middle man - Pasha, Waggott or both - have concluded the head coach structure is the way to go here. I agree with that. But actually delivering such a structure - getting the right people into the right positions at the right times - is easier said than done especially when your focus is on doing things as cheaply or as easily as possible. The way to do it of course is to headhunt a sporting director with experience of working at a similar club, bring him in and delegate footballing decisions to him. But this process should already be at its conclusion - it is already becoming too late for such an individual to contribute to key areas such as appointing the next first team manager and recruiting half a new team this summer. You refer to the 'recruitment department' but these people are analysts and scouts not people who decide who we are signing. There has to be an individual - manager or sporting director - who goes through that information and takes responsibility for getting deals done and how those perform. If a head coach comes in before the end of the month, which I think is looking unlikely, then that bloke is going to need to know exactly what he has to work with and will need to crack on with getting signings lined up. What we are seemingly planning on doing is then dropping an as yet unidentified sporting director into the mix, who might have completely different ideas on things half way through the summer. Just seems a backward way of doing it. We've seen attempts at this before - Coyle was manager, we than randomly appointed a Director of Football (Paul Senior) mid way through the season who talked the talk but clearly wasn't qualified for the role, and then after one window and a few months he left and wasn't replaced. So whatever was going on there clearly wasn't planned, thought out or stuck to in any way. Mowbray just got on a plane to India, got his new contract and was able to run the club himself for 5 years. It is going to need much more coherency this time around, yet the people responsible for that are the same.

Well time is ticking by - about 3 weeks now until the players report back to Brockhall for pre-season training and really the new man and his staff need time to get in, get preparing pre-season and get to work on recruitment. A lot to do in not a lot of time. I have to say I am baffled by this sporting director but after the head coach is appointed 'plan'. Lets suppose we appoint someone on the basis they are going to be head coach and not manager, and therefore will have to relinquish some power to the sporting director on player recruitment and coaching staff. What happens in the interval between head coach and sporting directors arriving? Who is responsible for identifying and signing players? Is a head coach really going to tolerate being brought in and then having a sporting director imposed on them where there may be a clash of ideas, personalities? The more time that passes the more concerned I am that this is merely going to be a powerless 'head coach' brought in to work within the existing system - which means alongside Lowe, Benson and Johnson and whatever people we have dealing with things behind the scenes. I had hoped for a clean sweep and fresh start on coaching after 5 years of the same names and faces. It seems the club wishes to prioritise saving money on a couple of pay-offs or prioritises keeping nice lads in jobs than it does bringing in the best staff possible. Of course I'll wait until a final announcement on that front but the omens aren't good. I've spoken to a lot of people against Carvalhal because he's had a lot of jobs in his career. For me we need to be looking for someone who is going to give us the best chance right away, who might give us a couple of decent shots at it and then we can re-assess in 2 years time. Then either a change and target someone else or another try if we've gone near. There seems to be a lot of people mistaking stability with needing to have the same manager for at least 3 years and that we should appoint someone based on how long they are likely to last. We don't need this. We should be able to avoid the boom and bust model without needing to keep the same manager in place for years and years.

Apparently Accy are selling tickets for their game against us. No mention of such things from Rovers

Yep. Good old Nicko has gone with his 5-6 name shortlist which kept people dangling for a couple of weeks. The process is still ongoing so time to 'expand' that which should get another couple of weeks of fans hanging on his every word and buying the Sun to find out who is on the list.

Well the week ends today. So is that this week finishing today, or this week coming which ends on 27th May? Might not be a massive difference but if the latter and we aren't even speaking to people until the last few days in May we are going to have to work quickly to conclude that process, settle on a preferred option, get approval from India and get them in the building and signed up to a deal, plus hopefully their coaching staff, by mid June which is when players will start returning to Brockhall. If it is the latter I have an issue that it has taken over 2 weeks since the Birmingham game to even speak to potential new managers.

Looking at the odds and it seems there has been barely any change to the names in the top 10 'favourites' or their order for about a week now since Farke dropped down the list and Carvalhal found his way to the top of it. Usually you might expect a new name or two to drop in the odds or someone to rule themselves in or out. Suggests to me either that very little is happening or if it is it is being kept under very close wraps.

How do you get to 'already have 3 vacancies'? Mowbray gone so need a manager/head coach Sounds like Venus going yet in typical Rovers fashion we don't yet know for sure. So there's 2. I'm on about coaching staff so we've still got Lowe, Benson and Johnson in place. I hope I am wrong and I hope you are right that we are going to be interviewing Farke and Carvalhal. But I suspect once these people realise what clowns we have running this club they will run a mile. Shame because I think both could be good for this club and both would want the job with the right structure. But being told there's no money and scope only to bring in an assistant whilst keeping the rest of the gang on won't go down well I don't think. Relatively big hitters like Carvalhal and Farke might as well just wait for a vacancy elsewhere where they will be allowed to bring in their own staff.

Probably as good as the people fulfilling the role right now (whoever they are). You don't need to be a CEO to work out that you appoint down the order of seniority. You don't appoint lower staff and then bring in a boss who might not want them. You appoint the boss and hand him the power to appoint those he is going to be directing. Pretty basic stuff really.

Micky mouse appointment it is then. Let me get this right in my head. Someone, somewhere has decided we are adopting the sporting director / head coach model. We are seemingly looking for both at the same time with a view to them then working together, at least for the next couple of years. Yet the expectation is that we will appoint the head coach first, with the sporting director to follow later. The expectation is also that the 'majority' of the existing staff will stay on (no surprises there) yet we haven't yet spoken to candidates for sporting director or head coach, neither of whom might want the existing staff. What is the aim here? To turn the established recruitment process completely on its head? The way it should be done is a) Appoint Sporting Director b) Work with Sporting Director to appoint Head Coach c) Sporting Director and Head Coach decide who is going to be on the coaching staff.

I didn't call theirs a good deal. They are expensive just as we are. Just pointing out that at least for their relatively high prices they get more bang for their buck so to speak in that they have facilities that are looked after, don't have to slash costs under the guise of FFP every few years etc, can bring in a good manager when things aren't going too well. And yes, Wilder is a top manager for this level.

So Middlesbrough finished above us, spent more than us, have a top manager who outperformed Mowbray after taking over when they were going nowhere in November.

Yes that's right. The prices I have put up are the cheapest available at each club including their renewals/early birds. So whilst our standard non renewal price is £429 most of those other figures will be higher for other clubs new customers.

Any decent sought after manager will demand or expect to bring with him trusted staff. Be that Mourinho, Carvalhal, Lambert, Hughes take your pick - all of them will at the very least bring a trusted sidekick and most will want to assemble their own teams who they know, trust and who are up to their way of thinking/working. It is clear that things have gone stale here over the last couple of years under Mowbray. Part of that will be down to the coaching staff. So I can only imagine how underwhelming it will be to the players to be turning up at pre-season only to see the same faces on the training ground repeating the same routine as years past. This isn't hatred or personal dislike of these individuals. Just an acceptance that there are cycles in football that come and go and at times change is needed. Fergie recognised this which is why he worked his way through all sorts of assistants and coaches to keep things fresh and up to date. If you are going to recruit on the basis you are determined to keep the existing staff in jobs then your managerial search is going to fail. No decent manager will have staff imposed on him No ambitious club would baulk at making changes to the coaching staff No serious club would keep staff in place because they are nice people or work hard. If a manager comes along who is a strong option and then he of his own accord prefers to keep one or more of the staff then that's fine - his decision and he will be judged on his results. I remember when Paul Lambert left and we had the shambolic recruitment process of 2016. It was mentioned numerous times that the club was looking for a manager to work with Irvine, Kelly and the other bloke whose name i forget. We had Warnock lined up who was set to bring in Jepson and Blackwell. Then Coyle sneaked in and got the job and initially they claimed he was working with Irvine. Then over the course of the summer Irvine and Kelly left to go elsewhere conveniently creating spaces for Coyle to bring in Stewart and the other two mates, so in the end he got what he wanted only on a gradual process.

Only at a club as comical as Rovers could you narrowly miss the play-offs, change manager, have decent people interested in coming to work here and then squander the opportunity to get one by insisting that the new manager has to work with the likes of Lowe and Benson.

Absolutely. And if we look at those more expensive than us you could say only Middlesbrough are comparable when it comes to stadium, empty seats and economics. Difference is that they have a 50 mile radius to share with Hartlepool whilst we have 17 other League clubs in that area almost all offering cheaper tickets. Norwich a relatively affluent area with no billionaire owners and know they will get 20,000 turning up come what may expecting a promotion push Watford expecting to be up there challenging Luton having the best season in living memory and a ground that can only accommodate about 8000 home fans. Its absolutely ridiculous yet I could accept it if the product or effort was there that you might not get elsewhere. If you got solid investment or a top manager like Middlesbrough have, or a nice stadium and facilities Instead it is just excuse after excuse.

About time for an update on season tickets. We now know most of the teams who will be in the Championship next season or are in with a chance of being. So lets look at their cheapest adult season ticket prices, in descending order Norwich - £534 Middlesbrough - £450 Luton - £430 Watford - £402 Rovers - £399 Nottingham Forest - £385 - could be promoted Rotherham - £380 Bristol City - £365 Sheff Utd - £357 Millwall - £350 P'boro - £349 - since relegated Coventry - £345 Stoke - £344 Wigan - £329 West Brom - £329 Swansea - £322 Blackpool - £309 Reading - £299 Huddersfield - £299 - could be promoted Barnsley - £285 - since relegated Preston - £280 Cardiff - £249 Birmingham - £225 QPR, Hull and Derby still to announce prices. Derby are in the midst of a takeover, Hull have a strange membership system and QPR are fitting rail seating at Loftus Road which will impact their ticketing policy. So as it stands we are the 5th highest starting price in the Championship. Two of those higher have just come down from the PL. Luton have extreme limits on their tickets which means they can charge more. Pay top end I expect to see a top end managerial appointment and staff. Cheap and cheerful just won't cut it in this economic climate at these prices.

Sharpe may well be correct there haven't been interviews. There doesn't even need to be interviews. If the club knows who it wants and has already had discussions with him then no point wasting time talking to others. Plus I very much doubt he knows whether talks have been taking place remotely.

I think they are just doing the usual pitch replacement - not the all singing all dancing job Waggott alluded to last year I've heard that we aren't having any home friendlies this year, so I would expect another couple of midweek friendlies away from home to take the total to 6 (or at least 5 and then use the Carabao Cup effectively as a pre-season game).

Well this was posted today. So assuming it was filmed today it suggests we weren't having manager interviews at the academy.

Good news on Carrick.

No surprises some would rather play it steady and keep things close to home. If you are a European manager particularly Spanish, Portuguese or Italian you change jobs with regularity. That's just how it goes. Doesn't make you good, bad or indifferent. I'd welcome a manager that doesn't need to be here and isn't grateful to just collect his cheque and plod on. Someone with clout will want to get to the PL and will go elsewhere if that isn't going to happen. I couldn't stand another 5 years going nowhere listening to excuse after excuse under a manager just grateful to be here treading water. Sometimes the foreign route is the way to success. Its not done Huddersfield any harm.

Quite a lot of talk about Carvalhal being on Flamengo's radar. If he is interested in coming here I suspect we will blow it through ineptitude or delay and he'll end up elsewhere.