JHRover

Waggott out

One of the latest in the division for putting them on sale Next season starting earlier than ever before due to World Cup Pricing set up to try to force people to buy before the end of June with 'loyalty' discount And Waggott thinks it is impressive that the rate of sales is higher than usual.

Birmingham still advertising season tickets starting from £225. Ours start from £429 unless you are renewing and doing so in the next few days. Absolutely no justification / excuse for that price difference.

As I've pointed to before after Waggott has referenced this 'investment' - is this voluntary spending to try and make things better, or essential maintenance costs faced by most modern professional football clubs ? - how does this figure compare to rival Championship clubs? It all sounds great until you realise that actually in the scheme of things this is probably just the bare minimum needed to keep things ticking along and probably enhanced by years of corner cutting making problems worse

I'll be very surprised if we spend near to £5 million

I know what Broughton has said to the press. Which specifically of the owners has he spoken to? This might appear to many to be a minor point but my view is that this is very important, because if you want to get things done here it needs to be the owners who have the power to delegate. As I said earlier 'healthy' budget could mean anything. I imagine even with budgets slashed on last year it would still be 'healthy' compared to what Bodo Glimt players were on.

I suspect so but given the backgrounds of JDT and Broughton I expect they will have a lot more patience than Lambert did. What Lambert and the Championship might consider a good budget is probably very different to what Gregg Broughton sees as a good budget coming from Bodo/Glimt.

Lots of talk about the Wilder factor in Lenihan going to Middlesbrough, given he wanted him whilst at Sheff Utd, about how he suits Wilder's ways and how Middlesbrough have a better chance of promotion this season so makes sense for Lenihan. Taking those points in turn, Wilder only turned up at Middlesbrough towards the end of last year when they were stuck in mid-table and we were in the promotion mix. First off the Lenihan contract should have been resolved way, way before Wilder was even considered for Middlesbrough. Secondly given the respective positions of the clubs as recently as last season I find it very difficult to accept this inferiority complex I'm seeing online basically of 'we can't compete with the likes of Middlesbrough'. This is of course what Waggott wants us to believe but the reality is we can compete and there's nothing they should be able to do that we can't. Their greater ticket income a drop in the ocean when you consider what their wage bill must be compared to ours right now.

The key is going to be what budget is available to Broughton and JDT and what the chain of command is to get deals done. I am worried that as there has been no India trip this signals a tight budget as they tend to only cough up serious money following India trips. If Broughton has authority to conclude deals himself we might be in business. If not then little will change.

Again, it isn't so simple. Nobody had offers on the table 2 years ago. The club did nothing on new contracts during the Covid lockdown. This is part of the issue. We were too late addressing things. Of course it is a simple fact the players declined the offers made to them. The issue is what offers were made, when, how were these players treated in negotiations. Very easy for the Club to offer 'improved' terms. But if it is too late, disrespectful or a pathetic raise then that adds another dimension to the simple situation you refer to.

Unfortunately it is a bit more serious than "we move on" and from what I have heard it is more of a complex situation than "greedy players". To ignore and absolve the Club of any responsibility is just not acceptable IMO. I want to see accountability and consequences to such a damaging turn of events. A shrug of the shoulders and "we move on" won't cut it. We have lost 3 key players for nothing. Unacceptable at any club but especially one where executives and fans have spent the last 5 years talking about FFP problems. I am just waiting for the latest 'we can't spend due to FFP' article in the Telegraph. I will flip my lid when it does. £10 million down the toilet in lost player value and at least part of that is a direct result of the way the Club has approached the issue of contracts. The people responsible for this almighty mess need identifying, calling out and at a normal club sacking. They want fans just to shut up and accept it. JDT is another conversation. I am optimistic about him, wish him the best and don't blame him for the mess he's walked into. But I can't just accept this. My complaints on here and in private settings will have zero impact on the team and JDTs management.

I think the other one was that having introduced a Final 5 game package for £99 it would have been cheaper in the end to have bought each one individually: Bristol City - season ticket holders could bring a friend for £10 Derby - £20 Blackpool - £25 Stoke - £25 Bournemouth - £10 tickets in all areas So a saving of nearly £10 to buy individually.

There's a difference between us having cash / spending cash, and Steve Waggott telling us via the Telegraph that we have cash. If he told me Rovers play QPR at home first game of the season I'd go and check the fixture list to make sure. I've seen and heard enough excuses and failures over the last 4 years to hold my horses on talks of good budgets. The warning in there is about the 'wage structure'. This the 'structure' that means we cannot keep our captain from the clutches of Middlesbrough, have lost an assortment of valuable key players for nothing and has seen an exodus of players from the club in the last 12 months. It is also this structure that sees a ridiculous discrepancy between what academy graduates playing every week for us get compared to others who barely play. It really wouldn't surprise me to get the familiar talk in September of 'there was a good budget available but getting those deals done was tricky', 'we'll carry it over to January', players in the building to sign but terms changed at the last minute. All the excuses Waggott comes with in his latest interview - FFP, wage structures, significant increase in costs - all apply and exist at every other football club in the land - don't they? And I'm not aware of any other club at this level that has managed to offload such a large amount from its wage bill whilst raking in substantial transfer fees in the last 12 months either.

Sooner he's gone the better. 6000 less season tickets than PNE and Bolton and 3 key players off for nothing. CEO should take responsibility. This is unacceptable.

That's a fact is it? According to who? Liar Waggott? According to him Lenihan was signing a new deal last year. I wish I was so relaxed to be able to shrug this off as "it is what it is" whilst rivals pillage out squad. I prefer to see a reaction. At the very least heads rolling to ensure we aren't in the same situation next year. This club can't afford what has happened today. Something needs to happen to ensure it doesn't occur again.

And that makes us different to Middlesbrough how?

You over simplify things. Of course you can't force them to sign. But you can act in a way that is more likely to persuade them to. Like making them feel wanted and needed, instigating negotiations in a timely manner and making them healthy offers. I don't think those things have happened here and you only have to look at how Waggott treats paying supporters to obtain a glimpse into the workings of his mind. Activating 12 month extensions was hailed as a masterstroke on here but in actual fact was probably the final nail in the coffin in making those players minds up to get the hell out of here. I can't blame them. If I wasn't emotionally and locally attached to this club I'd do the same. And what money issues do we have that stops us paying these lads similar to Middlesbrough? Did I imagine the slashed wage bill last summer and Armstrong cash?

I'm astonished even by your standards. You have seen what from Brown and Hedges to convince you that they are good enough for a mid-table Championship side? 2-3 cameos in low pressure games at the end of last season? This is a squad game not a 1st XI game so whilst it doesn't look too bad when you list our best XI you and I both know that this doesn't work in the reality of the Championship. Ayala another year older and he only plays half a season at the best of times. Still big question marks over Dack's fitness and durability and BBD will have to be sold whether he is happy here or not. He's hardly going to be persuaded to hang around after watching 3 key players head off elsewhere is he? I see that we are now shifting the narrative - Nyambe doesn't suit JDT's 'style' so its fine he's leaving on a free transfer and Lenihan might have wanted a change of scenery from being our captain and mainstay to go to.......Middlesbrough? I doubt he'll even move house for that one. Unless his wife has decided she wants to live on Teesside and forced him to leave like some folk reckon happened with Rothwell and Reed's partners?

Who said anything about throwing loads of money at it? Just paying our academy grads competitive wages and dealing with the extensions of contracts in a timely and professional manner would be a start. Derby's issues with FFP came because they tried fiddling their accounts and got caught. Not sure we'd need to do that just to pay our lot more. How much off the wage bill in the last 12 months? This is Venky cost cutting. Nothing more, nothing less. Dangerous game in this league.

Not sure I did get it wrong. There was no problem with Derby until Mel Morris suffered health issues and decided he wasn't going to put any more money in. I keep hearing this 'sailing close to the wind' stuff. Middlesbrough, Stoke, Bristol City, all have lost way above and beyond the limits on FFP and none of them have been sanctioned whilst spending more than us. Its a myth, a convenient tool for Waggott and the Venky entourage to spout off about as an excuse for them stopping spending again. In my opinion of course. The only clubs to suffer from it are those run by idiots - Us, Cardiff, Birmingham, Reading. No coincidence that the biggest spenders and those with clued up owners keep on getting away with it.

I think we need closer to 10 signings, and probably 10 if we lose anyone else.

I don't think there is any plan, desire, intention of replacing Nyambe with a cash transfer. It will be, at best, a loan for the season. This will kick the can down the road for another 12 months until we face the same issue next year. In the meantime the 'powers that be' will have their fingers crossed that someone emerges from the academy who is up to the job.

Comparisons to the Brentford model simply don't stack up on 3 counts. 1) The people running Brentford are experts in their field and also in European markets, particularly Denmark and Holland. They have been able to unearth talent from there and the lower leagues with remarkable success more than pretty much any other club. We've had Waggott and Mowbray for the last 5 years. HOPEFULLY that is to start to change with the new structure but think there is more to it than just employing people who have worked in those European leagues before. They need to be good at it, need to be able to get on with it and need to be financially backed to do so. If not it is a waste of our time. 2) Brentford were on top of their contracts. Case in point being leading man Ollie Watkins, who was signed up to a 5 year deal once they realised he was banging goals in the Championship and becoming hot property. This deal secured them a £30 million transfer fee from Aston Villa. Compare to us who have ended up with relative peanuts for Armstrong, Lenihan, Rothwell and Nyambe, not to mention Raya, and will now be forced to sell BBD at a relatively low price too. 3) Brentford reinvested the proceeds of their sales. No sooner was Watkins out the door to Villa that they went out and got Ivan Toney for £5-10 million on a 5 year deal.

I don't know what to make of the 2,000+ season ticket holders last year who haven't yet renewed. I'm one of them. On the one hand I wonder if a lot of them are like me - people who will probably renew but have a habit of leaving these things until the 11th hour and will only be forced into it as the deadline approaches. On the other hand we've already had two deadlines come and go with this botched sales process and these people haven't renewed in advance of either of those to secure their 'loyalty discount' so are they going to be bothered about doing so before the end of the month? Bearing in mind that even with the 'surge' of half season ticket sales we were only at 8,000 or so to have over 25% of those still not renewed is concerning, because if these people are undecided or aren't renewing that is a big old percentage of an already small number.

Why couldn't we have the best of both worlds and go down the Middlesbrough road? Remember it is now going to cost money to adequately replace these big departures. So it could end up causing further damage to our FFP situation than it would if we had just made reasonable offers in a timely manner. We are owned and run by idiots. Middlesbrough and Stoke aren't. That's the difference.