If its anything to do with FFP then why are they persisting with the claim we can't get Nyambe and Rothwell on new contracts? All a bit pointless if we can't even extend players contracts isnt it? For context this £16 million move is probably not far off what we could command for those out of contract were they on long term deals rather than leaving for nothing.

If this had come out of the blue I might be more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to them on this and work on the basis there is some creative work going on for FFP purposes or whatever. BUT Having witnessed what went on earlier this year with the housing development shenanigans and the secretive way they set about doing that before they were exposed by supporters the default position needs to be concern and alarm. After the 'abandonment' of the last scheme I expected that they would just go away and move on to an alternative plot. I will work on the basis this is the starting point for that.

I can think of an easier and quicker way to 'thwart' Maggott's scheme - sack him I certainly wouldn't interpret a transfer such as this as some bizarre attempt to protect the site from Maggott's grubby hands. At best this is an accounting trick for FFP purposes but I would be amazed if these people were so proactive as to do something like that. Things like this don't happen for no reason. We should be on full alert. Amazing that once again this emerges via supporters doing research rather than any announcement by the Club or Maggott. Let me guess...the Land Registry have acted inappropriately and taken us all by surprise?

The first 6 months of a new Nyambe contract could be covered by knocking Maggott's salary down from £300,000 per year to a mere £200,000. I'm sure the club and Maggott could survive such a cut. I'm pretty sure the owners didn't ring Mowbray and Maggott up in June 2020 just as the pandemic was hitting full swing around the world and insisted that they gave month long extensions to 7 players costing another couple of hundred thousand pounds for nothing. Or like when they hired a private plane to fly the lads down to Cardiff for a dead rubber fixture. Pretty sure that when Mowbray's contract is up there will be a much greater clamour and hysteria around the club about getting it resolved and they'll end up finding the magic money tree to enable him to get fresh terms. And what a strange decision it was to pay money for and sign Kaminski as our new No 1 and put him on a 2 year deal yet sign Pears as backup on a 4 year deal. Where the logic is there I don't know but another decision that will likely cost us fortunes.

I'm still struggling to understand the basic problem here which is that we have billionaire owners and are losing upwards of £15 million a year yet supposedly cannot afford to pay key players more to ensure they are tied to the club. Of course Maggott and Mowbray will attempt to absolve themselves of any culpability by wittering on about wage structures and not being held to ransom, but if we can't afford to pay Nyambe an extra few thousand a week then where the hell is all the money going? It becomes a self-fulfilling problem anyway because important players like Nyambe leave for nothing = no windfall from selling him = have to go out and replace him = have to pay a transfer or signing on fee = have to pay Championship wages on a replacement or at least League One wages on a rookie and hope for the best. On and on the madness goes. I'm so utterly sick of the lot of them. I suspect we are now past the watershed on these deals. We probably had a good chance on all of them had the Club acted appropriately and got them resolved in good time but the disgraceful behaviour of those behind the scenes will have ensured that these players will be counting down the days until they can get out of here. We've heard from Stewart Downing the sort of nonsense these people get up to and mess people about with. Rothwell clearly wanted out in the summer and was forced to stay by us activating an extension. Nyambe has been mucked around and we've made it clear how little we value him based on the figures I've heard. In addition to that the complete lack of ambition of the club, persisting with a failed manager regardless of results and policy of borrowing kids to assemble a squad - certainly doesn't come across as a club any player with ambition would want to be at. I hope when Nyambe turns up at Ewood playing for Preston or similar next season that we don't get any Rovers fans booing or making excuses like we couldn't afford to keep him or FFP nonsense.

Before we stupidly appointed Paul Ince we were linked with options including Allardyce, Dick Advocaat and Michael Laudrup. At the time we were in a position of strength having once again finished in the top half and having a bumper compensation package from Hughes' departure to City. The world was our oyster as a well run, regular top half PL club. Yet for some ridiculous reason we headhunted a bloke who had managed Macclesfield and MK Dons in the 4th division. Ridiculous when you think about it. It would be the equivalent today of Wolves or Leicester going out and appointing Mike Duff from Cheltenham or Derek Adams from Morecambe in the summer. Williams did a good job but that appointment has to go down as one of the most ridiculous in history. Thankfully the penny dropped quickly and he rectified it by getting in the ideal manager in Allardyce.

So you have slammed the training ground project and gone to the trouble of signing a petition about it, yet you are very keen to take Maggott's word as gospel when it comes to contract negotiations? My view is that he is a man who cannot be trusted, working for owners who cannot be trusted, and I would treat everything they say and do with suspicion and doubt. The training ground stunt which they were actively pursuing only a few months ago is the shining example of why they cannot be trusted because a blind man could see that it wasn't in any shape or form in the interests of the club. If they can concoct and bankroll the planning of that scheme despite the harm it would do the club and the opposition to it then they can fib about how hard the club is trying or has tried to tie down players to contracts. As I keep saying - add together all the players out of contract this summer or who wiould be out of contract next summer. How many do you get? My count is 17. Not a single one of those 17 has successfully signed new terms with the club. Not one. When you reach such numbers you have to ask the question - where does responsibility lie - does it lie with all 17 of these players all making unreasonable/unrealistic demands of the club all at once? Or does it lie with the charlatans in India and their cohorts at Ewood? A lack of evidence doesn't mean something isn't true. You have no evidence to support your claims either (other than the word of a liar) and a manager who of course will try to deflect the blame elsewhere.

Did you believe Maggott about the training ground 'project' too?

How do you know this? Do you know the players or their agents? Or are you relying on what Maggott and Mowbray have been saying? Maybe Rothwell will go to Rangers, maybe he won't. Not sure what that has to do with what I am saying. Of course if we can't be bothered getting his contract sorted or have mucked him around then he will look elsewhere.

I am baffled by the ease with which they have managed to get so many people to just accept that the Club is working hard to secure them, has been engaged in lengthy contract negotiations with these players but is just unable to meet their demands. The suggestion being that those demands are excessive or unreasonable. I don't believe this is the case. I'm not sure there are any active negotiations or that these have taken place in recent months. Venky taps are off. The only funds left to play with are those Maggott can squeeze out of the clubs income and that isn't very much. This is why the couple-of-grand a week jobs like JRC and Wharton can get sorted but not the 5-10 grand a week Rothwell and Nyambe ones. This is also why the club was unable to conduct any proper transfer business in the summer, as the only funds to play with in the transfer market were those the club could raise on its own steam (and that didn't extend to the Armstrong cash which went into the Venky black hole) So instead we wait all summer to borrow kids whose parent clubs were more than happy to send here for nothing or next to nothing to get them fit and playing regular football. That's why we waited all summer and got them done despite fitness issues because they were so cheap they were the only options we had.

I'm not sure why 'only' managing Real Madrid to incredible success over 4 years is an issue. Of course there's the unknown as to whether he could replicate that at a different club or one in a country he hasn't worked in before but that will only be answered when someone tries it. At one stage Guardiola had 'only' managed Barcelona. Didn't turn out too badly did it? Conte is an incredible manager and would be able to adapt his tactics to the situation. He is high maintenance as he has every right to be with his CV and won't be made a fool of. I think this might be an issue for United as Conte will expect backing to win trophies immediately and I'm not sure they will provide that which was kind of the reason Mourinho fell out with them because they wouldn't sign the players he wanted. Other than those two there are very few proven world class managers around who are either available or would jump ship to United now.

Ole surely needs to go. But I don't think he will. Not as though there are plenty of good options to come in. The two obvious ones are Zidane and Conte but both carry risks. Other than that there aren't many top class managers on the market.

http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/ Interesting read on the ongoings at Cardiff.

The top 6 is 'wide open' at the moment but that's kind of the whole point in having a play-off system so it keeps the mid-table sides in with a chance of doing something. We've been down this road before. Come March and April it will be worth looking at how close it is.

Just watched that Mowbray interview through and I'm surprised at how forlorn and beaten he looks. Talk about looking and sounding totally fed up. He appears to be a beaten man. He's been similar to this before and bounced back from it but this time he looks worse. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I remember that he has been very well paid for the last 5 years and could walk away to a cushy lifestyle any time he wants if this is too much for him, but no he would prefer to hang on. Mowbray's time was up 18 months ago IMO and it is hard to get past that, but the lowlife that are above him in the chain of command have left him out to dry. He should have been potted and replaced many months ago and the club able to move forward, but instead the cowards have just left us to rot.

As I recall it Bristol City appointed Gary Johnson whilst in League One. He did a good job for a while, got them to the Championship but was then sacked. Later on in his career he returned to Yeovil and performed a miracle in getting them to the Championship but they were relegaed after 1 season. He hasn't been back and has since managed Cheltenham and Torquay in League Two/Conference. The point being that there are many, many examples of League One and Two managers who have done well at small clubs with low expectations but haven't ever moved up and succeeded in the top two divisions. Maybe Ainsworth will one day but surely if he was such a good option then a club bigger than Wycombe would have made a move for him by now? I'm still waiting to hear what sets him aside from say John Coleman, Ryan Lowe, Darrell Clarke, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Nigel Clough, Michael Appleton or Karl Robinson - all of whom have very impressive records at small clubs in the lower leagues but not above. Just because Ainsworth was born in Blackburn? Is that really the sum total of analysis? In the last 10 years or so Hughton has won automatic promotion twice to the Premier League as well as had two play-off campaigns. He also kept Norwich and Brighton in the Premier League. Mick McCarthy had Wolves in the Premier League, Ipswich challenging for the play-offs, managed Ireland and rapidly turned Cardiff around. Even now his record at Cardiff is better than Mowbray's here in the Championship.

Of course he's not concerned by 8 wins in 34. He isn't judged and his future not determined by results so what difference does it make? He gets to carry on, good salary to boot, He's surrounded himself with chums and sychophants who think the sun shines out of his backside. He seems to think he is doing us a favour by gracing us with his genius and that he should be spending his time preparing Real Madrid for El Classico not that he's a run of the mill lower league manager. There isn't ambition here because if there was he would have been sacked last season. His reminder of the owners 'investment' only serves to show everyone what a dysfunctional mess this club is. Because anywhere else in the Football League a £20 million a year investment would see progress, improvement, growth not decay.

Passion and enthusiasm only gets you so far in this game. Plus just by being from the town doesn't automatically mean he would be any more passionate than anyone else about the job. I'd hope there was more going into the search than appointing someone because they are passionate or enthusiastic about it. I'd qualify on that basis. I just find the obsession with him bizarre. We should ignore his Blackburn connections and focus purely on his CV. Close to 10 years at Wycombe Wanderers, 9 spent in Leagues One and Two. Plenty of other options in that category. Not the worst contender and he's done well there but by no means a stand out candidate - there are many lower division managers who have overachieved or done well - Gary Johnson did it with Yeovil - maybe there's a reason why no bigger club has taken him on.

If we're looking at League One managers then I'm not sure why Ainsworth should be ahead of Ryan Lowe. Did a good job at Bury in terrible conditions, got Plymouth out of League Two at the first time of asking and now has them sat top of League One. It seems to me that there is too much heart over head going into the Ainsworth one. If he didn't have a connection to Blackburn he would barely be mentioned. For me if we are serious as a club we need to be going all out for Chris Wilder and Alan Knill whilst available. It is going to be galling watching another Championship club get him in and do well from it whilst we drift along with St Tony. If Wilder not keen or too expensive then I'd be ok with Alex Neil who overachieved for 3 years at Preston and went much closer to the playoffs than Mowbray ever has here.

My view is that the contract situation with Mowbray is just the same as with all the players. That is that Venkys have done nothing about it, given no indication and have left everything to drift. I don't believe Venkys have approved or discussed any contract extensions and that is why so many haven't renewed. The club is unable to afford these deals on its own steam and needs owner approval, which hasn't come. Unlike the players, who will numerous options from elsewhere and won't wait for Rovers to sort it out, Mowbray will not have any better offer and will sit and wait for as long as it takes for Venkys to wake up. I'm pretty confident that if he wants to be here then he will be.

In other news in the Championship West Brom can be beaten even though they have parachute cash We were lucky to play Swansea when we did as they are turning a corner. Same for Forest. Preston don't throw a lead away against Coventry and don't settle for a point against them because they've had a good start to the season.

At a normal club the CEO is in place on merit and is judged by the owners on performance, including results and team performance. Naturally therefore the CEO would keep a close eye on things and ensure that the manager was performing to a particular standard and if targets were being missed or performances not good enough then consideration would be given to making a change, either brought about by the CEO or one instructed by the owners and carried out by the CEO. In circumstances where the players were fed up, disillusioned, not hitting their potential or looking for moves away then the manager would be on borrowed time. In circumstances where large swathes of the fanbase were fed up, disillusioned, attendances plummeting or people considering not renewing then the manager would be on borrowed time. Flip all that on its head at Venky Rovers. Mowbray is bulletproof because the cretins in Pune like him. He has consolidated his position by appointing his chum to the position of CEO who thinks he is god's gift and will never attempt to remove him or be able to. So instead we sit back and watch as our players' heads drop, inevitably look to move elsewhere, attendances collapse and people get completely fed up. But hey, at least Tony gets to carry on. That's the most important thing eh?

Not a chance that we are going to entice Robins, Critchley or Lowe from their existing clubs where they are making good progress and have sensible clubs behind them. Plus we don't pay compensation so that rules out any manager in work.

Its just so typical and predictable isn't it? Hammer Cardiff, move into the top 6, things are looking pretty good all round. 2 weeks later, shambolic defeats to Huddersfield, Blackpool and QPR and shambolic draw against Coventry. Back into mid table (for now), chopping and changing, absences, injuries, mysterious decisions, right back to square one. This could be 2019, 2020, 2021. It is all a blur. Same process, same manager, same outcome.

I can't bring myself to read the transcript of his post match interview. But I have seen the headline. Apparently, he had a game plan tonight, and it was to go and frustrate QPR because 'they are such a good side'. This is a manager who has 4.5 years in sole charge of this club, healthy backing, and until this summer has never been forced to sell anyone, yet he considers QPR to be such a good side that our strategy is supposedly to frustrate them. I didn't see much evidence of that, unless Kaminski wasting time on every goal kick counts, and it didn't work, because we lost. This is also such a great QPR side that was struggling for results themselves and not far off us in the table. What a horrific waste of time and money the last 4 years have been if the manager running it still looks enviously upon the likes of QPR, who have had less time and money than he has had to burn through, and even then can't even grind out a bore draw. Last week it was 'oh well, we're still 9th in the table'. I'm guessing the next rung down the ladder will be 'oh well, we're still in the top half' Look at the side below us on GD - Forest - who 3 weeks ago sacked their manager and were winless bottom of the table. Things can change very quickly at this level and we are setting out on another death spiral. The penny dropped a long time ago for many of us but there are still some people who can't see it yet. It will come.