JHRover

Pretty much every club that has had FFP issues has had something to show for it at the end of the day. Bournemouth - got promoted and stayed in the PL Leicester - got promoted and stayed in the PL QPR - got promoted then came back down Sheffield Wed - 2x play off campaigns including narrowly losing in the final Fulham - 2x promotions to the PL and looking like doing it again at a canter Cardiff - 2x promotions to the PL Reading - spent most of last season in the top 6 and also lost the play off final on pens a few years ago Birmingham - probably the most similar to us in being a dysfunctional mess but they have spent reasonably heavily and I don't recall them ever bringing in the sort of money we have through sales Derby - regular play off challengers including losing in 2 finals. So all in all it goes to show that those who have had FFP issues - and remember we've had them twice whereas most of the above haven't - usually the offenders have some sort of success to show for it and their efforts. Some clubs have fallen short - Derby and Reading - showing that there is no guarantee breaking the rules leads to success - but they've a hell of a lot more to show for their offences than we have, where our greatest achievement has been bouncing back out of League One and being at best a mid-table side in the Championship. Again none of this is necessary. The jokers running Rovers would love it if the gullible fans just believed that this is the only way of doing things - that the only way we can exist at this altitude is by way of massive losses, walking a FFP tightrope and that there is no alternative to this and Venkys. Of course that is absolute nonsense, as many rival clubs prove the rules can be adhered to without plummeting, sanctions can be avoided with astute management, training grounds don't need taking out of club ownership, managers who fail to achieve targets can be sacked easily and quickly without the cost causing FFP problems. Too many people in the fanbase can't see the wood for the trees and just accept the words of 'experts' or failures like Waggott without engaging their own brains and thoughts. That is why it is so easy for them to continue to run the club in this way with little to no opposition or hassle. No surprises when the Telegraph immediately and without question trot out the 'club spokesman' line and get a 'finance expert' to tell us what is going on. Who the hell is the 'club spokesman' and has this person got access to the owners? Would be useful to know. Is it Waggott hiding behind anonymity and if so why? Or is it someone else privy to the inner workings?

He's a football finance expert and a FFP expert. He isn't a Blackburn Rovers expert and probably knows very little about what has gone on here.

I think the suspicious thing is how quickly we went from one thing to the other. In February/March all the talk from Maggott and the Club and some people on here was how it was a good idea to amalgamate training sites into one, claims from the club that this was a decision being made to improve facilities, that it would require further owner investment and was being done to usher in a bright future for the football club. By April that grand exciting scheme had been abandoned, by June there was a transfer out of the club's control and by October we are now being told that this was a necessary step due to the pandemic and FFP rules. Strange how those thiings didn't come up in Waggott's appraisal in February. Back then it was all hunky dory and Venkys were tipping extra cash in to build the super duper new training centre. My assessment - this is all smoke and mirrors - the original plan was nothing more than a cash grab dressed up under the guise of improved facilities, they then hit the buffers on that due to immense public opposition and instead have quickly moved on to plan B which is underway with this transfer. I think more will come out in the months to come but unfortunately we will have to rely on supporters going and doing their own research rather than any transparency from the club. I think people interpreting this as a mere accounting stunt to dodge FFP issues are going to be surprised in time to come. Hope I'm wrong because the last thing I want is to lose the crown jewels but I think that is what we are seeing here.

So lets get this right on the timing. February 2021 - a member of the public discovers on the Ribble Valley planning portal that Rovers have had plans drawn up to demolish the STC, build a housing estate on it and combine both sides onto the lower academy site. Once this discovery is made the Waggott, in embarrassing fashion, attempts to sell the project as being a good, positive, forward step for the Club, even recording a face to face interview to extol the positives of this, claiming that the Ribble Valley planning department had taken him by surprise in releasing the plans online before Rovers had announced it themselves. The Club then spends god knows how much instructing surveyors and planners and running a consultation period, setting up a website etc. By 9th April 2021 the club has performed a complete U turn, confirming that the proposals would not be progressed and "will now consider other options". By 11th June 2021 a company has been set up seemingly with the sole purpose of purchasing the STC, and by 24th June 2021 that purchase has been completed and the transfer registered at HMLR. 4 whole months pass by with no mention of anything from the Club until 27th October 2021 when once again a member of the public discovers via the submission of documents online about the transfer earlier in the year. Within a couple of hours the Lancashire Telegraph have managed to obtain something from "a club spokesman" blaming the pandemic and FFP rules - both of which were there many months earlier and during the housing estate efforts. I'm sorry but it is going to take more than the textbook blame FFP or the pandemic to make me believe there isnt more to this than meets the eye.

All this talk about FFP - you'd think the rules were new to us or that we had suddenly had them imposed with no warning. We spent 2014-17 whinging about the rules and suffering because of them. I thought things were supposed to be different - building on a sustainable footing, being sensible, not saddling the club with ridiculous wages. And here we are. Transfer embargo earlier this year, selling the training ground, slashing costs left right and centre, selling our star player and losing what little quality we have on free transfers because we can't or won't sort out new contracts. What exactly has changed in the last 6 years? The club seems to be no further on than it was back then. And I'm still waiting for someone to explain why we have such a hard time of managing FFP yet all these other clubs in the Championship manage it without sanctions, without £20 million losses, without billionaire owners and without selling their training grounds - see Preston, Luton, Barnsley, Millwall and many more.

So in the last 6 months we've had the Armstrong cash (minimum £10 million?), the Raya bonus for promotion, the Brockhall sale cash (£16.6 million) and then there was another substantial share issue in the summer as I recall (maybe this share issue was using the Brockhall cash - probably needs clarifying). All in there a massive pile of cash, greatly exceeding the £20 million covid loss we keep hearing about. On top of that massive wage savings through departures this summer and no new contracts issued. Where is all this headed?

We have low income because of Venkys and the way they run the club. So their 'steps' to overcome this by selling a prime asset are not good enough. New appointments? Who? The commercial bloke who worked at crisis club Hull? Who else? Leaner organisation? That's just a positive spin on making people redundant and cutting costs. They don't want to announce these because there's nothing worth announcing. You've put the most positive outlook on things possible. Given the history of these people I think expecting the back of Mowbray, a decent new manager and healthy transfer kitty next summer is fairyland stuff.

We can't sell any big players if we can't keep them under contract.

So why the secrecy? Why no announcement from the owners, CEO etc. at a fans forum meeting or on twitter to reassure concerns? If it is a mechanism to overcome FFP then how come we slashed costs in the summer, sold Armstrong for £15 million and spent a couple of hundred grand on a full back from Lincoln and have failed to secure any senior players to new deals despite a critical need to do so? A £16.6 million boost to the accounts along with the Armstrong cash would surely put us in a great position to resolve the above? They have created a situation where we have only 9000 fans turning up. You make it sound as though they are innocent powerless bystanders in that. Want more than 9000? Don't run the club like this and let Mowbray and Waggott continue. Appoint a commercial director. Get a kit manufacturer that delivers shirts to sell. They have created these problems. Maybe this is a way to overcome it. So what happens in another couple of years when there are no more assets to sell off and crowds have dwindled further/we are in League One due to a lack of investment?

I didn't say the agents or players were being greedy. None of us know. My belief is that we haven't even offered them new terms. Venky taps are off. Yes I said earlier I had supported such a scheme as a means of avoiding FFP trouble. If FFP is the reason behind this then ok, I expect to see us investing in new players soon. I don't expect that to happen. I cannot overlook the stunt they pulled earlier this year. Fair enough if you can but I don't believe in coincidences such as these.

Can't pay Nyambe what he wants yet can pay Richie Smallwood and Jason Leutwiler to stick around on the bench. It's not clear at all. There are alternatives - maybe the club has chosen not to offer them new deals or the players won't stay because of the manager?

4 months ago this happened. Only comes out because government/local authority documents that the club cannot prevent confirm it. Second time in a year this has happened. Last time Maggott claimed that it was an administrative issue that resulted in Ribble Valley Council uploading planning documents earlier than expected. Then along come the Telegraph with the 'exclusive' hours after it comes on here, positive spin as expected. Of course if it was so positive you might expect the CEO to have mentioned it in one of the many meetings and conversations with supporters since then. Hmm. I wonder why he would avoid mentioning it?

Before this transaction were someone to try and buy the club or Venkys try and market it for sale part of that package would be ownership of the training ground. Now it would not. That's a pretty substantial and valuable asset out of the club's portfolio. of course it can be remedied quite easily by transferring it back to the club just before any sale if the intentions are honest and positive. But if not it could be bad bad news when assets end up owned elsewhere. In the past I have encouraged moves such as these to circumvent FFP rules. I'm not sure i believe that is the motive here, not after what happened earlier this year.

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.