JHRover

You'll note my point earlier, that in the last 6 weeks through Tosin, Walton, Downing and Graham going the club will have shed £500,000 from the payroll which comfortably covers Kaminski and his fee. Let's see in the others happen and who goes out the other way to enable it. We need 8 first team ready defenders IMO. If Mulgrew is frozen out and Williams being sold then we need minimum 3 to come in, realistically on permanent deals to avoid another mad dash next summer. Kipre would be a good start yet as expected the tubby Scotsman is pouring cold water on it

Our choice not to sell tickets. Nobody has forced us not to. Bamber Bridge can sell them so why can't we? The sponsor news whilst unfortunate in this climate was always a possibility with their termination clause and will have happened months ago. So a lot of time to secure something else. Yes we have lost income. So has every other club in the world.

Mowbray says a lot of things that aren't true. The fact is that it seems very likely Williams will be out the door before the new signings are in. Call it coincidence if you like. To me it shows that yet more funds need to be freed up to have a chance to get others in. Our wage bill is already a lot less than last season so the explanation seems to be either they are reducing costs or need the lump sum transfer fee to pay for someone. As above wage savings for August alone by releasing a mass of players ought to have raised the cash needed for the keeper.

Quite alarming to me that bringing in essential defenders appears to be contingent upon getting shut of one of the three experienced players we have left who can play at CB. I sure hope Mowbray knows what he is doing here because it could easily go very badly wrong. Also quite disturbing that having slashed almost £100,000 a week off the wage bill since July and added only the keeper who won't be on more than £10,000 at most there isnt the scope in the budget to bring in reasonable signings without further outgoings. A quick calculation for August - if we've saved £400,000 on wages by offloading Walton, Tosin, Smallwood, Downing, Graham and Samuel then we can see where the money has appeared to get the goalkeeper.

Stockholm syndrome

I thought Stanley had said that the first 770 purchasers would get priority. Probably as clear as they can be with something like this. There will inevitably be people not happy either because they can't go to the earlier games or can't sit in their usual seat etc. Clubs have to do the best they can with what they have and Stanley's approach seems to be sensible. So it encourages people to get them asap or risk missing out. These issues are not a reason to simply do and sell nothing like Rovers have opted to do. This isn't a problem for us as we have the luxury of a 30,000 modern stadium and at best about 8000 season ticket holders. Knock off the staff and player complimentaries and just allow entry to paying season ticket holders and that number drops significantly. Knock off those who won't renew for various reasons and I'd be surprised if we could sell more than 6000. The discussion as to whether we blame covid 19 for that or inept management of the club is for another day.

Not a chance that I'll be paying £10 per game to watch on I Follow. Not when foreign based people were getting gsmes for £5 last season. I feel that I am still in credit from last season. If they don't want my money for my season ticket then fine, but it isnt going on I Follow.

I dont think Williams to Swansea is that odd at all. He's a good age, experienced at this level, played for Ireland and I suspect Mowbray would drive him to Swansea if it meant getting his wages off the books. He's not great by any stretch but reasonable cover for defence and won't cost much. It seems clear to me that him and Mulgrew are the make weights to enable a couple of defenders to come in. Its also obvious that something has been amiss with him since January with his mysterious injury.

No I haven't and to be honest I'm fed up of listening to Mowbray. I can't take him seriously.

But selling it without a sponsor will likely make it more difficult to secure a sponsor or reduce what they are willing to pay.

Good news and a relief to get this deal done. Should be getting another 2-3 first XI players in quickly now to address the defence. Not sure how him going down to Brockhall having his photos taken fits with 2 weeks of isolation and quarantine.

When charged with overspending Derby immediately disputed it, employed a leading barrister in Nick de Marco QC and challenged it all the way. Having succeeded in that challenge they are now considering pursuing damages and compensation for lost income and sponsorship against the League. Can you imagine Waggott and Rovers standing up and fighting like that? I doubt we'd ever challenge anything, instead just accepting whatever gets decided with a shrug of the shoulders.

It amazes me that anyone is remotely concerned about these rules anymore. In this climate they cannot be enforced. Even those clubs who have broken the rules previously haven't been punished. Birmingham got a meaningless points deduction, Derby got off Scott free and Wednesday are being punished for fiddling on their accounts, not overspending. The attitude seems to be that it is fine for Derby to break the rules and spend more than everyone else using every trick in the book but yet we are meant to be well behaved and worry about overspending whilst we've a fraction of Derby's overheads. All suits Venkys though.

It all hinges on who comes in. Like I say other than Downing I'm not too bothered about releasing those we have BUT they need replacing and haven't been YET. If they aren't replaced with at least 4 incomings of decent quality I think we will be weakened.

That's partly through our choice. We could have sold 5000+ season tickets like Bolton have done which would have covered a large portion of any lost income. We've decided not to so no sympathy there. Edit - sorry just seen @Stuartcovered this above.

Didn't want to renew, or couldn't renew? I think in the case of Downing it is the latter. I also genuinely believe that if he had scope to do so Mowbray would have given Samuel new terms. But given the financial circumstances imposed from upstairs he has had to let them go and doesn't expect to be in a position to get Downing back.

Lenihan, Nyambe, Travis, Buckley, Rankin Costello, probably Wharton - all academy products, all likely to be used with regularity this season. So no, I wouldn't say closing the academy is the right thing to do. By the same token you don't just get shut of everyone else and throw in academy products across the pitch because that will only end one way. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes. I do know that as of 26th August just over 2 weeks before our first league game we haven't yet signed a player and have let 7 go. Unless that changes significantly and quickly we will be in a weaker position than we were last season.

I'm struggling with the logic that letting 7 senior players leave and to date signing 0 cannot impact on our ability to perform. I wholeheartedly agree that of those released the majority were not good enough for anything more than a bottom half season but the fact remains that these were senior experienced pros who were in the squad as options for use. This probably applies more to the likes of Graham and Downing than Hart and Smallwood. But the point remains - if we are away from home at a hostile ground and need a goal or need to defend a 1-0 lead I would have absolute faith in Graham coming off the bench to do his thing or likewise Downing using his experience to guide us through than the alternative which is currently making do with what we have. The alternative being chucking one of the young lads on. Are they really going to be able to do what Graham does on a rough night at Millwall or Barnsley? The problem with your plan for the defence is we will have to get shut of those players before being allowed to sign the replacements. There is unlikely to be much interest. Once we are rid we are upon the new season under immense pressure to quickly sign people having offloaded yet more. I expect two players for every position. Therefore 2 people who can play LB, RB and 4 who can play CB. Lose Mulgrew or Williams or both and whilst we might not be bothered the fact remains they need replacing and quickly. Including Wharton we would still then need 2 x CB, 1x LB, 1 x GK and ideally 1x RB I'm not expecting us to go out and blow teams over with offers. Clever clubs don't need to - they identify bargains and get them quickly before others. But I would have expected a lot more progress than we've had. One incoming not yet confirmed and not available for a fortnight. We need a lot more and i am worried about getting the time we have, our manager's track record and what I am hearing to be totally honest.

Karanka has only been in the job a couple of weeks and they've already signed Jon Toral and George Friend this week.

Just looking at his history his last club was Beijing Renhe, pretty sure they are owned by the same people as Reading are.

So lets believe that we have £3 million to cover everything this summer including wages. Bear in mind that we have in Downing, Graham, Samuel, Smallwood, Leutwiler, Hart, Walton and Tosin shed probably possibly in excess of £100,000 a month off the wage bill before bonuses, appearance money and signing on fees. That's probably a saving of £1.5 million straight away. Not really much of a budget after you take the above into account. If Mowbray is really now having to offload either Mulgrew or Williams to raise the cash for a Kipre to come in then we are in really dire straits. Having lowered the wage bill substantially even with a well paid goalkeeper we should be well below what we were last season. We have next to no options in defence and yet the plan to bring a defender in is to offload what experience we do have left at the back? Scary. A proper experienced keeper and a proper experienced CB should have been done and dusted by now. We've known about those positions for 6 months or more. We should now be putting the finishing touches by getting in a back up CB and GK, and another option up top.

Millwall after Scott Hogan. Him and Ryan Woods on loan - now that's putting the loan market to proper use - not borrowing untried kids from academies.

I never get any excitement at all when the inevitable links appear to United, City or Liverpool lads on loan. It happens every summer. Tosin was an exception because he was signed as a starter and had proper first team experience before coming, but our current chaotic state exists because we made that short term decision and now dont have our own player. Maybe its our record with such loans that end up contributing little to the team. Maybe it's the fact that even if they do well they won't be here beyond May at the latest. Maybe it is because our academy is better than United's yet there seems to be the belief that anyone from them will be great 'because it's United'. I feel Downing would be a better start in midfield but I'm not the one balancing the numbers and looking at a heavily subsidised loan for a kid rather than a hefty salary for a 36 year old.

You won't get promoted going down this road though. It is extremely rare that a goalscorer will emerge from an academy and start performing and scoring immediately. In the meantime the other assets in our squad, such as Dack, Armstrong, Travis and Lenihan, get another year nearer the end of their contract and another season of mid table when eventually they will decide to move on to have a better shot at the top division. Then we are having the same conversation again next summer and the summer after looking to fill gaps in the squad.

You only use it if the players are good enough and are ready for the Championship. You don't use it regardless to prove some sort of point and in the process hinder the first team. My only interest is getting a team out that can get promoted. I am not interested in individuals, projects or development. I don't care if they are from the academy or Burkina Faso. All about ensuring the team is properly equipped for the challenges ahead. You make it sound as though we need more from the academy than we have been getting. Last time i looked we have Nyambe, Lenihan, Travis all academy products playing regularly along with Buckley and Rankin Costello more recently. That's a big return, I'm not aware of any other club with such numbers so we have already used it heavily. Thats good of course. But I dont get this attitude of 'we need to use the academy more moving forward'. We don't. We need promotion moving forward.