Conway and Smallwood will be on a Championship level wedge or at least top drawer League One wages. Stanley will be paying bottom half League Two wages.

They will be going harder if their manager knows his budget and has the ability to get decisions made now rather than in 2-3 weeks time. Our manager it seems is limited to scouting and tentative discussions with potential people rather than being in a position to put money on the table and get agreements in place.

Really? So there's a 16 year old kid who is still trying to make a career for himself and is in our academy but riddled with injury issues which have prevented him from having a run in the team. Do we keep him on forever with the view that it's the right thing to do and if we let him go he will struggle to get a deal elsewhere? How many players do we do it for?

More like Sheffield Wednesday are ahead of us in the process and are in a position to crack on with negotiations whilst our senior management team don't know what the score is and have to get back from India before the button can be pressed.

Can't believe it is so open to manipulation or we could fiddle our way right through it. Why not just move the club between different members of the Venky family or different companies under their umbrella? Villa have got away with it just like Wolves, Brighton, Fulham, QPR, Bournemouth and Leicester all did. Spending massive amounts to go up and all succeeded. Villa/Derby will too. Neither will be punished. None have been other than QPR who after about 4 years of talking accepted a fine of less than they should have had.

Has Sharpe said this or is this just the rumour? I keep hearing about Rangers which would be class but I'm doubtful about it. They will have Champions League qualifiers around the time we have gaps in our schedule. I also don't think there's much appetite at Rovers for a home game given the 'showcase' games against Everton and Liverpool last year weren't exactly well attended. I really hope the missing 2 friendlies are going to be against teams to get an ounce of anticipation up for. The ones announced so far are very uninspiring.

Sheffield United owners are in a Court battle this week. It has been disclosed that the club were funded using a £3 million loan from the family of Osama Bin Laden.

We release or reject countless players over the course of a season right through the academy to the first team. Each time we turn down a 16 year old prospect or free agent it could potentially end his career or stop it before it even begins.

If we're the sort of club or manager that goes handing out contracts to players like Gladwin (who likely both isn't good enough nor fit enough for where we want to be) and for whom the decision should be a straightforward one, then it's fair to assume that similar emotional decisions may be made in respect of other players, who might be better or fitter and easier to justify keeping. Put another way. Every man and his dog expected Gladwin to be shown the door this summer. Mowbray (judging by his comments in the paper) seems to be in the business of keeping players out of a sense of duty or loyalty. As such it sounds as though a stay until January is possible. If he can apply his emotions to decisions for someone like Gladwin then he can do the same for other players. Do it 4-5 times and you've a lot of players and money tied up when they might not be up to the job.

The time, money and resources used in negotiating and potentially agreeing a new deal for Gladwin could be allocated elsewhere, as could the cost of his wage. It may 'only' be one player but if true it gives a snapshot into what might be happening on a bigger scale. When Waggott and Mowbray are telling the Telegraph and Fans Forum about how hard up we are, how hard it is with FFP rules and how tough it is to attract quality players then this becomes relevant.

I'd rather we focused our efforts on getting promoted asap and with it sorting out our crippling finances which could jeopardise the future of the club than spent our time worrying about being nice and 'doing the right thing'. Good old Rovers eh. Do the right thing, don't break any pots or upset anyone, just carry on being nice and sign/keep players to help them out rather than the club.

£16,000 could go towards something the club will benefit from. A contract even for 6 months (do they even do 6 month deals these days?) is 24 weeks. If he's on £2k per week that's going to end up more than £50k before anything else gets going. For what purpose? To be nice? Or because Mowbray thinks he might be good enough to fire us to the Premier League? Or because his bosses might not be too impressed if he walks away for nothing after 2 years of a wage so he has to try and get something back from it?

If I picked up an injury that prevented me from being able to do my job between now and Christmas 2020, yet I still received full salary and benefits between then and now, I would not expect my employer to offer to keep me on any longer than they had to. I would understand that 18 months of full pay and benefits was more than honourable and that my employer didn't owe me any more.

Hmmm. Two ways of looking at it really. On the one side Gladwin has had a hell of a lot of money out of Rovers whilst also benefiting from excellent facilities to try and get through his rehab. A 2 year deal even at 4k a week is worth way more than most people could ever dream of being paid, never mind for little in return other than trying to get fit. On the other side I can see the human element. Of course it isn't nice to chuck an injured player onto the 'scrapheap'. But this is a business. People on a lot less money than Gladwin have been made redundant from Rovers and other football clubs. People who aren't loaded. Waggott and Cheston wail about low incomes and the need to generate revenue yet we're on about using up a salary to give him more time to get fit? The question though it whether he is good enough when fit. I don't believe he is if we are serious about moving upwards and progressing. On that basis the injury issue almost becomes irrelevant. If he isn't deemed good enough for what we need then he shouldn't be retained.

They were back up players last season. He isn't progressing or building if all that happens is we keep the same players out of a sense of loyalty, unless we keep them AND add even better ones which I find unlikely given the financial talk. Until I read Mowbray's comments on Gladwin in the Telegraph I suspected that Mowbray was playing some sort of game with that one. In telling everyone he's in discussions over a new deal it might strengthen Gladwin's wage demands with other clubs or even encourage an interested side to offer us some cash to 'step aside' and let them sign him. But his comments suggest more that he feels a sense of responsibility or loyalty to the player after his injuries and that he'll be staying so he can try and get fit and earn himself a longer deal. Worth remembering that the only player to get a new deal is Leutwiler so far, so not the end of the world but again, improving the GK position is relatively high up on the list of things we need to do so it doesn't bode well if the first step we take is to hand out a new deal to him. I can't see Raya being sold and I expect that will be our lot on the GK front.

Building to get out of this league is fine but doesn't involve keeping people who have shown they aren't up to it or are so injury stricken that they haven't played a single minute in 18 months. Building to get promotion means you methodically replace and phase out the above with superior players whenever the opportunity arises. Early days yet and I'm still hopeful Mowbray is playing games without seriously intending on keeping these players. But his comments especially on Gladwin are very strange for a club supposedly restricted on finances.

Statements in the Telegraph are one thing. Actions another. Talk is cheap and easy, spending and recruiting well isn't.

Check Rovers website

Only logic I can see is that in telling everyone that we're in talks with him we're hoping someone with a vague interest will come along and offer us some cash to step aside and allow them in on a free transfer. Seems like a lot of effort for minimal return but after some of the stuff I've heard it wouldn't surprise me.

The last 7 years, barring the freak Brereton stunt which took everyone by surprise.

Quite clear Mowbray never rated Hart nor had any intention of giving him a run in the team. Quite clear to everyone that he isn't good enough for us. Yet he was signed midway through a League One promotion season and given a new deal this season despite spending it out on loan at garbage League One sides. Bizarre. It also makes me feel better about Mowbray if I believe he wasn't responsible for that one. Suspect someone else behind the scenes playing lucky dip with ex-Premier League club academy players hoping one pays off.

Wrong. You set your targets to improve as a club. If you don't have ambition to kick on and improve then go and get involved in another sport. That means getting shut of the deadwood and signing better ones. Merely carrying on with players who aren't up to the job on the basis 'we're a mid-table side' and 'that's our lot' will only do one thing - ensure stagnation and decline.

I don't believe for one second that signing was Mowbray's nor was the decision to give him a new deal.

Unless of course financial restrictions/lack of investment means he knows he's going to be struggling and so it is going to be much easier handing an extra year out to those already here than it is to go out into the market, spend money and tie someone else down to 2-3 years..... I'm afraid anyone expecting these owners to suddenly come up with cold hard cash to invest on Mowbray's promotion plans are in for a rude awakening. I suspect the only chance he has of extracting cash from the top dogs is by selling players to them as potential profit makers like Armstrong and Brereton. Those sort of deals won't be easy or quick to complete and Mowbray may have lost some credit on that front with Brereton's difficult season.....

None of them have clung on, yet, though it is worrying that we're even entertaining ideas of keeping Gladwin and worrying that Leutwiler has got another year at the club's behest. I think/hope this is probably Mowbray playing it safe again. Keep Conway/Rodwell dangling whilst he goes to India and discovers what the owners want to do. If they want to spend (unlikely) then he can get shut of these players, but if (more likely) Venkys say funds are limited then the likes of Conway and Rodwell might be as good as it gets and Leutwiler ticks all his boxes as a back up GK. As ever, bewildering and concerning.