Not really. The only club to have received anything more than a soft embargo at this level was Birmingham. It took them 18 months to decide on a punishment and when they finally got round to it they knocked 9 points off them when they were sat comfortably in mid-table, it made next to no impact to their season and the slate was wiped clean and past crimes erased. No side chasing promotion or fighting relegation has had any sort of sanction. Meanwhile Villa, Bournemouth, QPR, Leicester and Wolves have walked all over the rules, won the ultimate prize of promotion and have had nothing but a nominal fine. I'd say it is a gamble entirely worth taking.

On the contrary I think Birmingham know the rules aren't worth the paper they are written on. Sheffield Wednesday are taking them to the cleaners too.

Yeah, not saying they are top drawer signings but Birmingham have struggled for goals all season so are doing something to try and address it with a couple of players who have been around the block in this League

Or we can increase income and spend more. Especially when we've got billionaire owners desperate to invest.

I take it you've forgotten Gestede, Rhodes, Cairney, Marshall, Hanley, Duffy, Raya, King - estimated £33 million there.

Birmingham signing Hogan and Enobokhare. Couple of potentially season changing additions if used correctly. Thought they were in FFP bother?

We've brought in more money through player sales since 2015 than pretty much anyone in this league.

Raya? Mahoney? £4 million

Forest signed Gaetan Bong from Brighton. Compare and contrast - owners that hide behind Ffp and pretend they want to invest and owners who have invested heavily for 2 years to try to get promoted and don't give a stuff about Ffp.

Do you get points, goals and results for trying hard, being honest and principled?

Need a win here if we are serious. This lot are tough to beat at home but are in the position they are for a reason. They are unlikely to go down but it is still a possibility, as we are unlikely to go up but it is still a possibility. I reckon 0-0 or 1-1. Go behind and we will struggle big time.

I am concerned that the transfer negotiations are being handled by Mowbray and Venus rather than someone higher up the chain. I don't think in this day and age it is right or good for the manager to be doing this. Deadline day tomorrow and Mowbray is on about being at Brockhall whilst the squad go up to Middlesbrough. Not good. CEO or Sporting Director should be dealing with the transfer nonsense tomorrow and Mowbray should be 100% focused on 3 points at the Riverside. No room for slip ups if we really want promotion.

But but but FFP!

Sheffield Wednesday were charged with FFP breaches and it was rumoured Birmingham were about to be done again too. Both have signed players this month and neither has been sanctioned. Why are we still talking about FFP as an issue? There's no money left in the kitty and therefore no scope for signings. The best it will be is an 18 year old cheap deal like Sam Hart or Harry Chapman or a loan on heavily subsidised wages at the last minute. Neither of those approaches are likely to result in an improvement to our side.

I don't really want to derail the thread much further. My original issue was with the claim (i believe ludicrous) that these owners are ready and willing to invest whatever it takes but can't. I think that is nonsense and I've seen absolutely nothing in the last 7 years to make me think otherwise. Back to those clubs - Brighton were playing on an athletics pitch when their owner took over - look at them now - he sunk in £200 million or something like that and they are now unrecognisble. Their crowds have grown accordingly. Wolves, Bournemouth weren't getting 30,000+ crowds. Bournemouth smaller than ours and Wolves perhaps 5000 more than us most weeks. We make money by bringing in more sponsors (including some from beyond Blackburn with Darwen). How about some international sponsors like most other Championship sides have? Am I supposed to believe that a family business like Venkys, the biggest poultry company in India, 100 companies, billionaires, in business for 40+ years have no ability to do some deals with friends of theirs to get some extra money into the club?

None of those clubs i mentioned were promoted when their owners arrived. Their owners wanted to better their clubs so invested real money into improvements across the board - facilities, staff, players, managers - and reaped the rewards of that with promotion. Our lot have just been on a damage limitation exercise whilst hiding away on the other side of the world. Yes they've put money in to keep the doors open, but lets not pretend they are sat with their chequebooks open desperate to invest and push us on to a new level but can't because of FFP . 1) If they were keen enough to invest there are ways of doing it as the above clubs have shown 2) If they were keen to invest they could still do so to facilities/non playing staff yet have spent diddly squat.

They spent the first summer because they thought it was so simple as buying promotion and left Shebby and Kean to wreck the club by piling ridiculous costs onto the books. After summer 2012 it became a cost cutting exercise focused on reducing costs and recruiting through frees, loans and cheap signings. Only 2-3 exceptions to that in the 7 years since - Brereton, Armstrong, Gallagher - and it is clear what the motivation was with those. I'm afraid it is going to take a lot more than this to convince me these owners are keen to spend but cannot. I look at what the owners at Wolves, Leicester, Villa, Brighton, Bournemouth have done since 2012 compared to ours and there's no comparison. Our lot have zero interest or pride in the club and will only invest into players if a case can be put to them that they'll get a return on it in a few years.

For the first 2 years after relegation we weren't constrained by FFP. Where was their spending then? If FFP was abolished tomorrow Venkys would sanction massive spending on players? Nah. Look at the state of Ewood. No investment at all beyond essential stuff. They just aren't interested. For years the theory was that they would spend big if promotion was a possibility. Last two January's we have been in decent positions yet nothing spent on the team. They're having us on

An important and welcome 3 points that keeps us ticking along. It was so important to build upon that Sheffield result with another win as dropped points would have wiped away some of the progress we made there last week. The performance wasn't good other than the first 15 minutes, but I won't ever complain if we end up with 3 points. Overall it was a 'typical' Rovers/Mowbray home performance - a positive first 10-15 where we played some really good stuff, got at them and created some good openings and got ahead - should have had 2 - then conceded out of little pressure with their first chance of the game - then it deteriorated into an hour or so of nothingness other than the Lenihan header to get us ahead. If that header had gone over I'm fairly certain the game would have petered out into a draw - thankfully we got that goal and from there dug in and protected what we had but that second half as we've seen so many times wasn't good to watch but we did enough to get the job done. It is clear to me that we expend so much energy into the first 20 minutes of games and are often rewarded with early goals that we are unable to sustain it and end up knackered and hanging on later on in games. I loved Travis' performance - in the opposition faces, winding them up, ran all night long - last few minutes he was down by the corner flag stopping crosses coming in clearly knackered - my MOTM. Overall keeps us in touching distance of the teams above us and you never know whilst you remain in reach. Still think we need a couple of quality signings to have any chance.

This sounds lovely but simply can't or won't happen. Mowbray has thrown Buckley in and he looks out of his depth at this stage. Chapman has been mediocre at the very best playing for the u23s. JRC has just made his first appearance - a brief cameo debut in a game we were 4-0 up in - a long way to go before we can set out to rely on him. As it stands we will need nearly double figures. 2x GK, 2x CB, 1x LB, 1x CM (if Downing goes or Evan's isnt ready), 1x RM and 1 x CF to replace Graham propery - all at the least. For a manager and club that struggles to get bodies in the building and has a dodgy record on transfers I'm not particularly relaxed about this.

And as it stands neither Tosin nor Downing will be here for pre-season. So as well as they might be doing we are going to have a problem. I always think that you need a settled spine to you team and a settled back 4. Not just for a few games but a few seasons. We've neither. Because we've refused to deal with those positions preferring to take the cheap and easy route by loading up on loans for 12 months. Recruitment goes beyond filling in gaps, there has to be a medium to long term build. Come summer time we will have no senior keeper, 1 good enough CB, no good enough LB. Mulgrew cast adrift whilst still on a big contract for another 12 months. Midfield - Travis is great, Downing great but out of contract, Johnson meh, Evans an unknown with his injury. Up top another mess still not got sorted out and Dack in the treatment room. Doesn't strike me as evolution but revolution. That isnt what Mowbray said would happen.

I want 30,000 a week turning up. But I know that isnt going to happen. You have to be realistic and pragmatic. 'Wanting people to commit longer term' isnt going to happen with season tickets on the rise and a poor product being served up. The ludicrous £3 surcharge won't encourage more to buy season tickets. It will just ensure next to nobody goes to games like tonight. I'll walk past the ticket office at 7:15pm tonight and there will be more people waiting to get served in the Fox and Hounds than buying match tickets.

I don't think that £12 million would have ever materialised for other buys or other positions. Someone in India has it in their head that these young British CFs are worthy of a large lump sum investment. I don't believe that this money was available for other areas or targets and if Mowbray hadn't signed those players I very much doubt the money would have been seen again. It is beyond belief that we've shelled out that level of cash on those two players and meanwhile the rest of our team consists predominantly of frees, loans and low cost signings, particularly the defence and GK positions which have been neglected for years. Then there's the signings like Davenport and Hart - even more odd.

I think there's a difference between spending and paying wages/signing on fees. I accept that the likes of Johnson and Downing won't be cheap, but they cost little/nothing to bring in. It has always been an issue under Venkys for us to cough up lump sum transfer fees. Never had an issue with sanctioning decent wages on loans and frees. If we've paid City £1 million to borrow Tosin for 12 months then i think that is ridiculous and out of order. We will have eaten up a large chunk of our budget to borrow someone else's player and let him develop for a year. If we have or had £1 million for a CB it should have gone on a cash buy on a 3-4 year deal to build upon moving forward. Derby were glad to let Johnson go. I doubt they'd have asked for much (if anything) for us to take him off their hands. Wages probably considerable but at the same time we've given him 2 years to Derby's 1 so probably undercut them that way.

We had a minimal budget in the summer. It was pretty much loans and frees - Tosin, Downing, Johnson, Walton, Cunningham - other than the exceptional funding allowance made for Project B Gallagher because someone fancied another punt on a buy on the basis it would reap big dividends after the Brereton one the previous summer. Now granted - some of those signings have been good uns - Tosin, Downing, Cunningham until he got injured - and wages will not have been insignificant - but lets not make out like we've spent big or built on these guys. Come the summer most of them won't be here and those that are will be in the twilight of their careers. It's about as far away from the Brentford model as you can get - despite Mowbray referring to them as a template. It is also worth bearing in mind that Cunningham was only done at the 11th hour presumably when the financial requirements were more favourable or when we finally found space in the budget by offloading Mulgrew for 6 months. Money is virtually non-existent for transfer fees - as it was in the summer. The Gallagher and Brereton ones are special cases where someone chucked the cash in on the basis they were projects likely to pay off with interest in years to come. I don't believe that money could or would ever have materialised for other positions, or for several smaller purchases. Mowbray and Waggott get their budget in May for the year and there it is. The only way we will see incomings in January is by shuffling around on the wage bill by offloading a couple for a few months or if we get lucky and manage to sell someone. This talk about European targets, Polish wingers for £3 million, Venkys ready to invest but constrained by evil FFP rules is just fantasy land stuff.