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.

Always tomorrow, never today

If it takes 6 months to appoint a scout, whatever the reason behind it, we might as well give up.

Without wanting to be negative about this ( I think it is a positive step) it does raise further questions. Why have we left it to now to appoint this person? How long will it take for him to arrive and get to work on targets? Why didn't we appoint him this time last year? It appears to me that it is just more stalling and diversionary tactics. Keep the fans off our backs for a few more months because before long we'll have all these great European players coming in.

Groundhog day at Rovers with the same old excuses and soundbites coming from the club. Nearly 4 weeks into the window and only now realising that top targets might be too expensive. Have we done any homework? Pretending as though the Dack injury has thrown everything into chaos. 5 weeks nearly since that happened. It strikes me as amateur hour. Life on easy street with no funds and no pressure to deliver.

When he left we were mid table in the Championship with optimism after Lambert's appointment. It was that optimism that allowed the Rhodes sale to happen with minimal fuss from fans because many believed that there was a plan to reinvest and build under the new manager. The sale of Rhodes and others and failure to reinvest paved the way for relegation. We are now back where we started- mid table Championship- threatening but never quite doing what is needed to break into the promotion picture. Since Rhodes left in 2016 I think we've lost about another £70-80 million.

A bit like us then

If they had sold Dack to another Championship club mid season whilst in and around the play-offs then there would have been uproar and it would effectively have been waving the white flag on promotion. Nobody serious about getting up sells their star player to a rival, Ffp or no Ffp. It would be like Fulham selling Mitrovic or Cairney to Leeds now. The only way Waggott and co. could justify such a sale would either be in the summer or to a Premier League club, and I doubt there's many of those interested in him.

So if we had beat Wigan and Birmingham at Xmas and were in the top 6 when the window opened they would have sold Dack to WBA? If their grand plan when promotion is a realistic outcome is to sell our best player mid season then I'd say they don't really want promotion.

I think Blackpool fans are asking a lot to expect to be much better off than they are at the moment. First season under new ownership and management, finally rid of the Oystons. Most of them going to games now were boycotting last year, now moaning about Grayson and their league position. Were in League Two with Oyston only a couple of years ago. Nowhere near as big as Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich etc. who are pushing for promotion. Not sure on what basis they think they should be higher than they are.

Very tight division League One. Sunderland and Ipswich are in decent positions for promotion despite both having horrendous November and December periods. I still reckon Sunderland will get automatic. Coventry very well placed but for me should be refused promotion unless they resolve their stadium issues.

I suspect one of the excuses that will be thrown out after the window is closed will be 'nobody is doing much business, it's a tough time'. It may be correct that numbers wise clubs havent done much business and nobody is going out making wholesale changes or splurging millions out. But I think a lot of clubs can or will be able to argue that they have signed at least one player that improves them in some form or another, even if it is just extra cover in a weak position. I don't think we will be able to do that because I don't think we will sign anyone, not unless we get shut of someone first. So once again we are sat waiting to react to things happening rather than taking things by the scruff of the neck. It's a shame we have so many happy to operate in that way and accept the excuses that come with it. For me, the minute Dack got injured long term the club would have been going into January to replace him. His absence could not only derail this season but also next. Instead we are just trying to make do with what we already have. We are 6 points off the play offs with a game in hand and 54 to play for. Whilst I dont think we will get into the top 6 if you aren't going to go for it from this position or the one we were in this time last year then you have to wonder how much they really want it. It isnt over and yet what happens with incomings this week across the division could go a long way towards it being over.

Perhaps that was partly to blame but I feel Williams was more concerned with keeping costs down, hoping to repeat the trick he pulled with Hughes in unearthing a young up and coming manager rather than what we needed which was a ready made experienced gaffer who could build on Hughes' work. The obvious one was Allardyce but many fans were bizarrely against him yet in favour of a 4th division manager in Ince. Beyond Allardyce there were a host of big name European managers who were interested. Advocaat and Laudrup two of those who were public in their interest. Ince was an easier option and Williams was quite restrained in his ambitions, probably because a Laudrup would have expected backing that we weren't prepared to offer. Sadly the modus operandi at this club has for a long time been to go down the 'up and coming' route of gambling everything in the hope it works out rather than pushing the boat out a bit more and bringing in a big name manager. Kidd, Hughes, Ince, Kean, Berg, Appleton all into this category with only Hughes working out. Even today we have folk strongly against the prospect of a Hughton or McCarthy, proven top managers at this level, yet keen on Johnson who has never managed yet is 'up and coming' and 'one of ours'.

Nowt happening then. Onto Monday at the earliest before anything is done and then it will be prepare for Tuesday night.