I don't understand your first sentence. Do you believe he is contractually guaranteed a place in their team every week? If City are moving the goalposts then perhaps the lesson to learn is not to rely on loans and to actually get your players signed up so you don't have to worry about parent clubs making such demands. Can hardly blame them really given the way things went with Palmer, Byrne, Samuelson etc. who were all welcomed in as great signings but contributed nothing. If Assombalonga was never going to happen due to wages then why was there so much media coverage about us being after him and I recall Mowbray saying we were keen? Kept the fans excited through January though so job done. Interesting that you criticised me not long ago for comparing our actions to other rival clubs yet you are now using a couple of other clubs as examples to try and show things are ok here. Both those clubs haven't been equipped with £15 million to spread around 3 attacking signings in the last two summers so the comparisons end there.

So just so I'm clear. We've spent 1 year pursuing Patrick Bauer. Failed to agree a fee to get him last summer or January so stuck it out only to watch him join PNE because we told him he would be sat on the bench as '3rd choice' CB behind the dreadful defence of last season. He didn't fancy coming here as '3rd choice' so joins that lot up the road instead. Having missed out on a long term target and seemingly having no other irons in the fire we then go after this lad from City on loan. Get him down to Brockhall, get everything up and running but then the deal falls through at the last minute because we can't or won't promise what City want in terms of games. If true, we're a complete shambles. Surely the x number of games routine would have dropped up as an issue early on in the proceedings not suddenly before he joins? Like wasting a month trying to get Assombalonga then deciding his wages were prohibitive. Rather than prices come down they are actually more likely to go up in the coming week. Sellers know we are increasingly desperate and will play on that. We think we are clever but will end up with egg all over our faces. Mowbray will try to cover for it by coming up with some weird and wacky way to incorporate the existing players into a competent defence. Exciting.

We had a baffling summer window last year which really, with the exceptions of loanee Harrison Reed, and Armstrong/Rothwell, didn't get us very far. We had a failure of a January window where we inexplicably allowed all our defensive cover out on loan and then watched as the regular defenders got injured. We also 'pursued' Assombalonga then appeared surprised that he is on big money at Middlesbrough which we are unable/unwilling to pay. We've now reverted back to baffling/failing again this window. Utterly baffling to tie up £5 million on a player the manager won't play in his best position and to dish out big wages to players in positions which didn't urgently need strengthening and being sat here 1 week from the big kick off and 1 day from our final friendly with no defensive improvements whatsoever, little indication of getting any and as such a weaker defence than last year which dragged us down all season. There will be the eternal optimists who cling to the idea that a young lad from City is going to sort it all out or one of those few young lads from the U23s are going to overnight become good standard Championship defenders but I'm not buying it. Even if Mowbray was bold enough to chuck them in at the deep end, which I don't think he is, they've not got any 1st team football behind them except brief loan spells at mediocre League One and Two sides (Hart and Grayson). Mowbray has a rapidly diminishing time window to address this otherwise he's going to be out of excuses and time when/if results deteriorate like they did last season. Last season he had the benefit of momentum from League One and the excuse of giving a chance to those who got us promoted. Not this time. Only he truly knows why he's performed one of the biggest u-turns in transfer strategy ever witnessed. To go from his passionate, bold, even controversial comments at the Fans event late last season and the tagline 'defenders are coming, make no mistake' - laying blame at the door of those already here - to this ridiculous situation we now find ourselves in is beyond belief. Either he's lost his marbles or someone upstairs has forced him to change track.

True. But the way these clowns operate it honestly wouldn't surprise me if they had stipulated that no signings would be approved if there wasnt an outgoing first. If they're leaving it to the club to fund then every penny will count and getting a few grand a week off the bill for 12 months may just do it.

Wharton going out to Northampton for the season could well free up the cash to bring in someone else. Expect an arrival very soon. But they'll tell you incomings don't depend on outgoings...

Everyone knows the defence wasnt good enough last season. The manager knows it and publicly admitted it at the end of last season. Something has changed along the line. Either the manager has lost the plot and has suddenly decided that everything is fine and has performed a complete u turn or his conversations in India have forced him to change track. Personally I think it is more the 2nd option. There isn't the flexibility or money to recruit the standard of defenders required so plan B is to wait patiently for favourable loans to materialise having missed out on the freebie he wanted. I can't believe for one minute that Mowbray would decide to invest as he has in the attack without spending on the defence. I don't believe he has any intention of playing the likes of Hart, Grayson, Wharton or Rankin Costello in the team. He'll want them all out on loan and is playing them in friendlies to attract attention. As I predicted a couple of weeks ago I believe there is a stipulation for departures off the payroll before arrivals will be sanctioned. The Walton one is only a loan and won't be costing much with Brighton making a large contribution. Unfortunately for Mowbray unless e makes the required signings or there is a radical change in performance/coaching with the existing ones he's going to be left with nowhere to hide and a fanbase running out of patience.

I've given up trying to work out what's going on. I'm still struggling to come to terms with a defence of Rankin-Costello, Nyambe, Grayson and Hart starting in our penultimate pre-season friendly before the season starts. I do not think Mowbray will have any intention of playing any of those in the League with the exception of Nyambe at RB so I'm wondering if half the point is to attract attention from elsewhere for loan destinations etc. for those lads. In terms of incomings despite Mowbray's mixed messages I'm not confident on much happening. Mowbray is trying to dangle another substantial signing by saying the Raya money hasn't been used up on Gallagher but we had all this sort of thing in January. Then the window shuts and the status quo remains.

No, not especially. 18 appearances in a side that survived by the skin of their teeth and who couldn't buy a win after January plummeting down the table. Lots of players 'impress' in awful League One or Two teams. Shall we sign them all?

I expect we will ask Bury to wear their away shirt so that we can wear the grey.

And I'm entitled to say ' I told you so' when he doesn't play for us because he isn't good enough or our defence continues to flounder as we've failed to strengthen.

And I'm entitled to mine that a couple of fitness exercises against crap sides isn't evidence of him being good enough for the Championship.

I'm one of those people who have watched him play live this pre season. I accept he's looked ok. I also realise that there are lots of players who perform well in meaningless pre season kick abouts against poor standard opposition. It doesn't mean very much. Impressing against Barrow and Mansfield doesn't mean he will be able to cope with defending against Fulham and West Brom. Suspect we will get more of it following tonight. He will probably impress against a Bury side effectively dragged in off the car park to make numbers up.

Whatever. Whenever I saw him play for us his was way off and that was in League One. Bit of a difference between being 'excellent' for a relegation threatened League One side and being good enough for an aspiring Championship one.

Never ceases to amaze me. Sam Hart is nowhere near good enough for what we need. Makes me laugh when after ok performances against non league Barrow and 4th division Mansfield that he's now considered to be a realistic option at full back in the Championship. Some never learn. We're so determined to avoid investing in proven quality in defence that he is now seen as a contender for the team. Frightening. I think if we had played some semi-decent opposition pre season he might have been exposed a bit more.

At the time it was the biggest budget and wage bill that league had ever seen. Losses of almost £20 million unprecedented for a 3rd tier club. Potentially Sunderland have since 'beat' us but they were in the Premier League 2 years ago and have parachute income. Not trying to diminish the achievement but no other club has had that level of wages and losses.

With the exception of Lambert I don't think any of the other 6 manager appointments have been ones that involved a great deal of planning or sense. None of them other than Lambert would have had a sniff of another Championship job. Bowyer and Mowbray are the success stories because both are decent, level headed honest blokes from old school football backgrounds but critically both worked out how these owners operate and tried to work within that. Bowyer has been able to forge a managerial career off it whilst Mowbray has rehabilitated his after Coventry. Fair play. More to do with luck and circumstance than the idiots in India learning lessons or delivering on a plan.

Mowbray was arguably luckier to get the job here given his departure from Coventry a few short months before.

Is Williams injured or just going off on paternity leave? Anyone know why Gallagher didn't feature in the squad at Rangers. Don't get it myself. Surely can't be fitness related as he was training with Southampton before signing here and looks in good shape and should be at his age.

Which Morris is it? Related to the billionaire one?

Other rumours doing the rounds that Tom Morris (owner of Home Bargains and absolutely loaded) has got on board with Football Ventures to buy them.

I imagine the biggest push for a 'new' badge for Rovers would ultimately come from the kit and merchandise producers. As much as we as fans might like the Rovers badge and as unique as it is in the world of football I expect it is relatively speaking one of the more difficult ones to produce en masse and plaster over kits and training gear. Its an unusual shape, rather than a standard circle or shield, has quite a bit of detail and critically has lots of different colours. Most of us like it because it has remained virtually the same since it first appeared 30-40 years ago and is the clubs only proper crest in its entire history. It is instantly recognizable. But looking at it from a modern kit manufacturers point of view it must be hard work to deal with. Over the years clubs have succumbed to ditching their traditional crests and coat of arms and have adopted plan, simple and 'modern' crests which are far easier to copyright, produce and stick on kits. It wouldn't surprise me if Rovers face those pressures in time to come, having to satisfy modern 'requirements'. I expect that was one of the underlying reasons City adopted their new badge and was definitely one of the reasons Arsenal simplified theirs. I also think the pink/orange/white crests we've seen recently on away shirts and training gear are the first step towards that - much easier and cheaper to produce gear with those on than with our multi-coloured and detailed normal crest.

So every goalkeeper that gets dropped for a few games or whose position in the team comes under threat asks to move clubs? As I've said before, for me there should be no such thing as 'number 1' and 'number 2'. The player who performs has the place, so if Raya ironed out his flaws he would have been in the team. All the talk about him being our 'number 2' and him not being happy at that, lets see what unfolds at Brentford and he goes on there, but given Brentford's record at polishing up players it wouldn't surprise me to see him progress.

Why would a keeper under contract here, established and playing every week as Number 1 in the Championship at the club he's been with since a boy, a season after we won promotion, part of a plan to kick on to the Premier League, decide to push ahead and leave all that to move to another, smaller club in the same league? Not trying to be funny but if it is the case that the move happened because Raya wanted to leave us to join Brentford then rather than just accepting that we have to ask ourselves why and be quite concerned. As far as I'm concerned no Blackburn Rovers player who plays regularly for us should ever express a desire to transfer to Brentford. If he does then that suggests something isn't right here.

This happens all the time. I cant work out if Mowbray just comes out with stuff he thinks people want to hear whenever a microphone is stuck in front of him or whether he genuinely expects what he says to happen but things keep on moving and changing. There's certainly very little consistency in what he comes out with and it is understandable why people are frustrated and disappointed with it. Whether it is budgets, calibre of player, positions, timings - Mowbray's comments to me seem to be all over the place. Maybe it's some cunning plan to confuse the competition or maybe we are all over the place on the whim of crackpots in India.

Excellent news which came as a surprise to me. Important piece of business.