JHRover

How many of those clubs require their manager and executive staff to fly to the other side of the world before they can find out what the ambition is and what, if any, budget there is going to be

He probably will see them as a better option if they are making him a serious concrete offer of a deal right away whilst we prevaricate, delay, await approval and wait for staff to return from India or wherever. Any real deal is better than a hypothetical future deal. Why wait for us to get round to it when others will want answers now?

Charlton have announced that Lee Bowyer is set to leave after failing to agree a new deal. They've also said that whilst they try to complete a sale they won't appoint a new manager. A remarkable statement on their website. At least that's one club in chaos.

Or we are playing catch up. Whilst Mowbray and Waggott are out in Pune waiting for their audience to try and persuade the owners to cough up some money Preston and most other clubs have already got all that sorted and are on with contacting available players and negotiating terms. If he's a 'greedy so and so' then how come it sounds like he's going to Preston? They don't pay big wages and also lose a lot less a year than we do. So if he's going there over than here for financial reasons something is amiss somewhere.

Brentford and Hull won't sell as many as us and Derby won't sell many more in the scheme of things. Brentford have only just gone to Umbro after being Adidas for a number of years so I'm struggling to understand or accept that they should be ahead of us. Fair enough we're down the pecking order from the top clubs and yes even the likes of West Ham these days but we're now behind fellow Championship sides. Probably not something that concerns or interests most people including those employed by Rovers but we keep hearing about low income and revenue yet we are missing out on a lucrative summer sales window by being at the back of the queue, as we are almost every summer.

I wonder what work Rovers put into determining what kit manufacturer to use. I say that because for the last 10-15 years we've been stuck with Umbro (apart from a couple of seasons with Nike but that was because Nike took over the Umbro contracts). The pricing and range of clothing is appalling. I like wearing Rovers tops/jumpers but on principle I will not pay 40 quid for a nylon t shirt. I'd be interested in discovering whether anyone at Rovers assesses the range Umbro provide and consider going elsewhere to Adidas, Macron, Kappa etc. Who all appear to offer superior selection and pricing. As it is it seems to be a case of 'this is where we are' and we just take whatever Umbro send our way. Easier that way.

Does anyone know why Umbro manufactured clubs like Hull and Brentford are unveiling/releasing their new shirts in early June and we are a month behind them?

Charlton have signed someone from Orient this morning. Haven't a clue who he is or how good he is but interesting that they're able to do business already just 3 weeks after winning promotion with their manager out of contract yet we're 3 months on from securing our status and nothing happening.

Stoke will have known their budget and will have been working on that basis since March knowing what league they were going to be in with their manager wanting to make changes ahead of next season. Our manager didn't even know the owners intentions, let alone budget, until he flew around the world a couple of weeks ago since when he's been on holiday. Not rocket science is it?

My point of course was that we've heard about wages being prohibitive before and people said the same about Armstrong last summer. Newcastle don't pay massive wages which is one of the reasons their fans aren't happy. I've no idea what Hanley was on at Newcastle but I'm very confident that Norwich won't be paying him huge bucks. Just an easy excuse at Rovers to moan about wages. Remember Bowyer moaned about being restricted to only 10k a week wages which was more than Rowett had to work with at Birmingham.

People spent all last summer saying that we wouldn't land Armstrong because he was on big money at Newcastle and we couldn't afford him. Then he arrived, either because we could afford him, he wasnt on as much as everyone expected at Newcastle or he was willing to come down to enable the move to happen. Newcastle don't pay mega money under Mike Ashley so whilst Hanley likely got a raise by going there I wouldn't expect it to have been that much. Ashley runs a tight ship and having just got relegated he wouldn't allow silly money on a Championship CB.

I said at the start of the summer that Hanley would be high on my shopping list and if we kept Lenihan I'd be quite pleased with the defence. Nixon's theory of bringing in Hanley on loan and selling Lenihan is likely guesswork but exactly the sort of short term stunt we'd pull off to raise cash whilst keeping fans onside by bringing in a relatively popular academy graduate. Just hope he's over that knee injury he had before transferring to Newcastle....which leg was it on again?

It's Sunday morning so Nixon has to put something on his twitter account to try and entice people to go to the shop and buy whichever rag he's putting his stories in these days. Notice his 'stories' always appear early Sunday morning just in time for people to nip to the shops.

Think the West Ham and Hull shirts are smart and a nod to shirts from the 80s or 90s. Will be interesting to see if we do similar. Doesn't stack up with rumours of dark blue though.

Isn't that John Buckley on the right too?

Brentford are on a different planet to us recruitment wise and to be fair compared to most clubs they are very good at what they do. We can forget emulating them any time soon. They've sold God knows how many players for all sorts of money and have repeatedly bounced back from it.

For what it's worth I don't think Mowbray would deliberately set out to mislead fans. Unfortunately working for this mob puts him in a difficult position and I've no doubts the goalposts continually move in India and their promises often don't materialise. It's been that way since day one. Promises galore but what actually happens is some way short of that.

Well this is window number 3 since promotion and number 5 since Mowbray took over. Mowbray spent last summer telling everyone that it was a long term build and would take a number of windows and that the owners had bought into his vision. I'd like to know how many more windows are required as part of that project and whether the plan has changed.

So far lost Reed, Conway, Downing and likely Rodwell. Work to do just to fill that gap and replace those lot. That's just to stand still assuming nobody else goes. That doesn't cover progression and replacement of people like Smallwood, Nuttall, Evan's etc. If we want to improve. Won't be long before the club and Telegraph are painting Chapman, Davenport and Samuel as new signings.

Not just Rovers or Rovers location. Applies to all outside the parachute payment teams.

Byram and Hugill will go to the Championship this summer. Neither are in contention for West Ham. Hugill isn't good enough for the Premier League and Byram has had a bad time with injuries and needs games. Not sure how he did at Forest last season. Both will cost so I imagine there might well be interest if West Ham are paying the lions share of their wages but if not they won't be happening.

Suspect WBA will 'go for it' this season to get up before the parachute cash runs out. Got to say I'm impressed with the Bilic appointment. Let's see what he has to work with there but he won't be cheap.

Mowbray made references to defenders coming in this summer during his speech to the fan groups a few weeks ago. He didn't mix his words. Not possibly coming in or maybe coming in but definitely coming and not one defender but defenders plural because those here last season allowed too many goals to go in. It wouldn't be the first time he's made bold claims to fans which then don't come to fruition but he will be left looking silly if it's the same team as last season with Rodwell and a cheap back up to replace Downing making up the numbers. Then again he'll arguably look even worse if he gets his new defenders, spends money doing so and then they turn out to be crap or we continue to leak goals for fun. Then the spotlight turns away from Mulgrews legs and towards the training ground and coaching.

Wouldn't rule it out with the old North East/Middlesbrough connection there but he'll have been on fortunes at West Ham and hasn't really done the business for a while now.

There it is from the horses mouth my suspicions confirmed that it was a panic move late on as money was on the table and Mowbray felt compelled to spend it through fear it wouldn't materialise down the line. The big question for me is whether that cash was there all summer and we failed to invest it until the 11th hour due to pursuing unrealistic targets for weeks and weeks or it wasn't and someone at Venky Hq suddenly decided to throw a lump sum into the mix to sign a 'star' player hence the last minute nature of it and throwing it all into one player rather than spreading it around the team. Incomprehensible that Mowbray would opt to spend such an amount on a 19 year old project whilst doing next to nothing with the defence and midfield and ending up with no fit centre halves in January.