I think we all want and recognise the need for an experienced goalkeeper after what we witnessed last season. But what we might want and what these awful owners and executives allow us to have are totally different Eustace can say until he's blue in the face that he wants a proven goalkeeper. JDT repeatedly said he wanted an experienced CB. Didn't get it The owners and executives don't care what we or the coaching staff want They'll get what suits the owners on cost and timescales. And that in the vast majority of cases means the proven players look elsewhere.

Krul is just this summer's Danny Batth. They'll keep dragging it out and mucking around but in the end he won't come purely and simply because we won't pay what is needed. Then come the end they'll dress it up as the player greedily demanding too much money, wanting guaranteed games which we won't offer, wanting younger players to have the opportunity blah blah blah.

I'm struggling to name 3 clubs that I would bet on us finishing above. People will take the easy route and say Oxford / Portsmouth but both those clubs have ambitious owners. I can certainly say both will be better run clubs than us aiming to do more than merely exist from one season to the next, It is also highly likely both will invest more than we do and I suspect both will be offering more on the wage front than we are. Other than that I'm struggling. We benefited last season from a couple of chaos clubs in Huddersfield and Birmingham but both are gone. Plymouth maybe with the Rooney appointment but they'll act if it isn't working, they won't wait until February like we did with Coyle.

Lots of 'records' being broken this summer. Just a shame nobody trustworthy is able to verify that.

Plus that we have no commercial department and a bloke running the club with no track record of anything in the game save for trying to sell training grounds off for housing.

Difference is that other clubs bid for players with a genuine intention and capacity to get the deal done. Of course many won't and bigger or richer clubs will come in and outbid, but nevertheless ownership down want it to happen. Here I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our transfer 'efforts' consist of chasing players we aren't ever going to be willing to pay or at prices that clubs aren't willing to do business at, or that we are going around trying to sign players but without the crucial sign off needed from the owners to actually get the deals done. Our reputation for doing business with must be in the gutter. Fitting when owned and run by people who belong there but have ended up in positions of wealth and power

Precisely. Blows the FFP fanatics out of the water together with those who suggest higher ticket prices needed to cover losses.

Anyone who goes to Preston on that Sunday at 12pm will see the impact of Sky. Rather than 5500 Rovers fans there and a raucous atmosphere there will be 3000 odd and a tepid atmosphere. Rather than a full Deepdale there will be 5000+ empty seats. Clubs aren't bothered because it's all about the Sky money and they simply assume fans will tolerate whatever scheduling they come up with. I think as time goes by less and less will put up with it and ultimately they will kill the golden goose. The people facilitating it right here right now will justify it on the balance sheet and will be long gone by the time the true damage becomes clear.

£26 million from Ash Phillips, Kaminski and Adam Wharton since this time last year should have given us some money, but already it seems that has been forgotten about. So I doubt another £4-5 million for Raya is going to make an ounce of difference. Whether we bring in £1 million, £10 million or another £20 million this summer I suspect the budget for fees is the same - very little - and on the wages front at the very most we can replace like for like so outgoings first then incomings to fill the void.

I really believe that Waggott just comes out with what he thinks people want to hear as and when he's under pressure or the spotlight. I don't think he cares whether it is true or not, he doesn't think anyone will bother pulling him up on it and just assumes people will forget or that if they do remember it will be too late for anything to happen. So when put on the spot about the owners funding 'issues' last year he'll have said the bare minimum designed to get the pressure off his back and appear positive to the fans. That's what he's always done. Said very little but what he has said cleverly designed to protect his masters from any hassle, criticism or grief. So now when we are thinking about whether he was being accurate, truthful or sincere back last year or many months ago it isn't worth getting too hung up on. He's a proven liar but to be fair he probably knows a lot less than you'd expect a CEO to know. I bet he is just given a budget to work to and he'll be lucky to get wind of the owners issues a few times a year. Then when the only interrogation you get all year round is the Telegraph, Radio Lancashire, club media and the fans forum every few months it becomes pretty easy to blag your way through.

I think here we just see the inconsistencies and nuances of Venky ownership. Too many different ideas and decision makers. I firmly believe that the reason Mowbray was able to quickly establish himself as the dominant power at the club was because straight after relegation in 2017 he jumped on a plane to Pune and met with Desai and husband. As with Kean and Bowyer that secured him a contract extension and by Venky standards a hefty transfer and wage budget. This is because they will grant such face-to-face requests and those two are the ultimate controllers of funds. For that reason Mowbray was as safe as houses for 5 years and was never, ever, going to get sacked or replaced until his contract expired. Results, performances, progress, all totally immaterial as with Kean. I'm not comparing the two blokes as I think Kean to be despicable whereas Mowbray a well meaning and competent manager albeit very frustrating at times. But similar patterns in their job security and links to the top dogs in India. After Mowbray finally left I think and suspect that the top 2 took a back seat and left the next decision to a combination of Waggott, Pasha and Balaji (the more time that goes by I suspect it was less to do with Waggott and more others). This is why we get something more resembling a modern, professional, forward thinking structure with a plan behind it, but totally hamstrung by a lack of serious funding created by virtue of the top 2 owners having no involvement in it and not having that personal link to the management. I think they tried to overcome this problem in summer 2023 by attempting to set up a meeting for Broughton and JDT to go to India to meet the top 2. Clearly after a positive first season and concerns about budgets this was an attempt to persuade the top 2 to relinquish funds to support JDT who was getting restless and had offered to leave. But for one reason or another that meeting never occurred, no money comes through and inevitably he leaves. In the chaos of February I think the Eustace appointment was similar to the Mowbray one in 2017 - simply turning to an out of work bloke with a reasonable reputation from elsewhere and hoping he can firefight. The difference this time around is that Eustace hasn't had the India jolly, so isn't going to be armed with a hefty transfer kitty. Instead he's going to have to work with peanuts like the other non-India visitors Lambert, Coyle and JDT got. All boils down to technically having 3/4 different owners with different plans, ideas and financial capabilities, ultimately the proper serious money being in the control of Desai and husband, those two refusing to engage in the process unless people go out to India and wait to meet them, and between all that people like Waggott and Pasha with their own opinions, wishes, feelings and power struggles to win.

Another exit for cash where there wasn't a sudden inexplicable breakdown in dealing with the administrative requirements. Funny that. Only happens when big wages and a fee needs to be paid out.... Likewise perfectly able to commit to outgoings at this 'early' stage in the window but we are being drilled by the Telegraph not to expect incomings for a while, something about the Euros etc.

Something that really, really irritated me this week was reading the Travis article on the club website https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2024/july/02/eustace--trav-better-following-his-tractor-boys-experience/ Within there it talks about how he helped Ipswich to promotion to the PL for the first time in 22 years and about how that loan will have helped him and how it will have been a great experience and it even comes with a photo of him in an Ipswich shirt celebrating promotion. These people are just totally shameless aren't they? I've still not fully digested the fact that we bundled him out the back door in the first week of January (club captain) to a league rival. I still find it difficult to digest that clubs such as Ipswich can come through League One and straight through to the Premier League under bright and ambitious management. Meanwhile they reduce this club further and further every season , falling further and further behind such clubs all the time. But for Rovers to now pretend that this diabolical maneuver was a positive decision for the club and player, that it will somehow benefit Rovers, that we are supposed to tolerate this sort of thing, plastering photos over our own website of our captain celebrating Ipswich's promotion last season whilst we limped our way to survival. Simply incredible to me that anyone employed by Rovers can even talk about it with a straight face. Scandalous. They need to be working out a way to emulate the mighty Ipswich not acting grateful that our captain has benefited from their promotion when in reality it was nothing more than a sinister money saving scheme.

I've never known a club so poor and weak at handling its assets or dealing with these situations. Rothwell, Lenihan, Diaz, Nyambe - you'd have thought after those debacles costing tens of millions of pounds that heads would have rolled or serious lessons learned. It seems not. We're gearing up for more of the same with Gallagher and Dolan, who like them or loathe them are two of the few players we have remaining who can attract serious interest from rival Championship clubs. We seem to be pinned into a corner whereby we don't want to lose or sell these people at the right time, but are totally incapable or unwilling to extend their terms. It is obvious why we aren't doing the latter - drastic Venky cuts make it almost impossible to offer terms to players that are appropriate and other clubs will offer far better - the question is why we don't sell before this point and I suspect the answer is because they know that even with some cash in from those sales we aren't going to be able to source as good or better because none of it will be reinvested and the wages will never be re-allocated. Once upon a time they could successfully lay the blame at the door of greedy players and agents but I've come to the conclusion that they aren't the problem here, far from it, and it is the actions of the club, or lack of action of the club, that is forcing these situations to develop and players to look elsewhere. It's happening far too frequently for it to be anything else.

There is no transfer news. Only rumours and gossip, most of which likely to be entirely without foundation and impossible if we've no money, which all the signs suggest is the case.

Easy to say they're wonderful people when you're being paid a huge sum by them and left to do things as you want. Their track record proves that they are very far away from being caring people. Actions speak lounder than words. They may sound lovely when showing people around their palace and surrounded by people grateful for a job. But their actions prove what they really are. We might soon be adding criminality to their charge sheet on top of all the other wrongdoing in the last 14 years.

Just wondering how long it will be before we get the excuses about John Park only coming back to the club at the last minute and not having any time to plan for the summer and with the changes with Broughton leaving and new structure we're going to have to write off the summer window and instead focus on being ready for the next one.

And to put the cherry on that cake Waggott has probably earned himself a juicy bonus for negotiating the Wharton deal and bringing a large sum of cash into the club that can be used to save the owners money. So rather than be criticised for the deal he'll be even more popular with the odious ones.

I keep on thinking about our attractiveness to would-be buyers. If you are an investor looking to get into English football and a quick route to the PL then Rovers should be towards the top of the list of options. Smart management and decision making and sensible investment for a few years with this academy could easily see us promoted. Might be laughed at for saying that but we've spent much of the last 3 seasons in the top 6 positions and ought to have finished in there at least once had it not been for our owners doing their bit to undermine it. Yes you would need capital and substantial capital at that to fund the club potentially for several years at a loss. But it can be done for a lot less than the famous £20 million a year figure we hear about under these owners. Compare to having to shell out £200-300 million to buy a ready made established PL club (if there are even any available). Businessmen out there who would fancy a crack at it. Yes they could fail and get us nowhere and lose money on it, but most people would work their backsides off to avoid that and fancy their chances of being a success. And if they failed, move on, let someone else have a crack at it. Admit defeat if you run out of money, ideas or interest. That's what sensible, mature, reasonable people would do but instead this lot would rather hide away and let the club crumble into dust through their chaos.

You don't know that. Nobody does. It could happen, more likely however we find a better owner who runs the club properly or sells it on again in a few years if they've run out of money. That's what has happened at every other club in the country, of which there are dozens, that have had a change of ownership in the last decade. They're all still in existence and the majority have had good times at some stage or another under those new owners. I'm still waiting for our good times under these owners 14 years in. These people and success in football are incompatible. That's their choice because of the way they elect to operate. Absolutely nothing to do with FFP or attendances or negative fans. They'd do it exactly the same if 50,000 a week put up with their nonsense. They have nothing but contempt for the club they own, evidenced by not visiting once in a decade, so whatever the fans are thinking and saying they won't see or hear anyways. So yeah, we need shut of this lot and until we do at best we are treading water as the years roll by and the impact becomes harder to recover from.

Indeed it helps but when you're bringing in £25 million in sales in 12 months that comfortably outstrips any advantage any rival club has on attendances.

Have ended up with a bright young manager who has has an excellent first season in charge and are backing him to take them higher. A bit different to what we did under JDT

A familiar tale. We've heard similar before. We are dealing here with the scum of the earth and nobody should forget that.

Palace took us to the cleaners with that deal. No surprise at all when everyone knows these owners have reduced us to a financially distressed husk and they employ charlatans to run the club who have absolutely no pedigree in the game. Very sad, very frustrating, a big opportunity missed but all part of the game at Ewood under these owners. Anything good or positive is ushered out quickly at an undervalue or for nothing when their contract expires, whilst the deadweights and wasters carve out lucrative long term careers and hang around like a bad smell. All the hallmarks of a club where the people at the top allow it to happen and couldn't care less.

Many predicted Leeds would face financial chaos after relegation and missing out on promotion. They won't and this is one of the reasons why. Just as with the dingles they will sell a couple for big money and use that to reinvest and stave off any trouble whilst signing and loaning a few more 'big hitters' in the other way.