And what about the dozens of staff who have lost or will lose their jobs under Venkys if their cutbacks and managed decline down the divisions continues?

I suspect that the Adam Wharton money will keep the lights on comfortably until August, especially when added to season ticket cash and a few installments on media and commercial income. I also suspect that Waggott will be instructed to sell anyone who a reasonable cash bid comes in for, and in particular Szmodics, because if they get a good offer for him that will probably be enough to keep the show on the road until March 2025. I think if they are absolutely forced to then the owners will do the necessary in August to fund the club. This includes depositing the required bond in India. But before then they will do whatever they can to avoid or delay that, which of course means player sales and cost cuts. So expect Szmodics gone, the Raya money used and also 'big' earners like Gallagher, Travis and Sigurdsson moved along. The first two will also attract Championship interest and cash bids. Sigurdsson probably overseas interest. I doubt Waggott really knows much more than the plan for the time being and the need for him to make cuts and sales to help the owners in advance of August.

"The ongoing court case in India is now related only to technical and procedural issues involving Venkateshwara Hatcheries Pvt Ltd (VHPL) and should have no future impact on the owners being able to continue to fund the club" Putting aside the club's track record for inconsistency, confusion and inaccuracies the above promises absolutely nothing. The word should very carefully placed. Quite fortunately for them since this statement was made we've managed to bring in many millions from player sales which I'm sure will have been used towards running costs, likely avoiding the need for the owners to even need to send money over. It's what happens when that money runs out that's going to be the interesting bit.

Fully agree. Unfortunately however for as long as the bills are paid and bailiffs are kept away from the door there will always remain a large number of people, internal and external, who will insist that they are good owners. It matters not to them that these owners have created most of our problems, that their presence is one of the reasons we are so stuffed financially, that they have dragged this club into the gutter with them. A lazy and simplistic way of looking at it. Basically it is bills paid on time = good owners. The minute we hit defaulting on payments, wages being paid late or administration all that lot will start to take more of an interest and hold Venkys more responsible. Until then they share the Venky attitude which is that they pay the bills so that entitles them to do whatever they please with impunity. The local media have proven themselves to be a waste of space. Developments like there have been here with the Indian legal action are massive potentially club defining events and yet way too much hassle and risk for them to get involved in. Lets just ask slippery Steve for his view of things and print his account out verbatim. It was the fans with the good power of the internet who rumbled the Brockhall plans and then suddenly the club and Telegraph clicked into gear and started catching up. It was the fans with the internet who rumbled the owners' legal issues in India. Without the fans and the internet the owners, club and local media would have kept us in the dark indefinitely. They treat us with contempt.

Remember they don't think mere fans are worthy of knowing this sort of thing. All the trouble in India with the owners would have remained a tight secret if it hadn't been for people going online and finding the information out for themselves. I'm pretty sure everything that Waggott and co. have said on the subject has only come after the people have unearthed information themselves. Same thing with the training ground scheme.

I think that will hinge on what installments were are getting from Adam Wharton and whether we get our hands on the Szmodics and Raya cash before then. If we get the full lot I expect the hearing to be put back for a few more months whilst that money is used to keep the lights on. If they aren't sold and we don't get that extra cash then the hearing may well have to take place as without it is goodnight Vienna.

Indeed. They lied about Indian tax law changes and hoped to get away with that one until the investigation into the owners got out of the bag and have since had to admit that it is actually their conduct which has attracted investigation and with it restrictions. They have since tried to claim that this is all fine and not causing a problem for Rovers. I'm not convinced by that claim at all but that's what they are trying to make people believe. They have relied heavily on the FFP excuse over the last 5 years or so but when you've brought in such a huge amount of cash it becomes nigh on impossible to use that one to not spend any money. In between those excuses they've now exhausted the admin error/rogue secretary/unfortunate chain of events excuses which have, quite fortunately for them, torpedoed efforts to spend money and sign some quality. So as you say the go-to excuse, tried and tested, is FFP. I imagine we will get talk of cycles and saving money for future years to ensure compliance.

I say there's no cash, or rather I should say there's very little. I've no doubt that we will spend SOME cash, but that isn''t something to be excited about when it will be at a level insufficient to get the quality we need and will probably be limited to more along the lines of O'Riordan, Edun, Pickering, Wahlsted. Young project signings brought in from lower leagues or abroad for a few hundred grand. As usual we will only know when deadline day is past but I've got history on my side, including January just gone. But my prediction is that we will get the traditional 3-4 loan signings and then maybe another couple of relatively cheap cash signings and that's your lot. A couple of million when we've brought in £25 million+ and are likely to bring in another £15 million+ really won't be acceptable.

Eustace isn't going to turn around and say we need a complete rebuild and substantial spending. He knows he isn't getting it and to say that publicly would ostracise half the current squad. He's a company man and company policy is that there's no cash so incomings will be restricted to a few positions. In the last three seasons we have collapsed after January. That's either because we have a small squad unable to sustain results over a full season or due to mental weakness Either way big incomings needed to stop it happening again.

Yes we do. We survived by the narrowest of margins and are totally reliant on one player to score all our goals. Our form from December to May was totally unacceptable and unfortunately that means a lot of these players need replacing with better. That's if the club has any ambition. Which it doesn't. So it will stick and save money and effort and hope for the best. That doesn't mean we have a good squad, it just means the powers that be are too tight and lazy to overhaul it.

Agreed, and think that this is the perfect scenario for those running Rovers. They get to keep Szmodics through the summer and benefit from him for the first few weeks of the season, they can try and start some sort of bidding war or charge a premium from a desperate club, they still get him out the door and millions in return, there's little to no time to spend anything the other way and then they can play the victims of circumstance, powerless to do anything but take the money but no time to reinvest.

The other year we were due to play Doncaster in a friendly and then were drawn against them in the first round of the cup, so they decided to cancel the friendly and just play them in the cup. I wonder if a similar thing will occur this time around.

And I'm afraid 4 or 5 is well short of what is really needed after last season's debacle, even if we pull off a 100% success rate and they all turn out to be good. But rather than get talk of an overhaul or total rebuild we get 4 or 5 to be competitive. Music to Waggott's ears when 2-3 of them will be loans.

BB postcodes include all of Blackburn, Darwen, Hyndburn, Haslingden, Rawtenstall, Clitheroe, Whalley and surrounding villages. If true then effectively a third of our season ticket holders live beyond those areas, which highlights just how large and wide our catchment area is and just how important it is to engage in such areas to grow and retain fans. Perhaps they could come up with some figures as to precisely what efforts they have made outside of BB postcodes to do this. Absolutely nothing is my guess.

Virtually every club at this level loses £10 million+ a year without substantial sales or parachute cash. Not many will bring in £25 million and counting in sales within a year to help with things. Not many have 'billionaire' owners desperate to invest. Most will spend more than us in any event. Most will spend more than us this summer without any multi-million pound sales. Most have owners who want their clubs to get better. We don't. What you are highlighting is entirely the choice of our revolting owners, and something that could instead be used to propel the club forward. If a mere 50% of cash received was reinvested it could catapult us into a good league position. This lot would rather save in the short term but get relegated to League One and lose more in the longer term.

We've just brought in £25 million+ in the last 12 months from sales and spent next to nothing the other way so there's something very wrong indeed if our finances aren't in good health. If that sort of influx of cash and our small squad and shorn wage bill doesn't put us in a decent position financially then nothing will.

But nothing stopping them from using their many contacts and links through their vast business empire to secure beneficial sponsorship and commercial deals, provided those are of a fair market value. Which begs the question, why have they never done so, not even once, in 14 years of owning the club? It's a mystery. Surely for the billionaire owners of a conglomerate with interests in a whole range of industries it would be pretty easy to encourage suppliers, partners, customers to put a bit of business or money into Rovers and thus massively help with those terrible FFP rules. Perhaps the answer is that they just couldn't care less. If so that could explain a lot of the other stuff we've witnessed here over the years.

I think in the cases of Cardiff, Wrexham, Hull, QPR the deals they had came about as a direct result of their owners using their connections and ambitions overseas to secure sponsorship with their clubs. Clearly our foreign owners have no such intentions / abilities. 12 years on and have we ever benefited from a single commercial deal from having these billionaire international conglomerate holders here? Not one from what I can remember.

Hull City are / were sponsored by Corendon Airlines, Pegasus Airways and McVities. Wrexham by American Airlines and Tiktok. Cardiff by 'Visit Malaysia' QPR previously by Gulf Air Norwich by Aviva Reading by Waitrose During that time we've had Probiz, RFS, Zebra Finance, Totally Wicked and Watson Ramsbottom. Unheard of or small local companies The only major one we've had was Dafabet which was thanks to Dave Biggar. I simply refuse to accept the claim that this deal is better than that one was.

To replace a vaping company? Yes absolutely no issue with a betting company sponsoring the shirt. Why would I? Not that its an either / or choice. There are plenty of large organisations all over the world that can be approached. Unfortunately we've got no commercial department worthy of the name and no efforts made beyond BwDBC boundaries. Totally Wicked chose to end or not renew their deal, which is backing out, so a new sponsor had to be found.

They're a local business and that's just the way the small minded regime at Ewood like it. According to their own website they've got a presence in Barnoldswick, Carlisle, Pontefract and Lytham. That doesn't correspond with "offices throughout Cumbria and Yorkshire" it's a couple of offices outside the local area which they probably share with other businesses. The comments on Rovers website are very much banging the 'local' drum. Basically Waggott has panicked because Totally Wicked have backed out so he's offered it to the next name on his very short list of local companies he's done business with previously. Lazy. Small minded. Another sign of the times here, no intention of growth, expansion, trying something new, looking wider, just stick with the easy local option and sell it with the 'local' talk

Coventry have an owner that takes an interest, wants to invest and wants his club to get better. So they reinvest money from sales whilst the con artists at Ewood come up with all manner of reasons and excuses why our owners don't.

Why sign players now and pay them through June and July when they can be signed at the end of August and save on 3 months wages? Why sign players now when there are 4-5 kids in the academy who could benefit from pre-season? These are the things Waggott will have in mind. A proper pre-season and hitting the ground running? Irrelevant.

On 16th May Rovers announced some pre-season plans on their website, including that they were travelling to the 'Tyrol region' of Austria from 14th to 21st July with 'at least one' friendly 'expected' to take place 'at the end' of the training camp. In the fans forum minutes of 15th April Steve Waggott stated that plans had been made for a pre-season tour to Austria and that details would be published 'shortly' so that fans could make travel plans 'in good time' if they wished to attend. To my knowledge no further update or information released in the last 6 weeks. We are now 3 weeks away from the 'tour' to Austria and still no confirmation of where they are going, whether they are playing any games, when those will be, where those will be or whether fans are welcome to attend. The 'Tyrol region' is quite large and very vague as a destination. It can take a very long time to travel around the mountains especially if you can't drive. So you'd have to be brave to book time off work, book flights, arrange transport and find a hotel somewhere in the 'Tyrol region' on the premise Rovers are playing out there but you don't know when, where or if you are going to be allowed in to watch. So they've failed once again to update supporters and give them sufficient advance warning. Despite the same thing happening last summer and them vowing to release information more quickly this summer to ensure people had more opportunity to attend. You compare to the transparency at other clubs, with full details released months in advance and even clubs organising packages for fans to book on, it's shocking. I'd have more respect if they just said they don't want anyone to go and discourage people from travelling. At least they'd be honest about it.

He explained in his first sentence why he would do it - to get the message out there as to what a shambles Rovers are. Can you think of an easier, cheaper or quicker way of anonymously getting a message out to a wide audience? And not a chance that an agent is going to go public in the press or with Sky Sports and say all that. Unlikely they would broadcast it anyway as they just aren't interested in the internal chaos of a Championship club. It may be true. May be rubbish. It certainly wouldn't surprise me if it was true, but then again might be some idiot making stuff up. Some people make a living out of that.