JHRover

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.

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.