JHRover

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.

Have you seen the population of Huddersfield compared to Blackburn?!

Agreed. The Championship is now a behemoth of a league with massive national and even international coverage. One of the most watched and attended leagues in Europe. It smacks of laziness and taking the easy option turning to an established name in the phone book based up the road, a familiar trait with Waggott - see Totally Wicked, Webbox and the other vaping company he had involved a few years ago. Like with so many other elements this club could, and should, be doing so much better yet there's nobody with the slightest bit of interest in doing so.

There's a game at Morecambe the night before Wigan (so probably the youth team) and also a behind closed doors fixture on the weekend after we play Stanley.

If not Watson Ramsbottom then Leavers Bakers, Ewood WMC, 100 Club or Ewood MOT garage all options.

No shirt with 'Venkys' printed on it is getting bought by me, no matter how nice its design may be.

When we are still 7-8000 ish short of Bolton, Preston and Dingles the club should not be using the word 'smashed'.

We're announcing that we are 'expecting' them to be on sale in July whilst West Brom, new to Macron, have this week unveiled their new shirts.

I don't think sales this summer will make any difference to what we spend. I suspect we are, at best, going to spend £2-3 million, and that is top end. The focus will be on loans and cheap deals of £500k here and there. Ah right, I'm with you now. So the club has made a loss of £6 million since the start of February necessitating the entirety of the £6 million from Wharton to be spent? We are in a mess aren't we? You can believe what you like, have you any basis for this £6 million in 3 instalments stuff or just making it up? Not that it really makes any difference, because if the club has an agreement with Palace to that effect then the owners could loan the money and recoup it later when those additional funds come in. This would not pose a problem under FFP and would allow greater investment in the summer. We aren't making any improvements to training grounds or academy facilities, it is called routine maintenance and shouldn't be funded from the Adam Wharton money. You are just repeating what Waggott has said on the subject because he's desperate at every turn to dilute expectations of the owners investing in the club. Presumably because it's his job to save them money and so he's keen to fund everything from sales instead.

What has the Wharton £18 million been spent on? Running costs? Even if his transfer money has been used towards paying ongoing running costs that money then has to be reinvested by the owners. That's how reinvestment works in football. The owners will have budgeted and had scope within FFP rules to invest a certain amount to meet our costs. If Wharton had got a serious injury or no interest had materialised in January then they would have had to use their own money instead. So they can do that now instead and fund transfers from their own cash. If the Wharton money is being used for that instead it leaves space in the owners' budget to put into transfers instead, not simply disappear. There is no excuse Chaddy yet you are doing Waggott's job for him by firstly believing the nonsense they come out with and secondly repeating it as fact on here refusing to question the narrative. They've had the best part of £30 million since last summer. Fact. They're likely to raise another £15 million this summer from Raya and Szmodics. It will be very surprising indeed if at least one of those deals doesn't happen. The club will never be in a better position to spend, if it has owners with an ounce of ambition for the club. You love to remind us about FFP rules. Well find me another Championship club bringing in that sort of cash on top of what the owners are already permitted to spend. Find me a club with a smaller wage bill to build on. I bet there's about 3-4 at a push.

Round about now the time large blocks of seats in the JW upper suddenly become available as we look set to shift even less than last year despite a price cut. Some achievement that, almost as though there's an awful lot of people sick and fed up to the point a price reduction won't tempt them.

So you think a transfer spend of less than 20% of money brought in is appropriate or acceptable? Where does the other £30 million go?

Coventry spent way more than half on new players. We've brought in £20 million for Wharton, plus much more in other sales and will almost certainly have Szmodics to add to that. £9 million is grossly insufficient given the cash brought in and state of the squad.

Depends what the aim is but even if it just to remain a middling Championship side I'd expect to see upwards of £10 million. There are plenty of areas need investment and quickly, in today's market that isn't big money for a full rebuild. Fortunately given receipts of £30 million+ there is no excuse for not spending at least that sum. If we want to get promoted (haha) then I'd expect to see the vast majority of that cash invested. They've no intention of course. I see Gestede is a quick learner and is already parroting the 'protect the owners' line readying us for little spend. Then it will be FFP and 'loans and frees aren't free you know' excuse.

How does non-attendance hurt the club? Presumably you are referring to lost income but given the mismanagement and squandering of resources at Ewood I doubt a full stadium would make an ounce of difference to our fortunes. It would just make it easier for Venkys to fund every year. Other clubs have poor ownership. None that I am aware of have lasted uninterrupted for 14 years and counting. Most come and go within a few years before a rebirth or rebuild gets underway. That can only happen here under new owners and the longer this regime remains the less there is to salvage.