Of course not. Broughton might not be perfect but has nothing to gain by derailing deals. He will be doing the best he can with an impossible situation working for charlatans and liars. As with O'Brien he will have been led to believe that funds are being made available, he will have done the hard work in getting the deal ready and the player on board and then when it comes to parting with the cash the owners fail to deliver. Each and every time. Of course nobody employed by Rovers is ever going to admit this because if they did they'd be out of a job and probably not employed elsewhere in football, but anyone thinking logically about this knows where the blame lies. It makes no sense for Broughton to line it up then scupper it, just as it made no sense last January supposedly for the Club Secretary to suffer temporary amnesia and forget how to do his job. It's just lies, bullshit and smoke and mirrors aimed at shielding the Indians from any blame for what are their decisions.

Well not many that we know about, I suspect there is actually a very long history of similar stunts that have occurred at this disgusting club over the last 10 years or so that simply don't get into the public domain. This one has because it is a player from the US and there's a decent fee attached, and the previous manager rarely recruited from beyond Yorkshire. But same scum owners and same shady characters running it on their behalf so expect the same nonsense has been going on for years.

Not really When did we last sign a decent permanent cash signing in January? Under Mowbray the best we got were a few reasonable loans.

How about the owners advance the money, knowing that the worst comes to the worst Wharton doesn't go, we then have to sell him or another in the summer or we get the Raya money and they get their money back? In the meantime we get presumably a top target for the remainder of the season to help us out in dire straights. That's generally what clubs, particularly those with wealthy owners, do. They don't sit and wait for the funds to land in their account before doing business, just as they don't cut their squad back to the bone with FFP. You do it as a cycle, with a back up plan for the future if things don't go the way you expect. Here they just make it up on a whim from one day to the next.

Hopefully now people start to re-evaluate the O'Brien debacle and realise that the scumbags in India were ultimately behind that one not happening too.

We've opened the flood gates to bids for everyone and everyone. Don't blame clubs for trying it on, we're obviously in the business of selling and cutting, We will be judged by our actions, which is why clubs will try it on and why ambitious people will dodge us.

What's more important - Rovers having enough proven capable players to call upon for the rest of a tough Championship season to secure enough points to survive / be successful... Or Travis not being 100% happy at not playing as much as he would like? The Club comes first, professionals knuckle down and get on with it. You always manage to do this - turn every significant departure into 'player X being unhappy and wanting to leave' as a justification for every sale/cost cut. Will you ever hold Rovers responsible?

What is? The endless pursuit of cost cutting? So JDT is working his way through his squad and weeding out the biggest earners and most experience? Why? With Travis and Buckley the situation as I see it is quite simple. Venkys have the Indian issues / restrictions. This prevents any increase to the wage bill and probably means Broughton has been instructed to cut it further. In collaboration with JDT those two were identified as the sacrificial lambs on a cost-benefit analysis. This is partly because rival Championship clubs will see two relatively experienced and proven Championship players and consider it worthwhile entering into a loan agreement for 6-12 months as a 'try before you buy' scheme. In Buckley's case it didn't work out - poor choice of club and he got injured. Without those departures or equivalent from the wage bill there would be zero scope for incomings. All starts at the top with Venky financial nonsense in play again. At a normal football club the Travis one would never have happened, or certainly not in the first week of the window. It would have been a case of loan but only late on in the window if and when we have secured replacements. Or a sale for a reasonable fee so we can reinvest. Letting him go on loan in the first week of the window, knowing PL interest in Adam Wharton was near, was madness, as is the suggestion that we are well covered in his position and using an injured Buckley, totally unproven Ayari and regularly injured / deployed at RB Rankin Costello as examples of why.

Amazing how it is always the most expensive, experienced or sought after players that end up not fitting "the style" or getting itchy feet and wanting to go elsewhere, and ever so conveniently their departures facilitate a further round of cost cuts. Almost as though there's another constant factor in play here.

I bet other than Gallagher he's top earner. At very least in the top 4-5. They sensed an easy opportunity to offload and save. Travis was miffed at not playing, so they thought it would be all so simple to just usher him off to Ipswich who were willing to pay the wages in full, we'd make do with what we have or find another loan / cheap option and on it goes. Short sighted, dangerous, idiotic, but increasingly common under this regime. Buckley was the same. He was sacrificed so they could add Moran and Telalovic to the wages. They'll have loved that. One out, two in for the same cash or less. Problem when Sheff Wed sent him back - too much on the wages and someone substantial had to leave to cover it.

You know that the club is in a financial straitjacket. You know the owners are having to go to Court to meet obligations. Yet you don't think offloading one of our most experienced players might have financial motivations? Surely you are past the point of believing that it was all because "JDT didn't rate him"? He will have been top earner or certainly close to it. Maybe Gallagher higher that's all and he wasn't fit at the time. Let's say £8-£10k a week. Ipswich pay it all, we resume paying Buckley's wage in full whilst injured and take on the nominal costs of the two loans from Villa and Brighton Money saved That's the name of the game here, nothing more.

3 weeks ago we loaned our captain out to a league rival. An inexplicable and unforgivable move that appears only more and more foolish now we are set to lose Adam Wharton to the inevitable PL interest. If anyone was under any illusions as to just what a desperate financial state these owners (not FFP, covid, Indian government etc) have created at this club that decision illustrates it perfectly. Of course selling Adam Wharton hurts and I'm sure within a few years as with Raya and Cairney we will be wishing we had held on for more, but fundamentally £20 million is a lot of cash (that should be a game changer to the club) and Palace are a PL club. The move therefore makes sense, it can be justified as much as we can debate and discuss the figures and timings. The Travis one cannot be because we jumped into it to desperately get his wages off the books, leaving ourselves short on numbers and with no money to reinvest into replacements. So yeah, they were always going to jump at the chance to rake in millions, we're in such a state we can't even meet our existing wage obligations and are turfing out the captain to a rival to save cash.

I think Broughton is probably like most of the people who have worked at Rovers over the last decade. His intentions are right and proper, he wants to do well here, and probably works very hard at trying to do so Even if he isn't a particularly nice bloke it is still very much in his interests to perform well for the sake of his career. But as with most others it might be the case that he has ended up in a position he might not be up to the level of managing, or even if he is such are the restrictions and limitations he is operating under at a horrendous organisation such as Rovers his individual capabilities are probably immaterial.

Palace level Luton absolutely battering Brighton at present, need a third whilst on top Edit - Palace now 2-1 down

Its an insult to Brentford to even compare their setup to ours.

By the summer JDT and possibly Broughton too will be gone, then they'll wheel out the next lot to talk the talk and plan under false promises with certain fans hanging on their every word, but as you say the be all and end all is that the cash will disappear into running costs as it always does. Good news for Venkys and the money men, bad news for Rovers and our league status but since when has that been a matter of concern?

The difference is that Middlesbrough reinvest. We don't. I don't think any Rovers fan would complain if we used the money to improve the squad. But we won't. So we gain zero benefit other than keeping Venkys happy for another 12 months.

If offloading Wharton to Palace 2 days before the deadline with almost zero prospect of any serious reinvestment wasn't a nauseating enough concept, just add into the equation the cartwheels Waggott will be doing in his office as he awaits the cheque coming in from Palace and his next meeting with the cretins in India. It's hard enough to take and accept but knowing it makes life easier and better for Venkys and Waggott knocks me sick.

Not quite, to try to keep them you have to make them offers of new contracts and pay them the going rate. There's no evidence we did either, other than the claims of a proven liar.

Our last big sale was Adam Armstrong in August 2021. £15 million by many accounts. At the time we heard all the usual stuff about how this is the model we are operating in, how selling players for profit was our route to growth and development, the Brentford model, it would allow for much needed reinvestment into several key positions, that Armstrong was a sacrifice worth making to enable spending on other positions. What happened in the days, weeks and months following that sale? Well we spent nothing for the next 12 months and then the next claim was that it had funded our spend in summer 2022 when we signed Szmodics, Brittain and Hyam for a few million combined. Then the story was that the rest had gone to this new concept of a 'FFP cycle' and that we had no choice in this matter in order to avoid catastophe that never actually befalls anyone even when they don't sell players for such huge sums of money. 2.5 years on and we've spent at best 1/3 of the Armstrong dosh, sold Brockhall and are now going to sell Adam Wharton with all the same trademark talk about projects and models, but in the end it's all bullshit under this ownership.

I'm confused here. So you are saying that immediately upon Wharton's sale the sum of £11 million has to be siphoned off just to cover the "FFP deficit" without which we would be forced into further sales or a summer transfer embargo? How does that add up? Why is it that this club seems to be under such a constant immediate pressing need to reduce costs, wages and significant player sales to stave off this threat when so few other Championship clubs face it? Between 2017 and 2021 we had no major sales (other than the pitiful fee we got for David Raya) yet were never in breach of FFP, never placed under any restrictions. Fast forward a few years and despite still being a Championship club, despite having presumably a significantly lower wage bill (much smaller and younger squad) and despite a few sales and significant cost cuts last summer we now need £11 million to stave off the threat for the summer? It just doesn't add up and i don't believe it. Is the current 'model' really one that is FFP non-compliant and reliant on a sale of £10 million+ of players every couple of years to remain out of trouble? Likewise if Wharton was to suffer injury or a move break down and we don't get a massive transfer fee I doubt it would make one iota of difference - we would not be placed under an embargo in the summer either way. If the Wharton money is used 'towards' FFP then that surely means that the money the owners don't need to pump in to meet existing running costs can instead be pumped into recruitment and new signings?

Still waiting to see JDT's '3 experienced signings' he announced he wanted last week. Of course we who have been paying attention to events at Venky Rovers know how the routine goes by now. There will be at least one sale, possibly more than one, and millions on millions of pounds coming in as a result. We will be lucky to make any signings the other way, if we do they will probably be loans, or at best a couple of cheap permanent buys. 90%+ of the transfer cash is never seen again. We then get the stories about how we 'had' to sell Gallagher due to his contract, allegedly not wanting to be here or his wages (strange how no such issues for those clubs after him), and then it will be the usual 'FFP cycle' excuses for why we never see the Wharton cash. They'll play us like fiddles. Many will fall for it and insist to their mates that they know best. In the end it is just Waggott and Pasha getting a big well done and pat on the back (+bonus) for ensuring Venkys don't have to worry about injecting any cash next year and in one swoop earning themselves another few years on the never ending gravy train whilst they find the next few to develop and flog.

Pretty much every club that has endured turmoil under inappropriate / unfit owners in recent times has relatively quickly come through it and moved on. Bolton, Blackpool, Portsmouth, Derby etc. etc. We're into year 13 or 14 of this with no end in sight. A fanbase and club can cope with a short sharp battering, and when you come out the other side of it regroup and reunite. But when the battering is sustained over decades the long term damage done to the club and support is so much more severe, albeit probably less noticeable because it is gradual over the years where numbers dwindle and people move on. With everything in the world it comes back to cash. Because Venkys pick up the tab for it and we avoid admin many fans and the wider football world just assume all is fine. Nobody really stops to think about the actual impact their negligent ownership continues to have, and those that do just get the usual cop out of "ah but back in 1982 we only had x thousand on, it's better than those days"

We have a big catchment area, just a lot of competition in it. Makes it all the more important that we do our damned best to retain and grow that catchment area without PL football to offer, and all the more unforgivable the approach Rovers have taken in the last decade which is to do absolutely nothing to promote the club anywhere outside of Blackburn with Darwen. Sides like Ipswich and Norwich don't need to do very much to pull them in - a couple of decent seasons and promotion pushes will do it - the people out there have little else to do other than go back to them Here people have many other options ranging from Accy Stanley because it's easier and cheaper, to City because they can watch a quality product for less, to everything inbetween. The advantage we accumulated under Walker and 20 years of top flight football is being eroded and I think the club could and should do a lot more to stop or reverse that.

Tell you what they are making what should be a straight forward idea into something difficult to understand aren't they? Once upon a time it was just 'tickets on sale until kick off' especially when you've 10,000+ set to be empty. Nowadays we have ticket office shut, digital tickets ok until kick off, club shop and telephone sales good until 5pm, i.e. until most people clock off work, but then bizarrely we aren't selling any this way after this time, though I assume the shop will be open pre-match just not selling any tickets for the game. Apparently on police advice though still waiting for someone to explain why it is ok for someone to buy a digital ticket at 7pm but not ok for them to go into the shop or ring the club and buy that way instead.