So reinvestment is possible under FFP, just not here?

We sold one player for £15 million and all transfers since then have cost less than that, we also sold our training ground and other players including our goalkeeper and Ash Phillips and still whinge about FFP rules causing a problem.

Sshh. Apparently nobody will buy a loss making 2nd division club and you just have to hope the current owners never leave or the club will disappear. Also notice that their owner has managed to invest without hiding behind FFP rules as an excuse.

First thing to worry about is getting enough fans on to ensure we aren't outnumbered by that circus. They'll bring a lot and probably fill their allocation (probably would go close even without the media nonsense). Once again the ball is in Waggott and Rovers' court to ensure we at least try to get a healthy gate on (far more needed than the numbers against Cambridge) yet I suspect he'll instead spend his time concocting some new scheme to deter or frustrate potential buyers.

He can do what he would have been doing here - playing mid-table to bottom half Championship games - but getting paid far, far more off Spurs than he would have got here. In addition if he doesn't like it there or he struggles to hold down a place in their team then it matters not because come the summer he can go elsewhere.

Birmingham should consider themselves honoured that he's prepared to put himself to such trouble as travelling down from Teesside to do the job. He'll keep them up, they'll be mid-table inconsistent for a year or so and then they'll sack him when they get more delusions of grandeur or realise that the horror runs under him are inevitable. Just hope there's no staff or players at Sunderland that he advised to move on before he got sacked.

I really don't think Venkys know or care about that and even less than that do they hold him responsible for it. He can send his spreadsheets over there each year and show them how he's increased revenues from squeezing the 8000 a bit harder or by putting an 1875 membership scheme out or saved some money by shutting a stand or whatever else he comes up with. I really don't think the tying down assets thing is something they'll lay at his door, I suspect that one falls on Mowbray/Venus and the shadow man/Venkys for not sorting. They clearly don't care about things like lost ticket sales or plummeting attendances so doubt they'll even think about his policies and their impact on those.

He's doing well for his bosses, hollowing out the club, saving them relatively small amounts in the scheme of tens of millions a year, saving them any hassle or need to do anything other than sanction the annual budget. Unfortunately what is good for Venkys isn't what is good for Rovers, so as a Rovers CEO he has been an outright failure in improving, developing, enhancing, progressing the football club.

As with politics and showbusiness/media those in powerful positions/making loads of money don't give it up unless they have to. In most professions you'd be desperate to enjoy retirement or too worn down by decades of hard work to keep going yet these professions you get folk keep going into their 70s and 80s. Usually either because they love it too much or because it is too good a number to let go.

We did it once, and showed that even when we do sell them high (still less than we should have got) that we won't spend it.

And yet for Watkins see Armstrong, Rothwell and Diaz who between them we could have had pushing £30 million. Yet due to poor management only got circa £15 million, none of which was immediately reinvested due to various excuses, then about a third was allowed back in over a year later to try to rebuild the spine of the team and spread around 4-5 signings, then we have people saying despite the £10 million profit and dismantling of the wage bill we still had to sell Brockhall and are still in the pitiful state we are at present, focusing on getting people out and off the wage bill before potential incomings arrive. In short we've had a chance to emulate Brentford and have already proven we cannot or will not and have a book of excuses as to why.

Brentford had a plan, led by their owner who has a brain and is invested in the club. He has used his skills to overcome their financial weakness and small fanbase to get them to the PL. This included investment - they paid up to £10 million for Ivan Toney as a Championship club - yet we are told we cannot do this ourselves. So we are nowhere near and never will be near Brentford. Even if we got new owners we would struggle as they were so good at it but with Venkys making things up on a whim....never.

Do you believe every word you read and hear in the news? do you ever weigh up two sides to a story and apply logic or critical thought to a situation? Tomasson is paid by Rovers. He has a responsibility to himself and his employers to project a certain narrative. He would be the first manager in history if he came along and said "the player didn't want to go, he was keen to stay and fight for his place, but people at the Club decided we were getting rid and freeing up the wages as there's no other money" If he said that he'd be turning the focus on the Club, owners, board, Broughton and himself rather than on a player who's out of the way for 6 months and he probably won't work with again after he resigns in the summer. It's a bit like when you insist JDT is happy at Rovers because he's said something along those lines in his press conferences. You take that at face value and insist it is true. A blind man can see it probably isn't given the way these owners have conducted business since he arrived.

No it doesn't make sense You're trying to rationalise the irrational. Loaning your captain and one of a few experienced Championship players you have out to a side 25 points higher and in the top 2 is not sensible. If it was a sale for good levels of cash I could consider the argument. You know your stuff. Find me a comparable loan to the Travis one. I think you'll struggle because these sort of deals are very strange.

Always good to see all is well with the world of Rovers in Chaddyland The events of the last few days, weeks and months in all departments of the Club met with almost universal derision and condemnation, but can always rely on Chaddy to fish a positive or two out of the Ewood Park swamp.

'Huge wages' now for Travis that presumably we 'can't afford' yet in reality he was offered and signed that deal not long ago whilst we were a mid-table Championship club, fully aware of our income levels and FFP restrictions. This is how they shift the narrative. Making out he's a luxury that we cannot afford when in reality that just isn't the case on either front were it not for their extreme cutbacks. So we've either handed out unaffordable deals recently knowing we were going to get into trouble....if so why and why is the CEO still here.....or these aren't unaffordable deals and he's simply on the going rate, but the owners are electing to cut right back to the bone (again). If they don't want to spend what it takes I have a good idea. Clear off Venkys and save everyone the hassle.

They'll get a play-off spot at very least. Then anything can happen.

He could be a Premier League player or at least promotion winner in the next 5 months. More than he has achieved in 6 years with Rovers. Meanwhile we will, at best, be sat here still in the Championship speculating which assets are getting sold and which cheap loans we are going for.

How exciting. I feel so much better about the future now. Look on the bright side if we give him plenty of minutes we might be well placed for another kid from Villa in the summer.

Not at this moment in time, no. But there is a bigger picture. I can't see Wharton and Tronstad playing 90 minutes for the rest of the season. So someone else will need to come in. That's the reason Ipswich have signed him. Proven depth. What do we have in reserve? Travis is likely to be a sub at Ipswich, at least to start with. I assume he is content to do that and try to work his way in.

Agree with most of this. I am sick to death of this club. At every turn it is a cesspit.

A few extra thoughts. JDT has said Travis asked to leave. We don't really know the context of that (if true). We don't know what JDT or others have said to Travis. Of course JDT as a club employee is going to say things that paint him and the Club in a healthier light than a popular senior homegrown player being sent packing....on loan....to Ipswich. If people at Rovers have said to him "we're getting shut of you, you ain't playing until we do" then of course Travis will want to look elsewhere. They have to come up with something convincing because on the surface of it this is one of the more bizarre transfers I can remember. Loaning your club captain out to a side 20+ points above you in the same division. Unheard of. Yes there has been engineering of his move out. It is quite clear that since November a decision was reached that he would not be featuring in the team and his lack of appearances over Xmas at a time when we had lots of games and few players to call upon was inexplicable other than to keep him out of the way for Ipswich to come along. It isn't as simple or innocent as preferring another player in his position. That's fine, but Travis would still have featured at least as a sub if there was normality at the Club.

Probably around the same time the people upstairs decided he was the next one up for the exit door as they wanted his wages off the books and to 'reinvest' it into a couple of unproven kids instead. And as JDT points out these are 'club' decisions which basically means the owners' man decides, instructs Waggott and Broughton who in turn tell JDT what is happening with players.

I'm glad that JDT has confirmed that the Buckley loan and now Travis are at least partly motivated by finances and freeing wages up. As some of us suspected all along but were told they were purely footballing decisions for the betterment of the team. They're having us on and I think JDT is being as transparent as he can be about it.

Let's put it this way, in a relegation battle (which we will be in soon if not already) I would much sooner have Travis fighting in my team than a group of teenagers and loans most of whom have no real experience and none of whom are up for a scrap. Every game he plays Travis puts 100% in for 90 minutes and runs himself into the ground getting stuck in all over the pitch. Opposition sides must hate it. Instead we're going into the trenches without him, and I'm afraid looking at some of the 'characters' we have left it doesn't look good to me. A distinct lack of leadership and fight in recent games.