Not sure about Rhodes - didn't we get around £12 million or thereabouts? - but generally I think this is spot on. Trading smartly is absolutely imperative for clubs without parachute payments coming in. I suppose that you could argue that we've been slightly unlucky in that a disproportionate number of players have really kicked on to another level in the final 12-18 months of their deals, but you make yourself a hostage to fortune if you're not proactive enough with the contracts of players good enough to be in demand. I'm all for sensible budgets, but Brentford have showed that you need to speculate a little bit to accumulate, and then hopefully grow from there. They sold Watkins for near enough double what we got for Armstrong despite him scoring fewer goals.

Can't really speak for others, but I think most who bring up FFP do so because it means Venkys wouldn't be allowed to spend much more than they do, even if they wanted to.

Jumping the gun slightly here, but did we ever establish how large the sell-on clause was for Raya when we sold him?

Agree completely with your broader point. I think Stoke are quite a good example of how tough clubs can find things though under FFP. My understanding (which could be wrong) is that their wage bill has been cut quite drastically after spending buckets in their first few seasons post-relegation, even though their owner is willing to invest. I'd like to think that the evidence by the end of the window is that we're willing to pay the going rate at least compared to the clubs that we're currently competing with, but sadly at the moment there are probably 6 clubs in the division who have means which go way beyond what we can do. You'd probably expect around four of them at least to occupy the top 6 at the end of the year if recent seasons are anything to go by.

Are they? Championship clubs with parachute payments still coming in are Norwich, Burnley, Watford, West Brom, Sheffield United. Out of the rest, the only club who look like they're obviously throwing money about on wages appears to be 'Boro, and they're arguably doing so off the back of a impending £20 million sale. I could be wrong of course, but it seems as though we're similar to most other clubs without recent prem money.

If the lad wants to leave because he wants to play every week, he'll be going to a Championship team. Not ridiculous that it would be at Rovers, but sadly as we've seen, that will be partially dependant on the budgets of other clubs that are in for him.

Agree completely on relying on youth too quickly. If a player hasn't played senior football yet, you can't rely on them to be good enough straight away. You might get lucky with one or two, but then again look at how long it took Buckley to show his talent. I disagree on the players you talk about though. There's a real art to picking up players when they're past their best. It's much easier to pick up a Danny Murphy than it is a Gordan Cowans. Taking them one by one: McGoldrick - Never really been prolific even in this league. Had serious injuries, turns 35 before Christmas. James Chester - Had an excellent career at this level but Stoke fans thought he was a liability last year. A big downgrade on Lenihan in my view. Barkhuizen - Again, never been prolific if you're playing him as a forward. Like his attitude, but apparently has lost all of his pace. Average. Hourihane - This one is a bit more intriguing to be fair, I'd have been happy enough taking a chance on him. Mendez-Laing - don't know what his form in L1 has been like, but has an absolutely stinking attitude by all accounts. Experience is a real positive it goes hand-in-hand with hunger and fitness, so they all could turn out to be v. good signings for Derby for that reason. I think there's a reason that they signed for a L1 club though - if Rovers had signed any of them bar Hourihane I'd see it as panicking.

Just seen this doing the rounds on twitter. Absolutely vile. £70 for a kids ticket!

51 wickets away from matching Shane Warne's total, which seems completely achievable the shape that he's in. Ridiculous record for a pace bower.

You might struggle with that one - he's set up 7 in his senior career. The guy is a top notch defender, who I wish we were keeping, but his output going forward has been dismal. I don't see what's so hard to accept about the idea that Nyambe might just find it hard to improve that side of his game. Almost all players at this level are flawed in one way or another, or else they don't stay here for very long. Why do we hold other players responsible for their weaknesses but when it comes to Nyambe's work in the final third, that's all down to poor coaching?

We'll have to wait and see on that one. I liked Nyambe, but sometimes players just have weak aspects to their game. For all of Mowbray's serious flaws, he was talking about working on Nyambe's attacking for years now, so it's not as though it wasn't recognised. Too easy to blame the last manager on that one for me. Far more likely that he's just got a low ceiling on that side of his game.

I do find it curious that Wilder in particular has gone for Nyambe. He even expects his wider centre backs to contribute going forward, let alone his wing backs. Must think that he can get a tune out of him where Mowbray couldn't, but he strikes me as close to the opposite style of full back to what he would usually go for.

Wouldn't go that far, he's been a very good player at this level. Well past it now though.

Yeah, that sums up exactly my thoughts to be honest. I hope that a combination of his age, alongside our new approach means that he can find more consistency for the next five years or so. Obviously it's unrealistic for him to sustain this ridiculous purple patch, but he's so destructive that he could easily be the player that we all hoped Buttler might've been in red ball cricket. There could be a sense of making up for lost time too.

As I understand it he's very highly rated, but like a lot of youngsters at top clubs, find the Championship a much steeper learning curve than they might've first imagined. Obviously gets highlighted a lot more when you're a goalkeeper. Not sure if he would be permanent or not, but we've found that a lot of players you get loan from prem clubs would be great signings if they were on 4 year contracts, but you can really take or leave them if you just keep them for a year and let them make their mistakes. You get the odd exception like Harvey Elliott or Van Hecke last year, but just as often you get a Leighton Clarkson, Tom Lawrence or (dare I say it) Harwood-Bellis who are obviously talented but need more experience before consistently cutting it at the top of the Championship.

Happy to eat some of my words about Bairstow, his form since the ashes has been astounding. That said, we shouldn't let recency bias let us forget what the rest of his test career has been like. Forever giving his wicket away until he needed the occasional big innings to stay in the side. Being positive is fine and you expect a few soft dismissals as a result, but he simply hasn't delivered often enough for a player of his talent. Almost the first name on the team sheet now though. Long may his new found consistency continue!

I agree with your assessment of our setup at Ewood, and that commercially we've seemed second rate for some time. That said, I think we also need to be realistic about what can be achieved to the balance sheet by ticket sales, sponsorship and the like. Our entire commercial revenue in the last accounts I believe was just shy of £5million. A significant increase on that would of course be welcome, but we have to accept there is a ceiling to what this means in terms of FPP and the running of the club. Player trading, buying low and selling high, is the only game in town (bar promotion) when it comes raising the revenue of the club enough that we can spend substantially more whilst staying compliant with FPP. Obviously this means a bit of spending to accumulate, and protecting assets much better than we have done over the last few years. Slashing costs with no other strategy is a certain recipe for decline, but at there's no point pretending that FPP is an 'alleged spectre' when it's clearly not, or that we could transform our finances with a bit more effort and imagination on the commercial side.

It certainly has! Absolutely magnificent batting.

Such is the disparity in income that it's entirely possible for them to both slash their wage bill and still blow us (and most of the league) out of the water.

Sadly, we've been noncompetitive for some time when it comes to clubs with parachute payments burning holes in their pockets.

I'm sympathetic to a lot of that, if we could go back two years and make the same call again I don't think any of us would want to sign him. The fact that he's a centre-back too makes his lack of reliability all the more damaging. We are where we are, though. If someone takes us off our hands and we can give the £15k a week (or maybe more) on a more reliable player then great. But if we get into the realms of still paying a chunk of his wages just to move him on, then I think we have to be pragmatic enough to recognise that the most value we can get for our outlay is to have a good player for about half a season and make a better decision next summer. I wonder if some of the shocking recruitment we made in the Kean years has desensitised us slightly to paying off players. For clubs like ours, I think they should be real worst case scenarios for the Murphys, Orrs or Etuhus who need binning off for the good of the club. Ayala's been a frustrating signing to say the least, but he's not in that bracket.

Think it might be a bit ambitious to get a fee for him - but I agree that we might as well keep him if someone won't take on his entire contract. Twenty games of Ayala next season might end up being valuable, even if we can't rely on him to stay fit.

Yes - if I remember correctly he'd just been made bankrupt with his US based academy going belly up. Villa then offered to double his wages to £50k a year, which in his late 30s was always going to be tough to turn down.

I know what you mean - but then again I'm in my early 30s so I just put it down to getting a bit older. Rhodes stands out since relegation. Dack too I suppose. One thing I would say is that I haven't actively disliked any of our players for a while, which wasn't always the case a few years ago! Much easier to develop emotional attachment to cloggers like Smallwood and Bennett compared to the likes of Orr or Murphy.

Game of opinions, but I disagree completely. I think he's going to be the biggest loss actually. I would've agreed earlier in his career, but I thought he was very strong last season. Actually for the last couple of seasons, there's a massive difference between our win % with and without Lenihan in the team.