Mashed Potatoes

I didn't mean the PSR rules. I simply meant the cash available to the management at Ewood Park to spend on improving first team results.

Personally I don't have a problem with the club being owned by cold, hard business people. It is competence and good decision making that are primarily important, to me anyway ; I agreed with the decision to effectively withdraw from women's football because the increase in costs arising from the new rules were estimated to be in the region of £600k to £700k pa and I would rather see that money spent on improving the first team results.

I agree with you.

An interesting read but surely matches are called off by referees, albeit they may consult the two managers.

Thank you for the complement. To answer your questions : 1. I don't know; if I had to guess I would say they do not like to accept defeat. I don't think there is any evidence that there is anything untoward at the club to hide. 2. The most likely circumstances for a sale are likely to be some kind of pressure from within India. My guess is that the price they would be looking for if they are not forced sellers is way in excess of what purchasers would be looking to pay. 3. After 15 years of ownership the only area of the club that is not markedly worse than before is The Academy. Therefore you would have to conclude that their continued ownership is a hindrance. I believe they are in full control of the club and don't believe that they are puppets of any outside agencies. I believe they do want the club to succeed but lack the skills to achieve that ; I don't think there is any evidence that they have deliberately engineered relegations.

It only goes in the expenses column if the investment is written down. But 2 points : 1. That assumes the writedown is an allowable deduction for Indian tax purposes. I don't know. 2. Last time I looked at the VLL accounts there was a statement along the lines that the directors of that company believed the investment in the football club -equity and debt - was worth what VLL had put in. In that case I don't see how the Indian holding company could claim a writedown.

They count if an Indian resident is trading in the UK its own right, usually through a branch. But that is not happening with us.

I'm afraid you are misinterpreting this. Indian residents will be treated on "their" overseas income and losses as you state. But the losses of the football club are not losses of an Indian resident - they are losses of a UK resident,the football club. For Venkys in India a tax loss only crystallises if/when they dispose of the UK company through which they are injecting cash in to the football club - but that loss will be a capital loss which under Indian tax law can only be offset against capital profits, not trading profits.

It's the case, I'm afraid. If you were an Indian taxpayer how would you feel about effectively subsidising part of the wages of UK based footballers ?

Yes, I deliberately referred to operating losses as that excludes profits on transfer dealings. I think prospective new owners, either of us or Preston, would concentrate primarily on operating results simply because transfer profits and losses are volatile and cannot be forecast with accuracy.

You may well be right about how they account for the losses in India - but that will not be the same as the tax treatment. We seem to have our own Chief Financial Officer - Matt Wright - who I assume is responsible for most of the Finance duties rather than the board members.

Unless the Indian tax system is dramatically more generous regarding the utilisation of losses of overseas businesses than every other country in the world - which I doubt and on a brief scan of the easily available information regarding their tax code does not appear to be the case - then Venkys will not be able to offset the football club's losses against their taxable profits in India. If like the Hemmings group they had other UK businesses which were profitable they would be able to utilise the losses.

Preston don't have an Under 21 team so that would partially explain lower operating losses. Additionally they are part of the Hemmings family business group so presumably can make use of group employees for matters like IT,HR ,Finance and legal. Also being part of the Hemmings group the losses in the football club can be offset for tax purposes against profits of their other businesses.

You may well be right - I don't know - but who has actually "reported" this ?

Has it been reported that we face penalty clauses ?

Another day, another ridiculous conspiracy theory. In fact he fractured his back which put him out for 4 months, and then having got back to fitness dislocated his shoulder. He confirmed both injuries in interviews ,

I can't recall seeing any of that but ,whilst I appreciate you touch on this on your original post, more to the point do you think that the manager has done anything wrong so far in his team selections by apparently favouring academy products over others ? Most of the views expressed on here are to the contrary.

How do you know the details of his employment contract and remuneration ?

That wasn't how I interpreted the post to which I was replying which I think should have been expanded

We won a major trophy and qualified for Europe with the Walker Trust so I can't see why you think that.

If he was the next big thing at that age why wasn't he picked for the England age group teams as an academy player ? He had to wait until he was playing first team football.

Why is a 6 footer clearly not going to win many headers ? For Wharton's sake I hope he doesn't have the sort of defeatist attitude shown in your post. To reach the very top in any walk of life requires a determination to be the best possible, not just giving up when things seem hard. To quote the old prayer " Do not ask for tasks equal to your powers, ask for powers equal to your task". A shining example of the right mentality would be Andy Murray where early in his career it looked as if stamina might be an issue; he worked his socks off to be one of the iron men of tennis. There is no reason why Wharton can't do something similar.

Makelele is 5ft 9inches tall so was not going to be defending balls in to the air at corners. In contrast Wharton is 6ft tall so it is not unreasonable to expect him to defend .

Baffling to me that for some strange reason you seem to take exception to a statement of fact.

That appears to be an Indonesian poster, nothing to do with India