You would have taken a million then ?

Even though he "struggled with the basics" ? There are a number of other posters - I won't say who so as to spare their blushes - who thought he was not up to much. It wasn't unreasonable in the summer of 2021 to think that signing him was a mistake because he had delivered relatively little. But a new contract then ? At what sort of salary ?

Yet the fans on this forum are demanding that at least one particular player should not be in the starting line up, and that another player should be, even though the experts who are employed to make these decisions seem to think otherwise.

The point I am really making is that so much of the discussion about this player - and some others as well - is people being wise after the event but then berating people employed at the club because they weren't clairvoyants. Things just aren't as simple as they can be represented on this messageboard.

One of those posters would have been you. On page 192 of this thread - in June 2021 - you said Brereton was struggling with the basics.

You're assuming that Brereton would have agreed to the move to whoever - rather than wait a year for his contract to run down and be able to move without a transfer fee but presumably a big signing on fee. Who knows if the owners would have made the transfer fee available for new signings.

If you look at the Grand Old team forum their fans are not optimistic about what sort of money they could recoup on sales. Pickford would go for a fair few quid but they are saddled with a large number of under achieving players and the big question is whether there are clauses in their contracts that reduce their wages if they are relegated.

A million at best back then.

If Brereton had been sold with 2 years left that would have been the summer of 2021. What sort of transfer fee do you think that a player who at that stage had scored 9 goals in 80 Championship appearances would go for ?

After Newcastle had their cut we got £10m for Armstrong. Brentford were in the Championship for 7 seasons before they got promoted. I'm not defending the way Venkys have run the club - but I don't agree with the use of the word "underfunding" given the amount they've spent.

They spent £4m- £4.5m on bringing in Brittain,Hyam and Szmodics this year who replaced Nyambe,Lenihan and Rothwell. I would have thought that with players coming through our academy signing 3 players a year was a reasonable rate of recruitment. The idea that you will lose lots of money if you don't spend even more money signing players went out with Mel Morris and is the sort of thinking that the forthcoming new system of regulation in football is designed to prevent.

"Years of underfunding"? I hold no candle for the owners who have made many bad decisions but they have been losing £15m - £20m a year for many years.

Weren't they involved with a film studio that went wrong ?

It's a good question that you pose and none of us can know for sure what the answer is.The losses are historic so I would guess that they are rich enough to afford the £15m or so that they lose without being too put out especially as they might lose face within the Indian business community if they did withdraw. I don't think they would get £300m on a sale even if we were back in the Premier League.

I find it very hard to believe - in fact impossible to believe- that the Indian tax authorities would effectively allow a significant proportion of the losses at Blackburn Rovers to be subsidised by Indian taxpayers. Put it this way, our tax system would not allow a UK company to offset losses in an Indian cricket team against its UK profits.

I'm still a Chartered Accountant and I completely agree with you. It is complete nonsense to suggest that our club is being used by the owners for nefarious purposes. They have been very foolish in their approach to owning the club. That is it.

You can see his goal on YouTube- he scored from about 50 yards out although there must be some doubt as to whether the ball crossed the line for a goal.

He kept them up last season.

We are never going to know if there was a shout - or maybe Carter didn't hear it. I don't see how you can say"obviously" in these circumstances. Additionally Carter's clearance was very poor. But the point is that Pears wasn't at fault for what happened from the corner - it was one of those messy goals that you hope won't happen at all.

At the end of the season that late equaliser may prove to be what gets us in to the playoffs. I can't remember since I was so entertained by one of our players as Joe Rankin-Costello today. Although perhaps he should be grateful that he doesn't have an Italian defensive minded coach as manager since he didn't seem to be playing in any particular position. I don't understand why people are blaming Pears for their first goal. He advanced to collect the header by the Huddersfield player but it was then deflected close up by Morton and also by a Huddersfield player - no human being would have the reflexes to change their position there.

If they're under contract they don't have to !

I can't see anything in any of that as to who would not want us promoted - or why.

No idea - but as they are under contract for next season, will have a promotion bonus written in to their contracts plus a salary uplift if we are in the Prem why would they not want to be promoted .

Please could you name these "few".

You produce these doom-laden postings at regular intervals. Not that long ago you were asking if it was possible to bet on us not winning another game this season - we proceeded to go on a run of winning every game for which you were nowhere to be seen on this board. Then you reappear when we lose a game or two. I can see no logical reason why anybody at the club would not want promotion. Promotion bonuses - reputed to be in excess of £10m - plus higher salaries make it in everybody's interests to go up.