Impressive, although - again - another only to the end of the season. Has to be something in the lack of commitment past the end of the season. Something has to be driving it.

One more incoming?!!! edit: Elliott Jackson previously said that was the final one, so he’s kind of exposed himself with that.

Not that it matters, but has anyone got an indication of a fee?

Teasing is a big part of foreplay, I’ve heard.

I will state the obvious for anyone biting their tongue from saying, “get behind the lads, FFS, Venky’s are keeping the club afloat,” or similar: if Venky’s sanction the Wharton money for spending in the summer, then fair enough and I shall toast each of them at my wedding to Margot Robbie in the Autumn. Buy a hat, gang, you’ve been warned.

I’ll be thankful of being excited by a player, so long as “excitement” isn’t a euphemism for heart palpitations when he passes to an opposition player while playing out from the back and punching my own head when we concede from it. Not that I expect that, of course.

What debt? The debt to Venky’s? We lose £20m/year, they cover it and add it to the tab. What debt are you referring to? Not to be rude, but if you don’t understand the mechanics behind this, it’s not a big deal, you need experience with it to understand and not everybody has had it. It’s like a credit card. If you get laid off from a job and use your credit card for groceries while you don’t have a job, that’s alright, except if when you do get a job, you don’t make enough money to not continue buying groceries on it. The debt increases and you can’t eat into it because you don’t make enough. Would you then sell the tools you do the job with, or your car, in the hope you can pay some of it off? its not like a loan or finance on an object and where you make payments on it. We lose money just by existing, covering those costs doesn’t stop the inevitable and continuing to sell assets without buying new ones that can appreciate in value means you end up less like to ever overcome the burden.

I think those in charge congratulate themselves on their progress and continue on their course. Sell Szmodics on 1st September and explain how difficult it has been to get deals over the line, but that October’s Indian court hearing should free up some funds for January, unless it gets delayed again…

It’s the right question for him to ask! Paying down debt when you run at a loss means anything you pay off (which we don’t have to do, generally because our illustrious owners pay our bills for us) will rack up again.

This is an inane take. Paying down debt by selling assets which you then don’t replace, when you run at a loss means you’re just delaying the inevitable. The point I assume mattyblue is making - correctly - is it’s not a good deal for the club because the funds aren’t being reinvested to try and create more saleable assets. The owners have created the conditions for this cycle and are visibly so inept that they cannot recognise the futility of their actions.

Yeah, it’s really bad when you lay it all out like this

Strikes me that loans over permanent is related to contract length/“loyalty bonuses”/long-term outgoings. You can’t execute the model they’ve claimed they’re following without permanent transfers to replace your outgoings. I think Venky’s are genuinely shitting themselves about the court case outcome or the interminable rounds of hearings. They have looked at £22m as two tranches of cash they aren’t on the hook for, but that’s contingent on a budget remaining steady. If they isolate costs associated with loans as one-offs, almost like capex, they can find it, but they can’t allow actual running costs to go up. I suppose they haven’t factored in the downturn in match day, ticket and other fan-derived revenue that will come as time goes on, but all of that will be the responsibility of those at the club, in their eyes. We all know how bad it looks, but it feels like we might not yet know exactly how bad it is, “it” being the current status of the club.

As close to saying “I don’t want to leave” as he could say in the circumstances

Absolute madness to get this invested in football players but I suppose it had been a long time since a genuine Rovers fan had come through and looked like they could play at the highest level. Something about that especially will always be among the more special things about football and following a team. He did sound like he had a lump in his throat at a couple of points, but I just hope he hits the ground running and makes the most of it all.

Adam Wharton’s exit interview has unexpectedly done me in, I am pathetic.

“Okay, everyone. Last year, we struggled with the loan-to-buy deal we tried to do with a team in a different division on Deadline Day and caught a lot of flack for messing it up, so let’s change tack this year: same deal structure, but it’s a team in a different country.”

As a dyed-in-the-wool Sheffield Wednesday fan, I imagine he’s aware and delighted

I suspect he does have an in, but is stuck between needing to report on things and needing to keep lines open, so reporting in a way that the club don’t want him to would jeopardise his livelihood. Having said that, much as I like Elliott Jackson, he doesn’t help himself with the fanbase, sometimes. The glaring thing is no significant/explicit update on the McGuire deal. Either the club are saying, “bear with us, we’re working on it,” or aren’t willing to comment.

This is an objectively funny post, but today’s not the day for a lot of people

Refusing a transfer fee for Rothwell because your arbitrary value hasn’t been met and letting him leave for free? Fine, maybe that’s caution-to-the-wind optimism for promotion. Doing it again for Brereton? Can just about argue similar. Letting three of our bigger earners leave for free in the summer? Okay, budget restraints and upcoming financial sustainability, plus the need for more players in. Cutting the wage bill by pretty much the same amount gained from letting those players leave. Well, things must be really bad, but I guess I can just about see the logic, short-term. Selling your prized asset at the first opportunity? Okay, we need to strengthen, it’s really sad, but we are where we are. Allowing your recruitment team to line up as many as five transfers before sending your minion to put a freeze on all recruitment that requires a fee, because you are so hamstring by your - alleged - financial impropriety that the Indian court system needs to give you permission to send any money anywhere… We - as a fanbase - have accepted a lot and it appears many more are willing to swallow more. We shouldn’t. This needs to stop and it has done for a long time, but this has to be the tipping point. They need to be hounded out of the club, embarrassed in their own country and investigated thoroughly. We need to act.

He apparently walks from the car park to the director’s entrance entirely carefree, every home game.

I would take someone’s drunk Nan over this. We’d have something to market to people, at least.

Unfortunately - and understandably - you’re making the mistake of thinking about this logically. We’re talking about the whims of three fickle, petulant, competitive trust fund kids playing at running a multinational business. They’re billionaires currently on the hook for a £5m house purchase that wasn’t properly accounted for. Billionaires don’t get in trouble over £5m, morons do.

The voices in their heads, I wager

Rev, I know for a fact that you’ve been paying attention for the past 13 years. What within that time has made you think that the owners would behave in anything close to a rational manner? They are anti-talent. They are to talent as anti-matter is to matter. The inverse of it. Rich through the good fortune of being born to a talented father, enabled by a legion of yes-men minions and with ideas so far above their station it beggars belief. We are collectively supporting an entity which was passed from one set of untalented trust fund kids to another, with the first bunch bitter and vindictive that their patriarch cared for his town and football club a little too much for their liking and the second so deluded by their inherited wealth that they were planning to make us Champions League competitors with £5million of “player leases.” The operation at the club is below par, but the idea that the owners aren’t capable of this level of idiocy doesn’t wash. Its modus operandi for them.