Bethnal

Third transfer window in a row that I’ve put my OoO notice on for deadline day. We’ll be busy throwing smokescreens up right til midnight on 30th August, I think. I happen to believe the recruitment department are probably working as hard as Eustace has said, it’s just that all they are allowed to do is scout, analyse, sound out and recommend players. Unfortunately, we’ve got a senior management team more befitting a non-league club. Waggott has demonstrated no nous when dealing with the owners, no ability to manage upwards. We’ve got a notional COO whose major qualifications for his post at Rovers are being Balaji’s mate and being an orange juice salesman in a previous life. Rudy Gestede is on work experience, cosplaying a DoF, likely spending most of his time trying to get the most nutritionally dense potato smilies for Brockhall. Yasir Sufi has been promoted from engaging a previously under-engaged community to negotiating front of shirt sponsors with all the imagination of “what if we put the women’s sponsors on the men’s shirts?” Meanwhile, fans can’t agree on how to demonstrate discontent or - indeed - if there’s anything to be discontented by. Those who do engage directly with the club via fan groups are stifled by suckups at the top of those groups, more concerned with cordial relations in the hospitality suites than taking the club to task. And owners that don’t want the club but don’t want anyone else to have it and also need the fans to suffer a disproportionately worse indignity than being on the receiving end of a few snowballs, as they deservedly were the only time they visited Ewood as a whole. I believe the owners will be throwing a lot at winning on 20th August. They won’t want the embarrassment of a loss and I think they’re intentionally running the club down. I believe the club staff at all levels are planning for a loss because it’s a prudent thing to do and because the owners are so hands-off, nobody could know what’s going on. An undeniable mess, but for all of the above, we are surely close to seeing the backs of Venkys and - hopefully - the charlatans they’ve appointed.

Call it pessimism, if you like, but sudden uptick in some activity smacks of an impending cash departure (likely Szmodics). Delays are clearly to do with availability of cash/budget as some has been freed up. McFadzean being rekindled after months of talks inactivity especially so. I reckon the Ohashi deal is being delayed to coincide with Szmodics’ expected departure. We’re away at Morecambe tonight - Szmods being left out again as a precaution?

Pleased that there’s evidently some kind of budget, although aware it’s probably Szmodics money being spent ahead of time. Signing someone from the J-League is a very fun bit of business to do, hope he gets up to speed with the Championship quickly.

If this is at all in reference to comments I made last night, then I’m happy to apologise for offence that was caused but I did couch that it’s clearly not all who participate that I feel that about. A select few and based on what’s made publicly available. I recognise that it’s a somewhat thankless task. I also recognise you’ve offered your seat to anyone on here who wants to represent the site. I feel someone representing the site should be of long-standing and fairly deep integration with BRFCS, which would definitely preclude me.

Yeah, I think they’re trying to lock that off. Will be a good signing for them, I’d expect him to score goals for fun down there and continue in the championship. I’d like him here (transfer fee obviously precludes it) but he’d probably struggle here, with what we’re walking into next season with. I think there’s every chance we’re the lowest scorers, by a distance.

Needs to be many confrontations with him and Suhail. They need to be put firmly in the spotlight. After that, concerted leafleting campaigns around Ewood, targeting the people running the club, not just the owners. Outline the failures in bullet points, distribute to fans, update and amend as needed, but every weekend home game until there’s movement.

Yeah, I fully understand the point you make, which is why I couched it to not say all. The Chair of the Trust was bigging up Gestede’s appointment, while speculating that he was a “strong candidate for our next CEO” (meaning club CEO, I assume, rather than… Trust CEO?) while not long after mentioning details of the Wharton transfer on Twitter (not - as far as I know - publicly known before that point). I do think - for whatever an online forum member’s opinion about a club’s fans forum matters - that you actually only really need to look at the outcomes to see if either of us is right or wrong. Supporter takeover days coordination is a positive. Asset of Community Value status for Ewood is a positive. In terms of actually engagement with the club - they really can’t get much done, on either side and come to the club’s defence more often than not. I concede that I could be entirely wrong and truly Steve Waggott, his exec team and the owners are truly performing miracles down at Ewood and Brockhall, with the owners’ finance in particular not to be looked in the mouth. But I don’t think I am wrong and I suspect you don’t think that either. So if it’s clear to you and I, why do both groups dodge it? I do think our main point of agreement is that both, but especially the Trust, want the board seat and will bide their time and basically swallow anything in that time to ensure it happens for them. Crucially “them.”

This is an incredible idea for a stag do…

We all knew Szmodics was going, from the Leeds post-match interview. Not a shred of negative sentiment from me, he’s a great advert for the football league and I hope he goes to the Premiership and has a great rest of his career. Heroic performances and return last year, which kept us up (almost single-handedly). In his own way, he’s a cult hero at Rovers now and for the future (as long as the only claret and blue we see him in is of West Ham). The reason people are losing it about him going is because we are 2.5 weeks away and are selling (again) our best player for (probably) a good fee while apparently having no pot to piss in even after it happens. We should really have been shelling out to replace him and strengthen the team and squad already and we both haven’t and are not going to. We’re losing it about this deal because we know what it means.

No doubt whoever we do hoodwink into joining us will need a few weeks to “bed in” so scant hope of that. Our opponents on the Friday opening night have added 6 new players already.

I could not tell you what the two teams were instructed to do today, if there was anything. 3 weeks yesterday to season start and it looks like we need another three after that to get ourselves together. Only upside is the away kit looks cracking. Best kitted team to get relegated from the Championship? (Got to find the positives somewhere).

You’ve just confirmed something that someone told me and I laughed aloud at (specifically that the Duncan Ferguson deal was “basically done” I didn’t know it was Broughton that had approval/changed course). Staggering that Duncan Ferguson nearly became our manager and I chuckled that no such madness could ever occur.

This is just about the only thing we have going for us and would explain where we are. They don’t want to put a penny more in until August is decided. So they’re likely to fully shaft us of further investment during a protracted sale process, meaning whoever comes in either ploughs in huge sums in January (if we’re lucky) to save the season or starts planning for League One. Waggott and Suhail shouldn’t be able to walk freely in or around Ewood.

I am increasingly thinking we’ve not got a new first team player in before the season starts. Vale and Gent returns are not counting towards that, neither is Travis. Unless I was a fan of the club, I’d be getting my agent onto any kind of move away. Some embarrassing results incoming if we lose Szmodics and don’t bring anyone in.

I seem to remember the wording in the previous adjournment was “final hearing” on 20th August. No idea what the consequences are of that being adjourned again, but why would that be the wording if there wasn’t a hard stop? FWIW, I hope the “hard stop” is the Venky joyride hitting a proverbial oak tree at 90mph. I think we get bought out of administration pretty quickly (although “out of the frying pan into the fire” comes to mind) but it’s a long road back.

This stuff is the pre-amble. Missing wage payments is usually the harbinger of administration or sale, so I imagine we should all be keeping our ears open for word of that, but frankly embarrassing that payment terms are being missed. Imagine being this fucking bad at running a business and having the cheek to take home your £25k/month as CEO.

Extremely interested to see how Langstaff does. Crazy goal rate but a huge step up.

I’ve quietly thought this was the exact case, based on what we’d heard, but it is especially confusing when local media and the club themselves are saying something different. Being objective, anything less than about a 75% chance of winning a case is probably too high of a risk to justify placing funds in a bond, anyway, but my understanding has always been that they essentially have not been able to and are - get ready for an old favourite - “saving face” in some fashion, by ensuring nobody knows that they are currently unable to directly fund the club themselves. The club is funding itself, by selling the silver and cutting costs and they’re continuing to pretend that it’s by their grace we are funded.

Watched that Parker press conference and the guy looked tired, jaded even. If I’m being honest, this is a guy who believes he’s at a level below where he believes he should be and his record basically says that’s not true. I think American private equity money and a bit-part England international is the kind of clash of egos that could lead to implosion. They won’t hold onto him for long, but I foresee an atrocious 3 months, a new manager and a race to recover playoffs. 50/50 they go up through the playoffs this year.

I mean, read the post again, I’m pointing out that it needs a Rovers fan with deep pockets to be comfortable spending as much of their own money as this club would need. At the end, I mention venture/PE investors. If they thought there’s enough in it to potentially turn a profit on a subsequent sale/exit, they’ll take a look at it. If venture/PE think they can spend £200m on something and eventually achieve a £2bn sale, they’ll very strongly consider it and you could make a case that football is on a constant upward trajectory to the point that this becomes a no-brainer (I don’t personally believe that). Brighton is probably (according to Forbes) worth £500m, Crystal Palace £650m and West Ham £800m. All currently having a much better existence but a big part of the difference is our owners and their stewardship of the club has been orders of magnitude worse than those clubs’. The probability of their management being beneficial enough as to achieve that exit is not as important a driver as you’d think in their considerations, they have capital from LPs that they have to deploy and they all believe they are excellent at their jobs. I don’t believe any of the above is likely to happen any time soon, but it’s worth saying that the world of finance at that level has a sufficiently batshit baseline risk tolerance to do it, so there are a lot of accountants out there who wouldn’t be doing much at all to advise you against it.

If I were a Rovers fan with deep enough pockets to sustain a period (4 years or so) of losses, on top of a lot of infrastructural/organisational capex, I’d be keeping my powder dry to the point of the club being in administration. Why give the owners a penny back of their investment when they’ve completely mismanaged it into that position? Why let them slip a non-disclosure/non-disparagement clause in there? You pick it up for buttons and use any cash earmarked for the sale itself investing in the club, while hopefully exposing/leaking exactly how mismanaged it was for all that time, instantly earning goodwill/buy-in from the fans. FWIW, if I were of the profile above, I’d also quietly make my way into the club via sponsorship, ingratiate myself to the executives and start to grease the wheels for a smoother eventual process. No idea how deep their pockets are, but in this day and age you’d be raising finance for a deal, anyway, from LPs or institutions. Even still, their brand footprint is basically non-existent, by the looks of it, in an already niche market (you’re looking at glorified TikTok shop people in this space) so unless they’re doing white label for much bigger or a lot of other brands, I don’t see where the capital is coming from, excepting borrowing/venture/PE

Is this the one who said all the fans will be buying NFT’s?

McBurnie has been released by Sheff Utd and while my optimism has been ground down over the years of shit transfer windows, that would be a hell of a signing in our current position.

Sincerely believe it’s the former. The guy came from relatively modest beginnings and achieved enormous success entirely off his own back, but you don’t build that kind of thing without a lot of heavy lifting from those around you. Key appointments for the initial success and infrastructure for legacy. You only have to look at Balaji’s litany of failed entertainment investments (and the fact that the parent group continues funding them) to understand the reason behind the company’s success. It’s not the sprogs. I haven’t done the full research on the family’s complete range of financial interests, but the VH Group parent company only does £400m/year top line and that just doesn’t look like enough to siphon from to run a football club to the tune of £20m/year. It’s been mentioned that most of their actual net worth is in land and property in Pune. When you consider that, you can even more clearly see who actually had the brains. Like many children of successful/wealthy people, they are very likely to be morons. Typically, there’s a lot of idiocy, insecurity, indecisiveness, arrogance or a mix of all four, but it’s extraordinarily rare to see the children of the successful/wealthy go out and improve their lot through genuine brilliance.

That’s a particularly telling statement, Mike. In what way is it not representative of the fanbase? And as a couple of follow-ups; what’s the ambition of that statement? Where do you think that kind of approach is going to get you/the trust you currently chair?