That lad is going to get himself barred from Brockhall.

If that was the case you wouldn't be letting Dolan go to Tribunal in the summer, you'd have sold him in January. Same with Brittain, Travis and Tronstad.

He's 85 and hasn't worked in football since 2018 so I suspect he's retired. He also quickly walked away from Ewood when he got the measure of these owners.

As I said yesterday, I think that comment was his last plea for the actual owners to speak to him - circumventing the two clowns at Ewood. They won't so he'll be off to Derby.

If I had to guess I'd suggest we have a mid-table L1 budget right now. Which is why the mythical "lose £20m a year" comment doesn't sit right with me. We've done nothing but downsize and downgrade for about least 5 years yet that figure remains a constant.

None of those were for 15 years (and counting, which no sign of ending) though.

The only thing that would get to them is someone like Rohit Sharma going on tv during a Test match and calling out the Rao family for bringing the country into disrepute with their treatment of an English institution. Obviously that's not going to happen.

Or get found to have done something wrong at the conclusion of this court case - which suggests they know they have.

Don't need a Chief Football Scout if you don't sign any players.

No. When Eustace arrived in February last year the Duncan McGuire transfer from Orlando Pirates had just fallen through - it was a £1m loan fee and a mandatory future fee of £3.5m in the summer. Allegedly Eustace was promised this £4.5m was sat in the bank to spend if he kept us up. Obviously it wasn't.

He'll want better than Dolan, even in L1.

I certainly wouldn't bother following that.

Plans in place. How about having plans in place to retain the manager that has them sat in the playoffs in February? Beggars belief.

*£96m in losses claimed by a family currently being investigated for fraud. I'd take those numbers with a pinch of salt.

I'm sure he'll score now, but Rashford has come on and looked completely disinterested.

It's not so much form. We only attract a 'big' crowd for the Burnley game because that's a visceral hatred for many. We had a decent crowd for the PNE game, but it was nothing ground breaking. A 12:30 kick off against a nothing Premier League side after 15 years of neglect? Yeah I'm not surprised it was 15k. It's about 10k more than it deserves to be with how the owners have treated this club.

Are you a big fan of pissing into the wind?

I don't think Derby can catch Hull - so if Plymouth start a run they're doubly screwed.

Rodon at Leeds cost more to buy than we've spent on transfers assembling our entire squad (granted Kargbo might just ruin this now, depending on what his official price was).

You can pick out individual players across the board to sell - but no club at this level can operate like we've been asked to for the last two years. Nobody covers the hole in their budget (after tv / ticket / merchandise money) by selling assets, especially when you refuse to re-invest any of those proceeds. Owners have to put their hands in their pockets or the team gets significantly weaker. The Academy is very good (although it doesn't produce many 'great' players sadly) and has kept the club alive during their reign of terror (the percentage of minutes we've given to Academy graduates over the last few years has been unsustainable), but they're not going to fund the club too. Not unless you unearth an Adam Wharton every two years (which would lead to it's own frustrations).

I think he was beaten by the toe-poke nature of the shot, it took him by surprise, but yes he should have saved that. Only an excellent GK saves the second goal - that was rifled into the side netting. He didn't come for the long punt by their GK, assuming Forshaw / Woodrow (whichever one it was who was tracking back) was going to deal with it. When the outfield player just stopped running (a mistake on their part) he had to come and deal with it. You saw how far out of his net he was moments later dealing with a similar situation - he wasn't taking any chances the second time round, so at least he shows the capacity to learn.

Agree to disagree. In that first half we had two players upfront that could run past their guy - it changed the dynamic of the game. When was the last time you saw Buckley fire a cross-field pass to a winger running in space? Hedges / Dolan et al are usually stood there stationary. It'll take a few weeks to get them up to speed, but those two will add a lot to our attack. Moreso if Dennis agrees to play wide right with Gueye upfront.

He's not signing a contract in blood. If they make assurances and then don't follow through with them (i.e. tying down important players to contracts between now and the start of the summer transfer window) he's well within his rights to just leave in the summer - undoubtedly to a better club than Derby in a better situation.

I think this is him playing his trump card. It's him saying to Waggott / Suhail "let me speak directly to the owners or I'm off". Mowbray was backed financially because he flew over to India and hobnobbed with the owners in Pune. It's quite clever really.

"Something I'll have to discuss with the owner". Good luck, John. I'm not even sure they know who you are.