What I will say for Gus is I read (some of) the article someone posted of an interview with him, and he sounded like he knows his stuff and has a football brain. Hopefully that means he adapts well to club recruitment.

Odd comment from GB: "We wish to thank Dave Adams and the Board of the Welsh FA for allowing Gus to join us so promptly.” But he isn't joining us promptly? He's joining next month. It sounds like he is leaving at the end of his contract and therefore we have nothing to thank the Welsh FA for? Edit - Or could be a notice period as 1864 says above. Although that still doesn't sound like we need to thank the Welsh FA for any particular promptness.

Tbh slightly disappointing the Head of Recruitment has to wait until next month to arrive (which is vague...start of the month, end of the month?). We couldn't agree a compo package for a few weeks' wages? Would think the Welsh FA are in no rush with 'recruitment', meanwhile we are in the middle of a pivotal transfer window. It's already a bit late in the day to sort out our HoR, let alone it taking even longer. Then again, perhaps that's it - too late for him to have much impact so just let him start preparing for the next window. GB has Park's list, our database and whatever ideas of his own to go off. And I'll be honest again, I'm not sure about his CV for the role. Sounds like he has basically spent his career with the Welsh FA, and recruitment for a national team is a very different animal to recruitment for a club side. Then again I had the same reservation about us being Mark Hughes' first club team managed, and that turned out ok. Just think we have a few too many of the new management team trying their hand at something for the first time. DoF has no experience of being one. Manager has a couple of jobs under his belt but hasn't managed in England. Now a Head of Recruitment that hasn't recruited for clubs before (far as I know) and is joining very late. You can certainly get away with some inexperience if you have the quality, but for all three to be new to this in one sense or another is a slight concern for me. Hopefully it proves a non-issue.

Not necessarily close, but it was going on for a while at least, fair point.

New Head of Recruitment announced (the Welsh bloke): https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2022/july/22/welcome--gus-williams/?fbclid=IwAR0bq_BaYlEFUE4Xr-avBApIeoeDRg0VMBl29e403BzGjrNFQDaB7Xhrz6U

Wasn't the claim last week that it was close to done? That doesn't seem to have been the case.

Love Manure a little less eh?

About time someone went with mostly Rovers players!! The first list shamefully didn't include any, but had 3 Manure scum! Now take Schmeichel off your list, put Friedel in, wash your mouth out with soap, drop that loser Cafu for Salgado, drop that also-ran Sammer for the mighty Le Saux, and pat yourself on the back!

Styles isn't renowned for his defensive qualities. According to a Barnsley fan he played as a 'LWB' that was really a left midfielder he was so high up the pitch. Doubt he would shore us up at all in that role. What he is good at is attacking.

The LT said it was only aware of a bid in excess of 1 mill for Szmodics. This (possibly unreliable) site says 3 million has been rejected: https://punditarena.com/football/ronan-calvert/blackburn-rovers-transfer-sammie-szmodics-james-brown/ It's believed he cost P'boro just under 1 million, so Fry saying there have been bids 'way above' what they paid for him suggests it's closer to the 3 million claim than the 1 million. I'd be getting cold feet on this one at 3 million personally, let alone the higher fee we would need to reach. That's about what they got for the more highly-rated Dembele isn't it? They've been relegated since then... Has anybody seen a fair bit of this lad to say he would be worth over 3 million? It does clash a bit with what someone said about most of our budget going on a CB.

Despite how he has set up his teams formation-wise in the past, comments from him have indicated he doesn't think formation is the be-all-and-end-all (I can't remember the specific comments but they gave this impression) and that the only reason he hasn't played with 3 CBs or 3 mids (I forget which it was tbh) was because we don't have the numbers there yet. So I'm not expecting 4-2-3-1 too often personally, but if we do play that then I'd argue it reduces the need for CBs and for CMs and ramps up our need for attackers. However, very good point about the pressing game, which we know from comments we will see. It essentially becomes 3 games a week (as I've argued before and I'm not going over again!) at times and that's very demanding on the midfield and attack (and probably wingbacks if we use those) when they're using a high press. This doesn't affect the back three as much. I didn't factor this into my discussion with RF99, but it does shift the recruitment priority a bit more towards the midfield. From hearing that we are targeting 2 CBs and only one mid as well as managerial comments I still think we are more likely to field 3 CBs than 2. Course, we don't know, hell maybe JDT isn't even fully sure how it will pan out yet. It will be interesting to see! Agree I'd rather sell Ayala and replace him with somebody who is more likely to be fit most of the season and probably takes a smaller wage. I suspect Barnes is in our CB options until we sign one, then will probably go off on loan.

Great work having the meeting and giving us so much detail about it Glen. I don't want to sound ungrateful for that or like I'm criticising you, as I'm not, but I noticed some of these questions in particular didn't get answered. In the first quote you asked a terrific series of questions about the contract renewals, and really he has only answered one. You then put TBC after a brew, and I was hoping the rest of the questions were answered in the next part but you moved on to the next question. Was this an oversight due to writing so much and splitting it up, or did he really only answer that one out of the lot? In the second quote, I noted that he didn't answer whether he knew Honeyman, who still has clients at the club, was former MD of SEM Kentaro. I'd be interested in whether he did actually answer that, as it does seem relevant to me that someone involved with the prior stink of corruption still has their claws in Rovers players.

Seems to me that this was simply the Rothwell money. Reports ranged from it being about 3 million to 4.5 million (I think I even saw someone the other day claim it was 6 but that seems far fetched). Mowbray publicly stated we had two players lined up to replace him but the Rothwell sale wasn't approved so we couldn't do it. The numbers tally very well for it being these two.

The worry in the back of my mind is....that is the plan, it has been put into action, and we are spending it in advance.

That's not really what I was saying. Obviously being bobbins isn't a requirement. What I was saying is, there are three categories of players broadly speaking. More age groups than anything else. The young uns, who are often untested, or if they're experienced are pretty damned expensive. Established players. And players with loads of experience, generally 30+ and generally not good assets to buy unless you're already tooled up, have money, and need an extra push to get you over the line. You don't seem to be a fan of young, untested players, hence us having this discussion, so I assume us signing some 19 year old from another team's academy wouldn't suit your needs. You do seem to quite like your old grizzled slow vets, as I've seen you praise Johnson a fair few times, so I may have assumed wrong with the other post in that regard and you'd in fact like us to sign some old fart (who I would probably consider bobbins if they're like Johnson, and would almost certainly cost a fair bit in wages to barely feature). I wouldn't want to sign such a player, generally speaking. My point was though, the experienced but not past their peak players mostly fit into two categories - too expensive for this kind of squad role, or too bobbins to be a definite improvement on two very promising youngsters, or worth reducing their opportunities to appear. You don't really find many decent mid-20s players with Championship experience available for loan at a reasonable price. I suppose essentially I'm asking you, what sort of profile of player do you see us being able to sign or loan for a 2nd CM recruitment this summer? Not asking you to name a player or anything, just what sort of age, experience, quality are you really expecting we could manage for that position on our limited budget? As personally I can't think of a 'type' that would be appealing. Not saying they're physically not out there mind. Thinking about it, we've talked about loans too, which I'm not against for a 2nd CM if the budget covers it...and maybe we can get someone who has already had a season out in the Championship, but quite often we're looking at someone with about the same experience as Garrett and Wharton have. If it is someone who has had a year in the Championship, they're probably looking to feature more than being 4th choice in our 3 (or even 2 potentially) man midfield. If they're not, then they probably bombed at their prior stint in this league.

Buckley was fit for most of the season too. Not sure it's luck, rather than Buckley and Trav just not being that injury prone. Travis has been known to be out for a couple of months before though. Agree midfield was an issue whenever one of our main three weren't available, when we used three in the middle anyway. Less so when using 2, which is always an option. I think that affects the team less than switching from a back 5 to a back 4, as all you really need to do is drop an attacker (Dack ideally) a bit further back until someone is back. It's not really 'a reasonable role with immediate effect'. It's a reasonable role if somebody gets injured. It's even possible to go the whole season with this almost never happening to the whole midfield 3. If that happened, Edun and this new midfielder would mean Wharton and Garrett got almost, or perhaps actually, no game time at all. 'When they're ready and if they're good enough' well what if they're ready and good enough now? Whether we can afford 2 does matter though, indeed before whether we need 2. We seem to be willing to pay I would guess about 2 million to land Styles. If the budget doesn't stretch to a second, one option is to not sign Styles, and spread it over 2 CMs the club wants less, which I'd consider quality dilution. Of course, you're more talking about not getting a second CB, and I refer to my previous comments on that. Agree Carter has proven himself a bit more than the two young mids, but he's also further up the pecking order for that position once we assume a CM and a CB bought and Ayala out for his usual 2/3 of the season. After that it's kids with actually less experience than Garrett and Wharton (Phillips, barely even played u23s). In fact assuming 3 CB and 3 mids it's only 5 players for 3 positions total in CB (Ayala, Wharton, new guy, Carter, Phillips) vs 6 in CM (Buckley, Travis, new guy, Edun, Wharton, Garrett). With more injury record amongst the CBs than the mids.

I don't think Dack needs to worry about Styles, doesn't really play the same position. Szmodics does, so it's whether they see him as backup for Dack or the other way around. I'd imagine Dack starts with the shirt, given his wage, history with the club, and the injury niggles that mean Szmodics will inevitably get his chance. The club also needs to put him in the shop window if he's on borrowed time, as his injury record and lack of game time in the last two years will have drastically reduced his marketability and value.

Indeed. After that you're probably not bringing anyone in who is currently very good, you're either bringing in a has-been like Johnson on no real fee but quite big wages to hang around and play 10 games worth like he did last season, or a cheap punt youth prospect, and we have two of those. Anybody in the say, 26 year old bracket like I'm guessing RF99 would prefer, is going to be bobbins, or too expensive to waste most of the season sat on a bench.

CM: We've lost Rothwell, so he needs replacing. After that, we've lost Johnson and Davenport, who were only squad players, the former a very old and shit one by last season. Davenport was average and extremely injury prone. I'll take two untested but promising kids in their place. We can always loan in January if they're not up to it (I know what you'll reply with to that, yes that's half the season gone, but I don't see us getting relegated nor promoted this season so I really don't care...they'll barely be needed anyway so won't make that much difference). Davenport played 252 minutes this season gone. He barely counts. Johnson played 905, which was about 905 more than he should have. Some of those were at CB and as a 'second striker'. Between them that's an equivalent to 13 full games. Happy to give Garrett and Wharton about 6.5 games worth of playing time each to see if they're up to it, most likely spread largely over sub appearances, personally, rather than go pay for someone else to get in their way on our limited budget. There's also Edun, who may have been a little underwhelming but less so in CM than Johnson certainly. As you point out though he's not an option there whenever Pickering is unavailable. At CB, we are probably lining up with 3 of them it sounds like, so we need 5 dependable ones. We have Ayala for about a third of the season, Wharton, New Guy, Carter (who I expect you'll put in the same underwhelming category as Edun?) and then it's untested kids. So yeh I'd say two CBs is a bigger priority than two CMs. This changes a bit if we plan to play 3 CMs too though, in a 5-3-2 say, although then as things stand we could name 3 good mids (let's say Styles, Buckley and Travis) who have no real injury problems historically bar the odd niggle for Travis, but our best 3 CBs would be Ayala (injury prone), Wharton (some history with injuries) and new guy. Also to use the logic from my CM bit, we have lost two very good ones here, not one very good one and two also-rans. I see that as a bigger problem. If we sell BBD I'd probably say sure, bring another CM in once BBD is replaced. Probably on loan, which I suspect our second CB will be too (giving us time to see if Carter and Phillips are up to it rather than buying someone to get in their way).

You draw a very different conclusion to myself, if you're referring to a God of some sort, it's often an easy explanation for things that are too mind-boggling to comprehend but over time more and more of those things get answered in comprehensible ways. But that's probably a discussion for the new forum page so we'll not do that! Something greater than us though, yeh, all this huge and minute scale is absolutely greater than us. We're just little tiny specks in a colossal dance of chaos and order. It does expand the mind to know about these things. The micro universe, the quantum realm essentially, is utterly fascinating too, and probably more important for technological progress than the huge picture stuff for now. If you understand exactly how atoms and subatomic particles work...you can pretty much do anything at our level of matter. I also sometimes wonder if we're just parts of atoms of something much, much larger. It's crazy how much of the architecture of atoms has similarities to those of star systems etc.

As I've already pointed out to you, the lad has played in the '2nd division' for the last two seasons. But why let facts get in the way of a good trolling eh?

There's always a way...given their ages and profiles, I'd be telling Venkys it's better paying a bit more now than a lot more later.

Transfrmarket has it as LM. Their positional stats can be a bit ropey I find, but since he also scored 5 and assisted 4, seems more likely than LWB. I'd defer to anyone who has actually seen him at length though, like the Barnsley fan who says he 'officially' played LWB but was so far up the pitch it was LM really.

Nice. Definitely has talent, even from a youtube highlights reel that's clear. Hopefully it translates into regular returns. Looks very Rothwell like in many regards, probably not quite as fast, may be a bit better with his decisions but that's hard to tell from his best bits. Looks like he could have a little more bite. I'm quite excited about this one. I don't know if Brittain will be an upgrade on RN because his assists were only 1.5 more per season and I've no idea if he is defensively up to it, which is always my biggest concern for a defender. But still looks a good signing in the circumstances (that we created). But this lad excites me, I remember him bumming us and I especially like that he has started playing for Hungary at about the same time they've announced themselves as being able to handle the big boys on their day (if anyone doesn't know, beat us twice, drew with Germany and only lost by a goal to Italy away, and he played in all those games). Only 22, great age, loads of time left and should be room to improve. Would love to know what the fee is meant to be, but think we're signing a real asset here. Hope we don't let the sell-on clause get too high. His right foot looks like it's just for standing though. Quick Rothwell stats comparison in the Championship: Rothwell: 152 games, 10 goals, 18 assists. Goal every 15.2 games, assist every 8.44 games Styles: 102 games, 8 goals, 5 assists. Goal every 12.75 games, assist every 20.4 games So Styles more of a goal threat, less of an assist threat. Course, Styles seems to have moved around more than Rothwell positionally, playing quite a bit on the left (just left mid it says, not the wing) and in attacking mid, and the teams were different so I know it's not the whole tale, just illustrative. Styles also gets booked a bit less frequently, every 9.2 games compared to every 8.

As far as I can see online, he's never played LWB?