Lad from Liverpool on hold, injures to Liverpool squad.

3 hours ago, goozburger said:

Haddow signed a two-year pro deal today. Sunderland and Forest were interested in him, so quite good that we've got him to sign. Never seen him play, but he plays for Japan U19s and sounds promising.

Yeah, smart move by Rovers.

9 minutes ago, roversinmyblood said:

Who is Warburton?

First team coach for West Ham now.

55 minutes ago, K-Hod said:

I’m not judging entirely just yet, as we always appear to be slow in anything we do relating to transfers. It’s just a bit frustrating we haven’t signed anyone yet, while other teams are well under way…

I understand that especially seeing Burnley and Preston doing early business, but he wanted to see what he’s got, squad wise while in Portugal and hopefully we are a bit nearer with a few quality signings, think it might be next week before one or two come on board. 
We need to get the permanent signings first because getting the usual loans from premier clubs will be last minute. 

2 hours ago, JHRover said:

Derby will be in the PL before we are. Another like Wigan, Blackpool, Bolton used as a convenient example of what we would be if Venkys left but will ultimately rebound and rebuild whilst this club withers on the vine.

Here we go, you always seem to infer that we would have been better off going down the above clubs route, utter garbage, what those fans have gone through was terrible, if it happened to us most normal fans would have been devastated, just try and wait till the end of the transfer deadline then make a judgment..

See Reading want a £20 cap for away supporters and wrote to every club, already 3 agreed inc ROVERS, good stuff.

1 hour ago, JHRover said:

Van Hecke falls into the Harrison Reed category.

Clearly a good player, clearly the sort we should be investing in and building our team around, clearly attainable for a Championship club with some sensible investment. But not one that we are likely to get done because we won't pay the relatively small fee needed to get him. Even if there was some serious interest at Rovers' end we would take too long or faff about trying to drive him or Brighton down on cost whilst a rival comes in.

So instead he will end up elsewhere in the Championship and then we will get stories about how we could never get him due to FFP/Parachute money or because his girlfriend wouldn't allow him to live anywhere other than the South Coast of England etc. etc.

How do you know it would take a relatively small fee to get him?

2 hours ago, CoconutGrove said:

Personally, this transfer window is an interesting one. It’s not often a club goes 5 years between managers so we are going into a bit of an unknown period.

 

Hopefully, the appointments of JDT and Broughton will prove to be as good in reality as they do on paper. 

 

I’m not concerned about the lack of names spouted about in the media, I’d argue there success rate is less than 10% and our deals tend to get done behind the scenes.

 

Looking at our squad, there’s quite a few replacements we need. For me, the CB and CM positions are the ones we are lacking in.

 

JDT has done the right thing with taking the youngsters away with the first team. I hope Phillips gets a few minutes this season but he’d need an experienced head next to him. Ayala is the only one at the club who is that experienced but unfortunately, he’s injured too often so his wage is hard to justify.

 

One of my closest friends is aligned to a football agency and he has said we are in for an experienced CB (CL, international, PL) who is currently in a contract with a “big” club but is deemed as surplus to requirements.

 

Now I don’t want to share the names in case it comes back on him but I’d imagine if we get this player, it would suggest Ayala is off.

 

 

Every now and then (I’d say 1 in 10) he gets wrong but he’s been right about Nyambe not renewing, Dack getting a new deal as well as other things like Ajayi picking WBA over us. The main one he was wrong about was Wil Trapp coming over but apparently that was very close to being done.

 

So understandable if you take this with a pinch of salt (as I do with internet/social media rumours) but just thought I’d sprinkle something I’ve heard into this chat.

Appreciate the info 👍

1 hour ago, K-Hod said:

If we don’t sign better players than Lenihan and Nyambe, then there’s every reason for ‘doom and gloom’. Particularly if we’re paying Ayala a decent wedge to ensure the physios aren’t lonely….

Agree, if and it’s a big if, Ayala keeps fit with Wharton and Carter steps up, 1 more decent c/b should be ok, personally think a Nyambe replacement shouldn’t be too hard to find, thought Nyambe was not too bad, but not improved, think we can do better.

17 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

By the same token, you have absolutely no idea whether Nyambe wanted say 12k p.w. but was only offered £6k or £7k p.w. 

Until we do know for certain what sort of figures the players were offered, then it's impossible to say definitively who was in the right and who was in the wrong. So you cannot just assume the terms offered by the Club were reasonable.

All we know for a fact is that none of the out of contract trio accepted whatever terms were on offer. That would indicate to most rational people that either the terms on offer weren't competitive enough or the players had no confidence in the outgoing management team and Waggott, or a combination of both.

I would venture to suggest also that losing three key players for nothing at the same time is an absolute catastrophe  for a Club in our current financial situation and not merely one of those things that happens as you suggest. If one of the three had declined to accept terms you could maybe put it down to him being a bit greedy. For all three to decline suggests something has been seriously awry.

 

Re Rothwell, if we’d sold him to a rival in January this M/B would have been in meltdown. Fair play to the owners for refusing good money but it went drastically wrong, now all the captain hindsight’s are saying we should have sold him, and you’re right no one knows how much we’ve offered the other 2,  so why does everyone say we didn’t  offer enough… might come out one day. I personally think Lenihan got a good offer but who knows.

42 minutes ago, JHRover said:

"Silly money"

This is another one that irritates me. The suggestion being those players were demanding "silly money" to stay rather than just the going rate for an experienced Championship CB/RB. That isn't silly the only silly people are Rovers for thinking they can continue to take advantage of these academy products indefinitely, forcing them to stay on below market rate wages just because they've come through our academy.

So us coming to an agreement with two academy players requires us to offer "silly money" whilst powerhouses like Stoke and Middlesbrough are able to offer them this "silly money"? How does that work? Does it not annoy you that those clubs are in a position to cherry pick our assets for nothing?

Are you saying that those clubs are paying "silly money" whereas we aren't? Not long ago we were paying Mulgrew big money to do nothing and are paying Ayala big money to play half a season.

Then we have to replace these lads. If anyone has any bright ideas about how we find as good or better without paying a transfer fee or committing to wages on similar or more than they were looking for I'd like to hear it. Of course the 'plan' will be to delve into loans for another season, which won't arrive until the last minute and won't enable the club to profit in future - which hits turnover earning potential again.

See the fallacy of it all? We lose 2 assets worth multi-millions and now we will probably borrow replacements of no financial value to the club. So much for worrying about the finances.

I keep on hearing about this wages to turnover thing - lots of talk about reducing wages but not much talk about increasing turnover. Of course the increasing turnover bit is the tricky part that actually requires skill, effort and a plan - none of which we have at Rovers, so instead we get squeezing the diehards until they pop and cutting costs everywhere we can.

We can keep on cutting the wage bill every year and losing key players as a direct result - eventually that will destroy turnover because we will end up in League One again - that is inevitable sooner or later if the Club puts all its energy into cutting costs. You can't keep relying on finding good loans or pulling rabbits out of the hat and you can't keep losing players as soon as they mature especially not to divisional rivals on free transfers.

 

Think most things re Rovers irritates you, you me and anyone on here don’t know what we offered them, most people think Lenihan was offered a good deal, but how far do you go. Same with Nyambe how much was he offered, we don’t know. So how can you bang on about it being enough. If Rovers thought Nyambe was worth £12000 and his agent thought he’s worth £20000 what do we do, just give it him. You’re on about Stoke/ Boro it used to be Derby, we’ve seen what happened there, Stoke look like losing a player they want to sign an extension but he’s run his contract down and wants out. That’s football, let’s see who we sign instead of all this doom and gloom. Enjoyed the couple of weeks on here when new DOF and manager arrived, but back to normal business now. Enjoy the season..

2 hours ago, JHRover said:

There clearly is or certainly was an issue with extending contracts. Armstrong, BBD, Nyambe, Rothwell and Lenihan are living proof of that. The only reassurance since then is the commitment of Travis, Kaminski and Gallagher which suggests something changed later on last season.

But prior to that we had gone circa 2 years without getting any senior player tied down to new terms.

That suggests to me something wrong at the clubs end. Whether that be budgets, negotiators, timings, who knows, but for ALL of those players to turn down the offers after so long tells me there's a problem with how the club went about it.

'Nothing we can do about it' is precisely the attitude Waggott wants us all to take. Of course there are other things the club could have done, as is the case in every contract negotiation - offer more money, increase the budget, come to the table much earlier

Yeah they could break their wage structure and offer silly money, we are trying to get our wage to turnover down, in the next few years it has to get down to 70% of turnover, not sure how it’s going to be done.

4 minutes ago, arbitro said:

It's about protecting our assets sometimes and clearly age and usually experience come into play. It's good that the likes of Travis and Kaminski have signed but ultimately three players walking away and potentially Brereton too effectively could cost the club £25m. Whilst Stoke would like Allen to sign a deal if that was Ayala for us I wouldn't be too concerned given he has very little financial value to us. Last summer when Armstrong left Waggott alluded to the club offering him the best contract they have ever done. Was it breaking the newly found pay structure?

Totally agree, but the point I am saying if we have tried to renew, say Breretons contract last year and he won’t there’s nothing we can do, and if doesn’t want to move, again nothing we can do, it’s the folk on here saying we haven’t done anything when they haven’t a clue what’s been said

33 minutes ago, JHRover said:

I remember a lot of people questioning the fee paid for him, particularly given the massive imbalance compared to lack of investment in other positions of the team.

To be fair to Mowbray and co. after 4 years the investment has been vindicated. It took a long time but we got there in the end.

I don't remember any talk about giving him away or being happy for him to leave for nothing.

 

Short memory, this MB was awash with folk slagging him off, when it was tough going with plenty saying get rid.

The problem is you think we can sign everybody on 4 year contracts and then renew every 2 years, you don’t seem to care about FFP, if nothing happens you think there hasn’t even been contact to renew, if players don’t want to commit there’s not much we can do about it. It happens at all clubs, even Stoke who you seem to compare with us. They want Joe Allen to renew but he’s run his contract down and is leaving.

We all need to criticise the club when needs be, but relentless criticism when we don’t have the full facts is wrong IMO.

2 hours ago, JHRover said:

The time for sorting Brereton out was 12 months+ ago. 

Once again Waggott and his paymasters have missed the boat. They've tried being clever and saving a few quid, and it has now put us in a very weak and risky position. 

Ineptitude doesn't quite cover it. An absolute sh1t show 3 years in the making neglecting contracts and trying to corner cut.

£10 million down the drain this summer already and more to come when we are forced to shift Brereton for a knock down fee.

Haha it wasn’t too long ago when 80% on here would have given him away for free.

5 hours ago, JHRover said:

Why couldn't we have the best of both worlds and go down the Middlesbrough road?

Remember it is now going to cost money to adequately replace these big departures. So it could end up causing further damage to our FFP situation than it would if we had just made reasonable offers in a timely manner.

We are owned and run by idiots. Middlesbrough and Stoke aren't. That's the difference.

Not saying we are run well, my point is you were saying we should be run like Derby, you got that one wrong, now saying we should be run like ‘Boro who probably are sailing close to the wind with FFP, I’ll wait till end of transfer window and see where we are before making any predictions.

11 minutes ago, JHRover said:

It would feel better if these players were going to clubs bigger, or at least in a higher league than us. 

In those circumstances you can hold your hands up and accept the situation and move on, albeit still significantly out of pocket.

But what we are facing is losing them to immediate rivals. The likes of Middlesbrough and Stoke. Mid table Championship sides. Sides who I have been told for the last 3-4 years have their FFP comeuppance looming and that these clubs would be sanctioned due to their huge losses and wages whilst good old Rovers make sacrifices in order to avoid that fate.

Back in the real world they haven't been sanctioned, despite losing far more than us, just as I confidently predicted they wouldn't, and are now able to cherry pick our key, prized core academy developed players by offering them better packages 

Think a few on here need to admit they were wrong about those sanctions and that we've been taken for fools.

Venkys out.

Waggott out.

Asap.

Remembering you saying we should be more like Derby, bend the rules , never mind about FFP,they’ll never get sanctioned etc, glad we didn’t go down that road.

Tony Caras leaving for premier club, big loss.

2 hours ago, Tricky said:

can understand why with some positions but not at the centre of a now weaker defence

Not saying it’s right decision but heard he was happy with money on offer can only think they wouldn’t stretch to a 4 year contract.

Opens up for Carter to come good playing with Wharton, Ayala and another experienced one needed.

Pretty certain it’s the length of contract that’s sealed it for Lenihan to ‘Boro, not sure Rovers are handing out long contracts anymore to 27/28 year olds.

Replacing Greg Coar. who’s gone to Wigan.

29 minutes ago, simongarnerisgod said:

whats the point of journalism then,it absolutely is his job to find out whats going on and pose the question "what the hell is actually going on"

He obviously asks but it’s tight as a drum, nothing given away, what’s he supposed to do make up few stories like others..

Now and again a league 1 manager comes up trumps like Chris Wilder, got Northampton up from league 2, went to Shef Utd got them up to championship and a couple of years after up to the premier…

Till you try them nobody knows….

1 hour ago, Mercer said:

 

Indisputably, a Rovers' super fan but never been sure why he's known as 'Birdy' when his surname is Birkbeck?

In my mind, the late Stuart Baird (think I've got his name right) was the original, and in many ways unique, 'Birdy'.

Massive Rangers fan was “thin Birdy” but also big Rovers fan and an absolute nutter, went on a few coach trips with him on board, always ended a bit messy.

50 minutes ago, Jimmy612 said:

I don't think anyone else has... There were a few "If they get appointed" statements being made, but nothing at all definitive. 

For what it's worth, IF it is Warne or Ainsworth I wouldn't be overwhelmed with joy, but I wouldn't be horrified. Both have overseen extended, succesful spells at their clubs with zero resources. I'm quite certain I'll renew my ticket as well, unless Coyle or Kean for some absurd reason got another crack at it. 

Oh yes they have, one only this afternoon saying he doesn’t feel he can part with his money with the calibre of candidates on offer, even though no one actually knows anything, 1 guy last week waiting with his 2 daughters to see the name and if not up to his standard none of them will be going.

Plenty more saying the same, can’t believe it myself but that’s life…