J*B

There’s still no official correspondence on FFP being lifted. People on this forum spent around 2 weeks saying that it was lifted, referring back to UEFA guidance on FFP which had zero effect on us a club. For absolute clarity, as things stand, we are carrying on as usual with FFP in the EFL. Ewood Ace has just explained pitch maintenance above. We cannot go into the season without a first choice goalkeeper. Whilst Kaminski looks astute and could be a brilliant signing, he’s realistically the most qualified first team keeper we can bring in cheaply. I have to congratulate the club for sourcing him and getting him in so cheap, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve needed to go for a cheaper option than Marshall or Phillips or some of our other options.

You’re crazy. The players currently don’t have a first team liaison because they cannot afford to bring her back from furlough. The grounds team has been reduced to one person and the number of pitches being maintained has been reduced because we can’t afford to maintain all the pitches. We have a very, very limited budget - the owners are limited to what they can put in because of FFP. We are lucky that some of our top earners deals expired before COVID. COVID-19 has cost the club millions.

DG has signed for Sunderland, for anyone interested

I’ve never seen this guy play. I hadn’t ever heard of him until 3 minutes ago. I think he’s going to be a star for us. Welcome to the transfer window!!

Sadly it doesn’t really matter how good he is - during the career at Rovers he’s averaged 28 games a season, league and cup. It’s sadly just nowhere near enough.

Not quite, Abramovich had never watched a game of football at the time he bought Chelsea and hasn’t attended a live game in years now. Abramovich bought Chelsea to give him a UK platform and persona to ensure that Putin couldn’t make him simply disappear for his alleged crimes against Russia.

Very much looking forward to finding out what tactic Tony has come up with during his annual leave. We’ve had 442s, 4231s, 433s, 4312s, 4321s, 352s, 343s - I think we could be on for a 361 this season.

Crikey, some achievement to win the league without a single player making an assist!

We ask for it in the initial post on the forum rule thread...

It depends entirely on FFP. Let’s say for argument sake we have saved 3m from the yearly budget — I say ‘yearly’ because a wage budget and a transfer budget doesn’t exist in football, they’re amalgamated into the same thing. If Dillon Phillips is available at 800K, that would be split at 200K/year based on a 4 year deal. Add wages of 12K a week (guessing), plus a 10% signing on fee at 80K, plus pension and NI, that would bring the yearly cost in at 1M quid. We could really bring three players in this year based on those figures. If the LB/CB plan is going to cost more than the Phillips deal we need to make a decision on who’s most important.

Please do report as many offending posts as you see, it’s really helpful to us. The rules which show what does and what doesn’t need reporting are here:

It’s in no way intended to be snide, I just cannot let the moderation team be questioned if the reports aren’t submitted as we’ve repeatedly asked for more reports. We rely on them. Especially on this thread I tend to read the previous 5/10 or so comments then post based on them, if a report isn’t made about the post ~15 posts ago, I certainly won’t see it.

Thanks for the feedback, I’ve just searched for any reports made from your account in the past three months and can see you haven’t made a single one. All moderation is done by volunteers and therefore only works if people can point us to the issues. If you’re not reporting things we can only assume there’s no issues.

I’ve heard nothing — but the reality isn’t that hard to work out. We where right at the FFP limit, that’s reflected in the club accounts. But, we have lost some big earners and are trying to offload another in Mulgrew. If FFP isn’t relaxed, I suspect we’re in the market for loans and frees using the difference in the wage budget to finance anyone brought into the club. If FFP is relaxed I guess we’re in the same position as most seasons, we have 2/3 million quid to spend plus a percentage of whatever sales are made. If we go another season without invested in our make shift defence we may as well chuck the towel in. If I was in charge I’d refuse any investment in strikers, wingers and midfielders. Get Nyambe signed up on a new contract, too.

Can we please stop questioning whether Chaddy is on recreational drugs or not? And Chaddy can you please stop entertaining it? It’s mind numbing for the rest of us. In other news, is there any confirmation yet that FFP has been amended for the coming season? Please don’t post that UEFA article, we need EFL guidelines not UEFA. If they’re not changing FFP we are at the end of the cycle and not paying decent money for anyone.

Crikey. I really hope we’re not relying on a CB that can’t get on the Stoke bench to solve our defensive problems.

Easy to launch a kit without the players. Sadly I don’t think that Rovers have the budget or the marketing team have the dare to do it.

Yes, equally it’s very easy to make up a rumour. I tend to believe most that would make sense, because it seems like a massive waste of time to make a rumour up.

I’ve been quoted a couple of times in this thread so thought I would point out my understanding of how transfers happen, and why tip bits people hear can both be right and wrong... 1) Clubs assemble a list of players at different suspected budgetary levels. As Mowbray himself has said, there’s an A, B and C list. 2) Clubs speak to players agents to see whether they would be interested and if so what sort of finances would be involved. Yes, this is tapping up, but that’s only ever acted upon if it’s happening consistently to unsettle players. 3) Clubs review who is interested and confirm which category they fall into now we know the finances involved. 4) Clubs decide as the window moves on which targets they go for and when. Each player has a knock on effect, if you buy a A List goalkeeper, that may mean you can only afford a C list midfielder. 5) Agents contact interested clubs if other interest if discussed. This hurried up clubs to act. Essentially, we may be at point 2 at ALL the targets on the Lancs Live list, but we may never proceed to point 4. Therefore - yes we where interested, yes we made contact or had a meeting (Doncaster midfielder) but ultimately it was decided that we needed to go for A list goalkeeper and left back, therefore it was never anything more.

Jesus Christ Chaddy, you’re killing us here.

The problem with this approach - and the approached you have put together in your stats thread (which is very good, btw), is you're basing all your decisions on Rovers as a football club not being able to improve our players. Mowbray doesn't like loaning players and wants to avoid it wherever possible. We're not looking to replace Tosin in a like for like player, there's not many of them and they're too expensive (including on loan - Tosin cost us 1.5m) we're looking to bring in players that are better than all our other options apart from Lenihan, but also with key attributes we think we can develop, ultimately to sell them for a good profit. I predict in the majority we will sign low fee/out of contract players, who have limited experience at this level, that we think we can improve. I think that stacks up with the signings I've been told we're looking at, Conor Ripley and Florian Hartherz.

Legend may be a touch far, but the reality is he’s been one of our top players for 4.5 years now and has made vital contributions throughout. Can’t quite work out where he will be going next, which L1 clubs are based in the North East?

https://www.whoscored.com/Players/107996/Show/Florian-Hartherz This guy.

I’ve been told they want a German left back called Harthez and Conor Ripley (son of Stuart) from PNE. May or may not be true.

DG, Johnson and a few others rent Wharton’s house off him. They live there midweek for training and at home for weekends/time off.