J*B

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.

HC as in Harry Chapman, at right wing back?

FFP limits spending over a period of time and Tony went ‘big’ with the Gallagher and Brereton gambles. We can not afford to make the number of signings being mentioned in a lot of posts in this thread, unless we sell our players for profit. A very underwhelming summer is ahead of anything thinking we are making numerous cash buys.

Fisher Nyambe Lenihan Carter JRC Davenport Travis Chapman Holtby Buckley Brereton I suspect we will lose.

No pressure? Playing 4231 with Holtby behind a striker? Nyambe at right back? 2-0 up within 10 minutes. So frustrating.

Big Ben now running at 3.5 million pounds per goal!

Surely not. Not when we’re paying Smallwood and Hart with contract extensions that are not needed?

I’m that confused with that starting 11 I can’t actually work out what formation we are playing.

Tony is in the LT today saying we’re missing 7 starters for the Leeds game. Incredible really. His team selections didn’t lead me to believe he knew 7 of his strongest 11.

So I was told, although we may perhaps have kept hold of him until summer considering we where play off chasing.

I think it’s unlikely but theoretically everyone that has resigned for the additional month is on pay as you play. It could be that it’s not costing us a penny to have Smallwood or Hart around.

1) I agree, they’ll probably be relaxed. But we couldn’t have signed someone in January, which was pre-Covid, on the assumption that they would be relaxed. Our discussion is specifically about signing a Dack replacement in January when nobody was worried about Covid in the UK. 2) Agreed, but as above, has no link back to the original point which for reference was replacing Dack in January. 3) They’re all going to court over it. Takes a brave person to back themselves in a legal battle. 4) You, like me, have no idea what Hart or Smallwood earn, or the contracts they have signed. They may well be on heavily reduced terms for the additional month. It’s not the same contract, it’s a 1 month extension. 5) The clubs offering refunds are, on the whole, either not as close to FFP limits as we are OR have dodged them by tinkering with the rules, eg Derby (signed Rooney as a player coach to split his wages and took sponsorship money from 32Red) and Boro (sold ground to owner). 6) It’ll be very interesting to see how many fans we lose because of it. I think the fact that you can stream every game at home for a small fee is more of a problem. 7) Just to be clear you would have compromised the entire football club by knowingly breaking the FFP rules, getting a multi million pound fine in the process and a legal battle, based on where we where in January? I’m glad you’re not in control, that would have been one hell of a gamble.

I don’t feel like everyone is grasping just how close to the FFP limit we are. We can not afford to refund 200K to fans. We where never going to replace Dack which would require a loan fee, high wages and an agents fee.

Even if we did scrape sixth, I would fancy anyone from 3rd to 6th to beat us over two legs and the same to happen at Wembley.

A few weeks ago, Cunningham put on his Instagram (and swiftly pulled down) he had been accepted into UCLAN to study Sports Science. That would be totally insane unless he’s moving back to the North West. I’m confident we will see him here.

McLaughlin in talks with Rangers according to Twitter

I know it’s been rumoured for months. My point is perhaps it would be more true to post “the papers have said for months Hart will go to Inter Miami”. I’m trying to stop fake news, that’s all.