7 minutes ago, Mercer said:

It's not unusual with big transfer deals for the pursuing club to first sound out a player through his agent to see if a move to them might be of interest otherwise the whole offer / negotiating process is a waste of time should the player not be interested.  If this has happened here, and I'd be surprised if it hasn't, the Whartons have seemingly not discouraged which is worrying.

As for a Carter move, any news yet when he, or Pickering, will be fit?

Carter from his own social media says he "is gutted to be ruled out for a while". No idea how long that means though.

2 minutes ago, ABRAM ROVER said:

Damien Duff is our club record according to TransferMarket about 24.5M euros. If we can get a club record fee I think we have to sell but you just don't have any confidence whatsoever of it being used to reinvest in the squad. 

Pretty sure Duff was £17m so the £18.5m allegedly offered would top that.

A normal Championship ran club and its get them to round up to £20m with some nice add ons. This is the job of the academy and I don't have too much of an issue with it.

This is (Venkys) Blackburn Rovers and we could realistically only see 10% of that money back for players, tops. The trading model is doomed to failure with only investing small percentages back into the squad.

A point closer to what I really think is going to be a limp to survival (hopefully). We created very little and got carved apart at times by one of the poorer teams in the league, who missed 2 excellent chances. A bloody awful watch. 

43 minutes ago, Herbie6590 said:

If Rovers are ever purely fan-owned, it will probably be in the National League…unless we find another 10000 season ticket holders…a massive shirt sponsor and sell a player for £10m profit each season…

This has always been my thoughts on Rovers, just how do we get our losses down or more favourably revenues up to be viable for a fan/local entrepreneur venture to realistically afford us.

I think you state the only real option but I'm sure we would all agree it's not viable. It's not just a Rovers thing but football club ownership is absolute madness.

1 hour ago, NeilInBristol said:

According to LT

 

Ennis is attracting interest from League One clubs with Bolton Wanderers, Blackpool and Barnsley leading the race for his signature. 

A loan exit is not imminent but with other clubs interested, a January move has not been ruled out.

Any idea WHY he is attracting interest?!

Whilst I don't rate him, we aren't a million miles off being unable to fill a bench! We must bring in before we let anyone else go just from a numbers prospective.

26 minutes ago, Bbrovers2288 said:

I wanted Leo to work but it’s dangerous to keep him in , I have no faith in pears so I think we need to get an experienced loan keeper in. 
I’d get Phil jones in to prove his fitness also, we need some experienced heads to steady the ship , it all looks like panic stations at the back 

It is utterly depressing to think our other option to Wahlstedt is Pears. Pears is "just" about safer on crosses, but the opposition like to tease him with balls dropped in between defence and him to make him come out on his kamikaze charges. We've got that to look forward to!

This club couldn't even fill a match day squad today ... the game followed in the same manner. Pathetic from top to bottom. We have a goalkeeper that literally can't keep goal. We have defenders who can actually defend but all of a sudden can't, it's truly a nightmare for a fan.

Deep down we all know that the cavalry coming to save us are Hedges, Pears, JRC and Gallagher. Good lord.

1 minute ago, TheRevAshton said:

Hilly's return to Bournemouth confirmed.

I must admit, I was underwhelmed when he signed, I recall that many of us were. It was the same when we signed van Hecke... but both turned out to be cracking players and proved us wrong.

I'll never judge a signing again until I see them in Blue and White halves. Good luck Hilly!

A very warm exit interview as well from the young man. Top bloke.

8 hours ago, Rover8T4 said:

Ennis signing was a shocking decision, Has had the longest pre mid season ever and still looks out of shape. Seen more mobility in a groundsman pushing the old pitch roller

It is completely and utterly unprofessional, I think the absolute base expectation of a fan is that a player is fit and looks after themselves to be available. 

He's been here for over half a year now, with trained fitness professionals. The fitness coaches could probably get somebody off the street into running marathons in that time frame if the individual was committed.

29 minutes ago, roversinmyblood said:

I thought it was the club saying he was injured (because of contractual terms).

I meant Kean, sorry for not being clear. I still love Ryan Nelson!

15 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

Oh aye, well remembered. Was released less than 4 months later after 8 games and 1 goal. Course, he didn't leave us out of ambitiously seeking a big club, he left because he was being ostracised and the club was a shit-show. Very poor how him and Salgado were treated.

I remember "the snake" saying he was injured, then literally went straight into Spurs's match day squad.

5 hours ago, philipl said:

Hmm.

I have just posted that SWAG fails on judgement trust and integrity - the most basic requirements of a CEO.

BUT 

I acknowledged that he was plunged into a situation sometime in 2023 in which he had no idea when and how much the next lifeline cash would come from Pune..

Believe me that could have been handled much worse than he did.

AND

If no more Indian cash were forthcoming, keeping us in the Championship and the young player development were the basic essential requirements to make Rovers a rescuable proposition.

That was the stark reality we were facing and JDT getting us into play off contention until the protracted injury crisis took its toll was a phenomenal achievement using playing resources GB had rustled up out of empty crisp bags.

I always come back to thinking about SWAG in two different roles.

CEO of a Championship club - very poor.

CEO of Venkys Blackburn Rovers - a remit of chomping down on the crap that Venkys don't want or won't deal with and keeping the fans from their door, a perfectly reasonable job.

Unfortunately for fans we need him to be really good at job 1, his priority is job 2.

Right we've made some signings to bolster the under 23's, when are we signing some for the men's team?

5 minutes ago, NeilInBristol said:

He hasn't played since Oct. Probably wanted to leave in the summer when we had the 800k bid for him. Surprised the owners didn't cash in then

Off the top of my head he played 3 or 4 times for part or whole games in December.

I have to admit I was very surprised to see Trav go out on loan, but if I think about it, my shock comes from him being the captain, experienced and it being a loan. I actually think the last dozen or so times he has played he has looked a liability and I've felt more assured when Garrett has come on.

The elephant in the room is his experience needing replacing, Rovers must bring in some experience.

3 minutes ago, Tom said:

Josh tweeted earlier that stuff had been removed over the weekend, just seems very odd 

To keep the liquidators hands off.

On 01/01/2024 at 11:37, Mattyblue said:

https://www.superstarspeakers.co.uk/event-details/an-evening-with-liverpool-legends-blackburn-29th-february-2024

’Liverpool legends night comes to Blackburn’

I’m thinking ‘’load of plastic Scousers at King George’s Hall, pathetic”… clicks link, no it’s at Ewood, of course it is.

The ‘Head of Consumer’ obviously knows what plenty of locals want to consume , I suppose… but so small time I’m still cringing.
 

When I moaned a while back on here that the club should find ways to make money rather than just save money, I didn't think I needed to explain we shouldn't welcome other clubs "legends" to our ground for an evening.

For the purposes of absolute clarity I don't want to see an evening for "Burnley legends" to raise money hosting the event!

3 minutes ago, BlackburnEnd75 said:

Szmodics - 100% absolutely, even at 28. He's the top scorer in the league for f sake. We could get more than couple of mil we payed for him, undoubtedly.

i Get your point though.

Sammie should be on to his agent tonight trying to get somebody to test this skint clubs mettle. He like us,  witnessed what happened to Dack when he didn't move when the going was good. We are stuck with this club, the players aren't.

Not many clubs were you watch a game and can realistically hammer the entire structure of the club. 

1st goal is calamitous from GB's recommended signing.

2nd goal needs the coaching staff to work on defending.

After the game the manager quite rightly goes after the owners for letting the club drown.

To be a Rovers fan!

We are fighting with one arm tied behind our back now with this lad in goal. The opponents know they can put an aimless ball in the box and stand a good chance of scoring. It just cannot be allowed to be a tactic for your opponent at this level!

7 minutes ago, martonrover said:

Rotherham yet to win away this season.

What could possibly go wrong? 😉

Whilst it would be nigh on impossible to get true statistics, I struggle to think there are many more clubs that allow opponents to break their bad runs than us!

It's just yet another game were we are seeing the same mistakes, followed by the same tactics by the opposition (GIVE BLACKBURN THE BALL), followed by the same inevitable results.

Followed by the opposition manager saying we are a good team, followed by our manager admitting we made the same mistakes and have injuries, a young squad and no money.

Its all just abit meh, rinse and repeat.  

Everything in me wants to pan the manager, I honestly don't know what he can do differently with the players available. We can't really change much and a well drilled team will know just how to play against us. Having absolutely no back up means teams can quite easily set up a team to counter our obvious line up.

What JDT needs to do is toughen up the mentality of the group, not sure if that's possible? We cannot continually go one down and have no plan to counter it. 

One thing that JDT has to carry though is we have fallen behind to teams of the calibre of Sheff Wed and Huddersfield and nobody is shocked we capitulated, he must carry some of that blame.

Am I honestly so crazy to think we might have given them some sort of game today? Injuries, Venkys, JDTs stubborn style aside, am I honestly so crazy to expect us to have given them some sort of game?!?