One of the managers told me he had been approached and about the others being approached. This could very well have been him trying to cheer me up on Rovers and how incompetently we are being run at the moment. So will understand if no one wants to believe it as is everyone's right. I don't normally listen to most things i have been told especially with my business but thought i would share that.

If Mowbray had wanted to bring someone in in January he could have. I think they spent most of the time trying to keep Armstrong and to get him to sign a new contract. The midfielder was Ben Whiteman again but not sure on the centre back.

He turned down signing a permanent CB and CM that the recruitment department had identified and funds were available for to sign the 2 youth CB's to tide us over in January. So yeah cash was available if he wanted to spend it, he just chose not to.

Put it this way, Venky's only discuss things with Pasha and Mowbray. Waggott and Cheston have never once spoken to Venky's themselves directly, only to their underlings. What has probably changed in the last 6 months is the realisation we have not been run all that well and not even the sale of Armstrong has been enough to cover FFP and allow us to sign players. We seem to now have a wage ceiling of £5k a week, which is very new. If you know you are likely to go into an embargo you spend as much as possible before you do, knowing you will have assets to sell if you need to sell them. You never make do with loan signings unless you are absolutely desperate. It's better to test your own kids instead of using a loan signing as you are building your asset value up.

Venky's were prepared to fund transfers in January if suitable players could be found as people keep saying if you ask them for additional funds for a player they will grant them. Mowbray convinced he could make do till the summer with loans and then sign players this summer, which has now changed to we'll loan players this summer and sign new ones next summer. Waggott and Mowbray present a budget each year to Venky's of what they need and how the budget will adhere to FFP. They are the ones who have come up with the plan etc and Venky's just pay for it. Everything that has happened this summer and the issues with FFP are down to 3 people, Waggott, Mowbray and Venus. No one else. It's sort of like all 3 expected to be gone by now and are struggling to come up with excuses of why they have f%cked it up so spectacularly!!

Waggott and Cheston both said 20 months ago we needed to sell Dack to balance the books with FFP and we needed to sell another couple of players to bring new players in. Covid delayed this by 12 months, so he would have known in December at the latest that we needed to sell a couple of players this Summer to do anything. Knowing this etc, he should have spent cash in January on who he needed to bring in on permanent signings. FFP is likely to be replaced next season with a % of turnover on wages of 120% first year, 100% in second year and then from third year onwards of 75%. Breaches will then cost a fine for each % point over these limits. So it will be up to Waggott to boost our revenues quickly.

He always rectified his mistakes though unlike nowadays.

Probably as he has injected £160m into Derby and run up against FFP. Without FFP they would not be in the mess. Pretty much the same as Venky's but he has been smarter and at least got to the playoffs a few times. The issue is he has started to run out of cash/had enough of trying to find ways to put money into the club and wants out. I think if FFP was scrapped half of the charlatans in the game would go. Seems most clubs have to employ dodgy accountants and lawyers to come up with ways of putting money into their clubs. All owners loan the cash, have to but stadiums of the clubs etc to put cash into the club to continue to run it. FFP did not seem to prevent Bolton situation either

Mel Morris explaining how if he became a minority shareholder and wrote off a proportion of the loans each year was a benefit to FFP calculations was very interesting. IF Venky's did sell us, the new owners could use a similar approach to Fund us quite aggressively for a few years to go for a promotion push.

I personally think there are 2 people in football you wouldn't try this out on, Levy and Ashley. We'll end up paying 40% of Obafemi's fee to Newcastle.

Well Ashley has started Admin proceedings for other companies for only a £10 debt so you can guarantee he will try everything to get £m's back if he thinks he is owed them.

That is the thing, the budget we had. We no longer have that budget.

I can't believe I am writing this but at this moment in time, what have we got to offer over Luton? He went through a horror show at Stoke and they are well run behind the scenes.

With Pulis might have been not wanting to work with the budgets available to him and enforced cutbacks etc. Also I don't think he enjoyed his Sheffield Wednesday experience of having a foreign owner who doesn't know or understand how to run a football club.

Nathan Jones, with the academy and training ground they are looking at a sale and lease back arrangement at the moment.

He is correct on Neil, during April and May, four managers were sounded out by Pasha and HSH to take over from Mowbray during the summer, with Neil being one of them. I think two others were Pulis and Jones. All 4 rejected us, Neil because he didn't agree with downsizing of academy and training ground, no transfer budget and a reduction of player budget etc.

Record revenues and profits, their vaccine businesses have also set records income and profit figures for the past 12 months. Two years ago they had some struggles and could be one of the reasons he had to sell Raya in order to buy Gallagher but this year none at all. They might be saving cash to buy some additional businesses and invest more in their existing operations but they are anything but struggling at the moment.

Not signing players up to longterm contracts now is as stupid as you can get and has nothing to do with FFP. With FFP you never allow a player to run down their contracts and leave for free as otherwise with a low turnover as we have how do you meet FFP in a couple of years if you have no assets to sell. Absolute Madness!!!

When you are in an embargo, the maximum you can offer for a weekly wage is £10k for a new signing as well as a contract renewal. You also have rules on signings and existing players not going above a certain Wage to Turnover ratio. So if we do end up in another embargo soon you can kiss goodbye to every player whose contract comes to an end next summer. Also we won't have any assets to sell to get out of the embargo.

Our issue with signing Free's is that we like to give them a big signing on bonus for a lower wage. I think Ayala's sign on bonus may well have been approaching £1.5m in order to agree to a wage of £15k a week over 3 years as he was on close to £28k a week at Middlesborough. So you would be pretty foolish to ignore the costs of signing Free's here. Tosin the previous year cost £1m no idea on Elliott, THB and Braithwaite last year. What normally happens is if you guarantee to play them in the first team each week you get them at a lower price. If you want to play them as a normal squad player then you have to pay more.

Sheffield United had bid £2m for Rothwell and he had agreed personal terms with them and everyone believed he was going. I have no idea why he isn't their player now.

A friend did look into their wealth once and came back with a family fortune of around £3 billion. Which would be in top 5 wealthiest owners in the championship with the richest being the Coates family at Stoke City.

O~ffer did not meet Venky's valuation. They have final say on every departure.

Apologies £39m over 3 years, but due to Covid it is a 4 year cycle with years 3 and 4 averaged between them. Venky's had to inject £20m directly into the club through a share issue due to only allowing £5m a season losses if owners did not do share issues to cover losses and covered them through loans from a parent company. We are still way above the allowed allowances, although Uefa etc are now looking at scrapping FFP and moving towards Wage to Turnover Ratios instead to govern the sport.

You can exclude, maintenance, academy, various other elements in regard to cap expense costs. I just removed these in there entirety from the figures based on what is in the accounts. If not all is covered then the amount we have breached will be higher. So probably could be a breach range £10-18m quite conceivably.