The Barnsly owner knows exactly what he is doing and a new CEO has been appointed, Khaled El-Ahmed, who is already briefed and experienced in how the club need to be operated. I wouldn't be too worried about them and to be honest their new CEO looks very impressive. It took them 1 week after the resignation of their previous CEO and no Agency insight. A very will run operation. With Cardiff, it isn't about what players we would want of theirs, for them it's about the right players being brought in for them to be get promotion and be competitive. Last year I don't think any of us wanted any Barnsley player and yet now there would be several we would be interested in.

It is pretty dire set of figures but it is recoverable from with a 3 point plan: 1. Boost Matchday income: Lower season ticket and match day ticket prices to encourage more people to attend. More people in the ground more is spent on food, drinks and merchandise. 2. Boost Commercial Income: Increase in matchday attendances will see an increase in people wanting to be attracted to the brand through perimeter advertising etc, afterall who wants to advertise to only 12,000 people in the stadium when 20,000 could be achieved. Once all places are sold can then increase prices in future seasons for sponsors only. 3. Broadcasting Revenue: More games are likely to be broadcast with a 80% full stadium for example than a 30% full stadium. It also needs a management team and club directors to act as one with the fans at the heart of every decision made by the club. This last bit is impossible without sweeping chnages.

From what we have been told, Managers/Mowbray go to Pune at the end of each season for a review and to discuss the budgets for the next season. It seems all player sales have to be agreed by Venky's and any player purchases above the agreed budget or agreed wage budget have to be approved by Venky's. Anything within the agreed budget can be approved by those at Ewood. Delays may happen if a cash transfer have to be made by Venky's for the purchase of a player but this delay is purely down to the finance team and international bank transfers.

Ashley's only issue is that he has run the club as a business. They are profitable most years, he paid off all of their debts in the first 2 years of ownership and the club has a board of directors and is generally well run. Newcastle supporters generally don't like him as he sacked Kevin Keagan and also won't the cash on players that other clubs will as well as naming rights etc.. He is the other extreme of Venky's really, involved and running the club as a business. I really don't understand any other billionaire in sports who run things as Venky's do.

My biggest issue with the appointment isn't that he has worked with Mowbray before as most people in football bring in people they have worked with before. The issue is that he prefers scouts and is not versed and does not agree with data analysis. So are we now dismantling the analysis team we have spent the past 2 years building up and is starting to show returns. If we look at Barnsley, Brentford and Norwich they appointed DOF and Head of Recruitments that eat and breathe data analysis and are very versed in modern data analysis techniques. Our new chap isn't but our old chap was.

We probably have an outside chance of top 6 with a new manager who can get the maximum out of our players. At present and this is no viewpoint on our squad, but with Mowbray in charge we are heading for a relegation battle all season. I am not sure bedding youngsters into that environment is the best approach

Do we know how well Wharton is recovering from his injury? Is it likely to be preseason his return or much later in the season? I wouldn't mind going back in for last years transfer target, Charlie Goode from Brentford and seeing how good their partnership would be in the Championship, as it was pretty good in League 2. I assume if an offer for Lennihan is received this summer he may well be off as only 12 months left on his contract unless we have an option on his contract too?

Supposedly Rhodes has gone back to Huddersfield to play and be close to his family. They also now have a much stricter wage budget than ourselves so I don't think he'll be on much more than £10k a week.

I think we need to exclude last season with Covid, with the delay to the end of the season, there was virtually no holidays before start of pre-season and the start of the normal season. Getting Kaminski in early was probably the real benefit there. But in a normal season getting players in early and settled normally results in a good showing.

Successful clubs normally try to get the players in before pre-season, so everyone gels and understands how to play in our system. It's one of the reasons why we have not been anywhere in the Championship, we never have a settled side going into the season, we do most of our signings in the last week of the Window. We then write off the first 6-8 games while everyone settles in.

It makes giving players an additional 4 week contracts for not playing look even more foolish as all of that would have been in the qualifying accounts. Sort of makes you think that the club or directors need us to go into an embargo. I can see in the next 12 weeks, we'll need the sale of AA, JR and another plus the sale of the Brockhall land for us to come out of an Embargo and will all be blamed on FFP instead of the incompetence of those in charge.

The Walker Family I do blame as well.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time the trust didn't have the funds to continue to invest the £5m a season. Also The remaining Walker family were suing them for mismanagement of the trust and that included continuing to fund Rovers which the family considered a financial mismanagement. I think if the Walker family had not launched the lawsuit at the time the Trust may well have kept the club but at a much lower continued investment of say £2m a season but we will never know. Also to continue to compete at the time the Premier League was becoming a Billionaires playground and the Trust didn't have the funds so found Billionaires who wanted to have a football club. The sad thing is if they had waited 12 months for the new TV deals to kick in we would have been a self funding operation. It's just incredibly depressing looking back on what might have been and how we are run now.

It's a difficult situation with them. They didn't really have the available cash to continue investing with Flybe etc consuming more of their investment capital as well as other issues following the financial crash. Also at the time the Walker family were suing the trust for financial mismanagement. The trust found a billionaire family to take on the club and unfortunately assumed they were competent business people who would continue the running of the club in a similar way to they way they had. They should probably have done more to explain the situation to them about agents running the club, how that would be illegal, double standard two face liars of agents, explained if you are relegated from the Premier League, you're are screwed so important to keep in it etc. At the end of the day, once it is sold and it up to the new owners to run the business as they see fit and there is not a lot you can do to stop them doing so.

I must admit the cash injections seem to be lower than i would have expected this year. Looking at it they have injected £1m more than last season despite not having nearly as much match day income etc plus investing more in player wages etc this term. I would have expected at least another £5-7m in share allocations this year to cover that shortfall. So really i wonder where the cash has come from to pay everything?

I understand and they should use the data both ways. To be honest all the data shows we do not have the players to play a possession based game but do have the players to play a highly direct, quick passing counter attacking side. So no matter what the issues for the season have always been Mowbray playing the wrong system and formation to match the players he has at his disposal. We can argue about data all the time but until a new manager is appointed who understands how to play to get the best out of the players at his disposal its a pointless exercise.

It doesn't show that at all though. it was a table to show that buckley had started more games that we had won than started more games we lost. That is all. Also we were under Hugh's and Big Sam pioneers of the use of the data systems we are now trying to catch up with before the system was dismantled after Venky's took over and implemented an agency lead approach.. Samba being an example of a demo Hugh's had of the system in the first few weeks he was here and then invited for a trial to see if the predictions of the stats matched with reality. As its a transfer thread and with most clubs now using these systems extensively especially with getting to games for the last 18 months, how do you think most clubs will be doing transfer business this year? Which would you prefer we go down the data approach or ring up our friendly agent and ask him to bring in 5 new player for us?

I am not sure JRC or Chapman will be here either. There has been a pause put on all expenditure and commitiing to any new contracts by Venky's The rumours presently in India are that Venky's are in discussions with a fellow IPL owning billionaire to come in as an investor into Rovers. If these rumours are true, Venky's won't be making any financial decisions concerning Us.

I think most Sheffield United fans were thinking the same when they appointed Wilder as manager, apart from being a Sheffield United Fan, he had not done that much to be appointed their boss. Also we did try to appoint him as manager at the same time as Mowbray, but got turned down, so we did seem to be looking at lower league managers at that point. I am not saying we should appoint Ainsworth, but he has something about him, and what he has done with Wycombe, especially this season on a £4m total player budget is pretty impressive. It just took him a touch too long for their players to get up to speed with the demands of the Championship. Wilder, sadly I don't see us being able to appoint, despite the fact he is perfect for the role, i think his relationship with the Sheffield United owner for the past season means he is unlikely to accept another basket case club.

As soon as he said he wasn't worried about trying to overhaul Wigan and win League 1, I was getting concerned. What ambitious successful manager says they don't care about winning the league they are in? Also to then say he had to convince Venky's to cool it when we were promoted. Sheffield United and Norwich had both proven you go for it once promoted and if you don't get promoted the first season, you will be set up nicely for promotion in the second season.

Are we all sure our current transfer embargo is as straight forward for us to get out of? I must say there does seem to be an awful lot of good out of contract players at other clubs this year, so even with a very small transfer budget, some clubs are going to be able to put a very good side together on virtually nothing.

It might be they want a replacement lined up similar to Bowyer and Coyle dismissals before they move.

You have written off the summer transfer window as the new manager will need time to assess the squad before deciding on players he needs. Also the pre season schedule will be what Mowbray had set up and could be completely different to what the new manager requires etc.

Good point. I am not sure which ones are living in the UK so avoided. If Wagner is living in the UK i would add him to my list as well.

I think with Brexit getting an obscure European manager will be much more difficult in obtaining a work permit, so it will therefore have to be a British manager. Also in regard to this recruiting unearthed gems from Europe through our new European scouting network is also going to be a challenge. I think really we need someone who knows lower leagues and can unearth gems from there as well as developing young talent through our youth system. I think I would go for one of either Cowley's, Gareth Ainsworth or Mark Robins.