It would explain TM denying all knowledge of Pickering and Crewe saying they have rejected a bid.

I have heard that there has been a breakdown in communication between Venky's and TM. It seems to be playing out in a similar way to the end of the Bowyer era, they have just stop communicating with him since the end of November. Also Braithwaite was bought in by the data team, Pasha and Silvester, completely bypassing Waggott, TM and Venus. Hence why TM is busy thanking Venky's for this transfer and his podcast last week. I am not sure how accurate the info is but does explain the sudden charm offensive from TM towards Venky's.

Investment in Brockhall has been pretty much none existent for 4 years, so it needs a complete overhaul. The analysis and euro scouting team seem to have been funded through cutbacks on medical, physio and training ground investments and it is starting to show. New manager needs to find out if the players here can play his preferred system, his plan b and c system and what new players he will need to bring in. Until players are properly defensively drilled how do we know what our current defenders can do?

My issue with giving TM till the end of the season before we make a change is that you are pretty much compromising next season as well. Replacing now, would allow the new chap to assess the squad, sort recruitment plans, improve training infrastructure, get the players to understand how he wants to play, drill the defence and implement a good pre season, giving us a realistic chance of promotion next season.

I still don't get this on finances, we have the second richest owners in the Championship behind the Coates Family/ Bet365. All clubs that have come down apart from Norwich have had to set players etc to keep losses down etc. Those that have spent cash have done so after player sales. Brentford also have a lower wage budget than ourselves, so how can you use those as an example. If Venky's wanted to, they could easily fund a 1 season all out assault to get promotion (knowing if it didn't work they could sell a few players to comply with FFP afterwards) and then pay the FFP fine when we are promoted as Bournemouth did. I believe this is what Venky's wanted to do when we were promoted, until TM convinced them to follow this slow build approach, which has a serious flaw being FFP issues without promotion in 3 seasons.

Let's say Venky's have given this season to be promoted before cutbacks happen in the summer. Would you still support him knowing that all assets will be sold in the summer? I remember when Souness was appointed, it took him 5 months to assess the squad and plan who he needed for a promotion push the next season. We are probably in the same category now. Although i have a feeling of deja vu, as i do remember having the same argument last year.

Up until his injury, I was starting to think our best bit of transfer business was Wharton not going out on loan.

For me as this is the 3rd year of the normal Venky cycle we have to go up this year. The summer will be a horror story of cutting funding, reducing squad and wages and selling anyone who is sellable, as happened last time under bowyer inorder to comply with FFP in 2022. I just don't think TM can do it this year, without the injuries he may have had a chance but i really do worry now.

bit of a surprise not to see Davenport on the bench after the Preston match.

Ainsworth does seem to be learning very quickly how to operate in the Championship. First thing he seems to have done is to sort out their defence, stopped playing so open and to make it difficult for sides to score against them.

To be honest a sale now would not surprise me as would no more signings. We have to remember, we have sold just over 1,200 season tickets so far, with this mornings announcement that the new rules will be in place for 6 months, fans won't be in a stadium till next April at the earliest, so we are facing no more season ticket sales. As of right now, Venky's are probably being told they need to put in around £25-35m cash to keep the club as a going concern and complete the season (which is up £10m on what they would have expected to inject up to now). How some of the lower league clubs without very rich owners are staying afloat I have no idea. We can safely say that FFP for all clubs is out of the window as i think Government bailouts and owner bailouts will be required for a lot of clubs even those in the Premier League.

What we should have done is admit that fans in large numbers will not likely to be in the stadium until January so we should have based prices on these assumptions.. Season tickets should have been £199 with a free IFollow season pass, if we get fans in the ground before Jan so be it. The Away Ifollow pass should have also been half price for the season to ensure fans keep watching and stay in a habit of watching. Doing the above we would have generated about the same income, reinvigorated fans, kept the watching habit going and people would not be as furious as they are now, infact we would probably have a lot of positive press, happy fan base etc. For Venky's could have shown them in a good light too, all in this together and they want to help fans who are going through a very hard time. My issue is that as soon as fans get used to not watching and out of the habit of attending they never return. We are going to be very lucky to get 3-4000 season ticket sales and to be honest that will be our new rate once all of this dies down, our once hard core fan base just won't be bothered attending.

I think Shelfy had gone by the time King was sold.

He'll be sold in January, there is no way they will run the risk of him leaving for free. An interesting question though, if say we are 4th in Jan and we look to bring in a player who will guarantee promotion, who wants let's say £45k a week, would we do it?

So you would potentially then be happy for Dack to leave on a free in 18 months time?

To protect a £15-20m payday we may well have to offer Dack £40k a week in a years time, although i suspect, we will most likely try and sell in January, if he has fully recovered from his injury.

Aren't we paying Mulgrew around £20-25k at the minute?

They also have a smaller wage budget than ours as well. So doing a very good job of finding players at very good prices, who don't cost the earth on a weekly basis. The amazing thing about them is that i think in total their owner has only invested £15m of his own cash into them since he took over. With the moneyball strategy he has implemented, he's rebuilt the club from top to bottom, with the backing of fans who understand they need to sell to then reinvest. It is something we could and should have implemented by now, but would require a complete rebuild of the club with a chairman who knows what he is doing. As JoeH, season review and potential signings book revealed their are some really good players in the lower leagues available this season for not silly money, so i can see Brentford doing well. Maybe for left back we could look into the Crewe lad who was suggested?

We are not at the end of the window yet, so let's see what the net transfer spend is at that point. I hope it is a positive transfer spend for us as i fear if we have sold any of the crown jewels we have no chance at making a promotion push this year which is what we all want. I also know that Venky's do not have a bottomless pit of money to spend on us, they normally spend £10-15m a year on us, last season it hit £20m with all of the testing required, this year at present it is looking in the £30m range. Also if Kaminski has been on the radar for so long why didn't we sign him up a few weeks ago, especially as we have known about his 2 week quarantine for a while. So he at least has some pre season with the defence and understands our tactics.

The £500k we spent on him will probably be covered by the sale of Williams to Swansea, be interesting to see by the end of the window if we have had to sell a player to bring one in each time and we have a neutral cash spend. Budget must still be very tight as we didn't go to the £800k Charlton wanted for Phillips. Either Phillips wage demands were too high, or the budget is very tight with the 3-4 players we want to bring in. As a safer investment I think i would have paid the extra £300k for Phillips as he is experienced in the Championship and no acclimatization that is normally required for European players.

Explained to fans they were not going to make the same mistake as last time and potentially bankrupt the side. Explained they gained promotion 3 years ahead of schedule before they had everything in place to consolidate a place in the premier league. Also were priced out wage wise on the 3 players whose bids they had accepted. Invested the cash in youth side, stadium improvements and improving the training ground etc. Now have a bank balance of around £30m and a profit likely this season as well. Very much the Burnley approach, Yo-Yo for a few seasons buildup the club infrastructure and make sure when you are promoted the second time you have all the infrastructure and player experience to stay there.

Nothing so far. I have heard that FFP rules will be relaxed next week and a new salary cap of £20m will be voted on as well by the Championship Chairman at their end of month meeting. If that is the case and we have always been told if it wasn't for FFP they would have put more funds into us, there is no longer any excuse for them

Or we have accepted an offer for one of our players and Venky's have given a % of that for new signings

Not until they are sold will we ever know. Most of the goals and assists from Dack were made in conjunction with his partnership with Graham. Until Dack starts playing again and forms a partnership with Armstrong we can't say.

The difference is they will be battling Norwich for automatic promotion, have a new stadium, cash in the bank, brilliant scouting and development setup and are already filling the gaps they have in the squad. We are heading into the season hoping to get 10th and most probably going on a winless streak halfway through the season, giving us all worries about relegation.