They could always, swallow their pride and ask Tom Finn to come back and sort the mess out.

I hope you are right, as I don't think we have the players to roll their sleaves up for a relegation battle, the two young lads from Everton and City will crack under the pressure of a relegation battle. I think your comments would have been echoed last season by Hull who had 39 points after 26 games. To only get 3 draws and a win in the last 20 games was horrifying for them. Looking at our next 9 games, we are likely to get a few draws so the last 8 games will be tight. Having said that when the pressure is on, TM always seems to conjure up a few wins so we should be ok.

I fear we maybe this seasons Hull with how we are playing at the moment. Our next set of fixtures look horrible, will he be able to sort it out or will he go down as our first manager to take us to League 1 twice in their tenure. He just doesn't seem to know what to do anymore and it looks like he is desperate to be put out of his misery and sacked.

You do realize that Brentfords budget is lower than ours, also they have to develop and sell one star per year to cover their losses each season. So why are they able to be top so far this season and have been able to mount multiple top 6 campaigns?

Apart from the overdraft, we do not have any external debt at the moment. It seems they are having to inject nearly £7m every 3 months to keep the lights on, so around £28-30m for this season (nearly double their normal yearly contribution). For that amount of cash I would be expecting a promotion challenge at the minimum. Also in 3 months we will break the magical £200m barrier, at a certain point they must reach an enough is enough moment.

Limited spending has been allowed following relaxation of the FFP rules for the season as well as TM going for the playoffs. Up until then we had a leeway of £15k. Venky's have guaranteed an injection into the club this year of £32m to cover this years running costs.

It appears TM over ruled the data team who were suggesting Goode and Pickering in the summer and instead went for Kipre and another left back. When these fell through they were then left desperately trying to find replacements in Douglas and Ayala who the data team were vehemently opposed to. Venky's now believe what was the point in investing in scouting and data if you are going to over rule them and make silly decisions. They have seen the success of Brentford and want a more scientific approach with rovers recruitment, which they understand, instead of how it has been in the past few seasons..

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?