30 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Wishful thinking and a nice spin on it.

Nobody gives an unfit player with a record like his at 24 years old a 4 year contract just so he can take 12 months to prove himself.

Or should i say nobody in their right would take that gamble he was a panic signing with a 4 year deal used as lure to get him up here.

I didn't say 12 months to sort out fitness, I said 12 months for fitness and develop into a championship standard player. It is very similar to Sammie Szmodics, taking a year to get up to speed and then flourishing the next season. This is the pond we are fishing in now, take rough diamonds and polish into a good player.

I assume as Sammie was signed on a 3 year deal, he'll be sold in the summer for us to maximize his resale potential.

5 hours ago, jim mk2 said:

 

So the obvious question is, why did we sign him?

It doesn't make any sense, particularly with a small squad, limited finances and every player having to provide some sort of value for money

He was signed as a development player before the severe budget cuts happened. If Venky's had put the restrictions in place in April he probably wouldn't have been signed.

The 4 year contract was offered as they expected him to take 12 months to sort out his fitness and develop him to championship standard, the following season we would benefit and in 2 years sold on with a profit and 2 years remaining on his contract.

2 hours ago, Mercer said:

From Jackson's article on Jan. 2024 transfer window in today's LT:

 

Around £8m of it will go towards wages and salaries, while £900,000 will cover VAT and around £217,000 is marked for ‘repayment of loan’.
Additionally, £1.8m will cover agent fees and £572,000 will go towards utilities as part of the day-to-day running of the club.

 

£1.8million on agents' fees !!!  Unbelievable (not far short of our season ticket revenue) - think there are some extremely 'soft touches' in our Exec. Management.

The £1.8m agent fees is a strange one, spend on agents is published by the EFL and for the last few seasons it's been around £500k a season and I can't see it being anywhere near that this season. 

So I am starting to think maybe agent fees includes other types of agents besides football ones such as people who have introduced Venture Capitalists for the  training ground loan or funding advice /legal advice we are likely to need.

One thing we can say is once the Indian Government sinks their teeth into this they will investigate every single payment the Venky's have sent to the UK and how it has been spent. It is going to be a very long and drawn out affair to say the least 

30 minutes ago, rigger said:

TM ?

Apologies fat fingers, should be TK.

1 hour ago, Bbrovers2288 said:

Absolutely, don’t understand why you aren’t grasping this point chaddy.

yes once kaminski hadn’t regained number 1 and there was then interest from Luton he wanted to go, which was fair enough.

had he came back in as number 1 , would he still have wanted to go, would Luton be prepared to pay for our number 1

we can’t say. 
but it certainly isn’t as easy as Luton wanted him, he wanted away

 

on Wharton, I still think it’s a red, I try and be non biased on rovers and had it been the other way then I wouldn’t have certainly been calling for a red. At best he takes man and ball at same time , from behind. Can’t do that 

on a cheap experienced cover, wonder if Man Utd would be prepared to give us Heaton in January for a final hurrah. Always rated him 

With the sudden wage budget reduction and the fact that after Ayala and Dack had left, TM was our highest paid player, we can comfortably say he was going no matter what after June.

It's debatable if things hadn't been cut would he have stayed? 

31 minutes ago, DeeCee said:

Keeping AW out of the side might take the pressure/hype away from him and  make possible suitors forget about him for a season?

I think we'll need the suitors to cover costs by January. It looks clear Venky's aren't likely to be sending through any more cash this year so we'll have to find a good chunk of change in January.

I would love to see what a proper 4-4-2 team could do with 2 fast wingers and 2 good Forwards who are not afraid to attack the ball, against today's sides. We seem to be losing a lot out of the game especially with young player development with these new rigid system approaches.

I am sure a Duff, Gillespie, Ripley etc would never come through now, they would have the individuality drilled out of them. I don't even think we produce good quality strikers anymore through youth teams.

6 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Live off the overdraft till Jan when GB will then be told he needs to bring in another 5 mill in deals sharpish.

I think he'll be tasked with raising £10m in January to cover this year's running costs till end of May. So we can expect A. Wharton to be sold to probably Newcastle in January.

Next summer will be interesting as we won't have anyone else to really sell. The recruitment team are really going to be up against it.

I would be good to turn a side over for a change, especially to improve our goal difference for later in the season.

58 minutes ago, philipl said:

We know Venky's got clobbered in India by the Indian Foreign Exchange Authorities for misrepresenting the purchase of Neville Palace as a chicken investment- for all we know there maybe chickens living there.

We know we were given totally misleading reasons for the budget cuts- and that is being charitable.

We know Gregg has not given his usual post-window interviews and frankly that says far far more than any interview would

And we know we have gone from having a project to not having a project.

 

Beyond that we are utterly in the dark. It is a bit difficult to keep a thread going about nothing..

Although we can probably add we know the £6m fine equals the amount our budget seems to have reduced by this season.

In reality we've got what we've paid for.

It looks like we've generated £4m net in transfer fees and are saving somewhere in the the region of £50-60k a week in wages. So from a Venky's perspective they only need to inject £8-10m into the club this season. 

After generating those funds we could have easily afforded several good forwards. The problem of not being able to invest any of the savings is that we have gambled on probably our 10-12th choice options and need them to hit the ground running just to get numbers into the squad.

At the beginning of the summer, GB and JDT had agreed on the players to go for and had brought 3 pretty good players in and were working on several forwards until the plug was pulled. 

Next summer they will most probably sell A. Wharton and allow £2m to be spent on players and not have to inject any funds into the club.

What an opportunity Venky's have squandered. 

22 minutes ago, Ben-2000 said:

I bumped in to Steve Waggott today & discussed a few things...

One interesting development is that a safe standing area & unreserved seating area are being explored, with possible areas identified. Both of which have been discussed with the Fans Forum.

Did he mention anything about all the rumours and how false they are? More to the point did he even know about the rumours?

1 minute ago, Paul Mani said:

I don’t think any amount of backing or money could stop him from taking a job with the reigning Champions of a country where his family live and he’s hero worshipped.

The only thing that could’ve swayed it was promotion for us last season.

If Feyenoord want him, he’s going.

I wouldn't object to a manager swap and appoint Ruud for ourselves really.

54 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Again, I don't get too caught up in every word a manager said, they all follow the same script. He was probably saying things to try and reflect well back in India which in turn improves his job security. No way did he have loads of money on the table and said no. Conversely, he also said some nice things about our players here:

https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/23510587.sunderland-tony-mowbray-admits-middlesbrough-blackburn-surprise/

Apart from being on record saying he had to talk Venky's out of funding a back to back promotion push and instead go for consolidation and continual improvement.

With Venky's it's all about interest and excitement with them. After the league 1 promotion they were interested and willing to bankroll a promotion push. After that first season back they have lost interest again. I am hoping JDT and Greg have managed to get them interested again so we'll have a reasonable budget this summer.

14 minutes ago, booth said:

His insistence on not bringing in a striker here is a big reason for Sunderland getting into the play offs.

We were a 16 goal striker away from being above them.

I see he is now saying it's never too early to gain promotion to the premier league, which is surprising after saying he had to calm Venky's down from going for a double promotion as we would be promoted too early in the journey. As we all know Venky's then lost interest.

46 minutes ago, wilsdenrover said:

It would be more profitable-  you know it, I know it, I expect even Waggott knows it.

But it would also take more effort - something SW is clearly unwilling to make.

At a normal club yes, but at Ewood, apart from the club shop, everything has been outsourced. We receive a set fixed amount per season so it doesn't have any impact on our income if 2,000 people turn up or 30,000.

2 hours ago, Sweaty Gussets said:

Do you get know or get the impression that:

a) GB and JDT have fallen out?

b) JDT will walk away this summer?

A) I don't think they have fallen out, I think both are incredibly frustrated with how Jan turned out.

he is very ambitious so it's a possibility. I think he knows we have a great academy and a lot of potential. Most of our players have now been tied down to new contracts by Greg (which I don't think would have happened with Waggot and his home grown wage limits), so it's up to JDT.

12 minutes ago, tomphil said:

He's still never been the same since he drank that coffee as like a lot he was a bit feral at times before but now he is positively tamed 🤣

At the end of the day, everything is a symptom of the owners.

More clued up and interested owners wouldn't have Waggot or Silvester working for the club. They also would have moved heaven and earth to get a striker in in Jan (increasing budget to do it if needed) and probably would have sorted O'Brien without any issues as well. A lot of the time we don't move quickly for players due to budget limitations.

2 minutes ago, Sweaty Gussets said:

Who were the others?

And who is therefore at fault if this is endemic?

Club secretary and he won't be fired.

1 hour ago, Sweaty Gussets said:

It's the first time we've failed to send not one but two forms off in time. Blaming past regimes doesn't cut it. It's on his watch. 

The third time in past 4 years. We just know about it this time.

1 hour ago, Bbrovers2288 said:

I didn’t have an opinion on sheff Utd until this season but feels like they have cheated here so I now dislike them as a club.

they nicked our top target when they didn’t have the money to pay for it, it’s fraud. Could be the difference between us and them going up. Giving them an embargo afterwards seems like a futile punishment , but hey when has the efl ever looked out or done us a favour , just really annoying 

He shouldn't really be allowed to play until SU have settled the debts for him or he should be going back to his former club.

3 hours ago, roversfan99 said:

Even if there would have been such negative fan reaction, which is nonsense. You don't run a football club like that, and they dont otherwise appointing Owen Coyle would never have crossed their mind. The key is to reinvest that money, we could have been so much better off with a big chunk of £12m+ reinvested rather than the alternative of 6 months of a disinterested Rothwell and a year of Brereton.

 

We wouldn't have got any cash, instead of Venky's injecting £20m they would have done £8m instead. You'd have just had a few less players.

A normal club you'd be correct, with usit doesn't matter, logic goes out the window.

If you look at Brentford, so long as they made a profit each player was sold once an offer was made and cash reinvested and I hope this is what we start happening. We used to do this all the time under the trust but the comments used to be why are we selling and not keeping the player etc.

1 hour ago, AllRoverAsia said:

I got a bit excited when I saw that this thread had new posts thinking that GB had just maybe kept to his word and provided the promised full detailed explanation.

Silly, silly me.

That lot will make do with the minimal announcement of it being turned down at arbitration.

Nothing really changes.

A not a single swear word, that shower are not worth the emotion.

Sadly GB can't do anything.

Any change will happen at the end of year review meeting with Venky. Silvesters close relationship with the Devil and knowing where all of the skeletons are means he's pretty much untouchable. 

So in reality what are we expecting to happen? 

7 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Execution of contracts was prevented by what could be construed as negligence by Rovers' personnel.  Forest and O'Brien have suffered financial and other damage as a direct consequence.  I think those two points are quite indisputable.  IMO, the arbitration appeal before William Norris KC has done Rovers no favours, portraying the club in an unprofessional light.  I think some of the conclusions were quite damning. 

You should note that Case Law is based on judicial decisions concerning unique disputes - and this could well turn out to be one of them creating a new precedent for the football industry if it went to court.   Should Forest and / or O'Brien come gunning for financial recompense,  I think counsel would be advising Rovers to reach out of court settlements - then again, having read the 22 page report from the appeal, I am struggling to believe that counsel actually thought this was an appeal worth pursuing.

Forest were not sued last for damages last year for a similar occurrence so they won't this year.

Also if they did, I would expect our lawyers would go back further in the day and say why did O'Brien complete his training till 1pm when we had agreed the loan between all parties by 11am? Surely as it was deadline day he should have left training immediately and headed up to Brockhall and sorted everything out. In essence those couple of hours training resulted in the transfer not being completed in time.