13 minutes ago, Mercer said:

If we sign 3 or 4 quality players then we might well be capable of reaching the play offs.

What's your point?

 

There is a plan now and they seem to be building from the back as well for the first time since Hughes. With what they inherited and what needed to be replaced they are doing all right. All of the signed players seem to be an upgrade on what left. Wage budget seems to be under control and we are not wasting the cash we are spending.

They are pretty much doing everything we have asked for, for the past 3 years and yet we are still complaining.

Hope 4 more players join tomorrow and we can have a great last day of the transfer window unlike previous years.

4 minutes ago, Mercer said:

Barring several rabbits being pulled out of the hat before the window closes, to me it's been very underwhelming and we are well short.

10 players out at close of last season (5 1st team regulars and 5 squaddies).

In of proven ability at Championship level: Brittain and Hyman.

Should be okay at Championship level: Morton.

Unproven at Championship level: Szmodics and Hirst (if signing completed)

Emerging talent at Championship level: Carter, Phillips and Andy Wharton.

So 10 out, 8 in of which 2 have big question marks against (Szmodics and Hirst) and 3 who have yet to prove they can cut it at Championship level over a sustained run of games (Carter, Phillips and Andy Wharton).

So at best we are 2 short and at worse 5 short and that is before injuries, suspensions or BBD leaving!

Factor in injuries: Barnes season over, Brittain and Gallagher seemingly out for 6 weeks.  Ayala yet to happen!!!

Finally, the BBD question - will he stay or will he go!? 

To me, our squad is at breaking point and as things stand, mid table would be an outstanding result. 

Yet if we sign 3-4 players in the next day, you'll be here on Friday telling us we now have a playoff capable squad etc.

4 minutes ago, roverandout said:

So we sign him for 5 million then he has another good season.  Then we sell him for 15 million the summer after we are back to square one.  There's no building its just developing players then making a profit. 

Yep being a trading club. The Brentford etc approach.

10 minutes ago, alexanders said:

Apologies if its been mentioned, but apparently Everton hade had an initial offer of 17.5m accepted by Rovers. They are now waiting to see if they will make a formal offer. 

https://footballleagueworld.co.uk/jon-dahl-tomasson-makes-admission-about-ben-brereton-diazs-future-at-blackburn-rovers-amid-everton-interest/

So they haven't made an offer according to that just a discussion. The only club to actual make a written offer so far is Nice which we rejected.

6 minutes ago, SuperBrfc said:

After all the talk and excitement about:

Anel, Davies, Van Hecke, Van Den Berg, Birmancevic, Bowler, Styles...

None of them happened, and we're left arguing about the merits of signing an underwhelming kid from Leicester.

Sounds about right for this regime. We've been had again.

At least we are now enquiring and making offers for players like this. Under TM we were little old Blackburn and should know our place.

1 minute ago, rovers11 said:

I wonder how many hours away we are from the BBD price tag dropping by a few million. We can't let him leave for free. 

Venky's haven't dropped an asking price yet, and it's up to them if they want to let him leave for free.

1 minute ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Of course. But he hasn't. More to the point, he hasn't even scored a goal at Championship level so on the face of it, the chances of that happening are exceedingly slim.

Wouldn't it be far easier to just spend £5m on someone with a track record at this level.

Who is there in the £5m range?

As soon as someone hits 15 goals in a season in the Championship they are in the £15m range. 

It seems to me a good approach, with us being able to spend the cash in other areas this season.

7 minutes ago, roverandout said:

Exactly.  2.5 million would have been a gamble worth taking if he had a good season but 5 million is Premier league money. That's money better spent on more areas of the team

It will be an up to £5m deal, probably £2m plus £3m in performance clauses and a 20% sell on. It won't be £5m all in one go.

1 minute ago, Sweaty Gussets said:

But he isn't in his last year. He's going to sign a new contract before he's loaned out. Maybe you missed that part? 

If he did let his contract run down, at his age it would go to a tribunal for Leicester compensation to be agreed.

2 minutes ago, alexanders said:

At the moment his wage is ZERO, NADA, NIX 

He has just had his Chelsea contract paid up so had 3 years of wages into his account in one go. 

If he wants to rebuild his career, dropping out of the limelight into the Championship does make sense. If Big Sam was here I would say we would have signed him, now we will be a fair bit down the list.

It would be amusing if it did happen for the response on thekitguy.

5 minutes ago, tomphil said:

Yep didn't someone once show the conglomerate accounts where it shows the club as an oversees 'asset' that needs funding.

So it is indeed just absorbing paper money and costing the owners themselves nothing it's just numbers on a balance sheet to them. The only time they'd have to worry about it is if the rest of the corporation suddenly lost its vast annual profits.

Then they'd drop us like a stone never mind all this pride bull shit that so called prevents them from doing so.

We are a drop in the corner of a multi billion Indian dollar ocean.

Which is why they are happy for turnover to stay as it is as if it did increase they wouldn't be able to put  £20m a season into the club. They want what's best for their overall business.

If we were owned by someone who either couldn't put £20m a season in or wanted what was best for the club, then things would change very quickly.

32 minutes ago, RevidgeBlue said:

Anyone put in a sensible bid for BBD that we know of yet?

Nope, don't think any offer has hit double figures yet.

18 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Tomasson was not for even suggesting there is a chance of above 3, unless he was fibbing. Coupled with the LT saying 2 x CBs and a loan attacker.

Potentially a 4th centre back on loan, Brown loaned out and no more central midfielders. Lots of decisions made against your own personal preferences.

Tomasson may have been referring to 3 permanent signings and ignoring any loan signings. Should be an interesting last week of the transfer window. 

24 minutes ago, CoconutGrove said:

The last set of accounts I can see is for the 2020/21 season, with 186% wages to turnover (see photo). This does include being hampered by Covid however. 
 

Where are you getting this 78% from?

Apologies, 78% was 2018, 2019 was 72%. I was looking at precovid accounts but now realize they had their last 2 years of parachute payments to hit those figures.

1 minute ago, damo100 said:

Money...

There is also the owners potential to invest, more say in who he signs, better club infrastructure etc. Probably more chance of promotion in next 2 years etc.

30 minutes ago, CoconutGrove said:

They’ve sold at least 10k more season tickets than us - not to mention the fact they were over £600 so nearly £200 more than ours. That’s only £2m but a big difference is that’s guaranteed income rather than our “potential” income (we can’t gamble on potential ticket sales for games as they can fluctuate depending on a number of variables). 

With getting more fans to games, that’s more revenue they’ll be able to bring in through things like shirt sales, other matchday income etc.

Also, playing in front of more fans means they can bring in more sponsorship than us. They’re sponsored by a betting company who will pay more than Totally Wicked do (although I actually like our stance on not accepting betting companies as a sponsor any more).

What Boro do have with paying the wages they do is a wages to turnover percentage of between 160-186% (lower end before behind closed doors, 186% with no fans).

At the end of the day, their financial losses are at the top end of the league and similar to what ours were 6/7 years ago. We are now losing a lot less per year (mid table for losses in the Championship). Gibson is always remarked as one of the best owners in the country but they can only carry on paying high wages and transfer fees for so long before something drastic happens (presuming they don’t go up).

According to Middlesbrough's last set of accounts the wage to turnover ratio was 78% so they do have a lot of flexibility to increase.

11 minutes ago, JHRover said:

Bizarre. All must not be well at Sunderland as I can't imagine why he'd want to leave them after promotion to join Stoke. I know Stoke have money but Sunderland can't be that far behind surely.

Difficult to know. Without FFP and with their owners I think Stoke would be the only club who could spend £150m in the championship if they were allowed to.

Everything is in place at Stoke and their owners/bet365 just wrote off the £200m debt they had, so the club is now debt free.

I think it's also easier to attract players to Stoke than the North East and Neill still lives in Cheshire so possibly wants to move to be closer to home.

We possibly may see Mowbray at Sunderland?

22 minutes ago, Swanson said:

Couple of weeks ago? So the same case as Brittain? Maybe we have other bids out as well then.

Waiting for Venky's approval and funds to be sent. It seems to be 2 weeks to get this. I hope we can get them to speed up next week.

We really need a new signing today to calm everyone down I really expected one of the two Vans to have signed this week by now.

3 minutes ago, bluebruce said:

And what would happen next season when we have no BBD and no money to replace him?

I don't think there will be an increase in budget apart from for a special case player even if we sold him.

3 minutes ago, JHRover said:

So its come from Waggott then. As predicted. He is paid by Venkys to protect them and shield them.

We've signed 2 players and a loan for RELATIVE peanuts yes. Liverpool will be delighted that we are playing Morton every week and aiding his devlopment - they are not going to be charging us a lot to do this for them provided we keep on playing him. The other two have been signed from relatively impoverished League One clubs who need to make cutbacks following relegation. Nothing wrong with that sort of policy if they are good enough but lets not make out these are big complex expensive deals, they are straight forward things that happen when a club gets relegated, needs to raise cash and a player wants to stay in the higher division.

So despite Venkys being desperate to invest and prevented from doing so only by those nasty FFP rules we are not going to be voting against the proposals and I don't expect we've ever done anything to try and have the rules removed at the League AGM either.

The rules have been in place for 8 years and during that time other than short term 'embargoes' only 4 clubs have suffered a points deduction for breaking the rules and many have beaten the system and got promoted. Some of the biggest offenders have got away with it - QPR, Leicester, Bournemouth - so if they can't even get to grips with that they won't be expelling anyone. It would make a mockery of their competition.

Why would we vote against the new rules, you can inject £20m a season and have to control wages, what's wrong with that? They are pretty much tailor made for us if we can start increasing turnover and to be honest your wage to turnover metric should never exceed 90% in the first place.

2 minutes ago, JHRover said:

Other than what you have read in the papers you have no basis for those figures.

The £10 million figure is one that wasn't mentioned anywhere until it appeared on this forum a week or so ago and in the time since has seemingly become fact as to what our budget is.

The £3 million outlay we have supposedly made this summer appears to be based on what Barry Fry (one of the last blokes in the world I would rely on) said to people at Peterborough's end. He's hardly going to say they've accepted a low fee for one of their most popular players when they are aiming for promotion is he?

The 'problem' with wages is simply that Venkys and their chauffeur have decided this is the area to target to achieve their desired cutbacks. So be it, but we won't be getting much decent business done if they stick to it. Pretending it is forced by FFP is just making excuses for them, IMO.

Any 'new rules' aren't yet in place and if they do come in will be voted on by League member clubs. So if we don't like it I assume we will be voting against it...doubt we will hear much on that front.

It was mention by Glen around 6 weeks ago from his chat with Waggott etc. So we've magically signed 2 players and a loan signing for peanuts.

I don't think we are voting against it but we'll here alot more about it soon especially for us as we don't have a training ground to sell for this 3 year cycle so the new rules do need to be in place.

Also one of the proposed fines for a breach of rules is now expulsion from the EFL.

1 minute ago, JHRover said:

National media, if they can be bothered to report on us, pick their figures from local media. Local media these days consist of Rich Sharpe and Elliott Jackson who I don't think can run anything without first someone at Rovers giving them the info.

Your also not including the sign on fee, agent fees etc which our budget does as well as any loan fees. Once you add all that up we will have spent at least ,£3m of our possible £10m.

The problem will remain wages and new FfP rules of 90% wage budget

4 minutes ago, Mellor Rover said:

I thought the 90% of turnover thing was a UEFA rules for champions league clubs?

That'd be impossible for some championship teams to achieve.

That's what the agreement is they are voting on in September, owners can inject £60m of cash every 3 years or £20m a season. Then wage budget will be 90%, 85%, 80%, 75% so reducing by 5% increments. 

1 minute ago, Butty said:

To be fair we’ve already spent over 3 million on transfer fees this summer, the only problem is we need to spend another 6 or 7 if we want to be competitive this season and like you, I have my doubts that much of any BBD transfer fee will be reinvested into anything other than keeping FFP at bay for another season.

FFP can be ignored for this season. New rules begin next summer. The important part is keeping wages to 90% of turnover and this has to be factored into the signings or we'll need a few sales next summer. Signing loans is probably easier as here for 1 year and off the wage bill for next summer.