This one is worth watching for how Adam Wharton handles Lewis O'Brien on its own.

If Pears isn't dropped after his Plymouth performance, I will seriously worry there is something wrong with Wahlstadt

If we are still in contention, which I believe we will be, after - a £5m cut to the transfer budget mid window - a 15% cut to wage budget on top of already one of the smallest budgets in the Championship - a block on signing players over 27 Broughton and his team are miracle workers. And sure the DoF is going to undermine the entire football club by saying on Rovers TV the squad is weaker! What planet are some people on? Despite the 3 early signings, the reality is we have scarcely seen anything of the 7 new players and we are 7 games into what will be a minimum of a 50 game season. We can't meaningfully offer supporters' judgement until after the forthcoming 7 games in 22 days including some pre-season bookies' favourites for promotion.

30 minutes for Sigurddson is the stand out for me. I had worried we were going through this 7 games in 22 days coming up with no prospect of seeing him.

Everything in his background says he is a punt who was a long way down Greg's shopping list. Sometimes punts come good spectacularly. Everyone at Rovers deserves a big lucky break. Let's hope he at least has a Jon Stead like instant impact.

As far as I can see there is nothing to clean. You can put a few ribbons on her but she is still what she is. If they are preparing an exit, the very last thing they would have done is precisely what they did do this summer. This summer budget cuts smack of a knee jerk emotional reaction to the Gary Neville pad punishment. And that was caused by some creative description 12 years ago which was never corrected and caught them this summer.

Surname Rao so the new director is family possibly/probably. Is he Balaji's son? Have you looked at some of the owners in the PL? The Raos have nothing to worry about on that count. Swag has a changed landscape within which to operate. Beyond that there is little to see or say at the moment.

Palace won 9-1 on Saturday. That will be a test against the league leaders.

We have hardly seen anything of any of the players who have come in so we have no idea what sort of a window it was. Just a case of get praying... Bloxham looks promising though

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..

The question I was replying to was the impact on other Indian businesses. The sudden change for Rovers I would hazard a guess came when the Foreign Exchange people contacted Venky's with the result of their investigation and told them the punitive action to be taken.

This is not something Indians are running around telling the world about. Venky's/Rovers were deflecting the real reason for their/our problems. But from talking to senior business people in India, there are far more questions about foreign exchange exports out of India and retrospective checking of past submissions to the authorities for foreign exchange approvals being used for the purposes granted for. I am not aware of anyone being punished the way Venky's have been but moving money out of India has gone from being a bureaucratic but routine process to an expectation of having your paperwork challenged and additional justifications requested.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/23772915.blackburn-rovers-issue-statement-financial-situation/ So Venky's set up VOL ostensibly to invest in their core businesses but instead bought Gary Neville's pad and nothing else. The Indian authorities seized property to the same value in India over the mislabelling of the purpose of the cash sent to VOL. The club statement says - Rovers remain in business because Venky's make up the difference for all the losses - Rovers also remain in business because Venky's have made commitments to cover all losses in future sufficient to cover all Rovers future commitments - so if you are a supplier to Rovers (including employees), the situation is unchanged. - from the public's point of view, the only support for this statement is Venky's having written a detailed and unequivocal letter to the club's auditors committing to meet all Rovers' legal and commercial obligations for Rovers to remain in business as a football club for the foreseeable future. The auditors state this unequivocally in every audit report issued since Venky's Hatcheries in India became the ultimate owner of Rovers. This is why the club statement is written the way it is. It is mirroring the words used in a letter of support to the auditors Of couse, nothing is being said in the club statement whether budgets are cut or not, or if players have to be sold BUT the club statement would NOT be lying if the underlying reality is Venky's are telling Rovers to do this. They could have cut the support and told Rovers to reduce losses on a planned basis because they will only plug a smaller hole. That is the nightmare scenario and when JDT says the project has changed, this might be what he is alluding to. It is also possibly the reason for the smokescreen about taxes thrown up to deflect. Being optimistic for a moment, the smokescreen actually did its job in covering a very embarrassing turn of events for Venky's which has now come into the public domain anyway after the window has closed. And it is smokescreen- the assumption is we have all forgotten the time we were googling Indian tax rule changes or talking to our mates in Delhi... Glen speculates the Indian Authorities are now going to look at Venky's London Limited. MY best guess is they already have. Nobody launches an expensive overseas investigation without looking at the biggest numbers first. Seriously, if you are told to look at something odd, are you going to crawl over 6m and ignore the 270m washed through the sister company set up at the same time with the same owners and same directors? Of course not. So there is reason for thinking this is contained now unless Venky's London was also described as a chicken company and the Indian Foreign Exchange folks are still in the process of gathering 270m of Venky's Indian assets for seizure- I think such a scenario is highly improbable. And nothing in the club statement would be inconsistent with the whole thing being a bit of Indian Government posturing for geopolitical reasons. Many Indian businesses with overseas operations are having an unusually rough time with Foreign Exchange compliance currently.

After the thrashings by Villa and Spurs, I am beginning to wonder if my assessment that Burnley would be comfortably safe is incorrect and the reality is Kompany has spent 132m to build a super duper Championship side and no more. Most PL sides can get outclassed by City but the size of the gulf to Villa and Spurs says very clearly the dingles are far short of what is needed to be a mid table outfit. Are they better than Luton, Sheffield United, Wolves and Everton? The jury is out.

OK, this is hearsay. I am sticking with my arguments that tax and special Government investigation were smokescreen But when Gregg Broughton talked about geopolitics affecting the owners, he was on the money (or lack of it). I will give an example on a much much smaller basis. Whenever Malta is under any global spotlight for how the Courts, prosecution service, financial regulators and so on work, it is best not to be doing anything innocent which nonetheless gets the attention of the authorities because they might need to use you as an example for how they seriously investigate tax compliance/ statutory filings/ cross border acquisitions/ customs compliance etc etc. On a vastly bigger scale the Indian Government plays the same game especially with a number of agenda items for hosting the forthcoming G-20 which it doesn't want disrupting by others finger pointing at non-enforcement at home. So the football transfer window came at absolutely the wrong time for Venky's risking popping heads above the parapet by sending additional funds to Rovers. They, like many other Indian corporates, were experiencing the attentions of the Foreign Exchange Control people running round with instructions to put on a show. Of course SWAG had to talk about the team bus to distract from the real reason for the sudden lack of support. If this is right- everyone suggesting this is a passing storm in a teacup are also right. If it does pass and all other things are equal, we could have a decent winter window if we are close enough to the top of the table to make a difference. JDT Project postponed, not cancelled if he can work a few more miracles for the next four months... If this is not correct, Rovers are progressively going to be sucked into nasty sticky stuff.

Previous post was factual as I see it. This is purely non-factual and speculative. Nobody has remotely provided a rational explanation for the majority of the £270m sunk into Rovers. Prior to the 2012 relegation there is a shameful narrative which at least is rational. Since then???? I am not making any assertion or allegations. But I do recall past cases of an American company or two making seemingly inexplicable operating losses overseas as a front for parallel cash and asset transfers away from IRS jurisdiction which overall were of greater benefit than the loss. The American authorities have made this sort of thing much more difficult. Hopefully, the Indian authorities are simply taking back asset values for a creative way of funding the now closed Swiss pharma business- if you were doing something creative moving assets out of India, Switzerland and Jersey make far more sense than the UK. Rovers in this case would be innocent collateral damage and Waggott has been told simply now is a sensitive time to transfer cash so hold tight for the moment. Being rational this is most likely. However, if the Rovers ownership by Venky's is at the centre of something much more "creative" which has been busted by the Indian authorities, then those on brfcs dreaming of watching 7th tier football could be about to get their wishes fulfilled.

The explanations about tax were nonsense and a deflection. The explanation that Venky's were subject to unusual Government restrictions were also nonsense. The seizures of property by the Foreign Exchange authorities are hugely significant. The Rao wealth is nearly all Indian real estate and other Indian assets. In the big picture, Rovers are a big part of their non-Indian business so my gut feel this is really serious for our club if it is uncontrollable.

Extremely early in the season but I had expected Boro to be close to a 100% win record at this stage, not 100% loss. I rate Carrick and they seemed to have made the best use of the window of clubs not rolling in parachutes or player sales to the PL. I watched the extended highlights of Boro 3-0 defeat at Coventry and 2-0 defeat home to QPR. Amazing how they failed to score in either game- they look very dangerous coming forward. Midfield and defence are lacking in belief so Rovers will get chances to miss the target as well. Carrick looked lost on the touchline in both games offering nothing except misery. A real toss-up this one. If Boro get one goal they might get a bagful against us. One thing is for certain, there is no way Pears could replicate the man of the match performance Begovich produced up at Boro. JDT has to give Leo the shirt in goal. At least Bucko can't replicate his needless red card again which proved so costly last season.

Horrific thought but if the Indian taps are completely turned off, Waggott's avoiding relegation to League 1 will be a considerable achievement given the player sales that will be needed in January.

Spent all that and still look completely short of Premier League class in performances to date.

Crazy Plymouth game- at least let in one fewer goal than at Rotherham last season which is the nearest comparison (other 3-0 losses last season were proper thrashings). All we need is for one of Ennis, Sigurddson and Telalovich to be consistently a significant level better than we had on the pitch yesterday in turning great build up play into on target attempts. Presumably, all three have been signed by Broughton and the recruitment team because they believe everyone of them is a step up on what we have. Early days but Moran and Leo look promising, Hall hopefully will gel into the defensive system wherever he plays and I have hopes Tronstad will get more attuned with the English game and how JDT plays.

Bonkers. Stark raving bonkers.

I can't completely rationalise it but the Hedges miss and Leonard air kick gave me nightmares last night.

Apparently the Glazers are now refusing to sell for less than £10 bn. Couldn't happen to a nicer club or set of fans.

Today settled Leo as number 1 keeper for the Boro game. Goal 2 was preventable and goal 3 a keeping calamity.