What a load of rubbish 1864. I'm with you in hoping or believing general improvement at the Club is on the way but this is the first time we've ever genuinely looked like being in a position to make a push under Venky's ownership. How will we ever know if we have enough to get to the Premier League if we start selling all our decent players the second we start doing a bit better?

The manager shouldn't be publicly waving him off in advance and giving his blessing to the move. Can you imagine any other manager in the top 4 at Christmas doing that? He should be saying that as far as he is concerned promotion is the aim and no-one is leaving. That puts the ball firmly back in the owners court. Then if players are sold and any promotion push goes correspondingly tits up the responsibility rests with them and them alone.

Show some bloody cajones and ambition Mowbray. Last I heard he was still employed as manager of Blackburn Rovers FC not as Ben Brereton's agent. Should be saying that if it were up to him the player would be going nowhere and you don't succeed by flogging off your best players half way through a promotion campaign.

Has the Armstrong money disappeared without trace then?

Good post, one would hope it's a case of the owners stepping in and attempting to do the job properly as opposed to Waggott's original poorly researched, back of a fag packet, pie in the sky scheme. That said I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him and as long as he is still here I would never underestimate the potential for him to get involved with and profit from a property deal before disappearing into a happy retirement leaving BRFC with diddly squat. As far as the query as to whether a new training complex is really top of our list of priorities given the already excellent existing facilities I'd, I'd tend to agree it isn't. However spending on infrastructure is exempt from FFP so it is theoretically a chance for the owners to demonstrate their stated commitment to the Club without affecting the amount they're allowed to inject under FFP rules.

Absolutely, obviously no lessons have been learned in the past from giving out inflated contracts to mediocre dross or players getting past their best like Evans Bennett Downing and Graham and subsequently not having the funds to retain our better players. Gallagher should be written off as a bad job. Ludicrous to be committing funds to saddling ourselves with him for an even lengthier period when we seemingly can't tempt the out of contract trio or BBD to sign new deals.

Absolutely Ricky, if we're still in the same position by mid Jan there's only one decision to be made - keep the out of contract trio until the end of the season and sell BBD in summer if need be and if we haven't been promoted. Anything else would be desperately disappointing and indicate zero ambition.

I'll start the car and pay for the fuel.

We trigger the extension and unless they offer what we consider acceptable he stays put. See above post.

Wouldn't have thought a team in Spain would be able to offer anywhere near the £25m that might turn our heads either. Doubt they'd be in a position to get much past double figures.

Why not? The owners don't need the money per se. The Club shouldn't need the money for FFP purposes imminently as the training ground exercise was completed in the last annual FFP cycle and the Armstrong money hit the accounts in the latest one. And if we do actually have this rather elusive contract extension in our favour as is claimed, surely we could sell him in summer for not much less than what we could this Jan? I'd say what we can't afford to do is sabotage the only potentially viable chance chance of the play offs we've had in the last nine years or so!

Spot on Gav.

I don't think there's much doubt offers have been made JH. However if the players won't accept them, they might as well have not been made at all - the net effect is the same. So as I keep saying the key question is are the offers realistic? Waggott claims they are, the players (or perhaps their agents) don't seem to be of the same view. Don't suppose we'll ever find out who's being reasonable and who's being unreasonable but one thing's for sure, I find it hard to believe a single word that comes out of Waggott's mouth after he attempted to recreate his training ground scam here.

Somewhat of an exaggeration, we won the Premier League before he arrived at the Club so something must have worked back in those days. I think I'd rather have Dalgish or Shearer than John Williams thank you very much. In fact I'd rather have Terry Ibbotson or Tom Finn than John Williams. That's not a sleight on John as all were extremely able operators in their own different ways. The contrast between those days and now is unfortunately however only too apparent with Waggott "at the wheel".

There's no comparison whatsoever between say Wharton and Gallagher. You probably made the mistake nearly everyone did on here of writing Wharton off without ever having seen him play because Mowbray wouldn't give him a chance and kept loaning him out. By contrast we've seen plenty of Gallagher and you don't have to be Nostredamus to realise we've been sold an overpriced dud. He's 26, not 19 as BB was when he was getting flak, and he's as good (or rather bad) as he's ever going to get. In his first spell here he looked distinctly ordinary but his one redeeming quality was that he was very willing and had an ability to run the channels. Since those days he looks to have bulked up considerably and lost all his mobility. Match that up with having no anticipation whatsoever and almost zero technical ability and it's not a happy mix.

The issue isn't really WHETHER they've been offered new contracts, it's whether those offers are tempting enough to get said players to re-sign and seemingly they aren't. Not really going to be worth us letting them go for peanuts if we're still in the top 4 come January either is it?

We can but hope.......... Souness situation mark 2. Never thought we'd be so lucky as to have lightning strike twice mind!

Does that mean Waggott has been offered a new contract? I sincerely hope not.

Did anyone make the point to him that it would be completely pointless letting DL RN and JR go for a relative pittance in January due to the contract situation then spend a similar amount bringing in inferior players?

Real "can't do" person isn't he. Every time someone comes up with a positive suggestion he is there with a reason why it can't be done or might not work. Extremely rare he comes up with an initiative off his own batt which takes everyone by surprise and which could generally be regarded as positive.

Thanks for clarifying.

Personally, I don't think he is as good as as Wharton and I'd rather give another of our youngsters, (Carter) the chance rather than push him out of the picture by signing Van Hecke.

You're being a bit vague1864, to boil it down to the nitty gritty, are you suggesting there's a chance we might not be able to meet certain conditions necessary to activate an extension, or are you saying it's simply a case of the Club has to wait until the appropriate time. I always understood it to mean that IF there is an option to extend a contract in our favour the player had absolutely no say in the matter.

I think he's been bloody awful but it's a game of opinions.

Didn't think it did improve to any noticeable extent John, we'll have to agree to disagree on that. The surface per se was passable yesterday but there's obviously an issue with the drainage and I can only see it deteriorating as winter goes on.