So you're happy to stick with Mowbray then?

You're clearly on the wind up Gav, Gallagher has been an absolutely abysmal signing. Clubs in our current position simplycan't afford to get it wrong when spending that much and he's also one of the highest wage earners. What makes it even more unforgiveable was that he was here before and didn't look all that then. (Albeit substantially better than he does now)

All desperately worrying if like me you are hoping Mowbray will be long gone by summer. Players on pre contracts don't help for the remainder of this season and what if a new manager came in and didn't fancy the players he'd been lumbered with signing?

Good post, one of the main reason revenues and attendances have been dropping like a stone is we have Mowbray in situ as manager under whom we have zero chance of success and Waggott as CEO who isn't fit to sweep the car park as another poster (arbitro?) aptly pointed out previously. Eventually people will just lose interest. I wonder what excuse these two give when quizzed about decline in revenues and attendance? Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, my guess is they both play the Covid card and hope the owners either don't notice attendances are up everywhere else or that they've currently got enough problems in their own Country to take decisive action here.

Exactly. I'd have a very hard time renewing my ST if either Waggott or Mowbray got a new contract tbh. And that's after fifty years and not even Steve Kean or Owen Coyle finished me off.

Also now the completely renovated Fox and Hounds on McDonald's roundabout.

Aye, like Christian Walton. Edit: If you make enough duff signings I suppose you're bound to get the odd one right eventually on the law of averages.

Because that isn't permissible for FFP purposes!

Taking the thread back to the original topic of Mowbray, Ssturday's game at Bristol City was a microcosm of us under him imo. First half, against a team bang out of form and confidence we never turned up. This was followed by a much improved second half display. In the end a draw was probably fair but a team going places would have scented blood and found a way to win yesterday. Whatever anyone's views on the owners, under a better and more ambitious manager we would do better. Someone who could get the players to put a shift in for 90 mins as opposed to 45 would help. Mowbray out Waggott out Venus out.

Ok so just assuming for a second in a weird parallel conspiratorial world that the explanation for the Training ground move isn't the obvious one that it's to get round FFP and it is in fact a machiavellian plot to cash in on it by the owners. Why not just sell it now?

Thank goodness for a bit of common sense on this thread.

Wouldn't say he was a Fans favourite exactly, when he was here I think most people wondered how he got in the side every week and assumed he must be in possession of incriminating photographs of the manager. After he left however he became a cult hero because given he had been that bad, every time anyone from either side missed a sitter the cry of "Beamo" went up for many years thereafter.

His exact words were along the lines of "I want to make sure the Club's all right when I'm gone". Once he had gone the Trust's Solicitor Paul Egerton Vernon announced in the LT that there was no specific pot for the Club but that it was hoped the profits from the other Companies would sustain Rovers. Whether this was Jack's actual intention who knows, but to play devil's advocate the amounts needed to remain competitive at the top end of the Premier League were rising all the time and the family had either no interest in football, or a passing interest but weren't willing to risk the family silver on the Club. I know several of the family to say hello to and I would say they are exceptionally nice people in a social capacity. As owners however the last straw for me was when they announced they were withdrawing funding from the Club and then one of Jack's other Companies Fly Be subsequently appeared as sponsors on the front of Birmingham City's shirts. As Rovers needed a net influx of funds of c £2m - £3m p.a. at the time and Fly Be presumably flew a large number of flights from East Midlands Airport I suppose the moves were sensible in a strictly commercial sense. I bet Jack was spinning in his grave at that point though.

Hardly, they've injected £16m quid into the Club for an asset they already own because there was no other way round it due to the ludicrous FFP rules!

You and me both den. It's obviously completely incomprehensible to a normal person how you can lose £20 or £30m p.a. without batting an eyelid. Even if they can afford it however you'd think they'd get far more pride and enjoyment out of it had they taken a much closer interest and kept a much tighter rein on things over the years and they'd lost rather less money on us and we had been somewhat more successful. Maybe they've come to that realisation? I think however after 11 years everyone's reaction will be "I'll believe it when I see it". And rightly so.

Speaking entirely personally, whilst it would be nice, communication with the fans would be someway down my list of priorities behind things like bringing in a decent Manager, CEO and Coaching Staff, renovating the stadium, replacing the pitch in full and upgrading the training facilities at Brockhall to state of the art standard where necessary. After eleven tough years we now need actions not words. I don't want to hear mealy mouthed platitudes about how wonderful I am as a supporter and how I can contact them any time with suggestions then nothing changes. Conversely to use an extreme example to prove a point I wouldn't give two hoots if we all woke up one morning to discover the Riverside Stand had been replaced with a shiny new date of the art facility and no- one had known the first thing about it. ** **I'm not aware of any such plans BTW it was a hypothetical example.

Agree with all of that.

You have heard of FFP right?

Probably because the managers of those Clubs haven't run such bloated squads for years and/or have traded sensibly to stay within FFP as opposed to stockpiling more and more players without ever having to sell anyone. Couple of key points here. To all intents and purposes Brockhall is still under Club ownership. If the owners wanted to cash in on it at any point they could just have sold it to an external party at any point before anyway. Secondly the Armstrong money didn't come in in time for the latest round of FFP calculations hence the need for the accounting exercise. I don't deny it has been gross mismanagement (by imo Waggott and Mowbray) and a lack of oversight by the owners that led us to this stage in the first place.

Sorry, this part is absolute rubbish. Of course they're putting money into the Club. Our wage bill alone far outstrips our income. Who do you think pays Ayala £30 k p.w.? Gallagher £20k p.w? Poveda £10k p.w. (apparently) to sit on the bench? Balaji might not have turned up with £16m in crisp £20 notes in a wheelbarrow at the point the accounting exercise with the STC took place but unless you start hearing stories that players haven't been paid for months you can be sure the money has come into the Club at some point. They have also backed the Club up to the limit they are able to under the current FFP rules. Will these rules change in future and would they be able to put more in in future if they wished? Who knows?

Agree with most of your post but the scenario outlined in the second paragraph would be a Civil dispute not a Criminal matter. There's no doubt the Club and therefore the owners had their pants pulled down by various agents but that's your own fault for being gullible, it isn't a Police matter.

Or maybe, just maybe, the fact that just 13 of the 227 votes cast were in favour of Waggott and Mowbray indicates that they are indeed shit? Must say that for a site you consider to be so marginalised, extreme and irrelevant you must nevertheless be an avid reader of it to steam straight in with a "like" as soon as someone contributed a post which aligned with your own view.

I was also reflecting today that the fanbase is fairly divided. I'd categorise it as follows. The first group seems to be one which looks at the League table, says "oh we're seventh this week" and doesn't really pay much attention to or indeed care what's happening down at the Club on a day to day basis. All this group are bothered about is going to the games and supporting the team on the pitch and having a good day out at the game be it home or away. This group are also likely to be of the viewpoint of "what can we expect, we're only a town team" and don't seem overly bothered whether we're successful or not. The second group (which I would belong to) think the last eleven years have been abysmal especially in light of the fact we have some of the wealthiest owners in football. That notwithstanding this group prefer the pragmatic view that even at this stage if we were properly run on the ground we'd have a far greater chance of success with the owners financial backing as well than without it. A proportion of the supporters in this Category will nonetheless have probably dropped off in the last couple of years thanks to the antics of Messrs Mowbray and Waggott. The third group consists of fans who were so alienated by the early years that they feel we will never succeed with Venky's as our owners no matter what. This group are also seemingly unable to accept you can't change the past and won't accept that although it was "criminal" what went on at first In the sense that it shouldn't have been allowed to happen, nothing "criminal" happened at the Club in the sense of being against the law. The majority of this group probably boycotted at a relatively early stage of Venky's ownership after relegation from the Premier League. Will any of the differing factions ever see eye to eye? The only thing I think that will come close to doing it is a period of sustained success on the pitch.

As much as I can't stand Mowbray, I do get a little uncomfortable if anyone refers to his physical appearance and calls him "the gunning idiot" or whatever. However I genuinely think there is very little of that and that the vast majority of the criticism aimed at him relates solely to his performance as manager of the football Club. Why do you think that isn't fair game? "Steadied the ship?" from where I'm stood over his tenure he's got us into so much difficulty with FFP the owners had to give the Club £16m for an asset they already owned to prevent the training facilities being sold for housing and also had to sell sell Armstrong to avoid sanctions being imposed. And despite having the considerable luxury of signing Players for £7m and £5m and being able to run the wage budget at 187% of turnover due to the owners financial support he hasn't even delivered a top 10 finish let alone a genuine tilt at the play offs. He also led us to the third worst sequence of results in our 146 year history last season. And a club record home defeat the other week. Oh and if that wasn't enough, most if not all of our better players look set to leave for either nothing or for considerably less than their true worth. If that's him "steadying the ship" I'd hate to see it when he destabalises it.

Ah sorry.