This approach whereby we offer less than other Clubs' valuations of their players at the start of a window then sit back desperately hoping no -one else will come in for them and that the selling Club might then take pity on us at the end and sell us said players on the cheap is a recipe for disaster. So far it's resulted in either missing out on all our main targets and then having to throw last minute telephone numbers about at players we didn't really want for the sake of getting some sort of deal over the line (Brereton Summer 2018) or waiting all window and then having to pay the original asking price anyway (Gallagher 2019). It also sounds from the interview that the opportunity is there this window to do a bit of wheeler dealing and get a few off the wage bill but we're going to miss out because we're waiting to hear first if Clubs will take pity on us regarding their players. I've no idea why we can't just select players we fancy on ability within our approximate price range and then just get the deal done which removes the risk of missing out on a player you want and frees us up to offload a few. To listen to the hand wringing from TM every window about how difficult the market is, you wonder how any Club ever manages to buy or sell a player. He makes it sound like it's on a par with curing cancer or something in terms of difficulty.

Sorry, not having Pedersen in the slightest. There may be one or two other examples but I can't recall another top player going completely off the boil at the peak of his physical prowess and the only possible reason I can put it down to is the fact he must have thought he'd done enough or made himself financially secure and effectively downed tools. His form started declining before Hughes left in summer 2008 when he would only have been about 27 and we had to endure him for a further five seasons after that. If you were to look back at the message board from that latter period I dont think many others were having him either but it seems the passage of time and maybe Shebby's comments have given people rose or blue and white tinted specs where MGP is concerned. Still if they choose to remember him for the first half of his Ewood career( which was admittedly brilliant) and disregard the second that's their prerogative just as its mine to judge his time here as a whole.

Would love it if someone stood up and asked him: 1) What he thought was the reason for him going from a superstar to being absolutely gash more or less overnight and arguably quicker than any other player in the history of football 2) Whether he felt the slightest bit of remorse for milking the Club dry whilst going through the motions in his final five seasons or so here.

× 1000. Like Evans, at some point either the fire in his belly went or he decided he wasn't going to put it in any more and was garbage for the final 5/6 years of his time here. And that was years ago. Might as well see what Shearer's up to if we're playing silly buggers.

God, you make it sound like he's made one bad signing and lots of brilliant ones, not one brilliant one and lots of terrible ones. It won't just be the Brereton signing that comes back to haunt him (and us) it will be his appalling recruitment overall. You can carry out your research on a player's character and find out what you want to know without him having played for you before. I remember reading that Man Ure did their due diligence on Chris Sutton whilst he was here and decided against signing him due to his excesses off the pitch. I also remember joking a while ago that to be a target for Mowbray the player must either have played for him before, played for Boro, or both (Chapman) I was joking at the time but it seems it's not that far wide of the mark. Combined with his reluctance to move on, or improve upon, his existing players and it's no wonder his recruitment is so abysmal.

They will still be on substantial wages though and I'd imagine our overall wage bill is as much of a problem as any fees when you're constantly bringing in players, discovering they're no good then looking to bring even more in without being proactive in offloading a few.

I thought Joe H's assessments were ridiculously generous, Mowbray has made one genuinely successful signing in Dack. Some others did a job in League 1 but as far as the Championship is concerned they'd all have to be fails thus far apart from Downing.

For me it's a no brainer the other way round. It'd be a no brainer even if we were only getting him off the wage bill, let alone getting any sort of fee for him. For me he symbolises everything that has been wrong with the Club, over the Venky's era, putting in little effort, not performing season in season out yet being rewarded with contract after contract. I understand where you're coming from with your post but if Evans did go and we got a fee for him I'd rather it was reinvested in other areas. I honestly dont think that alongside a slightly more attack minded player such as Travis, Smallwood would be any particular downgrade and we also have Johnson and Davenport picking fluff out of their navel. You ought to be able to get a decent pairing out of some combination of those four and if he is to be here for any length of time then Mowbray needs to be told he has to start getting the best out of what he's got as opposed to stockpiling players in certain positions then never using half of them. It probably won't happen anyway. Instead of cashing in on a poor player whose value (such as it is) is probably as high as it's going to get, Mowbray will probably declare him irreplaceable and we'll ward off Stoke's interest by handing him a new 5 year deal.

My god, what a godsend that would be, one of our highest earners and someone who's been stealing a living at the Club ever since he got injured in Bowyer's time off the wage bill and we might even get a small fee for him. We might then be forced to see how one of Mowbray's acquisitions, Davenport, goes on instead of just ignoring him completely and paying him for doing next to nothing as well. What a novel concept! If Carlsberg did transfer rumours............. I'll start the car, drive him down and pay the petrol myself. Sadly, I fear the rumour is way to good to be true and it isn't April 1st yet either. If however there is the slightest grain of truth in it, there's room for 3 more in the car if Stoke have in fact recently acquired charitable status!

If he's being bought in and then loaned out again straight away, what use is he to the under 23's?

Absolutely pointless then.

But not without negotiating his pay off first, everyone slapping themselves on the back and announcing the deal as being by "mutual consent". You really do insult everyone's intelligence and raise their Hope's unnecessarily by suggesting there's the slightest of chances he would walk unilaterally of his own volition without a pay off.

The same place as the evidence he's not allowed to spend money on the defence, it' doesn't exist and the poster is making an assumption. There would have been a loan fee of some sort for Tosin though, regardless of the amount. Edit: Islander beat me to it

In an ideal world Mowbray needs to be brave and ruthless this window and offload Graham, Samuel, Smallwood, Evans or Johnson, Bennett and maybe even consider loaning out one of Gallagher or Brereton. I also wouldn't hesitate to send Walton back if it was technically possible under the terms of his loan agreement. That should give us more than enough wiggle room in wages to bring in the players we need i.e. a couple of half decent strikers, a keeper and a defender or two on loan. Or at least it would if our recruitment department had the faintest idea of who they need to be looking at. In reality I predict we'll do absolutely nothing and then complain afterwards about how we've no money and how difficult it is to get business done in January etc etc

Yes, how dare he come here and play out of position, thereby knocking Armstrong out of his out of position position.

Calm down dear, it was a joke.

Morning. You're up early to stalk me today. Since Venky's rocked up, not many. Kean's one game against Liverpool, a brief period under Bowyer maybe. Imo the stuff served up by Mowbray's sides is down there with Lambert's as amongst the worst if not the worst though.

Wouldn't have said the price per se was an issue under normal circumstances. Trouble is the football served up by Mowbray's teams isn't worth £8 let alone £28.

Is it just me or is the last thing we need yet more "cheap" signings we can hypothetically develop for some distant point in the future? We already have a number of players at the Club like Hart Brereton Gallagher Chapman and Davenport who haven't progressed as hoped and need developing or discarding before we bring anyone else in. Then there are the Academy youngsters to consider as well. Far more importantly, if there's no money for permanent signings we need to offload some deadwood first before anyone else comes in then make two or three judicious loan signings to fill the areas of urgent need in the side like striker, keeper, LB RB CB etc etc

I think we're starting to go down that rocky road, particularly where said players happen to be black. Sign of the politically correct times unfortunately. (Not being able to give opposition players the bird to.put them off I mean, not racist abuse) Back to Brereton it's a completely separate issue. I can't think of another Club that has ever frozen their major signing out like we have done with Brereton. It must have been horrendous for him and if it has all got too much and in the heat of the moment he broke down, I couldn't care less. (In terms of it being a potential criticism of him) All that said I think the way things are going in general at Ewood it's understandable that the fans are going to turn on the team and whilst it's not ideal, individual players on occasion, so BB has to treat that side of it as nothing particularly personal and dust himself down and go again.

Sorry, not having that. If a manager really doesn't want a player then he has to put his foot down or evaluate his position if a player really is foisted on him against his wishes at the expense of someone else. Plus whilst I am merely surmising, I wouldn't be surprised if Mowbray has a lot more autonomy than at most other Clubs. Up until this summer at least he seems to have had the complete faith of the owners whereas at many bigger Clubs transfer business is carried out by Committee consisting of the Director of Football, Chief Executive, Manager, Chief Scout, etc and the manager has his say and input but not necessarily the final decision.

As regards point 3, you might think that would be the case, but in response to that particular suggestion Mowbray has claimed ownership of the Brereton signing on umpteen occasions. Unless you're going to accuse him of lying I think you have to take that at face value in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary. It just seems to me that for the section of the fanbase for whom Tony can do no wrong, when we make a signing that comes off, it's a masterstroke by Tony, if we make a signing that's a disaster the owners must have got involved and it's nothing to do with Tony. Whereas there's no actual evidence whatsoever that TM isn't in full control of transfer dealings and wouldn't have signed them all, good or bad.

Hi Stuart. If you're going to blame Gallagher's poor form on him being shunted out wide (which to an extent is fair) then I think you could make the same argument even more strongly for Brereton. I do think on balance we've seen enough of Gallagher up front to know that he wouldn't know where the back of the net was if you handed him a sat nav and a set of directions. He just doesn't have a striker's instinct for me and seems to have succumbed to this modern way of thinking that "there's so much more to a striker's game than scoring goals." Irrelevant if you're not scoring for me. Another poster (may have been Blue Blood but I couldn't find the post to reply) said yesterday he thought Brereton was irretrievable and Gallagher was salvageable. I actually see it as the other way round Brereton is only 21 in April whereas Gallagher will be 25 in September and really should be at or near his peak. I also get a slight sense when watching Brereton that there might be a player in there somewhere trying to get out whereas I don't get any positive vibe off Gallagher whatsoever. Might be completely wrong of course, everyone rates players differently. I thought Rochina was bordering on genius, certainly more than good enough for us in the Championship, others couldn't stand him. Another thing that struck me in all the Brereton chat over the last 24 hours was that Mowbray has more than once blamed Gallagher's lack of progression over the last couple of years on lack of game time since he was here on loan. Yet conversely apparently he seems to think the way to bring Brereton on is to leave him out of the squad altogether, or put him on the bench but not use him, or give him 20 - 25 minutes out of position every so often! Very odd.

Given that we ended up with Gallagher as well and (whilst I might be in a minority) he imo has even less potential than Brereton I'm not sure how that excuses Mowbray.

We don't know if there's any truth in the Dack to WBA rumour but to be fair to Mowbray (unusual for me recently) he has to play him until another Club show us the colour of their money. He can't start leaving him out because another Club is reportedly interested in him. He'd hardly have played.