RevidgeBlue

It's absolutely nothing to do with being "positive" or "negative" and it's a bit naughty to paint it that way. It's fans understandably voting with their feet after eleven generally dire seasons under the current ownership, some shocking pricing policy by Waggott over the last couple of years and (prior to this season) a pretty dire level of performance under Mowbray since returning to the Championship. That said, I agree with you that these young players deserve our support. It HAS to be a two way street though and before the missing fans flock back in massive numbers there will have to be a radical overhaul of pricing policy - I am very hopeful this will happen in the New Year. It will also require us to hold firm and the owners to say that none of our key players are leaving in January and actually add a couple of net bodies to give one or two extra options and cover in event of injuries. I have no idea at this stage if that will happen in January. However for me personally it's the litmus test of whether the owner's commitment to improvement moving forward is as strong as certain parties have been led to believe behind the scenes. Mowbray's defeatist comments the other day were far from encouraging in that respect. One can only hope he is somewhat out of the loop and completely wide of the mark.

Went into the Club Shop today for the first time in quite a while to get an extra ticket for a mate up from London forthe Brum game and had a quick look around. Seemingly no medium home kits left. About 10 medium away kits left. Now it's one thing running out of kit in March but to me running out of kit prior to one of your main selling windows at Christmas is just gross incompetence to me no matter how you try and dress it up. Neither Covid nor supply chain issues from overseas are brand new phenomenon and I wonder if Liverpool or Manchester United have these "supply" problems and you can't get one of their shirts? Some of the leisurewear was quite nice but the prices were frightening. Most of the stuff was min £50 going up to £65 and I put my hand on a bench jacket which was admittedly exceptionally nice but it weighed in at a whopping £150!!! How do we expect to sell anything at those prices? We really haven't got a clue.

No doubting Aguero was a great player but you could also flip that argument on it's head and say that if Shearer had spent his career playing with the players Aguero played with for an all conquering City side, he'd have scored a lot more than he did as well.

To be fair, you wouldn't expect that much to happen until January anyway and there has been a lot of discussion about the fate of DL RN JR and BB which I think is relevant to a transfer thread.

I've said previously that changes at the Club are in the offing and I expect improvements in this respect (pricing) in the New Year. The Club will be chopping the legs off any positive efforts made by the commercial department if players are sold in January though.........

Imo the damage was actually done the summer before last when Waggott removed the affordable seating and raised prices by up to 25% for a season when no-one could attend. Then, the fact that they had to give incentives for those you bought last season meant these headline prices were locked in for good. I'm actually surprised in all the circumstances and the dross we witnessed on the pitch last season we made it to 7,300 ST'S. Shows the resilience of the fan base. Then he compounds it even further with the ludicrous match day pricing...........

And in terms of pure finance, how many other "town" Clubs have multi billionaire owners who supplement the Club's income by c £20m p.a. ?

I'm sure you have previously been steadfast in your belief (apologies if I'm wrong) that a) We have a contract extension in our favour on BBD. b) Said extension will be activated by the Club and c) He will not be sold in January. Has something happened to change your stance on the above?

I would blame the owners but by the same token I wouldn't expect our manager to be seemingly coming out in support of the player moving either. This is the trouble with a lot of managers not just Mowbray, they have such an over inflated opinion of their ability in the transfer market they think they can sell their star player then replace him with 2 or 3 players for half the price and improve the team overall. It rarely if ever works out. As for the second part of your question hell yes. Islander has nailed it above, we received the £16m for the Training ground exercise in the last FFP cycle and the Armstrong money in this one. There should be no need to sell at all before the summer and to sell him in January if we're still in 3rd or 4th would be indefensible.

"If he can get a top top move, ........I'd never stop him doing that." Fuck off Mowbray. Obviously it isn't his decision ultimately but he shouldn't be coming out in support of the player moving. Like I said, his job is to put out the best team he can for BRFC. If that doesn't coincide with what BB wants in January tough. He's employed as our manager not Brereton's agent trying to secure him a dream move. As you rightly say (if we have an extension) we should just sell him in summer if we don't go up and six months is hardly going to ruin the players' career.

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.