You might be right, but the LT article commences with "As Rovers "begin" their search for a new shirt sponsorship etc. Evidence of more incompetence on our part if any break clause permitted 10 Bet to bail out so close to the start of a new season. If however we have known for months then we seemingly haven't been able to secure a replacement with the season less than a month away. Not a good look either way.

Hart's been sussed out now, he'd never get a starting spot anywhere higher than top half Championship at best imo. At least if the Clubs have any sense.

I was about to post something similar. I keep going on about this but assuming we're not going out of business imminently, I can't for the life of me understand why no effort whatsoever has been made to get supporters on board for next season. Get people signed up on DD for a nominal amount and adjust the figures upwards accordingly when it becomes clear what we can and can't do. As things stand the Government are probably going to make a last minute decision on fans in stadiums and we're going to be left completely high and dry with zero season ticket holders or members and faced with the impossible task of having to sign ST holders up from scratch within a matter of days. It's incompetence of the highest order from Waggott and his team imo.

Yep, Dack, Lenihan and Armstrong.

Whoa, someone needs to set the record straight on Evan's, he's absolute garbage and been stealing a living at the Club during his time here. Yet he has a half decent game every few months or so and some people think he's a decent player. He only looks passable when being carried by a proper player such as Travis and like Bennett he epitomises everything that's wrong about the Club - consistently one of our highest earners yet worst performers. And like Lowe before him we'll never do anything with him in the side. Apart from that he's all right........

I'd also like to see Wharton featuring for us next year. I'm not sure what he's done wrong since (imo) impressing when Coyle was here and it would in my view be lunacy to sign this lad from Stoke or Wharton's CB partner from Northampton without giving Wharton the chance first. So that's what we'll probably do......

If we sign Walton or Joe Hart at any point and in the unlikely event I've purchased a season ticket by then, it's going back! (Not that we'll have got round to formulating any sort of ST package by then but the point still stands)

A prospect under a decent manager, will probably turn out to be a myth under Mowbray which is not necessarily a reflection on the player as Mowbray didn't appreciate Harrison Reed's talents either.

Good post. I have commented in the past many times that the way forward would have been to add one or two peak age performers to go straight into the first eleveneach transfer window but to me it seems Mowbray is most averse to that idea and will generally only bring in "ones for the future" he can put on the back burner for a year or two or one last pay day types so he is not upsetting or dislodging the established players already at the Club.

Yep, like I said, in that instance it was the "icing on the cake" that little bit extra to get us over the line. We only have five elevenths of a cake!

Spot on. If he's the one you want, pay the fee and have done with it. This pattern of missing out on targets because we're seemingly unrealistic about how much the selling Club will ask for or are unaware of how much players are on seems to be a recurrent theme and smacks of lack of professionalism and foresight. As does the apparent policy of hoping Clubs will suddenly cut asking prices for no apparent reason or do you a favour and loan you a player AND pay most of his wages at the last minute. Probably demonstrates how bare the coffers actually are if we cant manage either a fee of around 800k for a permanent deal or a loanee on relatively high wages.

Probably not because they'll be stuck behind another new raft of loan players in the pecking order! I remember Madame saying soon after taking over the Club that they couldn't understand why players were owned rather than leased or loaned and we're seeing that increasingly here now. I think Joe H is absolutely spot on regarding the question of loans. Years ago they were used relatively sparingly, not to form the core of your business. You just need one or two to put the icing on the cake, but only after you've completed your permanent business and ideally the loanees should be absolutely stellar players way above the level of the rest of the side and beyond what you could afford on a permanent basis. The perfect example of this at Rovers was the sensational signings of Archibald and Ardilles on loan which would be roughly equivalent of bringing in Aguero and David Silve now, so obviously that sort of thing is a different matter entirely. The likes of Tosin and Cunningham were decent maybe even very good players but not that sensational that they completely transformed our fortunes as witnessed by our defensive record and another extremely disappointing League finish. It also really annoys me when players are brought in on loan to pad out the squad and then either are hardly ever used or utilised simply to sit on the bench like Mo Barrow, Chapman, Palmer and even Reed at various points over the years. What's the point in that and what must the Academy lads think when their chance is blocked in this manner? And look at the situation now the loanees have gone back. We have no keeper, one centre half and no decent left back. How can that be viewed as anything else but regression? As Joe says, it matters not really whether you finish 7th or 20th as long as you're making progress towards the following season but what would we have been better doing, loaning the players and finishing 11th or giving the likes of Wharton and another youngster at LB a season's experience going forward and finishing 18th? I'd say obviously the latter. It's a no brainer for me, I cant even understand why it's up for debate.

I think you can only judge that strategy a success if said loan players secure you promotion. Otherwise you're just chucking money away year after year and are never any better off on the pitch, having to start again from scratch every 12 months. If you're only going tio limp in mid table you're better off owning your players then you can benefit from an increase in value of some of them.

I sort of agree with you on the young centre backs, especially Wharton, but you could equally use that argument for Fisher/Eastham/Hilton.

You really don't rate Fisher/Hilton/Eastham then if you think none are good enough to be a number two? As regards Phillips we must rate him to a certain degree or we wouldn't be in for him in the first place. If he's the man we really want I'd say pay the asking price, if we think there's someone better available, walk away. If push came to shove I'd rather pay decent money for a reliable keeper and get a LB in on loan and rely on Wharton/Carter/Magloire than spend money at LB and CB but only get another loanee keeper in.

Isn't that the very point he's making though? Some Clubs have made additions, some haven't ,but it's irrelevant the level of business other clubs may or may not have done. We only need to worry about ourselves. We have glaring gaps in the starting eleven and to be fair, other than very tenuous speculation, there's no evidence of anything imminent happening in the form of serious interest or concrete offers going in etc.

Bloody hell chaddy calm down, no-one is accusing you of anything. In your reply to JHRover you seemed to be suggesting contrary to his opinion that the reason we might not go in for Phillips was that we might CHOOSE not to pay in excess of a million for a player rather than us being simply unable to afford that. You seemed content with that stance (if that's what the Club is doing) and also seemed quite content with the concept of the Boro lad coming in so before you clarified exactly where you stood it was unclear whether you were advocating the Boro lad as a number one choice. I think you need to stop getting so aereated about subjective matters of opinion. For what it's worth I can't see any merit whatsoever in bringing the lad in as either a number one or number two. If Warnock doesn't want him he's unlikely to be what we need as a first choice and if it was as a number two we already have three lads of a similar sort of age and I'd far rather they got the chance.

You appeared to be trying to defend the position of not being willing to pay 1m ish for this lad because he is down to the last 12 months of his contract. Unless you think we can afford to wait 12 months and will still be in pole position to secure him at that point I can't see the argument. If he's the man you really want, pay the money. If he isn't then you shouldn't really be in for him in the first place and should look elsewhere. Of course, I and a few others don't think we have 1m to spend without sales. On the other hand there are claims the new budget is reasonable so we'll have to wait and see. The overall point remains that regardless of budget there must surely be better options in the wide world of football than falling back on Mowbray's default option of returning to Boro (and possibly HSH) .

You obviously missed the point I was trying to make before completely. It doesn't matter whether X has made 20 appearances and Y is still waiting for his chance. It's ability that matters. The fact X has played 20 times doesn't make him a better player. Walton has plenty of experience but no talent and will always be a terrible keeper.

Just playing devil's advocate but why does Hilton need to be loaned out to get some first team football? If he's good enough to play elsewhere, why can't he play here? I'd make the same argument for Wharton as well. I can't see the point in loaning out or selling our own youngsters so we can pay more to bring in generally substandard players from elsewhere. (Tosin being an obvious exception)

We can't afford to wait another 12 months for a decent keeper. As far as this particular player is concerned, I haven't seen him play but he seems fairly highly rated and it may be that 1m is a bargain price for him entirely due to his contractual situation. As always you're waiting to see which way the wind is blowing on any particular topic and backing the Club's apparent position. If we did an apparent U turn and signed this lad for £1.5m tomorrow you'd be hailing it as a brilliant move!

The fact he's played some games at this level doesn't necessarily make him any better than Fisher, if by chance we'd had injuries in that position like Boro and been forced to play Fisher or had simply opted to give him a try out because Walton was so poor, would you still say this Boro lad was a much better option? The fact he's played a few games doesn't mean he's the answer any more than the view that Fisher is not because he hasn't yet been handed his chance. It's like saying a crap older keeper is the answer because they have "experience". It's nonsense.

What a bloody joke. Nothing changes, Mowbray doesn't seem able to find anyone unless they've played for him before, played for Middlesbrough before, or both - (Chapman)

Gallagher, Brereton bargain basement at 12m?

Unbelievable that 34.11% were in favour of signing him at any point. Completely talentless. You have to query the quality of our scouting when the best they can come up with is Walton. Seems pretty obvious we never watched him play and simply picked him from a list of players provided by agents and wrongly assumed that because he was on the books at Brighton he must have been ok.