I suspect sales have spiked with people anticipating a sadly inevitable lockdown likely to start to start from Barnsley at home onwards.

A "different approach" was earmarked last summer when Mowbray mentioned Rankin Costello and how we would be very careful bringing him back to fitness, and he has broken down twice since and played about half an hour of senior football. There are big question marks over his robustness and sustainability to play regularly, and even if fingers crossed those issues do get resolved long term, we need someone else to rely upon for a crucial half season. I am not totally convinced that he is anywhere close to being a regular for a side in the position in the league that we are even if he was fit, he defensively is poor and his attacking side has never blown me away either, he very much would be categorised as a steady deputy/squad filler at the moment if he was fit. But ultimately, he isn't and has proven repeatedly that we can't expect him to stay fit for the rest of the season, and our plan B when Nyambe who does a very physically demanding job gets a muscle strain himself is to move Buckley there it seems, who is not particularly good there himself, understandably so, plus it moves him from midfield. We need someone much more reliable and of better quality to compete with Nyambe such is the void of competition there and considering where we are in the table. It has nothing to do with Mowbray's future as to why I have questioned a potential pre-contract agreement with Hedges either, again you seem to be creating your own counter arguments. I do agree that recruitment should be a continuous process, it is the specific deal that I questioned. I merely enquired as to whether pre agreeing to sign a winger in the summer when we don't currently play with wingers and don't know what division we will be in is a prudent and wise idea, I think thats a fair question.

I don't see why you can't appreciate that my interpretation on the situation is just different to yours, chaddy also uses the "how many times does it need explaining to you" patronising line, but that is just your interpretation against mine. I do find your thought process baffling though in that Venkys permit a budget and Mowbray/Waggott spend that, whether they could use that budget better (especially the manager) is a different debate but there is no way that the budget given no matter how it is spent should impede on FFP regulations. To be honest, I don't really want to get into another FFP debate, as far as I know we haven't recently breached FFP, indeed a temporary embargo was placed due to late submission of accounts IIRC, and I certainly don't share this assumption which for me is baseless that Venkys would spend every penny up until the FFP limit and it is only regulations that is holding them back from doing so. But anyway, back to the point in hand. I agree with you, I would hold off on a new deal for Gallagher, at least for now. Yes there is a risk that he suddenly starts banging them in, and he certainly isn't useless, but considering that he is a higher earner and I don't see many teams being interested in him personally, I would just let it run for now. But comparison to deals regarding Nyambe, Rothwell and Lenihan are impossible, the idea that we let him go for free and use the wages to put towards the aforementioned trio is a non starter for numerous reasons, notably that it assumes that someone would take his full wage, and it assumes that he provides no use to us and wouldn't require replacement, which he obviously would. Hoping JRC stays fit is quite clearly a pointless exercise, never gonna happen. He has been back training numerous times and will invariably break down again within the next month. No clue on suggestions for a new player, leave that to people paid good money and who can spend good time identifying someone. Adding a player who doesn't fit into the current way of playing 6 months in advance when we are unsure of what league we will be in seems illogical to me. Signing him on a cut price deal now to help us achieve our ambitions for the rest of the season at the level we are now would make more sense, but would still raise the question over his position.

Would anyone take his full wage for free? We would still need to replace Gallagher if he left, he is not totally useless and he would leave a gap, so take that off any saving. You think Venkys are interested enough to "bollock" the manager and CEO over specific contractual issues? Nothing stopping them slightly increasing that budget now and protecting the assets, as I mentioned I suspect those 3 based on the difference in circumstances between now and when they signed their last deal makes the gap between current wage and demand to be significant, and that would be similar for the last year or 2. The reason the other deals have been done is not because that they were prioritised, they were clearly easier and/or cheaper.

The deals that we have managed to get done in the last few years seem mainly to be the easy/cheap ones. Dack signed a new deal on the cusp of returning from a serious knee injury whereby his bargaining power was severly impacted. Wharton signed a new deal whilst injured and also as a young player with little Championship experience at that time. Dolan signed an extension on the deal he signed as a player intended to play for the under 23s, and Buckley signed a year ago before establishing himself. Rankin Costello also signed both injured and again before establishing himself. Gallagher as mentioned in my last post will presumably be an easy one too, it was suggested in the LT that there will be a minimal if any wage rise, I share your opinion that I wouldnt extend it but it wont significantly the current wage bill. We do know that there hasnt been much money around lately hence the sale of Armstrong, a culling of high earners yet only 500k and a few loans in. Hopefully there can be scope for that to change in January as it has been regularly implied that we have offered the soon to be out of contractors "as much as in in the budget." They are all problematic in that they can justifiably expect a significant wage rise and due to budget cuts from India it seems that we cannot pay that. Contrary to what people have suggested in the past, I doubt that it is a dislike of Mowbray or due to anything footballing related, we are doing well.

Gallagher will already be on one of if not the highest wages at the club having joined from Southampton, to increase the length of his deal will not necessarily require a pay rise. The other 3 signed a while ago when they certainly would not have been able to justify the demands that they likely could now, Rothwell had been in and out at League 1 Oxford, Lenihan wasnt captain and Nyambe was just starting to get regular game time. This implied theory that we could just offer what we are offering to Gallagher to any of the other 3 makes no sense. Even assuming that none of the 3 want wages beyond a current self imposed wage ceiling, and knowing that no one including myself knows on here what those players earn, but ill use easy figures. Say Gallagher is on 15k, and the other 3 want the same but are only on 5k each. Giving them 10k extra will increase the current wage bill by that amount, obviously doing so to Gallagher wouldnt. The only issue with offering Gallagher a new deal is that we are extending having a decent wage beyond 2023 on our books. It is all about risk and reward and I can sort of understand especially having seen Armstrong and Brereton coming to the fore and also with the lack of general long terms deals within the squad why we might take a prudent approach and get him tied down for longer. I have never been a big fan and certainly dont see a development anything like the other 2 (who were/are also much younger) so would let the deal run for now.

Its about money, and seemingly because of "how tough" Venkys have had it, there isnt much of it rattling around. Mowbray keeps saying that he wants to keep the team together and has shown signs of frustration that the owners wont increase the budget slightly to get the deals done. But it isnt in his best interests either way to let them go, if he got us up then it would be a brilliant achievement and really look good on him, selling key players wont help that. If we go up, Waggott would see the pound signs too. With the Brighton players, the power lies with Brighton. There is no doubt that in terms of loan spells, both playing regularly for the team in third means that as far as Mowbray is concerned, he couldnt be doing any more both to please Brighton and also the players. But if Brighton plan to bring them back as a contingency with Covid and just to avoid being at risk of postponing games, how could Mowbray and Waggott possibly protect against that?

The 2 question marks about Hedges (I like the vast majority on here haven't seen much of him) are the timing and his position. Do we need a wide man when we seemingly have moved to not playing wide men, is this the formation going forward or are we going to change back? And I quite like the element of forward planning in the potential free agent market, but what if we did go up, is Hedges a signing only suitable if we stay down? Very much a big jump to make such an assumption based on a previous target and in Doyle, someone who we have been linked with in passing. So its obviously a totally hypothetical question. But we definitely need competition for Nyambe more than a central midfielder, we have absolutely no alternative and Nyambe gets through some serious work down the right hand side, so we need more than him. Sales will be down to the owners, Mowbray said as much the other day. Nothing to do with Waggott really.

It is hard not to have any enthusiasm sapped away regarding Rovers excellent form considering we are unlikely to be able to see it for a while yet.

I wonder if the fact that a small proportion of fans wear snoods will be factored in?

Henry Winter seems sure that behind closed doors football is inevitable.

Fingers crossed that they struggle to sign anyone decent in January and go down, would be funny.

They were both reds.

Villa v Burnley called off, not fair on fans to have cancellations so late. Only one game in the Premier League today. There is a real dilemma now, a circuit breaker could work perhaps in tandem with a countrywide one but covid will still be around in a week or 2 and besides, the schedule is already tight as it is.

Yeah, I am saying that the sale of Armstrong will be in the June 2022 accounts. Any purchase in January would also be in the June 2022 accounts.

Widespread reports about a 2 week circuit breaker which will inevitably go on beyond that. To expect football grounds to continue as normal amidst that would be naive. I am against a lockdown but I think after today there wont be any live football in stadiums for a bit.

We have a massive sale in the accounts of this accounting period.

With lockdown seemingly imminent, and we have been here before, it won't be 2 weeks, this will be the last game for a while in front of fans I suspect sadly.

Footballers very much included. I don't think that players should feel hard done by, of course not, but the idea that they are unfair beneficiaries of Covid based cancellations is not right. One thing that you would say to go off on a tangent slightly is that footballers who earn enough solely from football are very much in a minority, with so many more failing to get there, and even more so when you consider the few on 10s/100s of thousands a week. These are very much at the top of their trade.

Who are they?

At Christmas a footballer cannot indulge over Christmas, often will have to train on Christmas Day and stop in a hotel that night with their team mates. What do you propose to further remove their supposed "privileges" at Christmas? And are you implying that they have any control in the situation with games being called off due to Covid, ensuring that they have more scope to relax at Christmas? I don't understand your point.

We seem to be getting to a stage whereby clubs are considering vaccination status when signing players and also there have been suggestions of fining players who miss games due to not being vaccinated.

I keep saying that I share your stance on attitudes towards covid, albeit without the same level of naivety it seems. Why that brings you to the conclusion that I am "panicking" suggests that as usual, you are not reading what I am putting.

He specifically said "for us."

https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2021/december/16/kaminski-set-for-rovers-return/ Ok with injuries, but this doesn't bode well: “Rather than injury, I think the COVID situation is more pertinent for us.”