Miller11

Being the only player capable of playing the most essential role in the system the manager is hell bent on playing is pretty important, certainly not an “unneeded luxury”. Hopefully JRC can stay fit cos he’s our best chance of survival right now. Most of our “game changers” do so in a negative way. The one regular positive “game changer” has just lost the best supply line he has. Or is this just another round of the “he’s shit anyway” that tends to happen whenever we lose a player nowadays? Have you deluded yourself into believing we could’ve sold Dack and built a promotion winning squad with the proceeds? If so, why didn’t we do it with the proceeds from Armstrong?

Court documents show that Venky’s have £14.5 million sat in an account doing nothing except guarantee they were able to pay wages and bills. A further 15 million was set aside this month to add to that pot. The reason they have to do this is because they are being investigated over the purchase of a £5 million house they bought and have subsequently abandoned to rack and ruin. They have regularly pissed away tens of millions of pounds a year into this financial black hole they have created. Why is anyone “excited” at the prospect of this sale? The money is completely insignificant. It’ll go the same way as the Samba money, Jones money, Cairney money, Rhodes money, Armstrong money, Brockhall money, Raya money, etc etc. Assuming we survive relegation - which has just become a lot less likely, we can make excuses again this summer about transitions and rebuilds. The never ending journey that never comes to a conclusion can start again if we are lucky. There will be the odd bit of hope along the way, we will all be foolish enough to get excited from time to time, until another crisis comes along to remind us hope is futile and ambition is frowned upon.

The McGuire rain cloud will be Venky’s very own budget version of the Lewandowski ash cloud.

Imagine speaking to Jack Walker now… Well Jack, we’ve got a young lad come through the academy you built. He’s only 19, Blackburn born and bred, his brother plays here too. Genuinely a world class prospect, levels above what David Dunn ever was. No doubt he will go on to play for England sooner rather than later! Brilliant! That was always the dream, to develop young local talent that can help keep us at the very top! Oh, sorry Jack, did we not mention we are flogging him to Crystal Palace? You see because we have destroyed every bit of the club apart from the academy over the last 13 years, the 7th biggest club in London, with their small ground and zero trophies in their history are now considered a much bigger club than Rovers, even by half of our own fans!

We’d also gone a really soft, sloppy and avoidable goal down after spurning some good initial chances, then dominating play up until the edge of their area before running out of ideas (with the most obvious solution to our lack of penetrative passes sat on the bench). I was pretty pissed off in the ground at 1 down.

Another game where we completely outclassed lower league opposition. The gulf is immense. Still some really worrying signs and we’ll need to step up a good couple of gears on Saturday. If today is a glimpse of life without Wharton, we had better all brace ourselves for another trip to league one. Oh, and please play a normal formation on Saturday JDT. That weirdo Moran fan has been keeping his head down the last couple of weeks… no surprise as his boy has been off the boil for months. Miles off the standard of most of our player and a light years behind Wharton. Moran and Sigurdsson both very poor again today. Dolan and JRC were both really good today - we’ve missed them badly. As maligned as he often is, Gallagher is clearly our best forward, and I’m afraid Telalovic isn’t going to cut it despite his best efforts.

That goal wasn’t Gallagher’s fault. He was zonal marking at the front post. Helik got clear of all our centre backs who didn’t track his run at all. We’d have had a lot better chance of defending the set piece properly if we employed basic marking rather than convoluted systems.

I’ve no doubt I’ll be incredibly pissed off when we do sell him. I certainly won’t be wanking myself into oblivion at the prospect of replacing him with a few loans and couple of half million punts from league one and Scandinavia like many seem to be.

Also, half of 25 million is 12.5 million. That’s 2 million per player. If we pay them 10 grand a week for 3 years that’s 1.5 million each. Leaves an average of half a million in transfer fees.

Knowing quite a number of people who have taken this stance, a cup draw against a team we used to play consistently for a couple of decades before Venky’s showed up is certainly not going to win them back! Direct your ire at the ones who would rather watch us play Rotherham on a firestick while defending Venky’s and blaming our downfall on our low attendances. They will be all over the Newcastle game (if we beat Wrexham in another game they can’t be bothered attending).

So while he is on a 4 year deal that he only signed a few weeks ago, he doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe there are conversations to be had and decisions to be made in the summer, but a move to Palace won’t do a lot for any England ambitions, and it wouldn’t guarantee Premier League status either. There’s nothing to suggest Adam Wharton isn’t 100% happy at and committed to Rovers. People who are seemingly desperate to see him sold with vague hopes of money being “reinvested” seem to forget what the point of a football club is.

Why would you pick one player transfer out of the hundreds that happen every year as your benchmark? And why that particular one? I don’t really give a toss how much other players have gone for, as a club our primary concern should be what benefits us most. I’ve even heard people talking about a “fair price, which is just a ridiculous way to approach things. First and foremost we shouldn’t want to sell our best player. If someone wants to buy him they must expect to make an offer we can’t refuse. Venky’s literally have more than £25 million set aside with Indian courts so they can send over money to keep paying wages and bills. It is not an amount of money that is going to allow us to progress in the pitch. Losing Wharton would weaken us massively and put us in real danger of relegation, what good would £25 million be then? No amount of money we could spend would allow us to improve on Wharton at the present moment, and while swapping one exceptional player for 4 or 5 good ones might be something that we can reluctantly accept, swapping him for a years wages for his inferior teammates would be inexcusable.

As much as I hate the whole “”like a new signing” nonsense when a player comes back from injury, Rankin-Costello has been a massive miss for us and we will look infinitely better with him in the side. Dolan is another very welcome return.

That would be the price for us to start even entertaining the idea of selling him. All the talk of 15/20 million and reinvesting is stupid, it’d be swallowed up instantly for a few months wages. Selling out most integral player needs to be money that can make a positive difference.

My money is on another story linking Adam Wharton with a move away… it’s been almost 48 hours since his last one so he’s overdue.

That sounds more promising. Can’t claim to know much at all about him, but it sounds like he’s performed well in spells. No shame in not getting into the Liverpool side regularly, but I was surprised to see how few career appearances he had.

He looks massively inexperienced for a 26 year old! Only 60 career appearances apparently.

I was really looking forward to the Royal Rumble tonight, and was actually going to bother watching a live PPV for a change with all the potential intrigue. It’s as exciting as it’s been in a long time. However these revelations have left me feeling like I really don’t want to bother. Obviously it’s been common knowledge Vince’s behaviour has often been questionable, and of late there was obviously something particularly unsavoury going on. But this is absolutely horrific. I think Dreyski hits the nail on the head above, the industry is pretty horrible. What consenting adults do is one thing, and in that particular environment there’s probably a fair bit of salacious activity and minor scandal goes on, but it’s pretty evident there are still a lot of things that go way beyond what is acceptable. I’m sure a lot will come out about Vince now, plus there’s the recent revelations regarding Jericho and his NDA. Lesnar surely can’t be used again, Don Callous shouldn’t be employed… could be another watershed moment like the me too movement of a few years ago with some top names outed rather than just brits and indie workers.

Harvey was chief exec of the EFL between 2011 and 2019. Need I say more.

That was my thoughts. £26 million seems to be the annual amount Venky’s are happy/willing/prepared to remit. At a guess yesterday’s amount would be around £15 million given the 11 in October. With some, but far from all of it earmarked for tax.

Absolutely. They can’t release any funds without that No Objection Certificate.

This isn’t absolute gospel, just my understanding of the situation, and I’m no expert. However there is possibly some info that isn’t really widely acknowledged or maybe known: - The investigations started back in 2021, initially there were no restrictions on them moving money out of India as the RBI had no objections. This changed in August 2022, at which point it became a requirement that any company under investigation required a No Objection Certificate (NOC) agreed by the entity doing the investigation - the Enforcement Directorate in this case - We received the NOC for remittances in 2022 - We applied for another on 17th January 2023 which was rejected on 6th March, and a further rejection on the 31st March (for the amount of £26 million). This was rejected on the basis of the “Pedancy of investigation”. After this rejection Venky’s legal team also requested a quick resolution to the ED investigation - On the 27th April 2023 Venky’s received correspondence from HMRC threatening a winding up order. - On 24th May Venky’s received a letter from BRFC advising them of the potential consequences of not receiving immediate payments (presumably administration) - On 23rd June Venky’s were granted permission to transfer £3.5 million based on the potential consequences outlined in the above letter. They were instructed that an equal amount had to be set aside as a guarantee as any future action taken by the ED would be a financial penalty (so presumably they don’t want Venky’s sending over money then pleading poverty if/when they get a fine) - On 16th August the ED reported that their investigation would be completed within 15 days - On 31st October Venky’s submitted another application for a NOC in which they highlighted the reason for these funds. As we know, this was allowed with some conditions: A further guarantee of an equivalent sum Auditors at club have 3 working days to file an End use Certificate (this certifies club are the end user of these funds and they won’t be transferred elsewhere) The club must provide bank statements to prove these payments were made - In this hearing it was outlined that club activities were not under suspicion, BUT the investigation was only at a “nascent stage”. This is very much contrary to what was reported on August 16th, and suggests these issues could run and run. It also suggests club finances will come under the microscope at some point - Wording suggests that future remittances will be allowed, with the same caveats attached, but we’d still need to apply for the NOC, and this would likely not be granted if the club becomes under investigation So while the money remitted has to be used for the specified purpose, it’s not entirely accurate to state Rovers can’t spend anything that hasn’t had court approval. They don’t care about the minutia of Rovers accounts (yet!), and funds generated by the club can be used for activities outside the scope of the court document (which covered Wages, tax, VAT, loan repayments, utilities and agents fees). So our fixture against Chelsea probably covered a chunk of the O’Riordan fee. This latest round of funding we went for was likely to cover the same expenses from January til the end of the season. I expect there will be some funds available to cover some of those expenses, generated by TV payments, ticket sales, league payments etc. whether that lasts til the hearing in March, we will have to see. It almost certainly means that our very modest transfer budget has disappeared and we will be in another period of extreme austerity. I’m waiting for the announcement that I can’t sit in the Riverside on Monday. So we will probably muddle through until the next date in March, with threats of winding up orders and missed payments, unless it gets moved again. Our transfer window plans are of no interest to Indian Courts who have cancelled and delayed several hearings already this year. Maybe there is some sort of contingency (player sale, short term loan). A further delay might be catastrophic though. Either way, this situation has become farcical and can’t continue much longer.

He’s not a luxury at all, he’s absolutely integral to the way our manager is hell-bent on playing. If anyone thinks we are bad now, imagine how much worse we will be if the one person capable of actually getting the ball from the edge of our box to the edge of theirs goes. There’d be no point in signing a striker as the ball would barely leave our half.

I would love to know which specific events of the last 13 years are leading people to conclude that selling Adam Wharton would allow us to strengthen multiple areas of the squad and mount a promotion push. People getting all excited at the prospect of a fee that’s dwarfed by the amount Venky’s have had to set aside in order to guarantee monies they are sending us to keep the lights on. Swapping our best player, who has a genuine chance of becoming an England regular, for a few months worth of wages for his inferior teammates who will likely fail to keep us in the Championship. It would definitely make a statement - that we have given up anything resembling ambition or a plan. Being a feeder club to the likes of Crystal Palace is a disgraceful position for Blackburn Rovers to find ourselves in. Lets hope the stat obsessed football manager enthusiasts are left heartbroken and it’s all just paper talk/Nixon bollocks.

I don’t think Wharton is going anywhere for the moment. I certainly hope he stays. Take him out of our side and we will struggle to get out of our own half.