Miller11

I’d take useless over arrogant, vindictive, self serving, incompetent and deliberately sabotaging.

Venky’s were “badly advised” to buy the club by Suhail Pasha. Venky’s were “badly advised” to go into partnership with a certain agency, by Suhail Pasha. The agency recommended by Suhail Pasha then “badly advised” Venky’s to sack competent people, employ incompetent ones, and decimate our squad. They eventually took said agency to court, but allowed former employees of that agency to install Owen Coyle, Paul Lambert, and Tony Mowbray. Without said agency advising, they decided that Suhail Pasha could come back and do the advising instead! His most recent advice to them has been to tell them that all the crowd unrest was due to Steve Waggott, it was Waggott the fans didn’t like, not them. And all the fans were really pleased that he’d employed a club legend like Rudy Gestede - who could run the footballing side of things way better than Broughton or Waggott. His latest advice, which will no doubt turn out to be bad, is that they can cut costs to the extent that Venky’s won’t ever need to put another penny in to Rovers sooner rather than later. There is one man more culpable than any other for the state we find ourselves in today. More so than Steve Kean or Jerome Anderson. And he is still here being allowed to make catastrophic decisions. Removing this absolute scourge has to be the priority.

I’ve not heard of this, can you explain what happened? Cheers

Is that type of player we want ‘not as good as the ones that have left’? If so, you have a point.

Don’t know if it’s been mention elsewhere but why has Duru not got a squad number? For me he’s a lot better fullback than Montgomery and maybe on a par with the two new ones.

Love the detail. The quality looks absolutely top notch!

I’d have been furious at the time if we’d kept the centre halves back for that corner, or if we’d played it short to run down the clock. No issues with us pushing for the winner. However, the abysmal delivery and terrible positioning from the corner are just another two in the long line of examples where we get the very basics wrong. Aside from when Miller came in we conceded possession almost immediately from every single throw we had (been going on for years). John Buckley seems to be the only player in our squad that can play a good dead ball with any degree of consistency. Whenever I see us have a corner I always think we’d be so easy to defend against. I noticed on Saturday that our head physio was taking the shooting drills with the subs in the warm up, laying them off. Pretty sure this used to be David Lowe’s job. While Andy Procter is an ex pro (unlike other members of our coaching staff), I’m not sure why this has fallen to him. Definitely suggests we are short on coaches.

That’s exactly what happens when you are a club in crisis. Things don’t go your way, often in the cruelest manner. The big concern for me is that I don’t think that group of players could’ve done much more today. They played to pretty much the best of their collective ability. Anyone denying we have significantly downgraded over the summer is deluded. The result of managed decline was on display today. I think today will be a pretty good indicator of what is to come all season. Lots of huffing and puffing. Not much quality. Plenty of disappointment.

It would probably only take a 500k bid for us to sell Tronstad too

It’s been the case for years that we have always opened negotiations with our established players by offering them the exact same money for an extended period. Was the case with Lenihan and Nyambe, both of which were declined but further negotiations didn’t happen “because of covid”. Then it became too late. It improved under Broughton as Suhail was too far removed from the process, which he won’t have liked. It went Broughton - Waggott - Babu. Broughton actually got some deals done (although one of the main reasons he was dispatched with was he was seen to be too generous with contracts. Wahlstead was nearly our highest paid player, Jake Batty was on several times more than all other youngsters, JRC got a huge pay hike). Reckless spending, or bringing our wage structure up to the going rate? With Broughton gone things initially went Waggott - Babu - Suhail, then simply Gestede + Suhail. Last summer there were attempts to get Szmodics to stay by treating him as an exceptional circumstance and obliterating the fairly loose wage structure. He was certainly open to discussing it, but too much dithering from Venky’s end meant the Ipswich move became inevitable. Before the end of last season there was an idea to offer Dolan a hefty loyalty payment - basically a big (million plus) signing on fee to incentivise him to sign on lower wages than he could get elsewhere. Dolan and his Dad were open to this - the offer was never put in writing. Travis and Hyam will all have been given contact offers a while ago - extensions on the same money. No follow up will have taken place after the initial rejections so Rovers can say “we offered them a deal”. This is Suhail 101. Gestede was always a Suhail man, but he further ingratiated himself with the signings of Ohashi and Gueye. Yuki took a pay cut to come to England. Gueye came from the notoriously poorly paid Belgian League. Between Suhail and Gestede they have now decided that there is no need to pay more than 10k a week for a player with those two as their proof. 11 “A” players on a max of 10k. 11 “B” Players on a max of 6k. And 11 Young players on a max of 1k. Any exceptions will be phased out.

No they didn’t. It was a big bone of contention between Eustace and Suhail/Owen/Gestede - they felt he didn’t play enough youngsters and were sold on Ismael’s willingness to do so. They are financially incentivising him to make sure it happens.

I expect the fact that Ismael is bonused on giving young players their debut and minutes is a bigger reason for his team selection.

Team Waggott were keen last summer. Team Suhail not so much.

In the FF meeting Suhail answered the initial question regarding Waggott with one word. It took a lot of probing around directorial responsibilities and EFL rules for him to admit that Waggott was still employed. He seemed very reluctant to do so. I don’t think Lowe being absent from Brockhall or Ewood will necessarily mean he isn’t being paid by Rovers. I expect that both he and Waggott will have very nice looking gardens at the end of the summer.

Yeah. That happened. A couple of examples of club requested songs I vetoed: Take Me Home, Country Roads (someone had been to Old Trafford) Glad All Over. More than once.

Unless there is some sort of miracle before the transfer window closes, I think our best bet is to play Gueye, Kargbo and Miller every game. Smash long balls up to Gueye, get Miller on every throw in, tell Kargbo to run at people. This was where we looked most effective yesterday and pre season - particularly against competent opposition. I don’t think we are scoring many goals otherwise.

No. To correct the first paragraph. Version 1 was sent to the club before being sent to other attendees. As soon as it landed in my inbox I messaged Glen asking what he thought of them. As he hadn’t received them I forwarded them to him. We both came to the same conclusion on them, as did others on the forum at that time.

Another example here of why it’s important to add context to the minutes. Neither Glen, I, or anybody else in there demanded an apology from Venky’s. In response to Yasir stating that he didn’t believe pricing was the biggest issue regarding ticket sales, I agreed with him. I said that for me the biggest issue is people losing hope, being sick and tired of the same old mistakes, and that the significant drop off 13 years ago was due to people’s anger and frustrations with the owners. I suggested that if they want to start attracting those people they lost back then to return, then a little bit of contrition, and an acknowledgement from the owners of their mistakes might go a long way - although I did caveat this with we are now at the stage where actions are needed rather than words. I adied why every bit of comms that comes out of the club paints everything as rosey. You’d think we were highly functioning and free of any mistakes or issues - just show some acknowledgement! ”Balaji’s” statement yesterday shows it fell on deaf ears.

A couple of points I’ll add… The April fans forum was the first I’d ever attended, and the level of professionalism on show was very different this time round for number 2. In that meeting I’d pressed Suhail and Waggott on whether they would be requesting significant transfer funds given we had headroom under P&S rules given the profit we posted in 23/24, but that opportunity to spend would disappear. Waggott stated that he hoped so and that transfer funds and an increase in wage budget would be forthcoming, and he acknowledged that there was a window of opportunity to spend. Suhail repeatedly claimed the squad had been reinvested in (mentioning the spend on Sam Gallagher at one point) - I argued that we’d only really replaced outgoing players (I used the term backfill), usually with cheaper options and there appeared to be no desire to progress and improve. He eventually stated he’d be requesting the maximum budget available given our FFP position. Which in the July meeting he admits he didn’t do. When asked about the owners aspirations he simply stated “A sustainable club.” Given that Waggott had always previously said “A sustainable Premier League club” I asked him “Sustainable regardless of what division we are in?” He responded by accusing me of putting words into his mouth. I pointed out I was asking the question - I redirected to Adam Owen given he has some football knowledge and background. As you can see above he wasn’t wholly convinced on the idea of breaking even. He mentioned different models we could go down and cited Brentford, Brighton and Ajax as examples. I stated each of these models relied on reinvestment of fees and presently we were more like Crewe circa 1998. Suhail stated that expenditure doesn’t guarantee success. Despite this Yasir later used the term “Punching above our weight” in a way which contradicted Suhail’s claims. At one point Suhail’s repeated attempts to absolve himself of any blame and put it in Waggott led to very audible widespread groans and comments such as “He’s passing the buck again”, “of course it’s not your fault”, and “That’s convenient”. Aside from my personal opinions on suitability, professionalism and competence, my key takeaways were: - Priority one is cutting losses. - Priority 2 is dumbing down expectations. - Suhail is feared by some employees - There is no desire to see Rovers promoted - Fans are an inconvenience, and any expectations we have are viewed as unreasonable

Just to add to this, no minutes produced could do justice to the amount of probing we had to do to get a straight answer to questions. There were instances where discussion points were attempted to be shut down with a one word answer and we as attendees had to continue to push for answers. Like pulling teeth.

I’ll come on here and provide clarity, context and corrections to all the parts where I’m quoted when the minutes do come out. If Glen and @K-Hod do the same at least the regular poster on here will get the true story.

This is the crux of it. Waggott had complete autonomy to appoint Eustace. This time he is part of a committee including Suhail and Gestede.

Similarly it shouldn’t be understated just how good Dolan was for the first. Not just the touch back into Forshaw but the fact he played the ball in to Brittain to start the move on the halfway line, then got to the 6 yard box to knock it back. Not often you see 60 yards covered in a 1-2!

Date TBC, we have requested a date so waiting to hear back.

No, didn’t really expect anything as yet. We expect it will come up in our next official MOU meeting.