I’d love to know how much “not cheap” is. If we are paying significant fees to borrow players it’s another thing making a mockery of the “project”.

I think this is why it’s so frustrating how we surrendered last season when a playoff position should’ve been absolutely nailed on 12 months ago. Realistically you need to be opportunistic and have a degree of good fortune to buck the trend, rather than a project. We aren’t as well placed this year, but another missed opportunity looks likely. Things will change regarding financial distribution down the pyramid, but it needs to be meaningful and not just token. Needs a bit of urgency too.

Absolutely. I know there is a lot of annoyance from the Championship clubs in general about it. Fairer distribution has to happen.

Being under an embargo wouldn’t be much of a punishment for a team that apparently can’t manage to get any signings over the line anyway.

Is this last season’s Joe? It’s always quite tricky to accurately gauge where we are in terms of wages. The only accurate measure is the published accounts and by their nature they are never up to date. We’ve offloaded some big hitters since the last set, so we will be getting nearer to that 70%. Perhaps we might actually be below the 100% mark as things stand currently. That chart shows the issue of parachute payments pretty starkly. Lots of work to do on match day revenues as we know, and our commercial income is massively inflated by slapping Venky logos on everything, hence the lack of urgency from the club to improve that side.

Then there’s the flip side… Starting in mid-December: ”Broughton will have all his targets lined up” ”We’ve interviewed three players already” ”We have a healthy budget” ”Balaji’s special warchest” A week into January: ”You need to be patient” ”Judge the window on the 31st” ”I wouldn’t want any player another club has signed anyway” ”We want to make the right signings, not just signings for the sake of it” Mid January: ”Porteus is crap anyway” ”You complainers are all going to look really stupid come the 31st” ”It’s not the clubs fault they can’t compete with parachute payments” ”We don’t need player X anyway, doesn’t fit the project.” ”You have to question his ambition, deciding to move for a better wage.” A week later: ”If we signed player Y we’d be the next Bury” ”We can’t do anything about losing our players for free or missing out on targets” ”You are all idiots who don’t understand it’s basically impossible to make signings in January” ”You are all unrealistic and expect us to sign Mbappe” ”Plenty of time to go. We only really need one more player anyway, not the 5 I initially stated at the start of the window.” ”We dodged a bullet with player Z. Bad attitude. Markanday is better anyway.” 30th January ”If you all bought more tickets instead of moaning on here maybe we could afford players” ”How can we be expected to compete with the likes of Sunderland and Luton?” ”If I was him, I wouldn’t want to move from the French Riviera to Shadsworth.” ”Broughton shouldn’t be judged until his 3rd full window” ”Screwed over by other clubs” “We have done all we can” Deadline day: ”We aren’t short on numbers. Loaning Edun out opens a pathway cos he’s shit” ”I said back in 2019 that Tommy Nooneseverheardof would be a brilliant loan signing. I watch a lot of Eerstedivisie sides U21s. Just the type of player we need.” ”We are absolutely correct to keep faith with the players who have got us into 5th.” ”Positive window for me. B+.”

#bringhimhome #definitelyonlyjoking

I’d take him for the Burnley game.

What are Nathan Delfouneso and Simeon Jackson up to these days? Its obviously not looking good right now, but it could be worse!

Ugbo is one to be hopeful about rather than excited about. It’s evident the club are taking a very laid back, non-committal approach to the window despite our promising league position. I think we all knew it was overly optimistic we’d really “have a go”. Have to hope he’s more Gestede than Hirst. Having said that there’s no point giving him too much thought til he’s officially through the door. Can’t take anything for granted. Overall it’s looking like a very frustrating window with areas we’d all like to see improved not being looked at, but the general feeling of frustration will be lessened by a bit of a relief by adding anybody this late.

I don’t know if our interest was anything more than rumours, but if we did, it doesn’t mean it was a wise decision.

I completely disagree on your first point, and particularly on recent form. I’m not even talking about the glaring mistakes, his general play has been very poor for a while, and in certain games (Rotherham being a very recent example) he has been disgraceful. I think he’s had more games where he’s stood out as being poor than good. Very harsh to lump Johnson in with that lot. We got a couple of good years out of him. For every Goodwillie there is a Graham, Best a Downing, Stokes a Conway, Brown an Ayala, and plenty in between. Vale has a lot less good will than Wharton and hasn’t contributed to the same degree when he has had a chance, he’s also 4 years further on. I don’t think Wharton would make as many costly errors as Morton, but he has a poor game and he’s right back down the pecking order despite having shown more ability to control a game than any other option we have on occasion. I think Travis has a right to feel a bit aggrieved - he was rightly dropped for his poor performances, but a loanee retains his place when he’s becoming a liability. He’ll certainly think he deserves his chance again.

What I’ve really liked from him since he’s come back into the fold is he seems to have a bit of an edge to him. He gave Khadra a well deserved shove yesterday, and he seems to stand up for himself and his teammates rather than rolling round on the floor. I definitely agree with @Spartakfenni He did a lot of his good work yesterday in central areas further up the pitch where you’d expect a midfielder to be. I think he’d thrive there. It’ll be interesting when Brittain does return from injury, JRC is undroppable on current form so he would have to settle for a place on the bench unless there is a change in position for Joe.

I thought Wharton did pretty well for most of the game before completely going to pieces midway through the second half. Made one mistake which seemed to knock him and then several more followed.

But there are big flaws in Broughton’s logic here. Bridging the gap by replacing experienced Championship midfielders with a player with a couple of token premier league appearances and the odd second string cup game seems pretty pointless to me. Morton may well be one year further in in his development than Garrett or Wharton, but that one year is pretty insignificant when they are all miles behind Rothwell, and that 12 months of odd cameos and bench warming isn’t going to replace the experience of a Bradley Johnson. If we’d loaned Isaac Hayden, Hamza Choudhury, Jeff Hendrick, or even Callum Styles - like other teams in the Chanpionship have - the argument of short term experience works. There are loads of Tyler Morton’s (20 year old loanees with very little first team exposure) littered throughout the Championship, but very few are as integral to their parent teams plans. Compared to Hannibal at Birmingham - who played in the World Cup and is undeniably further along in his development - Morton is used far more often. Of course, 20 year olds are the cheaper option, which will no doubt have been more of a factor than all the stuff Broughton came out with in that podcast. Any loan should be a short term fix, and loaning a 27 year old to play week in and week out rather than Morton and giving him 90 minutes most games would not block a pathway any more or less. This loan is benefitting Liverpool and Tyler Morton far more than it is Blackburn Rovers. He doesn’t deserve to be in the team on current form, and I couldn’t give a toss about his development. Might as well let our own players accelerate their development and learn from their mistakes.

Not much more to it really. We were catching up with them (bit of Trust solidarity and fan led review chat) and Pascha’s name came up. One of their board had met him a few times in a professional setting. We said that was more than any of our fans had done, and if he saw him again please tell him it might be an idea to show his face.

Queues when I went in at twenty to. Which I then contributed to trying to scan my bloody digital ticket!

It was raining all game, the pitch was cutting up quite a bit, most of our players were covered in mud. At half time you could’ve took Morton’s kit, stuck it on a hanger and sold it in the club shop - it was spotless. Becoming a liability on the ball. Always been a bottler off it.

JRC could be the answer to our midfield problem. And there is no denying our midfield is a problem.

I can see kick off being delayed. They are asking fans to try and buy a digital ticket rather than turn up and get one at the ticket office. The website doesn’t work properly so I’m not sure how well that will go.

I’m trying!

Trying to get excited for this, but not really working so far. Being moved out of my seat, the prospect of there being more Birmingham fans than us, a frustrating transfer window, our poor form and playing style are all contributing factors. On the flip side it should present a good opportunity to progress in the best cup competition in the world. Hopefully a fringe player or two will give us something a bit different, and I’ll soon cheer up if we put in a performance and get a result.

Believe me, I wasn’t criticising the individual scouts. I know several of them personally.

I don’t know if we have dedicated scouts over there these days, and first team ready players might be tough to come by… Brown being a good example. I wouldn’t mind another Duff or Lenihan though. If I didn’t have concerns that our due diligence wasn’t up to scratch I wouldn’t have said it. There’s something not right in the process if we are constantly identifying players beyond our financial means. I’m not in the least bit bothered we’ve missed out on Porteus, but trying and failing to land him counts for very little if we don’t address the more pressing needs in the squad. If we’ve left ourselves time to move on to other targets, that’s ok. Too often though we end up with hard luck stories of near misses and tales of players having unrealistic demands rather than players on the pitch.

Depends where the physical scouts are being utilised. I doubt there is much data available for league of Ireland players or Mill Hill U13s. Plenty for Championship and Cat one academy players though. I remember specifically during Mowbray’s time he mentioned the difficulties of scouting players abroad due to flight costs. Perhaps we are doing things the wrong way round then? If it all comes down to finances we should be doing some due diligence and looking at whether a target is viable before committing resources to looking at them.