You talk like 5 months into Szmodix contract, we all knew he’d go and do that the year after. I also think you’d make a profit on all those players but surely we’re trying to build a team? Selling Szmod should’ve never happened should it - talking about it as if it’s a perfect model, if we’d kept him and only spent the small sums we had, we’d likely be top 2 with JE. Re the Diaz contract post too - is there not even a part of your brain that says “ey up, maybe it would’ve been difficult to get him to agree to anything at that point without creating a nightmare situation with the wage structure”… Apply the same theory with a few others too, consider that if someone is pulling up trees for us, perhaps the standard minimum of 23 clubs with turnover far exceeding us in this country (and countless abroad) might be able to pay them a lot more? For all our BRFC spectacles, players have short careers and rarely will miss opportunities for big four year contracts. We all know who is to blame regarding the reason for our lack of financial clout, and I personally don’t need another skip down memory lane. As I’ve said repeatedly in the quoted posts - the owners couldn’t give a shit and I would rather the club never sees a penny from them again. That’s my ambition, a rovers that exist without or despite the ignorant cúnts. Also the Armstrong deal. Do you know how many times people lamented the fact he had a big% sell on clause here? Do you know why that was inserted? Because we couldn’t pay the fee they wanted. Arma wanted to come here, if you remember his interviews at the time. He’s also sitting on the bench at a club around 7 places above us, likely on a wage that would pay for 2.5 Cantwells. I want the someone in the club to give John Eustace more options, and I fully understand the “Brentford model” and I don’t need a lecture on how football investment works; I just don’t look at the world as if we’re the only ones in it? Even if we had amazing owners in this financial scenario, we’d still be limited to sitting in a queue for these “investments” of nippy strikers with an eye for goal, ready to go at the top of the second tier, that are so easy to come by.

In my opinion, ”deep dark secrets” are the stuff of fantasy, we’re merely something on the shelf of conglomerate, which is something altogether more depressing.

It’s not a switch you can just press, the Brentford model also didn’t have an academy or an owner pumping cash in like us, sustaining a model that doesn’t work. They had a long term plan. We’re on our umpteenth reset in a decade, and we also want rid of our owners don’t we? That’s more relevant than ever when it comes to a club that can “wipe its own face”. A Club that doesn’t lose money every season doesn’t need absent billionaires. Whilst I trust JE with the team, I wouldn’t trust a single member of the boardroom with any serious money either. The amount of fans who reference “the owners” or “Venkys” as if they’re ever actually interested or responsible for day to day things such as transfers, contracts or facilities too - they merely sign a budget off and it’s probably a junior accountant. They couldn’t care about who is running the club, I doubt they even care about the money.

The last sentence sums up why we’d never find any middle ground. Forgetting the players from the academy that are already solid championship players, and forgetting any of the u21s/18s, and forgetting we’ve spent money on 3 players last season who I personally can see being potential investments, forgetting “player of the year” Tronstad from the year before, amongst others… Forget those lot and you’re right, there’s nothing anyone else would want.

Yea I know. I think it’s disingenuous to expect all investments to go that way btw - Gallagher and Brereton two perfectly fine recent examples. Let’s be honest, none of us would’ve offered the latter a big contract two seasons in if you’re response is “contract mismanagement”. One of the key points I was making was wage to turnover ratio. To stand a chance of shedding ourselves of this set of owners, I truly believe we need to have something less than 100%. That either needs huge crowds or regular sales and modest investment.

I seemingly hate the situation as much as you do, but that list of incoming money should likely be put next to a continuous wage to turnover ratio for the same period. Then look at a similar period where we didn’t sell players and look at the share allotments from the owners. See.. as much as it pains me to say it, you can’t tell a story from one point of view (well other than wonder years..!) PS Hope you’re well @gumboots long time no hear from

If you believe we signed; Gueye, Ohashi, Weimann, Ba’ath, Cantwell, Toth for less than 2m then Im stumped. That also doesn’t take into account any loan fees paid for Baker, ACD and Beck. Loans aren’t an “investment” but find us three players as good as that for less than 10m and you’d be world class scout. My personal guess would’ve been that we spent around 5m last summer, which if you include 5m from an instalment on Wharton, that’s probably 33%.

Forgetting that you’ve always been harsh on players, If our club needs to find an extra 15/20m of income a season just to break even, investing all of your transfer income would mean there’s still a black hole, so you’d need to sell someone to keep the lights on. Investing money doesn’t simply mean = reward. Regardless of posters telling us FFP only exists for those without ambition, if you’re haemorrhaging cash, you’re haemorrhaging talent if you’re not promoted. We should know, it’s happening every season. With a transfer embargo we wouldn’t even be able to replace with modest sums (as we have recently). If we invested 50% of our transfer income and kept the wage bill exactly the same, you’d still need to sell 30m a season to get near to the amount necessary to avoid the owners putting cash in. If we’re happy to let the owners continue to cover that shortfall (I personally can’t think of anything worse), I’d imagine we will spend between 25/50% of our player receipts anyway - judging by last summer that was the case. Also there are agreements we might not be privy too, Adam Wharton’s deal (which was a lacklustre fee ) has been structured over 5 years too, we wouldn’t know without seeing the figures, how much of that Raya bonus, or the smods and Gally money we’ve seen so far. Final key caveat btw - wage bill. The minute we’re in a tangle for a player who is available and likely proven to succeed in the league, we’d have to smash our entire wage system to even come near to any parachute payment club if they’re interested. Remember Anel Ahmehodzic or whatever he’s called? Final point I would make is look at the eye watering sums that leeds and Burnley made in selling players last summer, look at the talent they still have and the sums they’ve reinvested. There is no fair playing field in the champ.

@aletheia Gueye, Ohashi and Cantwell are already worth a lot more than we paid for them and it’s very early days. They came from spending a small amount, from selling a player we paid £3m for approx 3x that. This is what these clubs “not the duff ones” as you put it do. All the stuff about Venkys wealth has nothing to do with that. Do you want rid or do you want them to bankroll us to an even higher level of investment, because the figures that OOJW used are as close to reality as I would understand.

We want rid of them, why would you want them to put more money in?

From my perspective, I’d rather never see a “venky penny” at Ewood again. To me it just would take a serious amount of mental gymnastics and lack of memory to expect anything but the minimum from them, and at the time of writing they’ve got a fantastic court based excuse (constantly being kicked down the road) I expect us to invest something this month, hopefully on something that has resale / investment value and not more 30+ year olds and/or loans, but this notion that we’ve got 40m to “reinvest” when we’ve traditionally lost money every season (horrendous turnover to wage ratio) is not realistic. Judging by a lot of the posts I’ve read here this month, I think many people have forgotten that the season before we’d managed to start selling some of our assets for decent money, we used a loop hole to sell the training ground… To keep the lights on!

@J*B gave me the heads up to put some of the merchandise that I and a group, over in Oswaldtwistle have had commissioned for Ossy Fest. Firstly, Ossy Fest is something we started to try and boost revenue for our pubs, help out original bands and also put all the proceeds into local school music lessons, check us out; https://ossyfest.co.uk For this years festival, a very old friend of mine who started this; https://www.rocknrollfootballshirts.co.uk wanted to get involved and designed three shirts for “Ossy Fest” and three individual acts, two are rovers themed, hence why I thought it might be worth asking BRFCS if they’d help and they kindly said yes. The rovers home kit is based on a local band “The Ruby Tuesdays” take a look at their latest video, a really energetic indie sound, lovely lads. The rovers away is based on a local band called “The Rafters”, some of you will likely know Nat from the Ewood WMC! Absolute tour de force of the local punk scene. There is also an Accy Stanley one, the rest of our advert is here on Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/share/vCNWxrEvBvgxYKe9/?mibextid=WC7FNe Finally - please come and watch our bands in Ossy over the weekend of the 9/10/11th of August, I have attached a lineup. £3 on door every pub. JB

I’ve asked for that in previous windows and to be honest it’s probably what works for me whilst reading other bits of the site on lurk mode. Be nice if @unleaded can still post in that one too 😂

Deserves a chance. Will see how things turn out but he’s playing a very thin hand.

I think we all agree, I just think you’ve missed the point a few others made, which goes along the lines that not every reader enjoys the same gang of posters posting their own dire conclusions in every active thread, every other day. No matter how likely they are. On actual rumours, Someone in the local said we’d been linked to a French u21, and I might as well give up looking here!