At least for me, Khedra and Edun's defensive troubles were a reminder that Brereton's defensive work rate is one of the main reasons we should generally keep him out wide, unless Gallagher is out. He clearly has the lung capacity to run up and down for 90min, plus exceptional straightahead speed. I think his athleticism gets a bit underrated because he can occasionally look rather uncoordinated/gangly out there haha

Sam Burns scored again. I think that's 2 goals in 4 games? It's production at quite a low level, but he is now doing it against 'men'. I wonder if he can secure a higher loan in January... Jack Vale with an assist in this ridiculous 7-4 game: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/59083037 Solid cross for his one assist. Hilton started again for Hamilton in a 1-1 draw. 3 starts in a row now... but their 1st choice keepr is still out, so we'll see. No game for Annesley with Woking yesterday, although he did start again earlier this week. Chapman again left on the bench for Burton. I'll draw the line at chasing down non-league loans haha (outside of Burns!), but Dowling and G. Pratt do appear to be getting starts with their NPL loans; Lonsdale apparently not. (tempted to start a separate 'Loan report' thread!)

I told myself I'd give Poveda one more chance after seeing the starting lineup... I recall him looking good for about 5-10 min in one of his early starts, and he must have something about him with his pedigree, but then crap ever since... what a rebound performance from him. Was less down on Khadra, although his recent appearances had been pretty poor, so quite pleased for him today too. Clear case of a couple young attackers just needing a few successful dribbles to give them the confidence to keep at it. Of course still questionable to have them over, say, Chapman, but he's currently sitting on the bench for Burton, so... (It would be nice to maybe turn one of these loans into a loan-to-buy, as some had recently mooted about van Hecke before his, ahem, creative tackle against Fulham. One of the benefits of a loan can be 'try before you buy'... certainly not suggesting that for Khadra or Poveda just yet!) A couple shaky moments from Lenihan and Wharton, but I suppose that can be excused for Wharton's first game back. Was a nice reminder of Wharton's dominance in the air today. Big head CBs, fuck yeah. Otherwise, pretty great performance all around. Edun makes me nervous at times, but it's nice to think we've got two young LBs competing for the spot. How long since we could feel optimistic at that position?! edit: I should also mention a resurgent performance from Davenport, who I had started to finally write off. What an odd player he's been...

Yeah ,media quotes were something like £1.2-1.5m. Who knows in the end, but the speculation that we only got a few hundred thousand was nonsense. So, we're in agreement: a great bit of negotiating by Venky's and co. 🙂 (I kid, I kid 🙂)

No, Marshall said there was a decent contract offer on the table (and no less than he ended up signing for at Wolves), but he was (rightfully) worried we were going to get relegated (and have his contract halved with the relegation clause) and refused to sign (despite Coyle's pleas... haha) My favourite part of that story is Coyle then froze him out of the squad, he went on the lash in Dublin for 3 weeks and Wolves couldn't believe his physical after they signed him haha... I thought it was interesting that he also confirmed in that interview we did get up to £2m from Wolves. There was a fair amount of noise on here that we'd be lucky to get £200k given he only had 6 months left...

I won't claim any clairvoyance as I didn't watch Barnsley much last year, but I was sceptical they could keep it up after last year's Cinderella playoff run. Their wages are probably half our wages (and our wages are below-average for this division!). All other things being equal (big caveat 🙂), wages are going to be the best first order indicator of where you'll place in the league. Whatever they managed last year was likely quite sensitive. Lose Mowatt and a couple others, perhaps there's some injury issues, Schopp's messaging suddenly stopped getting through... edit: agh, had a brainfart and forgot that Ismael left Barnsley in the summer, so Schopp was new (and may have simply been out of his depth!) xGs table has them 19th instead of 23rd: https://experimental361.com/2021/10/31/expected-goals-table-championship-29-30-oct-2021/ Maybe unlucky scoring goals, but their defense has been as bad (or worse) as advertised. A major swing from last year when their xGs were as good their record suggests (and we should've been 5th according to xG of course 😋)

A goal for Burns in the FA Trophy for FC United (albeit against the venerable Runcorn Linnets in the FA Trophy). Apparently deserved a pen too. BBC report seems to suggest Annesley started at LM for Woking to start his loan there. Vale started again for Halifax. Seems to be getting a run of starts after scoring in the FA Cup, but seems to get pulled off after 60-70min. Hilton has finally started a couple league matches in a row for Hamilton after sitting on the bench for a while (otherwise, he started in their Scottish Cup games at least). Seems their usual starter is injured, but they had a pretty poor GA record up to this point, so could be a chance for him. 1 goal against today after a clean sheet on Tuesday. Side note: no idea how he's actually playing but Chapman was left on the bench in Burton's 2-0 loss today. 0 goals and 0 assists in 9 games so far and apparently not an automatic starter...

Poveda has been an unused sub plenty of times this year (along with the rest of the loans) (Not to defend Poveda's actual performances. Looks like we can only hope he is sent back in January so far)

haha, really? (They also booked a £17m profit from selling their stadium a couple years ago)

Hopefully that shows up ok. I was curious about medium-term FFP implications, so threw some guesstimates together. 2018-20 are actuals, while 2020 onwards are guesses in light yellow. Obviously assuming we're stuck in the Championship 🙂 Main takeaway: We likely well exceeded the 3-year £39m FFP losses allowance last year, but the Armstrong+STC sales likely bring us within a 4-year £52m FFP loss limit. Without the STC sale, we'd still be in trouble after the Armstrong sale. I would guess this was a big reason for the accounts delay/temporary 'soft' transfer embargo. Going forward, a profitable 2021-22 gives us a fair bit of leeway under the 3-year FFP cycles (and this all assumes surviving in the Championship at a below-average wage and low-ish transfer spend!), particularly if we have cut wages like I've assumed. How the player contract renewals feed into this... I dunno! These are all obviously assumptions to be shot at, but: - Matchday only gradually recovers to below 2018-19 levels (which was a slight bounceback after relegation/Coyle/L1). Was up to £4m in the early Bowyer days, or up to £6m in the PL days... I'm probably being optimistic here, but it's ultimately a marginal factor. - Broadcast goes up to £8m (I think there's a slightly larger EFL TV deal on the horizon?). This is also subject to cup runs. Commercial recovers to £4.5m, but that's below our 'usual' £5m+. - Our new wage structure is £20m/year after peaking at £27m last year (a guess!) - Assuming £12m profit on Armstrong and £12m profit on the STC (any idea of its accounting value? Possibly well-depreciated by now) - Other opex is an odd one as it bounces around. Tends to be on the high side for the Championship. I've assumed £9m (with a fall last year) - Player trading profits after this year (which could be higher if Rothwell/Nyambe sold in Jan...) is a big guess. We've barely had any profits before the Armstrong/Raya sales. Lots of Championship clubs report the occasional £10m+ profit, like we did with Armstrong. Play with that variable as you like. - Amortisation+depreciation is hard to say. Last year's £5.6m reflects Armstrong+Brereton+Gallagher+etc. Armstrong done, haven't bothered to work out how long Brereton/Gallagher fees are incurred. Maybe there will be new biggish transfers at some point, but if it's only the likes of Kaminski/Edun/Pickering-like spend going forward, it may fall to ~£2m-ish levels - ~£4m worth of Academy, community, ladies football, etc. FFP exemptions, plus exemptions for Covid-related losses of £0.5m and £2.5m in 2019-20 and 2020-21. TL;DR: My gf would probably be right to leave me.

Seems clearly to be FFP-related accounting trickery. Or at least that's what it is on the face of it. Conspire away 🙂 The statement given to the LT pretty much says as much: "taking into account the imminent change in FFP rules precluding the inclusion of profit on sale of assets with effect from July 1 2021 onwards, in June 2021 the club implemented a restructure of certain club properties, whilst ensuring all affected assets remain under the ownership and held within the Venky’s group." Payment went through on 24 June, so just before the EFL closed that loophole. So, we've resorted to the same chicanery as Derby, Sheffield Wed, Reading, Aston Villa, etc. I'm pretty sure others have also done the selling the training ground route. I can't remember who. I suppose it's at least a bit less drastic/symbolically sad than selling Ewood Park to a Venky's holding company. One-time profit (which thus helps for the 3-year rolling FFP windows), but then higher operating costs year-to-year thereafter due to the lease back arrangement (which presumably needs to be done on commercial terms!). I suppose the question will be what the accounting value of the STC was and thus how much of a 'profit' the club has made off the £16.6m sale. Perhaps another £10m+ to the P&L account...? The EFL has been trying to show its fangs of late, so don't be surprised if they sniff around this, but precedent suggests this is above board. They tried to get Derby for overvaluing Pride Park but failed, cleared Villa, and Sheffield Wed got caught cause they mucked up the timing.

re: Burns, while it'd be nice to assume we can find a loan for him in the National League (or NLN...) post-transfer window, I imagine part of the issue is finding a club willing and able to give him starts. Maybe others on here better know the everyday striker needs of the NL, but I suspect they're not necessarily keen to hand starts to an unproven 19-year-old. Just look at Jack Vale, who has only managed 1 start and 4 subs with Halifax Town in the NL so far this year. He has/had more pedigree than Burns, which probably helped secure the loan, but it hasn't guaranteed him starts. He also struggled for time with Rochdale in L1 last year (although I gather he continued to have injury issues). Seems he scrambled a goal for Halifax in the FA Cup last week and finally got a start yesterday, so hope that continues for him. Burns' pedigree is growing, but I don't recall much noise about loaning him out in August. I suspect the original hope was to loan McBride out to a L2 club and have Burns continue as the 1st choice u23 striker, but McBride's loan fell through for whatever reason and then Burns started outshining him. McBride was even on the bench in favour of Burns a couple weeks ago, so this helps ensure game time for McBride FWIW, in the brief bits I've seen, I struggle to see Burns taking the step up to the Championship level, but I certainly hope he proves me wrong! Good to see him continue to produce at the PL2 level. He's gotten a start and a sub so far with FC United, a month or two playing against 'men' can't hurt, maybe he can earn a higher loan in Jan, and their Twitter feed suggest he's impressed, including his contribution to this "beautiful" goal yesterday haha:

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE

Great article in the The Athletic today looking back on Tugay: https://theathletic.com/2811523/2021/09/08/tugay-at-blackburn-it-was-like-he-was-playing-with-a-cigar-in-his-mouth-it-was-that-easy-for-him/ (As always, apologies if you can't get around the paywall!)

My assumption is we extended a contract offer for the sake of protecting the asset and giving it one last kick of the can (if it wasn't for his mini-resurgence at Shrews, I'd bet we'd have let him walk) as we were still due compensation at his age if he left on a 'free', but that offer essentially tied him to us. I doubt there were too many L1 clubs this window willing to spend the (low) 6-figure fee we probably could command at a tribunal (plus probably above-average L1 wages), and I doubt Chapman attracted much Championship interest either. (I don't recall many, if any, rumours of clubs making cash offers for him?). Works out to him being like a borderline valuable 'restricted free agent' (RFA), if you take a North American sports perspective... From Chapman's POV, he was also probably looking at another year here at ~£4-5k/week here vs £2-3k/week for some L1 club, so a no brainer to sign on and hope for the best. Clearly he didn't impress enough to nail down a starting spot, so he was probably looking at a year of at most 5 starts + 15-20 subs, and he'll be pushing for starting time at this stage of his career, so fair enough to loan him out and maybe try to sell for a nominal fee in Jan (and presumably Burton are covering some wages too). I suppose the question going forward is how Proveda/Khedra turn out in comparison. I've only seen his outing at Millwall so far this year (poor, albeit he didn't have much help on the left flank), so maybe I missed positive flashes in the other games. His quick burst is just gone with injuries and poor fitness. His Shrews loan was a welcome surprise, but, as mentioned above, more smoke that he apparently still had some sulky moments and seemingly wasn't an automatic starter despite some goals (16+7). Didn't help that he apparently got sick to start the year too (for all we know that was Mowbray covering for more poor behaviour from Chappers...). Obviously an odd one, and I can see the case for just cutting our losses instead, but I can't see it as one to get too up in arms about.

Nice to be back in a stadium. Some random notes: - 1st half was some generally terrible football viewing all around. Millwall really do play some unattractive stuff. I'm pretty sure they don't have a single "artist" in the squad (Afobe seems to have really fallen off over the years) - that's not an outright "criticism" btw, as they have managed alright in the Championship at their wage level! - Plenty already said, but clearly not a game for Dolan to be pressing upfront like Swansea. Maybe his worst performance as a Rover... Buckley anonymous, but not really 'bad'. Game bypassed the whole midfield 1st half - see Rothwell below too - only Trav seemed to thrive (and a welcome pain in the ass performance from him!). Not following the Pickering criticism, thought he was ok (but not 'good'), but maybe wasn't watching him closely enough. Gallagher couldn't get anything going offensively, but put in a hell of a shift in the air. - The switch to the back 5 was merciful, and Carter impressed. Can see the logic in keeping him around if we use the back 5 plenty, plus as injury cover for Ayala, and then re-evaluate when Wharton is back. A player with Magloire's physical gifts may be worth waiting on, so another season loan for him and bringing in a short-term loan to wait on Wharton sounds sensible to me, but I wouldn't flinch if we sold him. - Millwall goal came out of nowhere. Watching the replay now (was hard to see wth happened from the other end!), kind of a hard goal to get too mad at anyone about. - Generally great stuff by Ayala and Lenihan, although the latter drove me nuts messing around with the ball a couple times in midfield. No need to pick up a senseless yellow doing that when he's going to pick up plenty... - Let's hope Butterworth's back holds up as he could be something. - Chapman's poor cameo highlights the need for a winger loan (although he rightly yelled at this teammates during that bizarre play where he was just standing with the ball out wide begging for support!). Given he's seemingly lost his quick feet, playing him centrally is probably the only way to salvage his career here (where he impressed at Shrews). Although Butterworth may have usurped him in the middle already, a la Dolan last year out wide... - Typical Rothwell game in that he was anonymous for long periods, and then suddenly took over the game. Please get that contract worked out...

PNE is certainly an interesting comparison (/criticism of our relative performance), but worth keeping in mind the above too... cut wages with caution (Wigan, Hull, and Charlton were the relegated sides for the chart above). We're probably maxing out what we can do on the wages side (and the evidence suggests wages are usually the best first-order determinator of success...), but that's still just below average in the Championship (and well below the top squads) Re: Barnsley, note these are the numbers from when Barnsley was a point away from relegation. Fair play to them on an exceptional year, and there's good reason to believe their management is a big reason behind that, but I'm hesitant to declare them the new model to follow after one year... but certainly a team to keep an eye on next year. The Brentford model obviously has the longest and most successful track record among the low revenue clubs. For us, following that exactly would mean dropping the Academy entirely, so one for debate... Interesting that Brentford barely used the loan market in recent years. I don't mind a few key loans, and there are other examples of sides using the loan market effectively to get up, but it's clear that Brentford prioritised developing their own assets first (and with significant sales to show for it!), helped by some very shrewd incomings.

To avoid any further confusion, there was a touch of sarcasm to that note :) (I'd file the 15% cut as merely the least you would expect given the circumstances.) Edit: And arbitro makes a good point re: wage deferral! Although you'd then expect that to show up in the player wage numbers too.

I'll maybe make another amateurish run through of the accounts later, but thought it was interesting that at the end of the accounts it is noted that Venky's actually had an insurance policy on business interruptions due to infectious diseases (not yet recognised in these accounts but it isn't expected to pay out more than £1m, but, hey, that paid off nicely, hurray). So, we can add Venky's probably unleashed Covid-19 on the world to their list of crimes. Waggott apparently took a 15% pay cut, so I think the fans will now get behind him. One mystery I think resolved for me (feel free to stop reading now) regarding the VLL accounts is how they appear to treat player registration amortisation vs the BRFC accounts. VLL appears to treat it as an operating expense (hence why I was confused that 'other operating expenses' had gone up so much in those accounts), while BRFC puts it within intangible asset trading (as a football club would do rather than a random holding company!). Hence, while we appear to have received an initial £3.7m or so for Raya + Nuttall (that might include sell-on for Mahoney too), and hence made a £3.1m profit on player sales (not sure about the £600k gap there given Raya + Nuttall should both have had minimal acquisition cost), but our overall 'intangible fixed asset trading' still came to a loss of £1.2m after accounting for our amortisation rising to £4.3m (Brereton + Gallagher + etc)

Uhhh, yes.

Nothing beats a good home shit.

My best guess/interpretation is both Mowbray/Rovers and Chapman/his agent confused Rovers having the right to compensation if we offered to renew his contract to effectively meaning we held an option on him. Even if they were technically wrong, I think he effectively was tied to us given the current transfer market climate. (Those were still some bizarre quotes in any case!) With compensation due (maybe £200k+? Given similar pedigree, I don't think Chapman would go for too much less than Mahoney's case where he went to Bournemouth for a tribunal fee of £425k+), that probably rules out most L1 clubs, particularly in this climate. He also probably couldn't get a better wage in L1 than he's on now (fwiw, FM21 has him at £3k/week). Maybe a Championship club would be willing to spend a couple hundred grand and give him a similar wage, but there's no way he'd be guaranteed game time. From our POV, it's a no brainer. A cheap-ish winger who may have finally screwed his head on right after a successful loan and we certainly have openings on the wing in what's looking to be a much leaner (cheaper...) squad this year. From Chapman's POV, he stays on a decent wage (the way things were going before the Shrews loan, perhaps the best wage he'll ever see...) and should have a fair shot at finally earning Championship playing time. He turns 24 in November, so he can leave on a true free in the summer if it doesn't work out. Maybe he and Mowbray haven't seen eye-to-eye (imo, fair enough given he has failed to impress in any of his cameo appearances and there's enough smoke to suggest his poor fitness levels haven't all been due to bad luck injuries...), but I also doubt Mowbray has it out for him. He signed the kid twice and would love to tout an eventual transfer success. Chapman probably just signed the 1-year renewal offer we made to protect the investment, preventing us from 'leaving him in the cold' and hoping someone signed him for compensation. Anyway, as hinted by Sharpe, I wouldn't be surprised if he's eventually sold or loaned out this summer or in the winter in the end, particularly if he fails to impress in camp again, but still worth one more punt, imo.

I don't know the exact details, but I have seen that some clubs have identified Covid-induced revenue drops in their 2019-20 accounts, which may then be excluded from FFP. Covid obviously complicates things, but exceptions have been made. Our 2017-18 to 2019-20 window also includes our L1 year, which may technically not count to FFP (although I've seen differing accounts on that, and I suspect it does count as a £13m max loss year...). Furthermore, I think 2019-20 and 2020-21 are being treated as an average as part of a 4-year FFP window, so our accounts this year may need to take into account next year too already... I had a brief look at this last week and ultimately there's too many variables to know for sure, but we're definitely at the margin of FFP (imo, given our low revenue and owner backing, that's where we should be if we're hoping to be competitive; stresses about FFP should be "intentional" to some extent). The VLL accounts give an indication of our 2019-20 losses, but the BRFC accounts tend to be a touch rosier. We also have relatively high spend on FFP-exempt cost items (the academy, community spend, women's football, etc), so it's hard to conclude our FFP-status from the accounts alone. And if we are in breach, given we've just unloaded a bunch of relatively high-earners, I suspect we'd still be able to negotiate that we're now on a more sustainable financial path, etc. So, lots of levers. So, I'm not surprised that we will tend to be stragglers in working all the above out, but obviously a concern if such wrangling is interfering with our transfer policy now (although, for better or worse, we tend to do our transfer work rather late).

Dack's face also popped up in the corner of the screen while me and my friend desperately tried to get the ITV app to work for the game yesterday evening. So, there's that too.

I think the reporting has generally been that Raya was sold for an initial £3m, rising to £5m with add-ons. One such clause being getting promoted, which the LT specified as £500k today, but it's also probably fair to assume he's hit some of those other clauses too given his regular playing time with Brentford. I think it was roughly calculated that Josh King's sale to Everton netted us £600k (checking Rich Sharpe's estimate at the time). Funny that he's now leaving Everton after doing nothing there, so a welcome, and random, bonus incoming there... Rumour is Cairney may go for £10m this summer too. I think it was reported that Cairney was sold for £3-3.5m+, presumably on the higher end given his accomplishments at Fulham. If, as Lancs Live reported, we get a 10% cut of any profit, that implies another £650k potentially incoming. Like King, it's a shame about the original fee (the circumstances of Cairney's sale were far more damning than King's case...), but anything that comes in now is a welcome bonus. Sunk costs and all that... Altogether, that's £1.75m of 'bonus' money incoming, which helps I suppose, but it wouldn't surprise if we still need to net another £5-10m to stay within FFP, e.g. Armstrong... although our FFP calcs are always a bit murky given we probably get a lot of exemptions through our Academy spend, plus the added complication of Covid giving clubs a bit more leeway and I'm not sure of the relevance of our year in L1 where FFP's application is less clear (which may still be a relevant year for our rolling 3 year FFP calculation, even if we're apparently to take the average of 19-20/20-21 due to Covid?).