JHRover

Very easy to see why Cadamarteri ticks all the Venky regime boxes. Wages unlikely to be an issue with him only recently emerging from the youth team at cash strapped Sheff Wed Transfer fee likely to be manageable buying from a club struggling to pay the bills and needing anything they can get Age 20 so a good season or even half of one will see a profit to be had. As others have questioned it really does lead to the question of why sell Harry Leonard if we are going to go and sign Cadamarteri for a similar amount. But then Leonard was 100% profit in and they'll be reckoning Cadamarteri can double or treble his valuation if he scores a few. Remember the percentages. Such a flippant attitude to our league position. Is solely investing in youth and projects really the approach of a club on the cusp of relegation?

All we are doing is hoping to exploit Sheffield Wednesday's financial situation and tempt them to sell Cadamerteri to us on the cheap. Some might call that good business (if it works) but I don't see a plan or a prioritisation of results, league position, urgent issues. All I see is them hoping to pick up a player on the relative cheap who they see an opportunity to polish up and sell on for a profit. That isn't the business we should be in. Our Championship status is slipping through our fingers and they are still mucking around with the 'project' to make profits and presumably percentages.

I'd suggest that if their personal wealth went up into the tens of billions then we would know about it - they'd be regularly ranked by Forbes and other experts as among the richest families in the world - not just India. When you have that sort of wealth it is impossible to hide, no matter how secretive or private you are, just look at some of the names on the world rich lists and yeah, it's not an exact science but it's still a reasonable basis to work from. This lot have next to no profile. No wikipedia pages, no appearances in rich lists, they're not very well known. So I find it really hard to believe they are worth that sort of money. A net worth of a couple of billion I expect is the most they get to and once you tie a lot of that up in land and shares when you are sending cash to the tune of £20 million a year to a black hole in NW England it must be having an impact they are uncomfortable with. Their approach over the last few years suggests they are.

I think Broughton was doing the best he could with zero backing or support from upstairs, and his only way to do that, bring in reasonable signings and at least try to maintain our league position was to structure it on the 'loan with option' basis, of course not then requiring any cash from India as it could come out of the club's own reserves if we got to the PL. Wouldn't have been necessary had the owners actually taken a shred of interest and wanted to support the manager in his efforts to get us promoted, but that's them all over. But even then when he'd done the hard yards and got such deals structured and agreed, shadowy characters did their bit to torpedo the moves. Not a problem we will be having for the foreseeable now that they've ensured promotion talk will be consigned to history.

Indeed. Attempts to get around having no money by tempting selling clubs to agree to a low up front fee with a biggie if we got promoted. Using the fact we were in/around the play-off positions. A serious club would of course have paid the going rate to get those players in during January to strengthen for the run in. But then again we were never serious about promotion, and that's why it slipped away in February and March when the players were running on empty and managers were let down.

Under JDT the MO for Broughton often involved the 'loan with option to buy' approach whereby we attempted to get players in at minimal initial cost but with an option or trigger clause resulting in a hefty payment if/when we got promoted. I can't remember names but there were a few where we offered to take a player on the basis if we got promoted or exercised our option we would pay a good amount of money for them. Obviously that little plan is now in tatters as we are in danger of going down. No player or selling club is going to listen to promises of future cash or promotion clauses that we are never going to trigger. So looks like we are back to the old favourite of a relatively small down payment with add-ons and extras later. Pretty daft expecting a club like Sheffield Wednesday to go along with that given their immediate financial issues - they'll want guaranteed cash up front. No matter, only our Championship status and club future in immediate question with 4 days left to sort it out.

Even if this is all family wealth funding it rather than company wealth, and assuming the family are worth billions and the family members are all content to keep on funding this, if they have a net worth of say £2-3 billion, which includes all their land, properties, shares, companies, cash the lot, circa 10% of that has gone down the drain over the last 10-15 years. Now that might not make a difference to them, as they can still afford to do everything else they want in life, but I know any businessman that loses 10% of his wealth on a still failing venture doesn't just carry on with it indefinitely for 'pride' or face saving. Their advisors would surely be telling them to stop the leak of cash and instead redirect it to investments in property, land, shares and grow value. Then there's the question as to their actual wealth - very little information available but seems unlikely that it is going up beyond £10 billion as that would put them into the Forbes rich list territory which they aren't. Infact they aren't anywhere to be seen in the top rankings of Indian families. It has long been believed that a lot of their wealth is in land and their shares, so not liquid cash they can easily just send to the UK to fund Rovers every year. No, I think this must be hurting them financially and that stacks up with what we have seen going on here over the last 3-4-5 years. I suppose the only question is whether there is a tipping point.

If the current situation is indeed purely down to them not wanting to admit their mistakes, saving face, not being too much of a burden on their overall finances it still doesn't add up. We are still costing them upwards of £10 million each and every year. According to their henchman that is more towards £20 million a year. That isn't going to stop unless we get to the Premier League. We aren't going to get to the Premier League because of their cost cutting attempts and running good managers out of the door every year. We aren't going to be self-sufficient in this league, or League One, unless we get very lucky with our player development/trading. They may think they can be after the deals for Wharton and Szmodics but that isn't an annual occurrence and their pocketing of the money for running costs is now going to cost us big time. Even if we can be self-sufficient - to what end? Who gains / benefits? As above, it comes at the expense of getting promoted, which they have proven is not their priority. Now if this was a passion for them - they enjoyed football, wanted to win, basked in the glory of owning us, came to games and enjoyed lording it over everyone, or had ties to the town etc. then I could maybe understand the enjoyment of all that might be worth sucking up that sort of loss every year. But they clearly get zero - or close to zero - benefit from this at their end. At best Balaji enjoys telling people he has a football club. And then when those people realise it is a failing 2nd or soon to be 3rd division club those people probably won't be impressed - if anything that would be a source of embarrassment as you'd want a PL club to really boast about it. Especially then when anyone who looks into it would see that they are the ones responsible for putting us here. I assume that they are surrounded by an army of lawyers, accountants, advisors, many of whom they trust to advise them on all aspects of their wealth and businesses. I can't believe that those people are happy with the drain and hassle of keeping this going. I presume that competent advisors would be regularly raising this arm of their empire and strongly suggesting that they get rid of it asap. £10-20 million a year is still a lot of money. Even to someone worth £1 billion it is still 1-2% of your whole wealth in liquid cash each and every year going into a black hole for which you get no pleasure/enjoyment/benefit. A £200million+ 'investment' and growing is one hell of a dint in people even with a net worth of £1,2,3 billion. There must be something somewhere along the line - be that financial advantages to their other businesses, or activities they don't want people from finding out about upon a sale, that make it worth keeping. Not wanting to admit failure or defeat just doesn't cut it. You'd get rid and just ignore it and start spending the cash on some other more rewarding venture and just keep quiet about it if your mates ask rather than carry on stumping up that sort of money to rattle around the bottom end of the Championship.

The Hemmings family 'unwillingly' inherited PNE from Trevor after he died. They've been willing to stump up the shortfall each year in the time since he died as custodians of the club and to allow them to remain competitive in the Championship, but probably haven't got the clout or interest to do it long term or make a big difference by Championship standards. A bit like the Walker trust - left with something they didn't really want but sensible enough to keep it ticking over. Despite that they have done things that our wonderful benevolent billionaires haven't such as looking after their stadium, not gutting the squad every window, not forcing out their managers every February, offering reasonable ticket prices etc. and all for lower annual losses then we manage, ain't it amazing how they do that? But they want rid if they can find someone so have made it known they are available and waited for serious interest to come along. That may or may not have happened with this American/Saudi bloke, or they may need to wait longer, but they will run the club properly in the interim. Unsurprisingly there is interest out there including from overseas in 'small' loss making Championship football clubs, just as those of us with any sense knew, which ought to put a stop to the 'who would buy us?' nonsense. A bit like the foreign consortium exploring buying Colchester United. The reason there is no public information about interest in Rovers is that nobody can get past first base, because we have a group of reclusive idiots who for some unfathomable reason seem content to keep hold of the club and run it into the ground whilst it costs them upwards of £10 million a year. You could put Bill Gates and Elon Musk together on a stage outside the Blackburn End with a loudspeaker declaring their wish to buy Rovers for £1 billion and it probably wouldn't make a shred of difference - because those creatures in Pune wouldn't hear it and even if one of them did they wouldn't deal with it in a professional or timely manner. The latest instalment of their reign of terror is going to be to condemn us to a prolonged spell in the third or fourth division, which of course will wipe another significant amount off their 'investment' whilst ensuring less interest from elsewhere in buying it, should they ever decide to sell.

The priority in those days of 2018-2020 was to 'stabilise' i.e. survive in the Championship and avoid risk of a return to League One, blended with a combination of 'rewarding' those senior players who had got us straight back up and 'developing' some academy products into mainstays of the team. I don't believe that promotion really ever came anywhere in the equation. But still, I much, much preferred that group of lads. A good combination of proper established senior players and some really likeable youngsters. I just don't get that feeling now.

Two things with West Brom - on paper they shouldn't be in trouble, and I don't think their ownership will sit back and risk their investment going down the drain and not act. I expect if this new manager of theirs doesn't shape himself quickly he'll be replaced. For some strange reason they seem to be wedded to this obsession with employing young inexperienced head coaches. But that will change if they are at serious risk of League One.

I think back to that squad we had between 2018 and 2020 Raya, Lenihan, Mulgrew, Nyambe, Bennett, Buckley, Conway, Dack, Evans, Reed, Rothwell, Smallwood, Travis, Armstrong, Brereton, Graham I don't know what it is but that was a much more likeable, relatable group than what we have now.

Rumours that Rowett is on the list for the next Leicester manager. Would be a sensible appointment for them to guide them through the next few months especially if they get a points deduction.

I'd suggest that the identity of the players' agent/agency is the more significant issue here than whether the player is the best we can get. Yes lots of options around in the lower leagues. But is their agent friendly with the regime? If not move on.

Predictably both Norwich and Sheffield United make changes, bring in good managers and underperforming players start to haul them out of trouble. So down to the dross now. Us, Pompey, Oxford, Charlton and maybe WBA/Leicester if they continue to sink though I suspect both have enough quality to keep their heads above water.