JHRover

Amazing how all these players leave, contracts expire, renewals fail (despite allegedly being keen to retain so many players) and yet they still manage to portray the club as the victims. Surely at some point the penny has to drop that the reason all these players leave and nobody signs new terms is because of the club and the people wrecking it?

Seems pretty likely the 'administrators' down at Ewood will be getting a bonus in their pay packet for delivering such a boost to the owners on deadline day!

'Rovers were backed into a corner' - correction - Rovers backed themselves into a corner 'Forcing them to sell' - Rovers wanted to sell, which is why they made it clear they didn't want to keep the players and didn't offer them new deals - they wanted their grubby hands on the transfer money 'Rovers would have liked them to stay' - ah, so that's why they refused to even speak about new deals to the core of Eustace's top 6 positioned squad despite numerous requests from him to tie them down, even to the point of allowing Eustace to walk out over it 'Tronstad's family keen to return to Norway'- so presumably when he moves to another Championship club, or one on the Continent, that charade will be dropped because I'm pretty sure he won't be playing in the Norwegian league next season. Another convenient cover story. Telegraph back to doing Telegraph stuff again and parroting the regime's account of things.

Yeah it is definitely circumstance. Because the Walker revolution so drastically and suddenly changed the whole scale and direction of the club so much it is very easy to 'compartmentalise' our recent history into 3 distinct clear periods. Pre-Walker (everything up to 1991), Walker (1990-2010) and Venkys (since 2010). Because things have been so horrific over the last 15 years there seems to be an eagerness among some to treat the middle period as an aberration and normalise what has been going on here over recent years as merely a return to normal service. I do, unfortunately, think a part of it comes from the attitude of those who were supporting the club in the 70s and 80s when it wasn't all PL and success, and some of those people get a kick out of reminding the younger end or those who started following in the good times that the 70s and 80s version is the 'true Rovers' and they are the 'true supporters' for having experienced those times not just the good times. Quite weird in my book but I'm convinced it is there as a factor. Oddly those people don't want to talk about the decades before that. It is probably the equivalent of Spurs fans reminiscing about the days they were a non-league side in the early 1900s or perhaps more like Ipswich fans saying that they belong in the bottom division because that's all they were before Alf Ramsey turned up. But yeah, if we'd have had say a fit and proper owner buy the club in 2010, but gradually declined from the PL into the Championship over a number of years, and then they'd have sold up to Venkys in 2020 and they'd have wrecked the club a decade later than they did, I suspect less would be willing to tolerate what is happening here. But because it has been going on now for so long, and there was a straight jump from Walker Trust regime to Venky regime, they can just box off the 1991-2011 period as a blip. I'm sure the numpties on that other forum will quite happy with things as they sit in an 80% empty stadium and insist they have it right and everyone else is wrong, and presumably all of them will be renewing when we go down to League One because the club and players need their support.

Biggest issue with Lawrence is his fitness. Barely played for Rangers last year and not many games over a number of years now. In isolation his age and quality aren't a concern.

Who'd have thought that a shirt worn in one random early January Championship game, that ditches the famous blue and white halves and adopts what looks at distance more like a Bolton or PNE kit, hasn't flown off the shelves at £80 a time just after Christmas. Once again...if they were keen on doing a 'special' 150th anniversary kit it should have been revealed and released in the summer and worn all season long, not just in one game. And if they'd put some effort into it then it could have been a big seller. But no, the brains trust decide that we are going to have FOUR different kits for the season, totally unnecessary and only release the anniversary one months AFTER all the others, and crucially AFTER the anniversary events and AFTER Christmas. Beyond imbecilic down at that place.

Surely they'd be less likely to walk away in the PL (if they ever allowed us to get there)? Overnight their annual losses would stop and even an immediate relegation would take away the financial pressure for a few years. No doubt they'd also bask in the glory and turn up for a game against Man Utd / Liverpool with their mates as well. No I'm convinced the only way it ends is through financial or legal necessity. I had hoped the legal 'issues' in India were the start of the end but it seems not. So instead I'll just have to go back to hoping that their empire collapses and can no longer sustain the cost of this pointless project.

He seems to have links to a few different firms in Switzerland / Zurich area involved in finance circles. Photo on those websites matches from his playing days. Always interesting and thought provoking when snippets of information emerge about their activities.

If getting back to the PL was even remotely of interest or on their radar then they would have conducted themselves very differently over the last 3-4 years. Like offering a drop of support to the 3 managers that got them within touching distance, not sold off all their best players, not undermined them, not allowed the last two to engineer moves away mid-season. That sort of thing. So we can safely drop the notion that they are waiting for a miraculous / unexpected return to PL riches. They've made it as clear as they possibly can they aren't interested and will actively sabotage our prospects of promotion if they can.

'Money in the kitty' We just can't spend it because no player is going to agree to join a sinking ship where we are offering wages more in keeping with a League One/Two club than an established Championship one. So all the Venky bingo boxes ticked - money available, nothing wrong with the owners, ready and willing to spend, targets being worked on, don't blame us blame the greedy players and agents End result we've all seen before. Excuses and issues, not enough to show for it.

A club whose league status is in serious jeopardy and has a squad in the state we have acts first to get quality in, and worries about nonsense like 25 man squads later when we know what we've got to work with. We can sit here until deadline day talking about who gets into the 25 - what matters is getting some quality in before another 4-5 games are wasted with us playing the reserves.

As per usual no issues or problems in getting people out of the door / off the wage bill / money in, but never so fast in getting people in especially where it requires cash or a permanent contract. So with that in mind we are now almost at the half way stage of the January window and have actually reduced our options in this joke of a squad. That is not to say Gueye was any good, but he's another option gone and as yet not replaced. I really don't take kindly to the local media supporting our transfer activity on the grounds we 'need to make space' in the 25 man squad either.

We don't even need to 'do a Wrexham' or even a Sheffield Wednesday or Birmingham (yet). For now we remain a Championship club and still have some vestiges of modern-day club infrastructure - 3/4 of Ewood Park, Brockhall and the academy. That's Jack Walker's legacy, which they've tried to destroy but bricks and mortar not so easy. Many of these other clubs - Wrexham, Birmingham, Wednesday, even Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth - needed so much more - multiple promotions, new stadiums, new training grounds, major works. We don't strictly need any of that, though the facilities and background do need some major renovations and investment. What we need to be looking for is an owner that wants to get to the PL fast which only needs one good season. Sadly these owners are going to ensure that this selling point is quickly removed by taking the club into League One, immediately making the job twice as long and difficult, requiring two promotions and more rebuilding. At least when we are there the nay-sayers will have more ammunition on the 'who would buy such a club?' game.

I'm far from Mowbray's biggest fan and have slated him on numerous occasions over the years, but I'm still struggling to comprehend why he would turn down / refuse to spend a transfer budget in January with the club sat second in the table, with his contract expiring in the summer. It makes no sense. No manager in world football would have done that in the position we were in at the time, especially when the likelihood is that it was going to be his last 'make or break' season with us. I'm well aware of what Waggott was telling people, which conveniently diverted blame and attention for transfer inertia and falling away from promotion away from him and the owners and onto Mowbray who they knew was probably leaving in the summer anyway. Nope, I'm not having it. Mowbray got 2-3 years of relative luxury under these owners (although I still am convinced that even then the 'big' buys of Gallagher, Diaz and Armstrong were all investment signings for the purposes of recovering their money with interest later rather than with a footballing target in mind) but then after that he was left out on a limb like the rest of them.

Well that was the party line yes....though I'm of the view he was prepared to say that or not bothered about correcting it as it served to 'protect' the Indians from criticism. I find it all too convenient that for owners who have shown zero appetite to invest that they managed to find what must have been the only manager int the world who 'actively discouraged' them from doing so. More likely Mowbray knew he wasn't getting anything/wasn't worth asking but he and Waggott weren't going to upset the apple cart by telling fans that it was Venkys' fault. He knew better than that. It's the only way of getting sacked around that place. They clearly haven't been prepared to back managers in the last 2-3 years when sat in the top 6 in January, so much so that both managers have forced their way out within a fortnight of the window closing, so I find it unbelievable that they were prepared to back Mowbray but for inexplicable reasons never seen before in football he chose to turn it down. Far too convenient.