I don't think so. He will be 23 at the start of next season and his only real experience has been loans at Bolton in League One, Dundee in the SPL and Rovers in the Championship. He is getting another Championship club at best. I can't see very many paying more than £3 million for a Championship LB. If we were a sensible club with any sort of strategy or investment then he'd be top of the list for an offer, but we saw with Harrison Reed that we've no interest in making these players permanent and prefer to put them in the shop window so that a rival club can move in and buy them the year after. I suspect he will end up at a Middlesbrough, Stoke, West Brom etc. I suppose we will see on that.

Beck will sign for a Championship club for £2 million or so at the most.

It's just nonsense in our position anyway. If we were stuck at the bottom fair enough I'd understand some caution on renewals if there was a serious threat of League One (although if we were serious about bouncing back like we were last time you'd still want a squad under contract for that battle)> But if looking upwards at the PL you take the hit on a new contract from a position of strength. I'm not sure what the downside is - we get promoted, hit the jackpot in which case the money laid out on a handful of Championship players is nothing in the scheme of things. They're just making excuses and they know that a large chunk of the fanbase will just accept it. The Venkygraph have been busy today, knowingly or not, doing the clubs propaganda work for them. Hailing the Ribeiro deal as 'first new contract in 16 months' but that 5 month initial contract was always ridiculous to begin with and still banging the Dolan drum as though the club has made a decent offer or tried hard to keep him. There's no evidence of that other than the claims of an untrustworthy group of people who are keen to protect themselves.

This lot will force Trav, Tonstad and Brittain out the door by failing to even discuss new terms until it is too late and then try to beat them in a game of brinkmanship and then turn around and expect praise for 'only' paying £20k a week towards Dennis' Forest salary. Then when those players inevitably leave to secure proper Championship wages and deals our lot will scratch around until deadline day and eventually capitulate and agree to pay someone else even more. They just make it up on a whim and it will destroy us.

So we CAN offer and extend contracts 'without knowing what league we are going to be in next season'? In which case why aren't they sorting out the really important ones - Travis, Tronstad, Brittain etc..?

There is a difference between the owners being permitted to send monies that ensure the club meets its outgoings, wages, tax obligations, without which there is a very real prospect of the club going bust/into administration, and the owners being permitted to send additional unnecessary monies for non-essential things such as new players. It is understandable why they would get the permission of the Court to send the former, as it is essential funding without which all manner of potential problems develop including unpaid tax and wages and probable redundancies. Lots of problems and questions for people to deal with. A different matter altogether when the money being transferred is a few million to allow someone to go and buy a few new players and in doing so increase costs. So whilst technically they may be correct - there is no problem with the owners transferring funds to cover liabilities and stop the club going bust - it may also be correct that there is a problem with them getting permission to send funds over to splash out in the transfer window or make improvements/increases to costs.

Derby now 2-0 up on Preston, On track for 4 straight wins. Quite ironic that run started with them beating us and we've just lost 4 on the bounce.

Waggott also claimed that his contract was direct with the ownership group. That can't be correct, if he is an employee and director of BRFC then his contract of employment must be with BRFC as the club pays his wages.

The ONLY concern of those appointing a new manager in February should have been finding a bloke who could extract 100% from this squad over 12 games. No more, no less. The summer should not have even been considered. Our last realistic shot at promotion to the Premier League thrown away due to fancy modern speak about recruitment, styles, etc.

I also find it really weird how Suhail is then questioned on retail and Ewood Park issues like season tickets, the Riverside, club shop, prices. They've admitted that he is more involved in the commercial side of things. It's just very strange, he admits to being involved with the purchase of the club by Venkys back in 2010, he admits to have been hands on at the club since 2015, and now a decade on he finally offers himself up in public but much of his topic of discussion is about what I would describe as fairly trivial matters in the grand scheme of things. On the one hand he's obviously the owners' man, representative and despite his claims I suspect the only one with a direct line to India, and is clearly trusted by them having been involved for well over a decade, yet we are now supposed to believe after all this time he is spending his days attempting to improve the Ewood Park atmosphere and worrying about kits and ticket prices and he's reporting to Waggott on such things? Nonsense IMO.

Waggott tied himself in knots with the Eustace departure and fair play to Andy Bayes for forcing that out of him. He came out with the ludicrous claim that the move occurred because Eustace had played for Derby and that it is 'closer to his house'. Eustace himself has said this wasn't a factor and nor is it very often in the world of professional football - you don't base your managerial career about being nearer to home or you don't get very far in the game. He then conceded that there had been an approach from Derby on the Friday and that from that moment Eustace was in the 'departure lounge' essentially that his mind was elsewhere and not on the job at Rovers. Then when asked why Eustace was allowed to remain in the dugout for the Wolves FA Cup game 2 days later, to which he responded that Eustace had done all the preparation that week and that because he hadn't joined Derby there was still a chance it might not happen. He whines about how difficult it is mid-season to recruit managers or even assistants employed at other clubs, overlooking the fact that this is precisely what happened here and the reason why we needed a new manager. Sometimes I can't work out whether he actually believes some of the stuff he comes out with, and doesn't think what goes on here is unusual, as he does put on a pretty convincing display in suggesting that all is normal and part and parcel at Ewood, or whether it is a very well crafted performance designed to try and convince viewers that the events of the last few years here are just normal. He also indicated that news would come out about a couple of new contracts for players in the next couple of days. So I am looking forward to seeing who those are before the end of the week. I think we all know by now that this is highly unlikely to happen and at best it will be a couple of the academy lads or U21s getting improved terms. I will be amazed, astonished, if any of the current senior team are announced as having signed new extended terms before the weekend. He can't help himself.

I thought it was telling when Suhail said that his trips to India have been reduced from every three months to once a year. I think this is true, and symbolises the 'washing of hands' the owners have performed of the club since 2020. Basically they trust him and Waggott to oversee things provided they keep income at a certain level and do what is necessary to minimise their losses. As long as their money men can see that happening in the accounts then the owners are fine with that year to year. This leaves these two stooges essentially running Ewood however they like, within budget, hence the total shambles and chaos we've seen since Mowbray left. It is unworkable unless the manager gets direct access to India, which hasn't happened in 5-6 years.

The stooges on the one hand referenced the made-up figure of £22 million a year required to fund the club (sounds better than the real figure if you are defending Venkys). On the other hand they admitted and accepted that the vast majority of the tens of millions received has gone into covering losses so the owners don't have to. So a new owner wouldn't need £22 million a year. It is already a lot less than that. Get a proper commercial team in place and ticketing and it falls further. Effective player trading reduces it further. Not necessarily easy, but possible for people with a brain/plan which this lot clearly don't have.

We are probably one of only about 5-6 at most in the Championship who do know what League we are going to be in. That is a tired old excuse that they come out with pretty much every year to blame for a lack of activity, forward planning, season tickets etc. Their approach to January and mismanagement ensured that a sustained play-off push under Eustace was doomed to fail - they chose that route. Not even Ismael's woeful performance so far is enough to drag us into the relegation equation, unfortunately for them Eustace secured too many points in December. Nearly managed it last year though. It's just excuse after excuse. Waggott's favourite is to make out as those the shenanigans at Ewood are all normal part and parcel of life. He knows that the morons on Facebook, Twitter and the Venkygraph will fall for this every time.

It is when those few academy graduates who actually go on to be decent players for us will either: a) Be sold at a significant undervalue to pay bills - Adam Wharton b) Be driven out of the club by running their contracts down - example Lewis Travis, among others It is a made-up metric that they continue to think is a measure of success. It might be for the academy coaches but for the overall management of the club the only thing they should be worried about is wins on the pitch and first team performance.