JHRover

No, not especially. 18 appearances in a side that survived by the skin of their teeth and who couldn't buy a win after January plummeting down the table. Lots of players 'impress' in awful League One or Two teams. Shall we sign them all?

I expect we will ask Bury to wear their away shirt so that we can wear the grey.

And I'm entitled to say ' I told you so' when he doesn't play for us because he isn't good enough or our defence continues to flounder as we've failed to strengthen.

And I'm entitled to mine that a couple of fitness exercises against crap sides isn't evidence of him being good enough for the Championship.

I'm one of those people who have watched him play live this pre season. I accept he's looked ok. I also realise that there are lots of players who perform well in meaningless pre season kick abouts against poor standard opposition. It doesn't mean very much. Impressing against Barrow and Mansfield doesn't mean he will be able to cope with defending against Fulham and West Brom. Suspect we will get more of it following tonight. He will probably impress against a Bury side effectively dragged in off the car park to make numbers up.

Whatever. Whenever I saw him play for us his was way off and that was in League One. Bit of a difference between being 'excellent' for a relegation threatened League One side and being good enough for an aspiring Championship one.

Never ceases to amaze me. Sam Hart is nowhere near good enough for what we need. Makes me laugh when after ok performances against non league Barrow and 4th division Mansfield that he's now considered to be a realistic option at full back in the Championship. Some never learn. We're so determined to avoid investing in proven quality in defence that he is now seen as a contender for the team. Frightening. I think if we had played some semi-decent opposition pre season he might have been exposed a bit more.

At the time it was the biggest budget and wage bill that league had ever seen. Losses of almost £20 million unprecedented for a 3rd tier club. Potentially Sunderland have since 'beat' us but they were in the Premier League 2 years ago and have parachute income. Not trying to diminish the achievement but no other club has had that level of wages and losses.

With the exception of Lambert I don't think any of the other 6 manager appointments have been ones that involved a great deal of planning or sense. None of them other than Lambert would have had a sniff of another Championship job. Bowyer and Mowbray are the success stories because both are decent, level headed honest blokes from old school football backgrounds but critically both worked out how these owners operate and tried to work within that. Bowyer has been able to forge a managerial career off it whilst Mowbray has rehabilitated his after Coventry. Fair play. More to do with luck and circumstance than the idiots in India learning lessons or delivering on a plan.

Mowbray was arguably luckier to get the job here given his departure from Coventry a few short months before.

Is Williams injured or just going off on paternity leave? Anyone know why Gallagher didn't feature in the squad at Rangers. Don't get it myself. Surely can't be fitness related as he was training with Southampton before signing here and looks in good shape and should be at his age.

Which Morris is it? Related to the billionaire one?

Other rumours doing the rounds that Tom Morris (owner of Home Bargains and absolutely loaded) has got on board with Football Ventures to buy them.

I imagine the biggest push for a 'new' badge for Rovers would ultimately come from the kit and merchandise producers. As much as we as fans might like the Rovers badge and as unique as it is in the world of football I expect it is relatively speaking one of the more difficult ones to produce en masse and plaster over kits and training gear. Its an unusual shape, rather than a standard circle or shield, has quite a bit of detail and critically has lots of different colours. Most of us like it because it has remained virtually the same since it first appeared 30-40 years ago and is the clubs only proper crest in its entire history. It is instantly recognizable. But looking at it from a modern kit manufacturers point of view it must be hard work to deal with. Over the years clubs have succumbed to ditching their traditional crests and coat of arms and have adopted plan, simple and 'modern' crests which are far easier to copyright, produce and stick on kits. It wouldn't surprise me if Rovers face those pressures in time to come, having to satisfy modern 'requirements'. I expect that was one of the underlying reasons City adopted their new badge and was definitely one of the reasons Arsenal simplified theirs. I also think the pink/orange/white crests we've seen recently on away shirts and training gear are the first step towards that - much easier and cheaper to produce gear with those on than with our multi-coloured and detailed normal crest.

So every goalkeeper that gets dropped for a few games or whose position in the team comes under threat asks to move clubs? As I've said before, for me there should be no such thing as 'number 1' and 'number 2'. The player who performs has the place, so if Raya ironed out his flaws he would have been in the team. All the talk about him being our 'number 2' and him not being happy at that, lets see what unfolds at Brentford and he goes on there, but given Brentford's record at polishing up players it wouldn't surprise me to see him progress.

Why would a keeper under contract here, established and playing every week as Number 1 in the Championship at the club he's been with since a boy, a season after we won promotion, part of a plan to kick on to the Premier League, decide to push ahead and leave all that to move to another, smaller club in the same league? Not trying to be funny but if it is the case that the move happened because Raya wanted to leave us to join Brentford then rather than just accepting that we have to ask ourselves why and be quite concerned. As far as I'm concerned no Blackburn Rovers player who plays regularly for us should ever express a desire to transfer to Brentford. If he does then that suggests something isn't right here.

This happens all the time. I cant work out if Mowbray just comes out with stuff he thinks people want to hear whenever a microphone is stuck in front of him or whether he genuinely expects what he says to happen but things keep on moving and changing. There's certainly very little consistency in what he comes out with and it is understandable why people are frustrated and disappointed with it. Whether it is budgets, calibre of player, positions, timings - Mowbray's comments to me seem to be all over the place. Maybe it's some cunning plan to confuse the competition or maybe we are all over the place on the whim of crackpots in India.

Excellent news which came as a surprise to me. Important piece of business.

I suspect that Mowbray went off to India with bold aims, but was told that there would be no money and that he would have to generate cash though sales before being allowed to spend. I believe that is the true reason for his u-turn on defenders, as there simply isn't the cash to do what he suggested he would do. The Raya sale I believe was motivated by a wish to raise funds, rather than by Raya's ability or his desire to be here. If there was a serious aim to progress you would keep Raya, let Leutwiler go and sign another decent keeper to compete with Raya. Perhaps the most baffling aspect of the summer is the decision to then use up all the Raya money on Sam Gallagher. As I said earlier I quite like him and think he could be a decent signing but if he's used up all the cash in the pot I see it as lunacy. I imagine that Mowbray had put a lot of time and effort into the Gallagher deal perhaps even with a verbal agreement with the lad to come here this summer, so that's why we went back in and did that one having been keen on him in the last two windows. It seems the aim now is to rectify our defensive issues through wheeling and dealing in frees and loans. That's ok if you pick up quality but to do that you have to pay the wages and you have to strike quickly and decisively. The best ones get snapped up quickly by those who act decisively and pay the going rate. The botched Bauer pursuit was a worry. The time it is taking to sign a keeper or CB is a worry. The names we are being linked with are a worry. I can't see how we are going to get any improvement on our defensive issues of last season.

I think the logical interpretation is that there is no plan, we are at the stage now of scratching around to find people with the deadline only a couple of weeks away.

As per Assombalonga we were never going to get Forster or Hart, but the rumours were fun for the fans. Always going to be some bargain aisle solution as the window shuts.

Even more concerning then that we've allowed such substantial transfer funds to be tied up in two players unlikely to feature very much. I personally find it incomprehensible that having witnessed what we did last season, particularly from December through to March, that we are sat here 12 days before the season starts with a weaker defence than we had last season. I find it unacceptable that having sold Raya almost 3 weeks ago with a sale progressing well before that we're still waiting to address that area. I don't demand big money be spent and dont accept spending money is a risk to the club's future. That depends on how the owners intend to cover it. But I do expect whatever resources we have should be allocated to improve the team immediately and not on long term projects to try and sell on for a big profit down the line. There are two sides to FFp. Beyond cost cutting and balancing spending there is increasing income. Waggott's failed season ticket policy is a big problem and he appears to have made little progress on that front. I also don't accept that 'at least it isn't as bad as at Bolton or Bury' is a reason to be positive or grateful. The situation at Bury is very different to that at Rovers and whilst the Bolton one is more similar they are at the extreme end of the scale. Setting our stall on avoiding ending up in their state isn't going to get the club anywhere.

So you're happy or comfortable with the plan which last time saw us end up in League One?

Why did Waggott say we were within FFP parameters if there's now a risk and we'll have to sell Dack next summer to comply?

Other clubs do it differently. They might not commit to as large fees as we have with Brereton and Gallagher but when they sign a player they do so for that player to immediately improve their team, not as a 'project'. They might sell someone every 12 months to offset it but then reinvest. Last time we moved in a 3 season cycle. We spent good money and signed quality under Bowyer, let it grow and then slashed and burned in no time at all, refused to reinvest anything and ended up getting relegated. So we have done the selling part - bringing in more cash than most clubs will have done at this level - we just did it all at once with no ability to strengthen after it. You must be confident in Venkys if you don't think similar could happen next summer.