JHRover

Your optimism is admirable. Bauer has picked them over Rovers because he might have played with someone who previously played under Neil who gave Neil a glowing reference so he joins Preston? So nothing to do with financial details, contracts, us chasing him for more than a year, our club being well known as a shambles of an outfit usually at least a month behind rivals in most aspects. I know which version I believe and what I think is the most likely run of events here. Of course we could come out of it ok if we go and get someone better, we could also end up in a mess given the time invested into this failed signing and Mowbray's fussiness over new signings. Telegraph at work protecting Rovers position saying Preston could guarantee him starts. Who apart from the world class players can expect guaranteed starts?

Time will tell what happens next. We land a Hanley etc. soon and most people will quickly forget about Patrick Bauer. I don't expect that will happen though. Bauer clearly a long term target that we've failed to get over the line. Either because PNE are seen as better in some shape or form (manager wise, admin wise, financially), or we've moved on to other targets, or we simply haven't a clue what we're doing as we're 4 weeks behind clubs like Preston thanks to the India trip. Either way it doesn't inspire much confidence. Mowbray spent all last summer preaching patience and the long game talking about high calibre targets. We ended up paying 10 million for Brereton and to bring Armstrong back. Hope he's got a better couple of tricks up his sleeve.

I'd say it's pretty poor all round if we're still after Bauer now into our 3rd window (at least) of trying to get him. After all he's spent all of that time playing for a League One side on poor wages. This the same Charlton that nearly lost their promotion winning manager through a refusal to pay him the going rate.

This seems to be something done by their owner. He heard Marseille were going to be in the area that week as they are training at St Georges Park so he got in touch with Marseille himself and asked if they'd be willing to play Stanley. The fact that Stanley's ground isn't going to be ready isn't a problem as they're hiring Salford's stadium instead. The team Marseille are putting out is immaterial. It's a showpiece fixture for Stanley and a good way to increase their profile. I wonder what attempts our owners or executive staff have made to set friendlies up against high profile opposition in an attempt to expand our profile?

No chance of Hanley at this early stage. IF we bring him in it will be late on in the window once we've haggled and Norwich have weighed up their options. It will be Bunn or Fielding, if its anyone.

Presumably then there will be a compensation mechanism in the contract that covers loss of merchandise sales during June and July. Why should other clubs get a 4 week head start on sales over us when produced by the same company just to enable them to stagger their promotional material. I have to say Rovers seem to have a very relaxed attitude about this particularly for a club and owners so keen to balance their books and boost income. 'We have to do what Umbro tell us' won't help with FFP calculations or reducing Venky spending. Taking control of the situation, getting better kit on sale early rather than last minute and changing providers if Umbro won't play ball is the solution if increasing revenue is the aim.

Mowbray also claims that Middlesbrough and Stoke are huge clubs and that Bristol City sell out their stadium every week. He's got form for grossly exaggerating things. Whether Bauer wants 50k a week or not he isn't going to get it.

How many of those clubs require their manager and executive staff to fly to the other side of the world before they can find out what the ambition is and what, if any, budget there is going to be

He probably will see them as a better option if they are making him a serious concrete offer of a deal right away whilst we prevaricate, delay, await approval and wait for staff to return from India or wherever. Any real deal is better than a hypothetical future deal. Why wait for us to get round to it when others will want answers now?

Charlton have announced that Lee Bowyer is set to leave after failing to agree a new deal. They've also said that whilst they try to complete a sale they won't appoint a new manager. A remarkable statement on their website. At least that's one club in chaos.

Or we are playing catch up. Whilst Mowbray and Waggott are out in Pune waiting for their audience to try and persuade the owners to cough up some money Preston and most other clubs have already got all that sorted and are on with contacting available players and negotiating terms. If he's a 'greedy so and so' then how come it sounds like he's going to Preston? They don't pay big wages and also lose a lot less a year than we do. So if he's going there over than here for financial reasons something is amiss somewhere.

Brentford and Hull won't sell as many as us and Derby won't sell many more in the scheme of things. Brentford have only just gone to Umbro after being Adidas for a number of years so I'm struggling to understand or accept that they should be ahead of us. Fair enough we're down the pecking order from the top clubs and yes even the likes of West Ham these days but we're now behind fellow Championship sides. Probably not something that concerns or interests most people including those employed by Rovers but we keep hearing about low income and revenue yet we are missing out on a lucrative summer sales window by being at the back of the queue, as we are almost every summer.

I wonder what work Rovers put into determining what kit manufacturer to use. I say that because for the last 10-15 years we've been stuck with Umbro (apart from a couple of seasons with Nike but that was because Nike took over the Umbro contracts). The pricing and range of clothing is appalling. I like wearing Rovers tops/jumpers but on principle I will not pay 40 quid for a nylon t shirt. I'd be interested in discovering whether anyone at Rovers assesses the range Umbro provide and consider going elsewhere to Adidas, Macron, Kappa etc. Who all appear to offer superior selection and pricing. As it is it seems to be a case of 'this is where we are' and we just take whatever Umbro send our way. Easier that way.

Does anyone know why Umbro manufactured clubs like Hull and Brentford are unveiling/releasing their new shirts in early June and we are a month behind them?

Charlton have signed someone from Orient this morning. Haven't a clue who he is or how good he is but interesting that they're able to do business already just 3 weeks after winning promotion with their manager out of contract yet we're 3 months on from securing our status and nothing happening.

Stoke will have known their budget and will have been working on that basis since March knowing what league they were going to be in with their manager wanting to make changes ahead of next season. Our manager didn't even know the owners intentions, let alone budget, until he flew around the world a couple of weeks ago since when he's been on holiday. Not rocket science is it?

My point of course was that we've heard about wages being prohibitive before and people said the same about Armstrong last summer. Newcastle don't pay massive wages which is one of the reasons their fans aren't happy. I've no idea what Hanley was on at Newcastle but I'm very confident that Norwich won't be paying him huge bucks. Just an easy excuse at Rovers to moan about wages. Remember Bowyer moaned about being restricted to only 10k a week wages which was more than Rowett had to work with at Birmingham.

People spent all last summer saying that we wouldn't land Armstrong because he was on big money at Newcastle and we couldn't afford him. Then he arrived, either because we could afford him, he wasnt on as much as everyone expected at Newcastle or he was willing to come down to enable the move to happen. Newcastle don't pay mega money under Mike Ashley so whilst Hanley likely got a raise by going there I wouldn't expect it to have been that much. Ashley runs a tight ship and having just got relegated he wouldn't allow silly money on a Championship CB.

I said at the start of the summer that Hanley would be high on my shopping list and if we kept Lenihan I'd be quite pleased with the defence. Nixon's theory of bringing in Hanley on loan and selling Lenihan is likely guesswork but exactly the sort of short term stunt we'd pull off to raise cash whilst keeping fans onside by bringing in a relatively popular academy graduate. Just hope he's over that knee injury he had before transferring to Newcastle....which leg was it on again?

It's Sunday morning so Nixon has to put something on his twitter account to try and entice people to go to the shop and buy whichever rag he's putting his stories in these days. Notice his 'stories' always appear early Sunday morning just in time for people to nip to the shops.

Think the West Ham and Hull shirts are smart and a nod to shirts from the 80s or 90s. Will be interesting to see if we do similar. Doesn't stack up with rumours of dark blue though.

Isn't that John Buckley on the right too?

Brentford are on a different planet to us recruitment wise and to be fair compared to most clubs they are very good at what they do. We can forget emulating them any time soon. They've sold God knows how many players for all sorts of money and have repeatedly bounced back from it.

For what it's worth I don't think Mowbray would deliberately set out to mislead fans. Unfortunately working for this mob puts him in a difficult position and I've no doubts the goalposts continually move in India and their promises often don't materialise. It's been that way since day one. Promises galore but what actually happens is some way short of that.

Well this is window number 3 since promotion and number 5 since Mowbray took over. Mowbray spent last summer telling everyone that it was a long term build and would take a number of windows and that the owners had bought into his vision. I'd like to know how many more windows are required as part of that project and whether the plan has changed.