Yeah, I fully understand the point you make, which is why I couched it to not say all. The Chair of the Trust was bigging up Gestede’s appointment, while speculating that he was a “strong candidate for our next CEO” (meaning club CEO, I assume, rather than… Trust CEO?) while not long after mentioning details of the Wharton transfer on Twitter (not - as far as I know - publicly known before that point). I do think - for whatever an online forum member’s opinion about a club’s fans forum matters - that you actually only really need to look at the outcomes to see if either of us is right or wrong. Supporter takeover days coordination is a positive. Asset of Community Value status for Ewood is a positive. In terms of actually engagement with the club - they really can’t get much done, on either side and come to the club’s defence more often than not. I concede that I could be entirely wrong and truly Steve Waggott, his exec team and the owners are truly performing miracles down at Ewood and Brockhall, with the owners’ finance in particular not to be looked in the mouth. But I don’t think I am wrong and I suspect you don’t think that either. So if it’s clear to you and I, why do both groups dodge it? I do think our main point of agreement is that both, but especially the Trust, want the board seat and will bide their time and basically swallow anything in that time to ensure it happens for them. Crucially “them.”

This is an incredible idea for a stag do…

We all knew Szmodics was going, from the Leeds post-match interview. Not a shred of negative sentiment from me, he’s a great advert for the football league and I hope he goes to the Premiership and has a great rest of his career. Heroic performances and return last year, which kept us up (almost single-handedly). In his own way, he’s a cult hero at Rovers now and for the future (as long as the only claret and blue we see him in is of West Ham). The reason people are losing it about him going is because we are 2.5 weeks away and are selling (again) our best player for (probably) a good fee while apparently having no pot to piss in even after it happens. We should really have been shelling out to replace him and strengthen the team and squad already and we both haven’t and are not going to. We’re losing it about this deal because we know what it means.

No doubt whoever we do hoodwink into joining us will need a few weeks to “bed in” so scant hope of that. Our opponents on the Friday opening night have added 6 new players already.

I could not tell you what the two teams were instructed to do today, if there was anything. 3 weeks yesterday to season start and it looks like we need another three after that to get ourselves together. Only upside is the away kit looks cracking. Best kitted team to get relegated from the Championship? (Got to find the positives somewhere).

You’ve just confirmed something that someone told me and I laughed aloud at (specifically that the Duncan Ferguson deal was “basically done” I didn’t know it was Broughton that had approval/changed course). Staggering that Duncan Ferguson nearly became our manager and I chuckled that no such madness could ever occur.

This is just about the only thing we have going for us and would explain where we are. They don’t want to put a penny more in until August is decided. So they’re likely to fully shaft us of further investment during a protracted sale process, meaning whoever comes in either ploughs in huge sums in January (if we’re lucky) to save the season or starts planning for League One. Waggott and Suhail shouldn’t be able to walk freely in or around Ewood.

I am increasingly thinking we’ve not got a new first team player in before the season starts. Vale and Gent returns are not counting towards that, neither is Travis. Unless I was a fan of the club, I’d be getting my agent onto any kind of move away. Some embarrassing results incoming if we lose Szmodics and don’t bring anyone in.

I seem to remember the wording in the previous adjournment was “final hearing” on 20th August. No idea what the consequences are of that being adjourned again, but why would that be the wording if there wasn’t a hard stop? FWIW, I hope the “hard stop” is the Venky joyride hitting a proverbial oak tree at 90mph. I think we get bought out of administration pretty quickly (although “out of the frying pan into the fire” comes to mind) but it’s a long road back.

This stuff is the pre-amble. Missing wage payments is usually the harbinger of administration or sale, so I imagine we should all be keeping our ears open for word of that, but frankly embarrassing that payment terms are being missed. Imagine being this fucking bad at running a business and having the cheek to take home your £25k/month as CEO.

Extremely interested to see how Langstaff does. Crazy goal rate but a huge step up.

I’ve quietly thought this was the exact case, based on what we’d heard, but it is especially confusing when local media and the club themselves are saying something different. Being objective, anything less than about a 75% chance of winning a case is probably too high of a risk to justify placing funds in a bond, anyway, but my understanding has always been that they essentially have not been able to and are - get ready for an old favourite - “saving face” in some fashion, by ensuring nobody knows that they are currently unable to directly fund the club themselves. The club is funding itself, by selling the silver and cutting costs and they’re continuing to pretend that it’s by their grace we are funded.

Watched that Parker press conference and the guy looked tired, jaded even. If I’m being honest, this is a guy who believes he’s at a level below where he believes he should be and his record basically says that’s not true. I think American private equity money and a bit-part England international is the kind of clash of egos that could lead to implosion. They won’t hold onto him for long, but I foresee an atrocious 3 months, a new manager and a race to recover playoffs. 50/50 they go up through the playoffs this year.

I mean, read the post again, I’m pointing out that it needs a Rovers fan with deep pockets to be comfortable spending as much of their own money as this club would need. At the end, I mention venture/PE investors. If they thought there’s enough in it to potentially turn a profit on a subsequent sale/exit, they’ll take a look at it. If venture/PE think they can spend £200m on something and eventually achieve a £2bn sale, they’ll very strongly consider it and you could make a case that football is on a constant upward trajectory to the point that this becomes a no-brainer (I don’t personally believe that). Brighton is probably (according to Forbes) worth £500m, Crystal Palace £650m and West Ham £800m. All currently having a much better existence but a big part of the difference is our owners and their stewardship of the club has been orders of magnitude worse than those clubs’. The probability of their management being beneficial enough as to achieve that exit is not as important a driver as you’d think in their considerations, they have capital from LPs that they have to deploy and they all believe they are excellent at their jobs. I don’t believe any of the above is likely to happen any time soon, but it’s worth saying that the world of finance at that level has a sufficiently batshit baseline risk tolerance to do it, so there are a lot of accountants out there who wouldn’t be doing much at all to advise you against it.

If I were a Rovers fan with deep enough pockets to sustain a period (4 years or so) of losses, on top of a lot of infrastructural/organisational capex, I’d be keeping my powder dry to the point of the club being in administration. Why give the owners a penny back of their investment when they’ve completely mismanaged it into that position? Why let them slip a non-disclosure/non-disparagement clause in there? You pick it up for buttons and use any cash earmarked for the sale itself investing in the club, while hopefully exposing/leaking exactly how mismanaged it was for all that time, instantly earning goodwill/buy-in from the fans. FWIW, if I were of the profile above, I’d also quietly make my way into the club via sponsorship, ingratiate myself to the executives and start to grease the wheels for a smoother eventual process. No idea how deep their pockets are, but in this day and age you’d be raising finance for a deal, anyway, from LPs or institutions. Even still, their brand footprint is basically non-existent, by the looks of it, in an already niche market (you’re looking at glorified TikTok shop people in this space) so unless they’re doing white label for much bigger or a lot of other brands, I don’t see where the capital is coming from, excepting borrowing/venture/PE

Is this the one who said all the fans will be buying NFT’s?

McBurnie has been released by Sheff Utd and while my optimism has been ground down over the years of shit transfer windows, that would be a hell of a signing in our current position.

Sincerely believe it’s the former. The guy came from relatively modest beginnings and achieved enormous success entirely off his own back, but you don’t build that kind of thing without a lot of heavy lifting from those around you. Key appointments for the initial success and infrastructure for legacy. You only have to look at Balaji’s litany of failed entertainment investments (and the fact that the parent group continues funding them) to understand the reason behind the company’s success. It’s not the sprogs. I haven’t done the full research on the family’s complete range of financial interests, but the VH Group parent company only does £400m/year top line and that just doesn’t look like enough to siphon from to run a football club to the tune of £20m/year. It’s been mentioned that most of their actual net worth is in land and property in Pune. When you consider that, you can even more clearly see who actually had the brains. Like many children of successful/wealthy people, they are very likely to be morons. Typically, there’s a lot of idiocy, insecurity, indecisiveness, arrogance or a mix of all four, but it’s extraordinarily rare to see the children of the successful/wealthy go out and improve their lot through genuine brilliance.

That’s a particularly telling statement, Mike. In what way is it not representative of the fanbase? And as a couple of follow-ups; what’s the ambition of that statement? Where do you think that kind of approach is going to get you/the trust you currently chair?

This is an entirely fair point, but there’s a lot more to sell than just the ownership. We’ve got history and positive community outreach. The brand association is a tough obstacle, but if you can position it in a way that there’s obvious commercial benefit, it’s possible. Sponsorship isn’t charity, there are huge potential upsides. We did donate the sponsorship to Prince’s Trust one year (from an aesthetic standpoint, that was an excellent sponsor), but as above, the point of the commercial department is coming up with the narrative that sells to consumers and partners alike. It’s been clear for a while that there’s no talent in that department, my observation is purely that actual talent in there would make things happen. CEO in a company is usually “Salesperson-in-Chief,” and while I imagine football oversight is also a part of the remit, it should be the first point of reference when assessing performance. It appears we only have a “Costcutter-in-Chief.”

Well, it’s right up there with the worst do commercial decisions not to have sussed this out and pitched for big stuff. Booths (E. H. Booth & Co.) did 20x the revenue of WR, with a bigger total bottom line than WR. With a growing reputation of “Waitrose of the North,” national distribution through Amazon Fresh and the opportunity to club in thousands of Rovers supporters at the ground, nationally and internationally, it’s a fairly easy sell to try and get someone like them on board for a significantly better fee. I’ve made this point before, they’d be an excellent sponsor and they’re just one of many within 30 miles of the stadium.

Well, I guess that’s Waggott’s wage covered. I suspect there was more cash out there for anyone with a bit of ambition. Thinking about it today, I considered that the Totally Wicked deal ending caught them out a bit as they began finalising the kit planning, leaving them little scope to go further afield. I’m at least happy it’s not some horrific betting or crypto firm, but just thinking about the firms in Lancashire alone that could have been pitched for it. Aiming as low as we do only hurts the chances of securing a good sponsor in the future.

Equally certain that Watson Ramsbottom are a good and competent firm of solicitors, but it does just go to show the total lack of imagination down at Ewood and I’ve been banging that drum for ages. I believe (having looked into sponsoring a non-league team ourselves this year) it’s common courtesy to offer a higher level of sponsorship to existing sponsors before seeking new sponsors, so that’s worth considering. Even still, League Two Barrow AFC have unveiled The Government of Newfoundland and Labrador (region in Canada) as new front-of-shirt sponsors. I saw a figure of £171k (oddly specific) written somewhere. I look at that, as well as recent filings at Companies House for WR and wonder how far above that are WR paying? £300k? Looking at a best-case, total marketing spend for a business like theirs would be around 10% of revenue (absolute maximum, really) of which, their biggest individual spend shouldn’t be more than 25%. Their total revenue in most recent filing is £12m, leading to £300k. Barrow were in the fifth tier 7 years ago and while they are clearly ambitious and upwardly mobile, what the fuck are commercial playing at not seeking the largest possible sum for the most prominent sponsorship opportunity?

Nailed-on relegation. Gestede was essentially interning last year, but he’ll have witnessed the backstabbing that Waggott is capable of and not bother pushing for anything. John Park - with respect to a man with as long and pedigreed of a career as he has; last year with a bigger budget than he will likely get here, his efforts brought about a squad that got relegated (although that Miyashi looks handy). Suspect he’s not exactly the hire you make if you’re thinking long-term, but it’s clear this administration aren’t doing that.

Same. He’s probably a good few years away from having everything at his disposal, but he’s got a lot of the natural physical attributes to suggest he will go to the top and displayed a lot of the “intangibles” at times. Obviously a kid still and being a centre back is as much about nous as anything else. Went too big, too quick, though. I suspect he gets another championship loan, then a lower premier league loan then moves permanently to a club “below” Spurs in the Sky Sports Pecking Order. A good career ahead for him, but feel his dickhead agent has put him on the back foot by forcing the move, as he’s likely to do again this summer with Ty Dolan.