IMO the players have got used to working for two pretty good managers. Eustace knew how to make a team solid and was an excellent man manager. JDT genuinely knew how to improve the players as footballers and to get an effective high press. What is Ismael good at? Well we can't see yet, that's for sure. What is Ismael trying to do with the team and the style of play? Well I haven't got a clue, the players don't seem to have a clue, does anybody watching have a clue? I hope I'm wrong, but I got a bad feeling about this. When I saw the team sheet, with Forshaw and a back three, like literally thousands of other Rovers fans I knew only one thing, that we were almost certain to lose. Gregg the Egg wasn't popular on here, but as I said at the time, at least he had a fucking plan. The club got away with changing the style of play when Eustace was appointed, because they got lucky and appointed a guy who knew what he was doing. I have such negative feelings towards Waggott and Pasha, almost more than I have for the owners. Desperately unimaginative leeches. Ismael doesn't appear to be a motivator, he doesn't appear to be a good man manager (he seems quite cold and quite odd), he doesn't appear to be a tactician, his assistant looks like a vampire and I am starting to wonder if he is, indeed, essentially just a long ball merchant as people have suggested. I wonder if even he understands why he was appointed.

I’ve supported England in several pubs in Scotland over the years. Stay proud of who you are and where you’re from, but remain humble and respectful. For the vast majority of humans, the world over, if you show respect you will gain respect back. Like when opposition supporters come on here to genuinely engage in debate and friendly banter. It makes the board a better read and we all welcome people with different allegiances. I believe my family roots come from the Norwich area, several generations back. I like to think it’s one of the better and friendlier parts of Southern Englandshire.

It is possible you may be right, but I remember GB also spouting (before JDT left) that the style of football should not change from manager to manager. That it should be a seam-less transition with all the youth teams playing the same way and any new manager buying in to this whole club footballing philosophy. We saw this with JDT ball and the easy way youth players fitted in to the first team (playing high press, high energy, quality passing, easy on the eye, lovely football, but still getting totally hammered). Eustace was a change in football philosophy - kids were no longer trusted in the same way (although JDT was also desperate to be able to stop trusting the kids so much) and the football was a lot less about entertainment and (perhaps debatable) resale value/ player development. Eustace's regime was about pragmatism, being tough to beat, gaining points and getting up the table. The youth team and the resale value/player development philosophy were apparently abandoned. GB left shortly afterwards. I believe the circumstantial evidence clearly points to GB picking JDT and Waggot picking Eustace. I hate Waggot. I think he's a total prick (indifferent to GB, btw). However, I certainly don't think Pasha chose Eustace, so it must have been a lucky pick from Swag. Perhaps Waggot was prepared for that one because he had been dreaming of being rid of his nemesis, JDT, for such a long, long time. One thing I will absolutely credit GB for though. He knew what a player contract was and he knew they were kind of important!

Absolutely, becoming self-sufficient, without making a significant profit by selling on players who’ve signed decent length contracts, involves us playing in League 1 or 2. There’s a lot of negativity on this board, at times, for Greg the Egg. However, he at least seemed to understand that player contracts are kind of an important part of running a football club. We could just about be self-sufficient at the top end of the championship (certainly in the PL), but not with Pashwag running the show. It would require talent, creativity, instinct and long term strategic planning.

OK, fair enough, apologies if I misrepresented what you were saying. Perhaps you’re right and they are expecting us to become self-sufficient. We’re going to need to make £10-£20 million profit on player sales, on average, every year. Step one towards that goal would be putting your existing players on long term contracts. Hmmmm! Step two towards that goal would be appointing some very competent, experienced, knowledgable and imaginative people to run the club. Hmmmm! I propose a different scenario - perhaps - as a collective entity - the four of them have absolutely no plan and no clue, whatsoever, about anything, and indeed any random chaos or mess could be just around the corner at anytime. As, indeed, appears to have been the case since day one of their ownership. No pattern, no plan, no intricate scheme, no tax avoidance conspiracy nonsense, just total and utter random mess!

In the fairytale scenario that we did get to play offs & promoted I honestly don’t see any increased budget over the summer. Waggot/Pasha/Raos/Desais are too dysfunctional to decide any budget before the last week of the window. We’d be starting the season, against PL teams, with Hedges and Pickering down the left. It wouldn’t be pretty. They can’t even agree on whether we have a Director of Football. They wouldn’t know where to start spending £100 million on PL footballers.

I hope you’re right about Venkys planning to exit in summer. However, I don’t see how not signing players up to new contracts is a sign of them planning to leave. If you were planning on selling the club, then squad value (a saleable asset) is increased by the players being on longer contracts. I think it’s just evidence of them being completely and utterly useless and incompetent at almost every aspect of running a football club. Perhaps it is caused by a desire to have total control (all spending to be authorised in India), combined with the contradictory reality that they actually don’t give enough of a shit to exert any meaningful control at all (other than appointing a total random employee - Pasha - to run the club as a dictatorship). As I keep saying, it’s also evidence of a divided family, where one/some of the four owners want to retain ownership and one/some of the four owners don’t want to sell. Neither side giving in. One/some can’t force a sale and one/some can’t force any spending. We are caught in a nightmare scenario and it’s been going on a long, long time.

Thanks for this. Corruption and deceitful business dealings are easily possible for these thoroughly dishonourable and totally dysfunctional family. However, I agree completely that it does not actually make it the most likely explanation for the decade long limbo we find ourselves in. The most likely explanation for the current situation at the club, IMO, remains the same as it has been since Paul Lambert was sold a pack of false promises to take over the club. That is - Mr & Mrs D probably want to sell, but the Fat One constantly vetoes this decision. The Fat One would probably like to spend/borrow a little, when he occasionally remembers about us, but his sister and brother in law constantly veto these decisions. Hence we are stuck in perpetual purgatory. Unreliable promises for £ and commitment come from the Fat One, refusal for £ to ever be spent, and instructions for sabotage, come from the D’s. (The other one I doubt remembers his own name, let alone ours). We’re caught in a sibling feud, I think, both sides too stubborn to give in. Neither side interested enough to make a killer move. I suspect SP (and thus SW too) see the D’s as the real bosses and probably try to humour and occasionally pretend to respond to the Fat One whilst knowing full well they take their real orders from the D’s. Pashwag (SP & SW) realise that to maintain their own positions they have to prevent managers having direct access to the family. Hence, post-Mowbray, JDT & JE have been kept well away from them. The instruction from the D’s to Pashwag may well be, as a priority, don’t let the coaches get access to the Fat One. Getting rid of Pashwag won’t change anything, but still, it would be fun to see them fall. We also shouldn’t talk of the owners as a single entity, they are a divided camp with different intentions. Our dysfunctionality as club merely reflects our owner’s dysfunctionality as a family.

Will BRFCS be eligible for compensation?

Thanks and appreciated. Personally, it makes me less likely to subscribe though. I wouldn’t give the man 1p a month of my cash - even though I accept he knows more about comings and goings than lots of other journalists. Maybe I am just stubborn. Thanks for being so open and transparent about it though. I wish Jeff Bezos was so open about what is going on at the Washington Post!

Thanks so much to yourself and the rest of the team for all the work you do on the site. It is hugely appreciated. Just one quick question though, please. Why does Alan Nixon get articles published on this site? All of us with memories remember the stance he took against us when we had a nameless charlatan as manager and another nameless entity ‘sleeping’ at the club. His presence disturbs me. I am all for forgiveness, I don’t wish him any harm, but I am absolutely not for forgetting. I just wonder what he’s doing here. Thank you.

Somebody might be on the way out then … …

That would explain a hell of a lot!

No Commentary up here either. Pay a subscription, ten minutes in and all we can hear is crowd noise. Amateurs!

Eustace clearly has more about him away from a microphone. In front of one, it seems to me, that his objective is to say very, very little at all and to just get through the minutes without revealing anything. I really struggle to pay attention to him speaking in interviews, he comes across, imo, as someone making white noise. He can not be like this in the dressing room or he wouldn’t have the players on board - largely (Siggy, Buckley and maybe JRC aside) - in the way he does and he wouldn’t have this side so well drilled if he was that dull all the time. Perhaps in a similar way, I used to think Kenny was deliberately indecipherable in front of a microphone. I don’t think he cared for being interviewed and that was his way of getting his own back on having to do all that bollocks. I will always love JDT for being so open about what an absolute tool Waggot was to work with. However, Eustace is cautious, pragmatic, professional and experienced in seemingly everything he does. Fair play to him for that. I’m not convinced he’s staying, not convinced he’s committed to working with these clowns and ultimately, if he goes, that is as damming on the Waggot/Pasha regime as any of JDT’s brutal honesty. I just hope WBA do not see sense and that we can get a chance at a top six finish and some end of season excitement/inevitable heartbreak before we have to roll the dice again.