Our team: Anybody who is still here not on crutches We slaughtered them at Loftus Road with a line up paradoxically not that different from the players available for Saturday. They have had their post Ainsworth bounce and are back struggling again. A must not lose for us but realistically a great chance to start rebuilding league and home form. I almost expect Szmodics to move closer to a goal a game with this one...

Blast from the past. Liverpool apparently bidding for Tosin Aderobayo from Fulham.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/24084595.bolton-boss-provides-update-pursuit-blackburn-striker/ Bolton confirm they are chasing Ennis

One of Palace superstars must be on the move to a CL or big 6 club. If not Adam better spend some of his 50k a week on bench bum ointment.

So our two Academy gems sign for London clubs within 6 months of each other. As previously posted, the share of profit on sale should give us a decent chunk of 50 to 100 million in two or three years and selling him now means we can use 12m in the transfer market wisely with 2 days to deadline. 11m will inevitably be held back. If I were Venkys lawyers I would be using March not to plead the case for operational costs to be covered but to get the shackles removed. If the shackles are not removed, we really are in the land of wtf

The rumours shall I call them about what happened are hairy. Anderson and Huber ended up acting for the Trust desperate to find a buyer and Venkys. Double bubble fees. Venkys were apparently not their first choice. First choice informally failed fit and proper when name was bounced off the Premier League. Then it got extremely hairy unpicking that first choice... Talking of rumours, Sir Frank Lowey of Westfield and if that was the case the way he was "discouraged" was rumoured to be shall we say unethical.

Rothschilds acted for the Trust

6 to 7 weeks sadly. Add at least 4 weeks to that for Hayden Carter.

Aargh being confused for Nixon Ok back from my shower. If nobody at Rovers is showing common sense we will all need to take a shower.. Back into the public domain. Scott Wharton talking about two coming in and JDT answering transfer questions without saying "ask Gregg" suggests the club is pretty close to signings. As for a different comment about Jerry Yates scoring penalties for Blackpool, how many of our recent in game penalties have we missed?

From what I understand... Thursday is probably going to be manic. Multiple ins and outs currently in the pipeline - mostly loans. Gally will not get a new deal so we probably said goodbye tonight. Ipswich can go higher if they want to gamble on hanging onto 2nd place. I am saying manic because there are no done deals and a few chains of X happens if Y and/or Z which is why I am suggesting Thursday. So could easily be crazy behind the scenes with zero transactions completed come Friday morning. Two completely different scenarios in play depending if someone (Everton but particularly Newcastle looking at you) hits Venkys magic Adam number and I have no idea what it is today. The hearing in March is complicating mattees. The FA Cup draw gives Newcastle the added need for insurance against Adam dumping them out... The cash restrictions are really hurting our ability to take a risk and be first movers to break a chain...

Watched it on the feed for the US which TN puts into pubs in Malta. Commentary praising the academy but completely omitted JRC as an academy product. They sounded desperate to see Adam Wharton on the pitch... An amazing stat given how old both clubs are, that was the first ever Rovers Wrexham FA Cup game. Wrexham knocked top division Rovers out of the League Cup in its inaugural 1960 season in the only other cup tie between the two. JRC and Dolan weren't perfect but made a big difference. I thought a lot of things didn't come off for Szmodics tonight - he could easily have had 6 goals and that is not an exaggeration. Struggling to think of another player with quite the same mindset of being totally unaffected in performance by set backs during the game. He just keeps going and getting into positions to hurt opponents. Gallagher physicality completely ruffled their defence but familiar wrong decision in third minute when he didn't move for a tap in and lack of control 8n 15th minute passed it to the Wrexham full back when he would have scored if he had given himself of a second touch if his first touch hadn't been so heavy... The 5 minutes they were cutting through us were scary but otherwise we were very good and a pleasing watch. Sigurdsson and Moran frustrated at times and Garrett had a poor game by his recent standards. Stat appeared on scrén around 70th minute showing passes 500-200 in Rovers favour and completion % 93 -73. That was the gulf in class. Sure they could have freaked a win but we could more easily have Harrogated them. Looking forward to seeing us against Newcastle. Obviously odds favour them but expect JDT ( whom the commentary were lavashing praise on) will set us up well.

Tronstad's joy when the 4th went in was worth the two hours in the pub on its own. Very good performance and if those final balls come good we are going to murder a much better opposition than Wrexham. Pears has come back as a real keeper by the look 9f things so far. Ok a PL level keeper stops the Wrexham goal but Pears looks to have used his lay off to good effect.

Another home tie as reward for beating Wrexham. That must put a few onto the crowd to support us surely.

Appropriate name for Brum

Glad Saadi and Whitehall are finally on their way back and in the under 21 squad today.

Under 21s today: Hilton Duru Olson c Doherty Haddow Saadi O'Grady-Macken Weston Biniek Gilsenan Bloxham Subs Honor Whitehall Powell Stritch Nsangou I had thought Duru and Gilsenan might have been in the first team squad Great to see Saadi and Whitehall on their ways back.

I am certain JDT is 100% in the picture about what Broughton and his team are working on. If JDT is feeling excited, I am allowing myself a little twinge.

I had forgotten PNE and Wolves were in the old 4th Division.

I asked myself, what would I write if the club faced a crunching cash flow crisis in the first half of this year, the hearing in March was a wing and a prayer and we faced a bonfire of club assets in June? I came up with something pretty close to that club statement. The issue currently is less whether Venky's wish to continue pumping in 20 m each year than whether the Indian Courts will allow them to. If the Court allows Venky's to support Rovers financially to then we are back in a Catch 22. FFP and especially the new club revenue formula determining the cap on ownership injections will permanently cripple Rovers without crowds recovering to 20k+. The ill feeling caused by Venky's tolerating Anderson, Kean and other utter cretins wrecking the club mean there is not a cat in hell's chance of those crowds returning under Venky's ownership. And there is the wild card that for the next season or two, we will have promotion places from the Championship blocked by clubs relegated not because they were rubbish but because of points deductions (Everton and Forest?) or punitive relegation (City and Chelsea?)

Wrexham have been hit heavily once or twice in League 2 so Rovers could cruise it if we get our noses in front then make dominance pay. The longer this goes without Rovers scoring, the more dangerous this fixture becomes. I will be astonished if JDT doesn't put the strongest starting eleven he can on the pitch- what else have we to play for this season? The bench might have the likes of Finernan and Gilsenan on it.

Being very careful how I word this. When I met with Glen and the team in the House of Commons with MPs Nigel Evans, Jake Berry, Jack Straw and then Sports Minister Hugh Robertson, I floated the words "match fixing" and got a reply that I think shocked all of us. The amounts staked on the Asian betting markets and illegal betting in India make a 20m a year loss look like a rounding error. I am no money laundering expert but I cannot see how Rovers is being used for money laundering and the utterly clumsy way the Neville Mansion and Balaji Birthday Party got mis-categorised suggests to me money laundering is absolutely not what is happening here. As it happens, Declan Hill, with whom I was in contact when he was at Oxford University, posted this on his Linkedin yesterday: Declan HillDeclan Hill • Associate Professor of Investigations, Author, Journalist - University of New HavenAssociate Professor of Investigations, Author, Journalist - University of New Haven "In sport, corruption is normalized..." An honour and privilege to be interviewed by the superb French journalist Patricia Cerinsek on bribery, corruption and criminality in sports. She asked the fundamental question, "Why are so many athletes corrupting their sports?' Three main reasons: i. They are told to do so by their bosses. Il sistema/the system/cooperativa is alive and well in many sports leagues. To be a 'good professional' is to learn to lose as well as win. ii. They are not paid their salaries. Non-payment of salaries is a chronic problem. If a player has not received their money in six months, what do you expect them to do? iii. They are gambling addicts. There is a silent plague of addiction among athletes. Very few people speak about these reasons, they have been influenced by the leagues, the bookmakers and the bosses. They are taught to frame the debate as an issue of 'ethics' and 'individual choice'... just like the tobacco industry bewitched academics/the public for decades.

I cannot see the 26m figure for the HMRC debt being correct. Rovers make no profits so the debt will be 100% PAYE. We have a big payroll expenditure but we would have to be well into the third year of collecting PAYE and not sending it to HMRC for the accumulated debt to be 26m. Remember the HMRC debt up to October was represented to the Court in India as being cleared within the payment of 11.4m Venky's injection which the Court approved. That 11.4m did include a substantial disputed and very late payment to one or more agents so if that was being cleared down to zero, I cannot think for a moment the winding up-happy HMRC preferred creditor wasn't being settled in full. More evidence the figure of 26m is incorrect is the Rovers audited accounts to June 2022 would have had to be showing a very significant unexplained liability which, without looking them up again, I have no recollection of being the case. However, a 2.6m debt to HMRC as has been speculated on here would be completely in line with Rovers "managing" our cashflow and HMRC getting itchy and threatening winding up orders against the club again. With regards to Ian posting about Company Directors' personal exposure in these circumstances, the Rovers directors should have been closeted with their personal lawyers as soon as that delay in the Indian Court hearing came through this week. If they haven't, and having personally steered a company in perilous conditions after the parent companies of our two biggest customers went spectacularly bust within 6 weeks of each other, my free advice to the Rovers Directors is to call their lawyers now and start writing personal files documenting why the business is not trading illegally and updating why Rovers can continue trading with hard evidence every week.

There are and I have spoken to some of them but the Venky's are sufficiently wealthy and litigious to have frightened them all off/ had a word with the editor and got them re-assigned/ sacked.

Great- here's hoping for a really juicy tie which motivates the Blackburn public to get down to Ewood on Monday.

Adam Wharton is on a long contract so Rovers can play this long if we and the player want to. However, the Indian Court delay probably is forcing a short term cash flow crisis with no certainty the decision will go in Venky's favour- probably will but no bankable proposition. So do Rovers sweat it out to the summer when we might be forced into a sale by further delay in India gambling on Wharton staying fit and in form and there being competition to sign him to prevent a single PL club exploiting our vulnerability? A club like Palace could be the best place for him to go- he is more certain to get PL game time immediately and if he is as good as we all think he is, we could get two dips- the immediate 20m+ transfer and the 10% share of the 100m-20m profit Palace get when he is sold on to one of the Manc clubs. I am afraid to say it but Adam probably will be bidding his farewell against Wrexham. The only upside is Rovers will be seen not only as an Academy youngsters will be desperate to come to but also those we have will want to battle through into the first team to improve their chances.