He didn't walk out mid season I don't think. Their season ends in December and he walked out after 2 successive League titles. The fact he walked out of that successful scenario to then be out of work for 6 months for no apparent reason would be my main area of concern though.

Hence my refusal to believe JDT plus his own choice of assistant would be any form of downgrade. If it turns out I'm wrong, so be it.

I think he was out of work when we appointed him though.

We finished 8th with Venky's + Swag + a washed up disinterested manager + Venus + said underwhel.ing coaches though so I refuse to believe JDT plus an assistant if he brings one in will be any sort of downgrade on that. What will potentially kill us is losing six established first teamers plus Poveda but you would hope an improvement in the standard of coaching would offset that.

If it's correct, some easy money to be had on SkyBet at 4/6.

Is there such a thing?

I've made my views on this fairly clear already I think. I'd be fairly apoplectic at what I would regard as another "Mowbray Mark 2 appointment" such as Pardew or Adkins. JDT would be far from my first choice but is different enough to pique the interest slightly. As far as my view on the owners went I'd have to see how JDT did before passing comment, at this stage it neither improves nor worsens my view of them.

Agree entirely. They never really seem to have understood the importance of hiring the best manager they can possibly get, probably assuming it's a job anyone can do give or take so why pay over the odds? A completely false economy in the general scheme of things. This insistence on Lowe Johnson and Benson staying (if true) takes it to a whole new level. If Waggott had had anything about him he should have put his foot down from the off and told them we wouldn't get a top class candidate unless they were allowed to bring in their own staff.

Great post. My mate nagged/shamed me into getting my season ticket in the pub on Friday night. I was going to leave it and see who we appointed originally.

I would love for that to happen if only to see Gav's reaction.

I'm told he'd be amenable to an approach as well.

No Greg Coar has apparently just left to go to Wigan and is apparently being replaced by some guy coming in from Bournemouth.

Not hard to imagine what scuppered discussions at an early stage there - Lowe, Johnson and Benson.

And you won't take on board my point that the owners were probably sold a pup by Waggott initially but if we accept that "He can only do anything with the owners permission" it is most likely that it was they who nipped it in the bud.

Do you not think they were sold a shiny new vision of something that couldnt actually be done in practice though? If it was what the owners wanted why do you think it was scrapped when it was? Would have been nothing stopping it getting to the latter stages of the process at least.

That's the worry. Won't feel secure on that front until Waggott has gone.

Big assumption there on the strength of one interview that Broughton will automatically be a huge success and is the man to transform our fortunes and will only be thwarted by machiavellian owners. He might be a success but could just as easily turn out to be a liability as an asset. Still doesn't do any harm to get your feet under the table ASAP with whoever is in Authority at Ewood at any given time does it?

Fair point.

Great post overall, but you seem to have an unbelievably rosy view of Steve Waggott. I don't know what his secret is, but he seems to have this remarkable knack of convincincing people who have met him in person that he is an all round good egg who has the interests of the Club at heart. I'm simply not having it. The crap food is symptomatic of his apparent penny pinching attitude but is a relatively minor issue. It's under his stewardship that affordable seating was scrapped. It's under his stewardship that prices were raised by up to 25% during a pandemic for a season where no-one could attend. It was him that was involved in Coventry City's attempt to flog their training ground when he was there. You can't put any blame on our owners for that. Therefore it defies logic to think that it wasn't him that was the driving force behind a similar attempt here and indeed he openly admitted that he was the one driving the idea. The scheme here was based on the fraudulent premise that a Category One Academy could be housed in a facility and on a site half the size of the existing ones. I wonder how much he cost the Club with the aborted scheme once a few inconvenient home truths were brought to light? Prices continue to rise, every pricing initiative that comes out of the Club is a near disaster and remedial steps to mitigate the damage are only taken once people like those silly posh QEGS lads running round in their rolled up trousers with their secret handshakes, or yourselves on the Trust, take them to task. Why can't anyone at the Club get something right first time round for once? He had essentially one job to do this season just gone - get Lenihan, Nyambe and Rothwell signed up to new contracts. 100% failure rate in that respect seemingly. The managerial search has been an absolute embarrassment and seems to have been designed to put off any better candidates. With the benefit of hindsight it would obviously have been far better to replace Waggott before Mowbray and have someone vaguely competent conducting the search. In summary, everything he has touched since he's been at the Club has been a disaster. But it's OK it seems because it appears he's extremely attentive and wants to help. (But never does.)

The bookies odds (I know I know) seem to find it reasonably hard to separate JDT and Deila (who seemingly is off to Standard Liege so for what it's worth, they must not regard JDT as anything approaching a certainty yet. What puzzles me about JDT is why he left Malmo after two successful title winning years and has subsequently been out of work for 6 months. Does anyone know the circumstances of him leaving? Was the break orchestrated by the Club or him? If the latter, did he have a better job lined up which never materialised or did he just fancy a break from football?

BIt the bullet and renewed ahead of the initial deadline about 13.30 today. Was originally going to wait and make sure we didn't make a Pardew style appointment but a fool and their money are easily parted eh? Was expecting there to be a sizeable queue but we were the only people in the shop which I thought was a very bad sign given it was deadline day and the shop was only open until 3p.m. I asked a lad in the ticket office who's been there a long time how sales had been going and he attempted to put a brave face on it by saying he wasn't told numbers but he "thought" levels were roughly the same as at the comparable stage last year.

Never mind "reading between the lines" you seem to be having difficulty comprehending what I posted in black and white. Would JDT have been my first choice? Of course not. I'd have been (very) happy with Dyche or Farke. But at least if it is JDT I would still regard that as a vast improvement on a "Mowbray Mark 2" appointment like Pardew or Adkins. And I would be prepared to give JDT a chance to show us what he can do unlike you who seem to be dismissing him out of hand before he even gets here. Has the recruitment process been a shambles? Of course it has. But that imo is what you get when you leave Waggott in charge of anything.

That post may come back to haunt you if we did appoint JDT and he turns out to be decent. Don't know anything about him myself but on the face of it his CV is far better than Mowbray's so it seems very premature yo be dismissing him out of hand before he even gets here. Not sure if you're being serious with this post or are in your usual wind up mode, but once again it seems extremely odd that you never complained about a manager who struggled here for years and who finished the second half of the season in relegation form but would dismiss out of hand the claims of someone who won the Championship of the Country he was managing in for the last two seasons.

The main advantage to the appointment of Broughton in my book is that someone like Pardew would have such an inflated opinion of themselves they probably wouldn't be prepared to work under and defer to a DOF. Unfortunately the converse probably applies in respect of a genuinely good candidate. Between that and the apparent requirement to work with Lowe, Benson and Johnson rather than staff of their own choice and I really can't see a decent appointment being forthcoming.

Broughton MIGHT be very successful. However imo the reason we haven't been very successful over the last 4 years isn't because we haven't had a DOF - it's because we've had a shite manager and even worse CEO. If we had an absolutely superb manager and Waggott I think we could still just about be successful. If we land another shite head coach or manager then I doubt very much the outcome will be any different to the last 4 years, regardless of Broughton's abilities.