Big Blackburn Rovers concern issued amid double contract stand-off - "It happens every season" | OneFootball

Blackburn Rovers are finding competing the Championship a struggle, and FLW's Rovers pundit doesn't blame the players for this state of affairs.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

An impressive 3-1 Valentine's Day win at Queens Park Rangers notwithstanding, 2025-26 has been a difficult season for Blackburn Rovers.

The Lancashire outfit ran out of patience with head coach Valerien Ismael at the start of February, and have now replaced him with Northern Ireland boss Michael O'Neill, but they remain in 20th place in the Championship table, just three points above the relegation places.

It's all a far cry from last season, when they finished a highly creditable seventh place, just one position and two points short of a play-off spot.

Recent comments made by the club's Head of Football Operations, Rudy Gestede, though, have shone light on why the club have been unable to compete in the division this season, as they look destined to potentially lose some of their key assets in the summer.

"The club just cannot compete" - Gestede budget comments criticised

The Venky's have had issues at times in recent years transferring their funds across to the club due to sanctions placed by the Indian government, and it looks like they may be potentially being a bit more stringent on next season's budget, given the fact they are struggling to extend the contracts of some of their top assets.

Speaking at a Rovers fan forum, Gestede was reported by the Blackburn social media account RoversXtra to have said: "We have offered Todd Cantwell and Balazs Toth the highest wages we can in terms of our wage structure, but they are not interested.

"We simply cannot compete."

Hungarian goalkeeper Toth and playmaker Cantwell are both out of contract in the summer of 2027, and Football League World's Rovers fan pundit Simon Middlehurst is unsurprised about the director of football's comments.

"To be honest with you, it's nothing new. It happens every season, hence why we lost a lot of players last season," Simon told FLW.

"The club just cannot compete with other clubs in the Championship financially, and obviously players are looking to earn more money elsewhere.

"In some respects, you can't blame them. If you look at what's happened at Blackburn off the pitch as well, players are going to want a bit more stability in their workplace, and we're not getting that at Rovers with what's been going on, so you can't blame the players.

"Toth is more concerning. Todd Cantwell hasn't really done much this season. He's not really turned up when he's supposed to and he's the club captain and in some respects we've actually played better when he's not been there, so we'll just have to see what happens."

Todd Cantwell's form has been poor, but wages issue is a bigger concern for Blackburn Rovers

As can be seen from his recent match ratings, it's fair to say that Todd Cantwell has not been performing as Blackburn Rovers would have hoped. Capology estimates that Cantwell is on £30,000-a-week, which is double the wages of the club's second-highest earners.

In terms of performances, though, Cantwell is not unique in his underperformance among this season's Blackburn team. They've been struggling all season, with the team having spent several weeks in the relegation places.

But the issue of Blackburn's financial position is broader than just the two players mentioned by Rudy Gestede. Rovers have the 19th highest wage budget in the entire Championship, as per Capology's estimates, so they're performing roughly in line with what they're paying. If anything, last season was quite a dramatic over-performance from the team.

Part of the reason for Blackburn's struggles comes down to parachute payments. Clubs who've been in the Premier League in the last three years have an enormous financial advantage over those who haven't, and Rovers haven't played Premier League football since 2012.

This, though, doesn't fully explain their position. Blackburn isn't a particularly big town. The entire population of the Blackburn with Darwen area amounts to only just over 150,000 people, meaning that getting Ewood Park - which holds 31,367 people - much more than half-full for bread and butter league matches has been an issue for years.

The club's owners, Venky's, have been criticised by fans for years, with a state of uneasy detente between them and the Rovers faithful occasionally punctuated by protests against them. A boycott was called as recently as January 2026, and attendances have fallen as low as just over 10,000.

The irony of all this is that, even though they're not in receipt of parachute payments, Blackburn remain heavily reliant on broadcasting revenue.

The last available figures for this are for the 2023-24 season, and they show that Rovers made £9.5 million from broadcasting out of a total revenue of £21.4 million, although it should be added that the club declared a £3.3 million profit for that season, though this was heavily dependent on them reporting £23.7 million in player sales.

Relegation from the Championship would significantly affect the club, too. Championship clubs benefit from higher central payments via the EFL’s broadcasting deal, with solidarity payments from the Premier League also increasing. Dropping into League One would cost them millions of pounds.

All of this means that Blackburn can only really compete if they can raise large amounts of money through player sales or through the owners investing a large amount of money into the club.

The former happened a couple of years ago, and Rovers finished seventh last season. But the latter has not, and as such, the club will continue to struggle in the Championship unless they get very lucky with the players that they are able to bring in.

Todd Cantwell alone costs them a not-inconsiderable proportion of their annual revenue. Blackburn Rovers literally cannot afford to have him playing below par. With a year left to run on his contract at the end of this season, they may need to rethink whether he is a luxury that they can continue to afford.