Drogheda United chairman Conor Hoey has been left ‘very disappointed’ after James Brown’s move to Rovers came without the League of Ireland club receiving any compensation.

Rovers last week secured the signing of right back Brown, the 23-year-old making his debut in the Under-23s defeat to Manchester City.

Tony Mowbray was impressed by Brown who had a three-day trial at Rovers last month, prompting them to move for him on a permanent basis this month.

Mowbray expects Brown to feature predominantly for the Under-23s initially, though he did travel with the first-team squad for the FA Cup defeat at Wigan Athletic.

Drogheda had expected compensation as Brown looked to progress his career, with League of Ireland side St Patrick’s Athletic also linked, but a change to FIFA rules with regards to the age of which it would apply appears to have allowed the full back to move to Rovers for free.

Chairman Hoey accepts that Rovers have acted above board in the negotiations, but felt the club should have entitled to some financial reward.

He told the Irish Independent: “I am not happy with the Jimmy Brown situation and there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system when we’re entitled to compensation if a player goes to St Patrick’s Athletic, but not if he goes to Blackburn Rovers.

“I went to Blackburn and said that we’d been caught on the wrong side of a rule change and tried to get them to do a sell-on clause, but they just said they might come over and play a friendly against us and that’s not really going to make money for us.

“Look at the amount of investment we’ve put into Jimmy to help him to become the player he is.

“I was very disappointed because we have a lot of history with Blackburn. Gary Tallon, who played for Drogheda, went there in the 1990s and we had a game against them when Alan Shearer and Kenny Dalglish came over.

“But they are not breaking the law and it’s done now.

“It’s not Jimmy’s fault. He is a great lad and we wish him the best of luck.”