He won player of the year too in 93-94 above Shearer, who was banging them in weekly. Batty was an exceptional player. I'd have him in before Sherwood any day. I'll go with a formation fit for 2025; Friedel Salgado Nelsen Henchoz Le Saux Batty Tugay Warhurst Bellamy Shearer Duff I have Warhurst in there as he'd have been an England regular without injuries. He had it all. Proof of that was him being signed by Sheff Wednesday from Oldham as a central defender, they stuck him up front in a pinch and he scored goal after goal. Rovers signed him and he played central midfield like he'd always played there.

They are simply not interested in fan involvement with initiatives...its either our way or the highway is the mantra. Its just horrible the way we are being run,just horrible.

State of the squad as it stands then: Toth Pears Brittain Hyam Carter Ribeiro Alebiousu Wharton McLoughlin Pickering Trav Tron tavares buckley Forshaw Hedges Cantwell Kargbo Tyjon De Neve Yuki Gueye Not sure Ive missed anyone off? Do we need anymore cms (unless we sell one)? seems a winger and cb and a 10 are most needed, especially with carters injury woes and wharton being out for ages. 2 signings of actual quality weve heard of would be nice, but not a chance in hell that will happen. I imagine we will be using the kids when needed as they want those extra minutes being ticked off... I also expect 1 or 2 on loan. Id be amazed if 3 more aren't signed by end of September. With our injury records it needs at least 3 at least. Scary looking at it on paper, where are those goals coming from...

Can't wait for this exciting summer to start...

Andy Brassell was saying on Talksport on Sunday that there were rumours of Spurs interest in Wharton but Palace didn't want to sell and they would demand £80 -£90m for him which would rule it out. He thought if he had another great season then the really big boys would be back in for him in 12 months at that sort of level. But £18m was a great price of course.

Where's Tyson Furey when you need him? He's always banging on endlessly about his home town of Morecambe etc. Be chump change for him to keep them going for a bit until alternative arrangements could be made.

Ipswich apparently signing Hackney from Boro for over £20M. Which you would imagine will leave Boro with the funds to buy Brittain On a side note, how is an inferior player, moving to a Championship club for more than Wharton moved to Palace? Are some still trying to claim that we got a good deal?

Jesus christ, Forshaw played in 16 games for us last season? No wonder we didn't get over the line.

As far as I’m aware the EFL can’t force anyone to sell a club (as you said earlier they’re privately owned businesses). What they can do is say if the club isn’t sold it will be expelled from the league. I appreciate this could be viewed as one and the same thing as the owner would usually sell to protect any remaining monetary value the club has. I say usually as I could see our muppet owners saying ‘fine, we’ll keep the club and go non-league then’. I forgot to add to my last post, I hope the lads you referred to (and their colleagues) get the money owed to them and find new club’s to fulfill their ambitions.

Sadly our ‘mobsters’ do not support Rovers - they support a close rival although I cannot and will not claim that is their reason for keeping away from Chorley and South Ribble both with villages on the BwD border.

I agree. I wouldn't rule out that they're waiting for the Baradji deal to be settled so they have an idea of what's left in the budget. If they can't get him at a price they're ok with they might end up going for a pricier or cheaper alternative. Probably the latter knowing this lot.

100 %. Especially the last bit. Edit: Im not even convinced by this Baradji saga but it creates the illusion we're doing something I suppose. Might be proved wrong when he rocks up here.

Try asking what the ST marketing budget is…..they don’t have one!! Everything is based on the existing database (which had to be cleansed as it was not DP compliant). They will not do any printed material or leaflets due to the cost and the “green” agenda. We explained the massive new estates being built around Blackburn (Green Hill area and more) and the need to leaflet them; we even offered to help with the leafleting. I will let you guess at the response*. *It was SFA

Shows how absolutely clueless they are. I’ve pretty much always lived in BB postcodes, but none of those the ones I’ve lived in, are in BWD 😅.

They sound like rival mobsters trying to protect their own patch of turf. Not legitimate business people. You should be allowed to operate wherever you want and may the best man win. Im guessing these reciprocal arrangements don't apply to Liverpool/City/Man Ure/Everton etc?

So far it's a window of cheap, under delivering and zero ambition. They are working within a barely "Championship" budget and planting leaks to players we have no intention of spending the fee required. Venky's Out, Pasha Out! It won't change until they are gone.

I'd argue financial fair play rulings (which I don't agree with in their current form) are slightly different to a membership body stepping in and ordering someone to sell a club, sell it at a loss or who to sell it to.

A close relative of mine worked for the Community Trust several years ago and he was working to the same policy. I say several years ago we are probably talking 10+ years ago, which is a long time in football to totally neglect and ignore a huge swathe of your support base.

All correct but the club have invented a rule that tells them they cannot market Rovers in Hyndburn or South Ribble because those areas 'belong' to Accy Stanley and Preston, and we wouldn't want to go upsetting people would we? We won't even look for sponsors outside of BwD judging by Watson Ramsbottom and Totally Wicked. Totally small time, lazy, yet bizarrely the 'local' obsession is taken by some as a badge of honour or something to be proud of. A conscious decision to save themselves time and effort but ultimately spread across many years, combined with decline and demographic change in Blackburn, WILL be a hugely damaging, potentially fatal move for BRFC.

Great post. Its there in black and white. We have also heard Gestede and Ismael mention 6 or 7 signings prior to knowing that Weimann and Batth were to leave, seemingly before Dolan was even confirmed to leave. There have also been interviews mentioning an "exciting" summer, that it was going to be more of an overhaul than we anticipated and repeated mentions of wanting some new attacking players with pace and power. This is why I dont get why people are downplaying the amount of players that we need. If we dont end up with another forward, or we do only sign a couple more. Im not going to have that it was a conscious decision not dictated to by finances.

…..but true.

Exactly so.

Absolutely unbelievable.

I should have added that when we challenged the club on the postcodes of those with ST’s they came up with a high figure for BB postcodes and said they were from BwD until we explained many of those with BB postcodes lived outside of BwD. The corrected figures shared with us showed approximately 50% of ST holders were outside of BwD.

Surely there's a duty of care to the supporters? Surely there's an SLA on these things.