JHRover

I asked the question about the relevance of playing Old Etonians on Twitter. The only sensible response I got was: That they were our opponents in our very first FA Cup final in 1881-82 which was the first to feature a team that is still (for now) surviving as a Football League side (Rovers) and the last time the Cup was won by one of the Southern amateur teams. I'm still not much further along in understanding why any of this is relevant for us celebrating our 150th anniversary. Interesting stuff for FA Cup historians and might be more relevant had we won the trophy that year to become the first non-southern amateur club to win the Cup but we weren't, we lost, so probably a fixture I would expect to see the Old Etonians arranging for their 150th anniversary not the other way around.

The other issue with this is logistics. When the Derby game hits full time you can bet on it taking a good 15 minutes for the pitch to clear, all the staff to get out of the way, media/Sky gang out. Then all the Rovers and Derby players will need their post-match discussion, shower and change before leaving the stadium. Are they going to be doing all that whilst there's another game taking place outside? Where are the 'legends' and Old Etonians going to change? They won't be able to use the home or away dressing rooms until probably an hour after full time so are they going to be stuck in a cupboard or spare room somewhere? Access the pitch from round the back of the Riverside as the tunnel is off limits? Pretty sure there are rules in place with the EFL regarding who can access the tunnel area before/during/after a game and time limits for that so that could easily cause a problem All the while they are expecting good numbers of fans to sit in their seats and wait... I say these things because I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if nobody down there has even considered these issues and just thinks there will be 22 kitted out players stood waiting in the tunnel to run onto the pitch and kick off at full time.

Whatever we did or didn't spend how about we ask ourselves why, after spending 'so much', have we deteriorated so much? Eustace and JDT both had us competing in and around the play offs without spending much. Now after a 'big spend' as you seem to consider it we've dropped into a side that looks nailed on for best case a long struggle against relegation. Why? Maybe reported transfer fees is only a very small component of this particularly when selling proven quality for more and slashing wages into League One levels.

Last season we were in the top 6 all the way through and fell away to finish 7th. Derby County, who were in administration a few years ago and League One as recently as 2024, who took our manager, captain and other players off us, and who survived in this league by the finest of margins last season. Now we are supposed to be feeling smug that they are struggling and 'only' a point above us?

Ok. So how about Wrexham, Birmingham, Forest, Wolves, West Brom, Leicester, Norwich, Ipswich, QPR, Portsmouth, Cardiff, Swansea, Sheff Wed, Sheff Utd, Barnsley, Huddersfield, Reading, Watford or Charlton All taken over by 'foreign money' in recent years none of whom were in the Premier League at the time

Agree save for the last part. In the last 5-10 years people have bought all manner of clubs in all sorts of divisions. In the North West all of B*rnley, Bolton, Wigan, Stockport ,Salford, Everton, Blackpool, Wrexham have been taken over by wealthy people wanting to invest in football and only one of those is bigger than Rovers.

The likes of Stoke and Preston aren't that good, they're just doing what we did last season - got off to a good start by virtue of having a united setup, good organisation, being hard to beat and carrying momentum. We did everything we possibly could as a club to stop and derail that - making the manager's position untenable, failing to strengthen in January, running out of steam, appointing a mediocre (if being kind) manager to pick up the job from February onwards. I can guarantee Preston and Stoke will at least try to stay in the top 6.

Come full time at 2:30pm there's a pretty strong chance we will have seen Rovers get beat by a Derby team containing our former management team, captain, and 3-4 other players. Unless something changes quickly we will be in or around the bottom 3 of the Championship. Odds are the weather will be crap as well. How many of the 8000 Rovers fans are going to hang around in those conditions potentially watching Derby fans/players/staff celebrate and gloat whilst Rovers get ready to play this 'legends' match afterwards? Not many at all I'd wager. It's hard enough getting people to stay in their seats for the 'lap of appreciation' after the final home game when we've lost never mind watch another match.

I'd suggest maybe Lambert a bit like Eustace albeit less effective in that he wanted results first and wasn't brought in and didn't have any intentions of all the above stuff. But yeah other than that whether it be Kean, Bowyer, Coyle, Mowbray, JDT and now Ismael there has always been a 'project' running alongside the bread and butter of results which takes over from it. The sad thing is that in both JDT and Eustace - for totally differing reasons but both very effective - they had people here that could deliver for them. Eustace showed he could do it on a shoestring budget without the need for some elaborate network and scouting, and JDT showed he could do it whilst handing debuts and game time to a raft of academy players, most of whom proved themselves to not be good enough yet were given plenty of opportunity at Championship level whilst we remained competitive. In avoiding both of the above we now seem to have gone down a third route - totally ditched the academy model, totally ditched the 'tried and tested' experience model, and ended up with a massively inferior manager working with a raft of players not good enough. Idiots gambling with the club's future and Championship status, for no good reason other than to perhaps benefit third parties outside of BRFC.

It's just the low hanging fruit again. Cheap and easy. Play it straight after the Derby game so there's no significant additional costs in opening Ewood/getting staff and stewarding on. Play Old Etonians it requires no effort or cost to bring them here for it. Is there supposed to be some particular relevance to playing them? I mean I know we played them in an FA Cup final but didn't we lose to them? So it isn't even a commemoration of a famous historical success. Are we now really at the stage of playing a game against an amateur outfit from the other end of the country who happen to share the same name as a team we lost to in an FA Cup final 140 years ago? Seems a bit tenuous to me.

It's never been about results on the pitch. Results have not been the priority at this club for over 15 years. If it was Allardyce wouldn't have got sacked, Kean wouldn't have been appointed, Kean would have been gone within a few weeks or at the end of that first season, both Bowyer and Mowbray would have lost their jobs earlier than they did. It is about cost and compliance. If you are willing to operate in the structure these people want and not complain, and are relatively speaking cheap, then you're set. Allardyce wasn't ever going to play their game so he had to go, Bowyer and Mowbray put up with it both because they got answers directly from India and because neither would have got similar jobs elsewhere. Coyle wouldn't have got the job and definitely wouldn't have been parachuted in ahead of Warnock and would have been sacked in October or November rather than February. Lambert wouldn't put up with it, nor JDT or Eustace because they all knew they were able to get employment elsewhere

Oxford's draw at QPR puts us into the bottom 3, albeit we can lean on the excuse of having a game in hand on most due to it raining at Ewood against Ipswich. We can take some comfort that Sheffield Wednesday, with their unpaid players and points deduction to come, are for now below us. Sheffield United WILL climb the table sooner rather than later once Wilder gets them sorted out.

If McBurnie continues scoring for Hull (he's up to 7 for the season already) and those goals keep them in the Championship whilst we go down due in part to a chronic lack of goals, I wonder if the bean counters and laptop carriers upstairs at Ewood will reflect on that as they count the £10 million+ cost of relegation? Of course they won't, they'll just resort to more and more excuses as to why we couldn't have signed him.

The owners and their stooges have been 'building' for relegation since the summer of 2023 when they decided they weren't going to support Broughton and JDT and then actively undermined them both by drastically slashing an already limited budget in the middle of the summer. It was only through a combination of good management by JDT and Eustace, and having the remnants of a good Championship side (Hyam, Travis, Brittain, Szmodics, Dolan, Batth) that we've kept ourselves afloat, although, again due to mismanagement they nearly managed relegation from nowhere in 2024. Now they've dealt with both of those issues - forced out the good managers who could overachieve and replaced with a highly questionable manager and dismantled the remains of that solid squad - so we are back on track. If it isn't a deliberate plan to relegate us it is at least recklessness and gross negligence.

Stoke had a tough away match at Middlesbrough last night, travelling back down after the game, late night. Us two home games in close succession. Could be an advantage there but then again just have to hope Ismael has no more birthday parties to go to before Saturday.

They didn't get rid of Coyle until February. February. This mon won't be going anywhere, especially with his 3 year deal and alignment. Remember lesson number one under this regime - football results and performances are irrelevant. Have been since day one.

Of course they did. That's life. Sometimes you benefit, sometimes you lose, but for the good of football overall and when tasked with making a decision for the integrity of the league, for once I agree with what the EFL did and feel they had no other option, and the whole 'representations' stage was a waste of everyone's time when it was clear from 5pm on the Saturday what the only realistic outcome was going to be. If we'd have been 1-0 down with 10 men we'd have got away with one and would be in the same position. There's one way of taking these sort of things out of the hands of Kieran McKenna, Ipswich players, the referee or a group of 'board members' at the EFL and that is to ensure that the Ewood pitch and drainage don't fail again in heavy rain. Never used to, now it has become an annual event. I wonder why that is.

You've told me that I've been wrong for having an opinion for years now, calling me a conspiracy theorist and many other things simply for offering a view. Yes they could have set a new precedent. And it would have led to all sorts of chaos in future. That's why it has never been done before in a century of football, because as 'unfair' as the decision is on Rovers it is the only outcome that works and ensures fairness in the long run. My only criticism is that it took them a while to make their minds up and inevitably we are now going to wait until November or beyond for the game to be rearranged. As far as I am concerned it should have been replayed last Tuesday or Wednesday and bollocks to whether that was inconvenient for Ipswich or their fans.

I'm getting fed up with this now. The EFL have made the correct decision. You and others at Rovers might not like it given the circumstances, but that's how it is. It would be utterly ridiculous for them to let the result stand with probably 15 minutes+ left to play and even more ridiculous for them to have just played the last 10 minutes or so starting with Rovers being 1-0 up against 10 men. There is no precedent for it in English football history and for good reason - it wouldn't work and would open the floodgates to all sorts of shenanigans in future when there are issues with the weather, floodlights etc. If you are angry about it I suggest you spend less time worrying about the EFLs difficult but ultimately correct decision and more of your time working out whether Rovers have invested sufficiently in their facilities to ensure the pitch is in the best possible condition to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen. I can safely say that Rovers could have done more, it isn't just the weather or the River Darwen, just as we had no issues with drainage getting games abandoned from 1992 - 2012.

There has been a long standing assumption that the shadow man is a Venky man. To me this appears to be based not on anything concrete but rather a combination of the fact that he has been around the place throughout Venky ownership, that he originates from South Asia, and that he has a direct line to them. None of the above actually mean he is a Venky man. It would be the natural and logical assumption that he is, but if we think outside the box maybe he isn't a Venky man at all, maybe he's representing other interested parties. His Asian origins may just be coincidence, his 'direct line' to them may be a business arrangement for their management of Rovers rather than him being their dogsbody reporting back every now and again. When we look at things from that angle whilst it may make some feel uncomfortable and might be suggested as implausible it is certainly possible and would stack up with some of the things we have seen. If he was the 'broker' that got Venkys to the table, that they trust and always have done, and this is his project, things start to make more sense. The installation of structures that compete with his little fiefdom - like Mowbray and Venus, Broughton and JDT, Waggott, all to varying degrees handed their own power independent of him - all swept aside. This is how he likes it - just as it was back in 2016/17 after Shaw, Myers and Bowyer had been removed. Whose interests was Waggott representing and acting on? I am inclined to say the Indians, as he was allowed to go out there with Mowbray. I don't think the shadow man has ever liked other people getting a direct line to India and he will stop it whenever he can.

The Telegraph conducting themselves with dignity and professionalism with what must be an extremely challenging development for them. Unlike the cowboys running Rovers who wouldn't know the meaning of the word professionalism and continue to drag a once proud institution through the gutter

'Alignment' claxon again!

They have destroyed, and will continue to further destroy, everything about this once great club. The only question is how much longer it continues and what state it is in by the end. Hopefully we still have a club left to rebuild from but I wouldn't approach that with confidence given the amount of damage done up to this point and a continuing refusal to leave.

Ismael's managerial career to date, starting in 2014: Nuremburg - 5 months and 14 games Wolfsburg - 4 months and 17 games Apollon Smyrnis - 3 months and 1 game LASK - 14 months and 50 games Barnsley - 8 months and 44 games WBA - 8 months and 31 games Besiktas - 7 months and 19 games Watford - 10 months and 41 games Average tenure - 7.3 months Average games - 27 Rovers - 7 months and 19 games (and counting). Within a few weeks he will have eclipsed his average tenure at a club and with another 8 matches will have matched his average games in charge at a club. Most of the above decided to sack him - infact the only one he walked away from voluntarily I think was Barnsley to take up the WBA offer. Gestede and Pasha in their infinite wisdom decided to give him a 3.5 year contract.

I wonder if we have now basically reverted back to the original plan whereby Venkys are the legal owners of the club and top up the running cost shortfall every year but aside from that the practical day to day management of the club is 'handled' by a third party - it appears that back at the start the intention was that certain 'consultancy groups' were given that job, nowadays it is the shadow man doing it. I thought it was interesting / strange when the shadow man mentioned that when it comes to a new CEO it would be India deciding on this and he would simply find out about it when it happened. That stacks with the above - perhaps employing a CEO is a job reserved to the India side of the equation and such an individual is 'their man' on the ground at Ewood, beyond the responsibilities of the management. Would explain the numerous power struggles and different approaches over the years. One being implemented by the management group and the other being implemented, albeit at some distance and slow pace, by the legal owners in India.