JHRover

You quoted me incorrectly. I didn't say I fear a disaster - that was the previous poster

Me too. This isn't really based on JDTs managerial skills or acumen. I am more worried about the state of the squad, what (if anything) is being made available budget wise and the capabilities of those running recruitment. There's a lot to do, not a lot of time and I anticipate not a lot of budget. You've got to be clued up, quick, decisive and have some cash to build a competitive squad and in a short timescale. The kids are only going to get us so far - as much as they can try to avoid it there is a need to go out into a tough competitive market and get signings done. If we fail to do this, or delay, we aren't going to be left with much.

Another friendly added away at Gary Bowyer's Dundee on Wednesday 13th July.

And a huge opportunity missed there, as despite starting from a low base and doing the hard part of getting good home form and a side in the top 2 at Xmas we managed to get circa 5000 extra fans on Ewood on a consistent basis. History at Rovers tells us that getting such a number of 'walk on' fans is hard work. Once you've got them at Ewood you'd better work your socks off to try and keep a portion of them. Even if we'd just retained the 8000ish ST holders and maybe persuaded half of those walk ons to get a season ticket we'd be looking at reasonable sales of 10,000 season tickets. Not great and still below local rivals but moving in the right direction. But the numbers we have at present suggest we've not only failed to capitalise on the numbers of last season but are now busy eroding the 7-8000 core.

I've spoken to at least 3 people in the last couple of weeks who have said that had there been a season ticket priced along the lines of Preston and Bolton - less than £300 - that they would have bought one even though they are unable to go to all the games due to work / other commitments. Their logic being that they can afford to cough up £250 ish now, they won't lose any sleep over that amount and would be willing to do so even though they can't go to every game. Now add £200 to that which is where we are now and those people, and probably many more, are unwilling or unable to make that sort of commitment when they are likely to miss a chunk of games anyway.

I think they will naively expect that the Tomasson appointment will suddenly prompt people into buying. It might encourage a few, but the big problem now is price. £429 starting price now is a heck of a lot for a side in this part of the country especially when most of the talk is about visions, journeys, young players. People want to see promotion as the aim if they are being asked to pay that much. The only real comparables on price are Middlesbrough and Luton. Middlesbrough will be promotion favourites, led by a top manager in Wilder who won't talk about young players, journeys or visions, he'll just go out, recruit good quality and give it his best shot this season. If people can see you are going for it they will pay expecting to see a good season. Luton have a ground holding about 8000 home fans and are having their best few years since the 80s. That combination means they can charge more and so they should as they won't be able to do what we will and hand over 5000+ tickets to Sunderland, Boro, Burnley, Preston. I expect to see an increase in the number of adverts and reminders, and lots of talk about it being an exciting new era. Probably a couple of decent looking loan signings too in an effort to shift a few. I think anyone expecting any meaningful reduction are being very optimistic. The money handed over so far will already be accounted for. At the very best they - might - just do away with the £30 increase but even if they were to do that we are still towards the top end on starting price. They had their chance and they blew it. Just like they had their chance in 2018 and blew it. 2018 v Oxford they had 27,000 home fans on yet no season tickets on sale or even prices to advertise - insanity. This season, despite awful sales of season tickets (a little over 7000) we managed to claw ground back over the season due to good results and league position, and by March we were back at 11-12000 home fans again. Season tickets on sale at a good price during that good run could have made a big difference, yet we wait until the last home game has passed and then charge top whack. Finally, could have salvaged the situation with an early, proactive and headline making managerial appointment. Send Mowbray on his way, communicate, get a good ambitious option in early doors and do what Preston did - promote it as a new era. Instead we've waited until mid-June and appointed something of a 'meh' manager - certainly not one that is going to get people flocking with excitement, though I wish him the very best.

Is there another club anywhere that has seen such a drastic collapse in attendances in recent years? I mean to go from almost 20,000 season ticket holders in 2011 when this lot turned up, to then almost halve your season ticket numbers overnight with relegation down to approx 11,000, and then in the space of the next 4-5 years fall from that down to less than 8,000 and now we are looking at falling well short of even that. All whilst we have stayed more or less at the same level on the pitch. Astonishing stuff which tells its own story of how this Club has really been run and what the people that matter - paying supporters - really think of things away from the internet warriors on Twitter and Facebook.

I just hope there is a plan for recruitment. What we don't want is Tomasson being led a merry dance, told that the Brereton sale will raise cash for good signings to come in, and then they 'do a Rhodes' and only allow a few loans and the cash disappears.

I think I'm down the middle road on this one. I am cautiously optimistic, but that's more down to the unknown quantity and doing something different hoping it works well than any info I have on Tomasson's managerial acumen. I think this is as much to do with the hope, perhaps silly of me, that this new structure and apparent continental setup is going to be more suitable for the Club and may work in our favour in this division. This is likely to hinge more on how clued up this Broughton bloke is, what power he has and what budget he has. This isn't an appointment that sets pulses racing or suggests we mean business as a Farke, Dyche, Bilic or Carvalhal would. But it isn't a depressing nightmare appointment as an Adkins, Woodgate or Ferguson would have been.

Yes, so if Rothwell goes there that tells us a story.

Whether you rate them or not the reality is that their departures were all dressed up as "no big loss" or "we can do better" yet the reality is all have gone on to better things, just like the trio will this summer whilst we are left scrimping around the loan market for replacements.

Where do you think they will go then? Latest rumours are Middlesbrough for Lenihan and West Brom / Forest for Rothwell. Want to have a bet we will finish above them 3 this season?

Rothwell, Lenihan and Nyambe will all be playing for teams either at a higher level or higher than us in the Championship next season. I'm pretty confident on that. Tells us all we need to know - higher clubs or clubs with high aspirations- want them. We won't get better than them. We've done all this before with Hanley, Cairney, Raya and co.

They (Waggott) went into the Lancashire Telegraph during the Covid ground closure and said that they would discount season ticket prices for the following year to compensate fans for those games that they had been unable to go into the ground to watch during restrictions. This was said to be an alternative to people seeking refunds for missed games. A few months later, despite still being under restrictions, not only did Waggott not offer this discount, but he also introduced a price rise. So in the unlikely event that they were to now backtrack or offer some form of future discount I would be very wary - this lot don't keep their promises. I suspect this failure to keep promises, lies, misleading statements and altogether treating paying supporters like dirt and for granted is a major reason sales have collapsed, along with expensive prices. I know personally the behaviour of the Club is more important to me than the price they are asking.

Sensible suggestion but one I don't think would ever happen here. Waggott would not have authority to make such an offer and Venkys work on 12 month cycles and budgets so wouldn't even dream of next year at this stage. Plus we'd get all the 'we don't know what league we are going to be in' (even though nobody else does when releasing tickets in February).

The other issue beyond pricing is what else can they do to tempt people? The best they can do price wise is to do away with the £30 disloyal fan increase. But even then it's still expensive by Championship standards. Tomasson intriguing but not an appointment that will make many sit up or rush to the ticket office. Ambitious transfer business? Not going to happen. Loans and cheap deals only. So quite scary really. Some of us have been warning of this for years.

The Club has tried to take plenty of credit for the various 'community' and other awards that it has picked up in recent years. So it has to accept criticism for what amounts to dangerously low season ticket sales. All the efforts at engaging with children and the community utterly futile if you are losing thousands of season ticket holders every year. Waggott has to go. He is CEO and his decisions have obliterated our bread and butter season ticket base. A U turn might recover some lost ground but still nowhere near enough, and a U turn would merely confirm that he has made a complete pigs ear of things. Time to go Waggott. The Club is dying - a direct result of negligent unfit owners employing substandard administrators and letting them run riot for years on end. Bolton, Derby, Wigan, Blackpool might have had financial chaos and administration but that was a short sharp shock followed by healing and rebuilding. We are now into year 13 of this and the direction continues downwards. For once I am seeing some common ground online - almost everyone seems to accept the Club is at fault here and the prices are ridiculous.

I would hope that this appointment of someone with significant clout as a player (Champions League / UEFA Cup winner, Denmark legend) will count for something - hopefully it acts as some sort of pull for potential signings and can teach our existing crop a thing or two. I don't have any particular issue with his appointment. If he hadn't had his 2 seasons of success at Malmo recently I would be concerned, but his time with Malmo certainly matches or betters CVs of other European coaches who have arrived in the Championship recently. For example Kompany with the dingles hasn't managed to win anything with Anderlecht who are giants in their league, Farke and Wagner were only reserve team managers, Frank had worked in Denmark and not won anything. So no particular issues on giving him a chance there, he's certainly got enough on his CV to merit a shot at it. My concerns go beyond which individual gets the managers job. - The structure and mechanics of our new 'setup' - in the past the way to get funding and things done here was to go straight to the source of power and funds - India - Kean, Bowyer and Mowbray did that quickly and were the only ones who managed to last here with any reasonable transfer backing. I am worried that without this we are going to be extremely limited as to what we can do and when we can do it as healthy funds will not materialise unless Desai sanctions it. - How much power do Waggott, Pasha and Broughton have? For example if Tomasson turns out to be a disaster and we are struggling for survival does anyone have the power to sack him and pay up his multi-year deal, or is this something that has to be done by India in their own good time? - Getting the squad into shape for the new season. I get the obsession with using the academy where possible but there are more important things here than ensuring certain players get their breakthrough. At the least we need to ensure we are equipped to survive this season, not a foregone conclusion, and for that there has to be good, solid recruitment and quickly. As per paragraph above I am not confident that this will happen with the resources available. - the setup of old - manager running everything and reporting to India once a year - needs tipping on its head. I am certain of that because under the old system the manager was an indespensible and bulletproof component regardless of results. That has to change. Tomasson needs to be able to focus all his efforts on first team games and issues, and live or die by results on the pitch. If he's good then we are all happy, if he's rubbish then he will need replacing quickly not another unsackable situation. - the coaching staff - if Tomasson is having staff imposed on him this is concerning. If he arrives and doesn't like the people here he must be allowed to replace them. If they won't even allow this insignificant cost and step then we have big problems.

I've lost interest the more time has passed since it became clear that the Club was unwilling or unable to agree to the removal of Mowbray's coaching staff. If that is for footballing reasons then we have Venkys, Pasha or Waggott imposing staff on managers who are better qualified to judge such things. If this is for financial reasons we might as well go home because the cost of doing this is chicken feed in the scheme of things. If we have undertaken this 'search' on the basis that contenders for the job have to agree to work with those already here then we have not undertaken a thorough search. We have unnecessarily restricted and hindered our options. Tomasson may be good, may be bad, I don't really care. The incompetents above him and Mowbray's staff below him are still here which is a bigger issue IMO. I'll wish him the best, it's certainly a more 'interesting' appointment than the dross we've seen on the list but it also isn't an appointment that suggests excitement or ambition either.

Broughton might just be a convenient one to blame. After the Lenihan and Nyambe debacles I'd be surprised if even these moronic owners hadn't started asking questions of Waggott. Bringing in a Broughton on a relatively cheap deal, buying a couple of years whilst he settles in for 'the journey' and then pointing fingers in his direction if more goes wrong should see Waggo through to comfortable retirement.

I think there is a considerable difference between a Marketing Manager / Head of Marketing and a Commercial Director. We haven't had a Commercial Director since Dave Biggar resigned some 6-7 years ago. That is the real issue and problem here. Marketing managers and the like - Greg Coar and co. - have a much smaller remit and in my humble opinion this is a central reason why our sponsorship and commercial performance has been so poor.

Pandemic, cost of living crisis, no PL football, small towns - all the excuses the apologists usually come with demolished thanks to our neighbours. Myths busted All it takes is some understanding and treating people properly.

Tomasson strikes me as one who as I said earlier is desperate to resume his coaching career and who seems to have been throwing his hat in the ring all over the place. I'm a bit concerned by him. Not sure what it is but see little there to give me any confidence, though I would take him over many of the names involved at this stage. Complete shambles of a club but some will be so desperate to see some conclusion to this exhausting process they won't actually be bothered who we get as long as it is someone.

Probably, though I'd say our budget is too low rather than all the potentials are too high.

I'm not renewing before the deadline. I'm in no rush. I'll happily pay the extra if I see evidence of a Club that backs up words with actions. You might get away with silly beggars stuff when charging low end prices but if you want to charge top end prices I expect to see top end action and product. If not then I might not bother. My two mates definitely aren't doing so I'll be on my todd if I do unless I relocate which I'm not particularly keen on doing.