JHRover

Absolutely. And if we look at those more expensive than us you could say only Middlesbrough are comparable when it comes to stadium, empty seats and economics. Difference is that they have a 50 mile radius to share with Hartlepool whilst we have 17 other League clubs in that area almost all offering cheaper tickets. Norwich a relatively affluent area with no billionaire owners and know they will get 20,000 turning up come what may expecting a promotion push Watford expecting to be up there challenging Luton having the best season in living memory and a ground that can only accommodate about 8000 home fans. Its absolutely ridiculous yet I could accept it if the product or effort was there that you might not get elsewhere. If you got solid investment or a top manager like Middlesbrough have, or a nice stadium and facilities Instead it is just excuse after excuse.

About time for an update on season tickets. We now know most of the teams who will be in the Championship next season or are in with a chance of being. So lets look at their cheapest adult season ticket prices, in descending order Norwich - £534 Middlesbrough - £450 Luton - £430 Watford - £402 Rovers - £399 Nottingham Forest - £385 - could be promoted Rotherham - £380 Bristol City - £365 Sheff Utd - £357 Millwall - £350 P'boro - £349 - since relegated Coventry - £345 Stoke - £344 Wigan - £329 West Brom - £329 Swansea - £322 Blackpool - £309 Reading - £299 Huddersfield - £299 - could be promoted Barnsley - £285 - since relegated Preston - £280 Cardiff - £249 Birmingham - £225 QPR, Hull and Derby still to announce prices. Derby are in the midst of a takeover, Hull have a strange membership system and QPR are fitting rail seating at Loftus Road which will impact their ticketing policy. So as it stands we are the 5th highest starting price in the Championship. Two of those higher have just come down from the PL. Luton have extreme limits on their tickets which means they can charge more. Pay top end I expect to see a top end managerial appointment and staff. Cheap and cheerful just won't cut it in this economic climate at these prices.

Sharpe may well be correct there haven't been interviews. There doesn't even need to be interviews. If the club knows who it wants and has already had discussions with him then no point wasting time talking to others. Plus I very much doubt he knows whether talks have been taking place remotely.

I think they are just doing the usual pitch replacement - not the all singing all dancing job Waggott alluded to last year I've heard that we aren't having any home friendlies this year, so I would expect another couple of midweek friendlies away from home to take the total to 6 (or at least 5 and then use the Carabao Cup effectively as a pre-season game).

Well this was posted today. So assuming it was filmed today it suggests we weren't having manager interviews at the academy.

Good news on Carrick.

No surprises some would rather play it steady and keep things close to home. If you are a European manager particularly Spanish, Portuguese or Italian you change jobs with regularity. That's just how it goes. Doesn't make you good, bad or indifferent. I'd welcome a manager that doesn't need to be here and isn't grateful to just collect his cheque and plod on. Someone with clout will want to get to the PL and will go elsewhere if that isn't going to happen. I couldn't stand another 5 years going nowhere listening to excuse after excuse under a manager just grateful to be here treading water. Sometimes the foreign route is the way to success. Its not done Huddersfield any harm.

Quite a lot of talk about Carvalhal being on Flamengo's radar. If he is interested in coming here I suspect we will blow it through ineptitude or delay and he'll end up elsewhere.

Well Reading have appointed Ince on a permanent basis. So that's good news. One less rival to compete with in the manager market and a side I'll be betting on going down next season.

The biggest shame from all this is that I believe good managers would come here and are interested. In the case of Carvalhal, it is clear that someone at his end is pushing his name with a view to returning to England. Yet the impression I get is that Rovers are once again on the back foot and will basically squander any prospect of landing one of these decent managers. People like Farke and Carvalhal there for the taking and basically inviting interest. Then we've Waggott and Suhail opening envelopes and applications on their desk and wondering what to do. I suspect Carvalhal will end up at a club in the Middle East on Big money having grown tired of waiting for us to get our act together. We'll be scraping the barrel pretty soon, which is where the friendly agents come in.

Well it must have been quick - they sacked him after 7 games I wouldn't be deterred by his role with Ghana. I'm sure he'd give that up if it meant he got a good management job and if not he could probably do it anyway during the World Cup break.

I don't see the harm in going for Carvalhal, if he's interested in coming here. For sure his CV is stronger than most linked or would be interested, and he comes with a track record in this division working for a similar club with similar ownership situation. Hand him a 2 year deal with a big bonus for promotion, back him as far as we can and see how it goes. If it works fantastic, if it doesn't we review at the end of his contract. At least we've tried something different from the usual names. I'd personally prefer Farke as I think with the right structure he would be better at building something that lasts, but other than him Carvalhal has probably the best credentials and would enthuse me the most.

Bielsa is just not going to happen. The bloke is 67 and it was mentioned whilst at Leeds that he had an eye on retirement and going back to South America. At Leeds he was on astronomical money and brought loads of staff along with him. These are two things that would ensure that it didn't happen. I doubt he'd be interested even if we offered the money.

Yes I think the only thing keeping me optimistic that it won't be is that HSH don't have any remotely acceptable options at this time. That list that people have helpfully put on here recently only has 1-2 names that would be even associated with a Championship job. So they've got their work cut out there in orchestrating that one.

St Tony was a miserable failure at Coventry in League One yet that wasn't a barrier to him getting the job here nor did it prevent him doing a good job. So I'm not sure why a short spell at Forest should rule Hughton out. Especially if he wants to prove a point after that debacle. Not interested in his age either. The two of the biggest balls up in this club's history were sacking Allardyce and turning Warnock down when Allardyce was mid 50s and Warnock late 60s whilst dreadful appointments of Kean (early 40s), Berg (40s) and Appleton (30s) show age is immaterial to this search.

Yes correct, I did think Mowbray was staying and I remain of the view that the Club itself had no plan for his departure and that the late meetings and discussions were to try and to see if he would agree to carry on. For one reason or another he had made up his mind by then and nailed his colours to the mast so instead they made it sound like a mutual agreement and are now scrambling around with no clear strategy. I agree with you we should go down the Sporting Director route if we want to avoid high turnover and radical changes every time a manager departs. But to do it we need a qualified Sporting Director and that person needs the power to direct. If we get someone unqualified or they don't have the power to sign players etc. then its a waste of time.

Soon be Sunday papers and we can find out Nixons latest rumours

If an external appointment is coming then Adkins and Grayson would be two likely options IMO. Both available, cheap, desperate to manage again and would jump for the Rovers job. Would accept whatever boundaries this lot wanted to impose. I think the Sporting Director thing is a red herring. They might want to appoint one but won't do that any time soon (unless it is an internal reshuffle) and it will just be left to drag on for months.

The promotion season has been and gone now. 4 years ago which is an eternity in football. Good achievement, well done, pats on the back and deserve a crack at the Championship, which he's had and then some. Mowbray's a very lucky man that a whole 4 years on from finishing 2nd in the 3rd division with Blackburn Rovers that fans are still harking on about that being his big accomplishment, seemingly getting extra credit because there are some examples of other 'big' clubs who haven't done that. Also no mention of mighty Rotherham who bounce up and down with regularity with a fraction of what Mowbray had here.

More likely to be Venus as D of F with Johnson as head coach

Rich Sharpe's article has all the usual hallmarks of a club that hasn't got a clue what it is doing. I look forward to being proven wrong but where do you start with things. They've known for months that there was a strong chance, or even guaranteed chance, that Mowbray was off and that they would have to find someone else. So I'm sorry, this tale about Waggott sitting at his desk sifting through CVs from all over the world and then sending a few to India for them to mull over is just ludicrous. Then the 'Sporting Director' thing. If they want to go down that road, and I think they should because I've long believed this is the only way we can operate with these owners, then that person needs to come in first and then lend his expertise to appointing a manager. On what planet do you appoint a head coach to work under an as yet to be identified Sporting Director and then bring one in who might not like or be compatible with the head coach? It sounds to me like Pasha quite likes the Sporting Director idea having tried it before with Paul Senior, but hasn't got a clue what he is looking for or what it needs. We don't need or want an agent, part time assistant manager or over promoted coach doing this, we want a proven experienced operator who knows the job and can recommend a manager. No rush.

Not sure how Carvalhal can be blamed or measured on what the Sheffield Wednesday owner has done or spent. Nor am I sure how relevant it is that he has had a lot of jobs in management. Being a continental head coach and working in Portugal/Turkey it is inevitable that you move around jobs every couple of years - that's how they do things there. Doesn't make him a poor manager. Mourinho rarely lasts more than 2-3 seasons in a job. Conte the same. Would we turn our noses up at them if they wanted to come here? Have to laugh at seeing people on twitter arguing that Carvalhal would be a bad option based on him having managed lots of clubs across Europe and having spent well at Sheff Wed. Quite insulting really this a bloke who achieved miracles at Rio Ave and has had Braga in contention for domestic and European silverware. Sometimes I wonder what it is some people want from a manager. Seems some would rather a Tony Mark II - a bloke who will go on a 4 year journey to nowhere whilst the club burns through £15 million a year and ends up losing key assets on free transfers whilst we watch Luton and Huddersfield pass us by. Not for me - I'd sooner we went out and got a big hitter who could teach the people at Brockhall what it takes to win and who will deliver higher standards and a fresh approach. So what if he is using us to get into English football - this can be mutually beneficial and if he walks or gets a better offer after couple of years so be it - we find someone else. Some people seem to mistake stability with needing to have a manager in place for 4-5 years. A club can be perfectly stable whilst changing managers dependent upon results.

If Venus, Lowe, Benson or Johnson are staying, either because the club doesn't want to cough up to pay them off or because they are nice people who work hard and therefore can't be removed, then there's no point in worrying about who the new manager is. It won't be anyone decent or with any credibility. The players will be returning to Brockhall in 5 weeks time and it will be the same names, faces and voices telling them the same things as last year.

A helpful reminder today in the Telegraph that Nyambe and Lenihan's contracts are set to expire imminently. Miraculously however it is now claimed that finances aren't an issue with Lenihan, and that the delay on his part is wanting to know who the new manager will be and whether the club has serious promotion aspirations. This is odd, because for the last 18 months we have been told by the press and Mowbray that the stumbling block is purely financial and that Rovers had done all they could do on that front. Now all of a sudden it seems to no longer be a financial matter but hinges on the managerial situation If true this just further emphasises the critical importance of making a good appointment and quickly. Both because the new man will want and deserve the opportunity to keep these players rather than have to replace them in limited time and also because the financial and footballing benefits to keeping them significantly outweigh the inconvenience or risk of making a fast appointment or of paying more to get a better manager E.g. if Farke hinges on him being able to bring all his own staff but in doing so would persuade those players to commit new long term deals the millions that could save us would be entirely worth it. I doubt such calculations are taking place and the focus will be on someone willing to work with Venus, Lowe and Benson. Aka a desperate option or a rookie.

The D of F setup actually makes perfect sense, especially at a club such as ours with lunatic owners in another country and the factor of the productive academy too. The D of F gets his feet under the table, directs Football, sorts out the recruitment department, hires and fires the head coach and coaching staff, sorts out the communication issues with the owners, assembles a squad with the budget he has. The head coach spends his time and energy working under the D of F concentrating on the first team and everything that comes with that. The head coach then doesn't need to bring in his assistant manager to act as a hybrid D of F, the head coach doesn't need to fly back to India every 12 months, the head coach doesn't need to assemble the whole football structure with his mates. Head coach gets poor results = head coach gets fired and replaced yet the show continues with zero disruption to recruitment, coaching staff, background staff and overall plan and strategy The madness of this club is that Mowbray has been allowed to assemble the entire operation and now he's off the whole thing could come caving in. This obviously requires a proper director of football who actually knows the job and has the right experience. So that rules out moving Venus upstairs to keep him on the payroll or promoting someone else from within or going for some snake oil salesman like we had last time round.