JHRover

I'm a bit of a selfish so and so. I couldn't really care less who does what in the PL whilst we aren't part of it. That would no doubt change were we to get back there but that isn't something I need to worry about for the forseeable. The only interest I have is ensuring the dingles get relegated. So I suppose if Newcastle can strengthen in January and get away from trouble that is one less side for the dingles to finish above.

It will be interesting to see what all the equality and diversity people have to say about it. Or just like Qatar next year will it be a different story when the money starts flowing in.

Too little too late. Many people on this website have been concerned and warning about the impact of disastrous pricing and ticketing policies on the numbers turning up. That was all ignored and only now, 2 months into the season, is the reality of the situation hitting home with the 'powers' that be at Ewood. Is this Waggott listening to genuine concerns or rather Waggott only now realising what a complete mess he's made of things and taking steps to try and shut the stable door after the horse has bolted? Much, much easier to keep hold of fans whilst you have them on the system as season ticket holders than it is to try and regain them after they're off the grid. At some point in the last 18 months the club has lost around 2,000 season ticket holders. A massive problem for anyone but for a club such as ours, starting on only 8000 to begin with and reliant on season ticket numbers to keep overall attendances up with minimal matchday buyers it is critical. Hopefully this is ownership and shadow man getting concerned and putting pressure on Waggott to sort it out. In reality it is probably just Waggott's penny dropping later than everyone else's and realising he's destroying our support base. He won't be willing/able to keep on dishing out 1,000+ freebies every week to keep the numbers up. Got to laugh at the latest marketing/excuse ploy which seems to be to repeatedly describe the team as 'Tony Mowbray's Young Side'. Almost as though the last 3 years never happened and this guy has just arrived into the club and is making the best of a tough situation, not that he's responsible for the mess and situation. I truly believe that serious action will engage fans more than any price or promotion. Unless you are going Huddersfield/Bradford style and dropping season tickets to less than £200 an adult and pushing them like mad then the only way people will get excited is through a promotion push, or ambitious steps on the football side - new manager, better players. Sticking with boring Tony without whom the Club wouldn't exist and whose form collapses every time the top 6 is in reach certainly isn't going to get bums on seats.

I'm confused. What 'lack of income' did we have last year compared to any other club in the League? Why have we been so seriously affected by this whereas others haven't had to slash back on their spending? Also, the sale of Armstrong will have cleared the vast majority of those losses, no? You mention FFP as though this is something we have avoided, but I thought we were under an embargo earlier this year? The bulk of our income continued to flow during Covid. We still had sponsorship, merchandise and most importantly media income. The thing we missed out on was ticket money, but we refused refunds on that so this was limited to the season 2020-21. Given we couldn't be bothered putting season tickets on sale until mid-September and then bizarrely decided to increase prices during a pandemic I think that tells us all we need to know about how important that area of income is.

Shock horror, Nixon links one of our players with a move away from Rovers in his Sunday rag. To be fair any player with ambition and desire to progress will be off. Can't blame them really. Why would anyone want to stay here with Captain Mowbray and his buddy running the place? If I could jump ship I would.

Why would you believe a word that Waggott comes out with? Recently he was going round saying Lenihan was 'days away' from signing a contract extension. Tickets, prices, signings, contracts, just about everything he says is going to happen doesn't. Of course if you think about things logically he is going to tell people what they want to hear. Some of us will live in fantasy land and believe everything he says and others (like myself) wouldn't trust him with £5 to buy a paper and a pint of milk and expect to get anything back. I think it is a pretty fair assumption to make that whatever 'offers' have been made to our senior players aren't good offers. If they were then at least one of them would have signed on by now. The fact that all the senior players have refused whatever they've been offered (and I'm not sure I believe that we've even got to making serious offers yet) tells me that they must be derisory if they are there at all. When you say we have 'invested' in Buckley, Dolan, Wharton what do you mean exactly? I expect they will be on very small wages in the scheme of Championship clubs and we will be forced to lose them soon too. We've lost numerous backroom staff to lower league clubs. You know this as well as I do. I can't be bothered naming them all now but there are plenty of these people who have jumped ship to lower division clubs. That doesn't happen unless there is something wrong. This, in my humble opinion, is a club in crisis. One look at Mowbray's miserable demeanor tells me that, but he and his mates have managed to survive the exodus and keep their lucrative employment going so he'll keep on rolling with whatever comes his way.

There is a mandatory 10 day isolation requirement for arrivals into India along with 2 PCR tests. Unless Mowbray has got special dispensation from the Indian government then he will not be able to go. If the meeting is taking place elsewhere - e.g. Switzerland - then this will be with Balaji and his cohorts and not with the Desai couple who control the purse strings. This is a double edged sword. As I said the other day I think the only way Rovers sees any investment in new players or contracts for our existing players is via a face to face meeting with the owners. Sadly I think this also means that Mowbray gets a contract extension. So do we hope Mowbray's contract expires but with it those of our 'best' players or do we hope he gets some cash for January and approval on new deals but with it a new contract himself. I'll be honest the prospect of enduring him until May is tough enough but beyond then I can't comprehend. This is probably all pie in the sky stuff because as above, I can't see him going to meet the owners in any event, or certainly not the ones that matter.

Here's another valid and important point - how come most other Championship sides, many of them smaller clubs than Rovers, can accomplish the same mid table mediocrity that we can on a fraction of the losses? This is an important point because it comes back to how the club is run and how quickly and relatively easily that huge figure of £20 million could be substantially reduced whilst still sustaining the same as we have now. It is one of the biggest myths going that the only way we can survive at this level is by having owners willing and able to pump in £20 million each and every year. The reason these owners are doing that is because of their ongoing negligence and mismanagement. If employing Steve Waggott and Tony Mowbray for nearly 5 years is the sum total of your interest and investment in the club then you deserve everything you get. These two no-hopers left Coventry City in ruins and walked into this job after being overlooked at clubs like Chesterfield, Southend and Gillingham. Employ better and get better results. Not just on the pitch but off it also. Anyone tell me how much the Blackpool owner is set to lose this year on his club? Or Hemmings at Preston? Or Berylson at Millwall, or whoever owns Luton? Halve that £20 million and then knock another chunk off. Why can't we do that and still finish mid-table? And no - the answer isn't facilities or the academy. At most the Category A academy costs us an extra million or two a year to run and it more than covers its outlay on the players we've developed through it. As far as I can tell all those other clubs also have grounds and training pitches most of which are better maintained than Ewood. If anyone can explain the above then maybe I'll accept that we need £20 million a year benefactors. Until then I simply don't accept it. And the debt figure is another myth. That figure isn't debt - it is their tab for their 'management' of the club over the last decade. They've chosen to do it that way which is entirely their right but it isn't debt and they aren't having it back. Nobody is paying it and the Club certainly can't.

Apparently because we got Kaminski over a year after selling Raya we had the last laugh. Don't mention that he will be another one we are forced to sell soon as we can't or won't give him a proper contract extension.

Claudio Ranieri being linked. Strange one but might know their Italian owners. They get criticism but it nearly always works in getting Watford where they want to be. 5 years in the Prem, 2 automatic promotions, a play off final and an FA Cup final all in the time we've drifted around the middle/bottom of the Championship and gone nowhere but at least we haven't upset St Tony and he and his mates have had 5 years cash for it. No room for nice guys in this game.

Who says he is going to India? I bet he'd love that opportunity but number 1 on the list would be nailing down his position and by extension his cronies. Waggott is probably starting to sweat on the situation. There's no doubt in my mind that the minute he gets direct access to the clowns in Pune he will secure his future for another couple of years. Him and Waggott already have the excuse book for their reading and sadly, as so many of our fans have, the owners will swallow it. Sadly for us him getting to India and getting a new deal might also be the only way the owners allow any cash to be spent. If he's going or being replaced by an outsider next summer they won't want to trust him with cash until he's knelt at their feet.

Ah so my prediction came true then. A poor defeat but an improved second half to send people home calm yet disappointed rather than angry. A defeat is a defeat whatever way you want to dress it up. Weren't Blackpool one of those clubs we'd end up like if/when Venkys left? Anyway, glad I decided to go away for the weekend instead of going to watch more of Mowbray Rovers. When the owners and club start taking this seriously I will. Bored with it all really.

Prediction. We will be much improved in the second half, have loads of possession, a few chances, put a crap Blackpool side under some pressure but fall short and probably concede a third late on but Mowbray will escape the fans wrath because we improved and tried hard.

I'd rather he was 'out' than 'sorted it' out.

Blackpool have had a big problem scoring goals at home. 2 in 5 league games before today. 25 minutes in they've equalled that against Mowbray Rovers. Anyone remotely surprised?

Which spare land is that? Not many places they can build 550 houses near Ewood. Do you mean the new estates up Feniscowles?

And it is precisely because of games and results like Tuesday night that we have never and will never be in the shake up come the end of the season. Most of us are experienced in this routine by now. Seems others want to ignore past evidence and think this season is going to be different. Why I'm not sure. Teams that mean business don't concede goals and points like on Tuesday. For me it wipes out so much of the good work prior to that. The hammering of Cardiff for example. I would have much preferred a 1-0 last minute job in that and then a ground out 0-0 or 1-0 v Huddersfield and 4-6 points than a smashing of Cardiff then a shambolic defeat to a poor Huddersfield. Because I think Tuesday was shambolic and it annoys me the number of people putting it down to luck, misfortune or not getting the rub of the green. We got an injury to our RB. Unfortunate but not unexpected given his history. To not have a replacement available and to then have to change the entire team around after 20 minutes to cover for it is just typical Mowbray Rovers. Self inflicted problems and making something that should be simple into confusion and something elaborate. Nowt to do with luck. Its poor recruitment and management biting us in the backside.

A few issues with your fanciful scenario: 1) Keeping key players fit - as we are already starting to see that rarely happens 2) Adding 2 or 3 players in January - we spent next to nothing in the whole summer and relied on cheap loans. Why will January be any different? 3) Will you not be supporting sales of Nyambe, Rothwell and Lenihan in January to ensure we get cash for them before their contracts expire?

A few years ago Mowbray had the luxury of being able to turn away bad eggs on the basis of having tattoos and ripped jeans. Nowadays beggars can't be choosers and I think the Leeds lad is here simply because they are happy to have him out of the building for the season.

Yes. You reap what you sow and tonight was the first real time this season it came home to roost. It is going to happen more and more as we get into October and beyond. That is inevitable. Magloire isn't remotely good enough yet he is first off the bench. I assume the excuse soon will be how unfortunate we are to have Lenihan, Wharton and the Brighton loan all out injured at once. The others are looking pretty mediocre too. Then when we sell Brereton, Rothwell, Nyambe and Lenihan in January all hell will break loose.

I'm not sure we can really say any of those clubs are in that bad states compared to us. I mean granted they are currently in the League below, but Sunderland and Wigan are looking like promotion contenders and Ipswich were expected to be and look to have a manager and squad set up to compete for promotion. All those clubs suffered relegations to League One just like we did. The difference was/is that all went down due to ownership cuts and changes, whereas we went down purely down to mismanagement. Sunderland got rid of Ellis Short and are now debt free under new ownership. Ipswich got rid of Marcus Evans and are now debt free under American ownership, Wigan got rid of their dodgy owners and are now run by someone who has pumped in money and turned them around so far. All are on a more stable financial footing, less debt, better managed and getting bigger crowds than this club. Put simply if you were to offer me their positions with new owners now or our position with Venkys I'd take theirs any day of the week. A couple of weeks in the top 6 won't change that for me.

I'm not sure I can roll with any of those supposed positives. Promotion was a positive, but we should never have been in that division to start with and the horror of the Coyle season and relegation outweighed joy at getting promoted. Establishing a foothold in the division we are in - again it is all relative. But having been in the Premier League, then supposedly tried returning to it all while losing £15 million every year I don't consider a 'foothold' in the second tier to be an accomplishment. I'm not even sure there is that much progress with the academy, the main difference being that there is more reliance on it and more opportunity for players to come out of it and into the first team than there was previously. The academy has produced the goods for us for many years, going back to Phil Jones, Grant Hanley, Martin Olsson and co. before Venkys rocked up. I don't think it is doing better than before, just that due to the way they are running recruitment and cutting spending it is inevitable that more opportunities and time will be afforded to lads coming out of the academy. We haven't avoided a FFP issue. I thought we were under an embargo earlier this year and then spent nothing in the summer to avoid getting into trouble? We also had an embargo in 2015 and sold all our best players directly leading to relegation to League One so we've actually suffered multiple times under FFP with little to show for it. We are hamstrung on signing players - we sold £15 million worth of talent in the summer and signed only loans and cheap ones at that with the exception of the kid from Lincoln. There is external debt to the BOI. It is relatively small in context of the overall 'debt' but it is there and relies on the owners overdraft facility. The owners don't deserve credit for the debt situation - they have chosen to fund the club this way whilst other owners have written off their 'loans' or funded their clubs differently without putting them £200 million in the red. Bolton, Wigan, Derby, Portsmouth, Leicester, QPR, Birmingham all survived bad owners and came through it - not sure why we are different to that.. We've nothing in common with Bury, the only club to go bust, who were cripped with third party borrowing.

So lower crowds than PNE, Blackpool, Barnsley and Huddersfield to name but a few. Fourth lowest in the division. And that's with the giveaway of 1000+ in the last few games in the BBE upper without which we would be below Posh. Whatever these supposed great changes are they'd better get a move on or it will be shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic stuff soon. I find it appalling that we are getting less on watching than an Oyston ravaged Blackpool but notice they've slipped off the list of clubs we could end up like if Venkys left us alone and replaced with Derby who will also come through their troubles and get themselves into a healthier state than us and be replaced with another club and repeat ad infinitum. Commendable stuff with giving away kids tickets in the Family Stand and BBE upper but the question has to be asked whether those people are going to be spending money on tickets any time soon. The answer to that I suspect is no so the club really needs to be going after teenagers, young adults, families who have the means at their disposal to buy tickets in numbers not primary school children with no money and from families with no history of following football. That's a longer term project but in the shorter term we've collapsing gates that need dealing with.

Mowbray is performing above expectations so far and I hope that continues. Amidst the hysteria though I do have to remind myself that we dished out a few impressive beatings early on last season (Derby, Wycombe, Coventry) and then as time went by our good start ground to a halt and then the wheels came off and we ended up looking at a relegation scrap. So I won't be falling for that one again and won't be hailing a new era either. Same manager and same coaching staff, lets hope lessons have been learned and the same mistakes don't happen again. Mowbray has form for these purple patches especially at the start of seasons. His career shows he struggles to maintain them - Middlesbrough and Coventry both got off to blistering starts and then collapsed.

😆😆😆 Lord almighty.