JHRover

Knock off the 2500 who qualify for their costs back from last season, and 300-400 who get freebies for working at the club, and concessions. Just how many full price paying adults have actually bought a season ticket? A couple of thousand? Dire straits.

And yet you will still have fans saying that this is all natural and expected with us not being in the Prem any more Or blaming Covid Ignoring sales at just about every club elsewhere. Or those aiming for one upmanship on other fans - "well I'm going so there"

Thanks for that. Shows what a complete and utter dereliction of duty and care we have here, negligence that could jeopardise the clubs future both on the pitch and off it. Yet some nutters think this is all down to FFP. Anyone else in this state?

I very much doubt they will, especially if we are stuck near the bottom and the locals are angry.

I think this is the last desperate attempt by Waggott and Pasha to drum up some interest and entice some fans back before the season starts. The damage their regime has caused will be coming clear now with awful season ticket sales and the last trick up the sleeve is to try and win people over with something 'direct' from the owners reaffirming their commitment at a time when there are rightly serious questions being asked again about their running of the club. I very much doubt Balaji has written this. Probably dictated or prepared by Waggott and then emailed over for his staff to transpose onto his letterhead and for his signature. Appears therefore more authentic than merely a typed article on the website as in previous years.

We're back to the Venky special motto "Always tomorrow, never today" We aren't even through this diabolical window, and are facing the real prospect of relegation, yet you are already pinning your hopes on them spending 'a few million' next year. This boom and bust model of falling foul of FFP (for the second time in 5 years) is on their watch, exacerbated by their management and their staff. We don't need it, certainly not to finish 15th in the Championship every year. Employ competent people and we could emulate titans like Luton and Millwall and finish mid-table, not break FFP and not need as much of their money. No doubt when that time comes another excuse will come along as to why they should have could have or would have spent money but didn't.

There will always be a bit of a mad rush in the build up to the first home game. I'll be amazed if Rovers have actually supplied Sharpe with a number for sales. It will all be percentages and 'healthy' or 'close to target' stuff. Looking on the website there is still plenty of availability in the middle of the BBE and the Riverside looks more empty than ever. Since relegation from the Premier League in 2012 there have only been a handful of sub-10,000 official attendances. Plenty of times when people through the turnstiles were less than 10,000 but we always had that block of at least 8000 ST holders to count ensuring the 10,000 mark was always reached. Suspect we are facing the opposite now and unless the away club brings several thousand the norm will be sub-10,000 official gates. In most cases once people stop they won't start again unless you give them a good reason to - extra cheap tickets or a good product. With this bunch in charge that won't happen.

Hmm not strictly true. If we look at the era after JW died but before the wretched Venkys appeared we were comfortably above all these clubs. Norwich and Soton were in League One when we were top 10 under Allardyce and Palace close to bankruptcy when Venkys took over here. The fruits of Venkys investment such that these clubs are now streets ahead of us. And did I really just see a post lauding Palace's following?

The only thing I'm bothered about now is making sure Mowbray isn't here next summer.

Because their parent clubs would expect us to pay the going rate rather than gift them to us for development purposes. We are nothing but a charity case to be used by the top clubs. We're becoming a B team.

You can't keep mentioning FFP as a source of problems and then not be desperate to secure our best players to long term contracts. You can't use FFP as an excuse for not getting players on long term contracts What difference would an embargo make right now? Any?

Deary me. I have had plenty of suggestions for replacements for Mowbray, most of which have been snapped up by rival clubs. You are welcome to go back and trawl through my posts if you want to see who but there's little point in me repeating them now they are employed at better clubs and Mowbray is clearly unsackable. I'd say there was little evidence to suggest either Mowbray or Waggott were competent enough to get this club back to the PL. He deserved a shot after League One, but by mid 2019/20 season it was clear we were going nowhere and a club with serious ambition and management monitoring performances and results would have taken pre-emptive action before the sh!t hit the fan and we wasted more time and money. I'm not interested in what is deemed 'reasonable' this club is more important and bigger than Mowbray and his feelings/opinion. If an improvement in management was seen as beneficial it should have happened. Sadly we've a reactive setup here who allow problems to build and unfold and then it is too late to do anything about it. Armstrong is the latest one, Coyle's season another. If you think it is 'irrelevant' that the first team manager appointed or at least recommended the CEO then we can't take this much further. It isn't irrelevant, it isn't normal, it isn't healthy and it isn't acceptable and it is a major, major issue in the dysfunctional setup of this club. A CEO should be able to change or at least recommend a change in manager. That isn't ever going to happen when the CEO got his job thanks to the manager. I think I agree with you - chumps like Derek Shaw and Waggott aren't fit to be running a club of this size and stature - you asked for a solution and I gave you one - stop employing these sort of people and get better in. It doesn't have to be a Blackburn fan at all. I don't believe that there are unique conditions here - football fans are similar wherever - they just want treating with respect something in short supply here. Again I don't accept that FFP is a reason not to fire a manager who is failing. That is nonsense. Sheffield Wednesday sacked 2 managers last season whilst under FFP trouble, as did Birmingham and Derby. Results come first and if they aren't good enough a change is made. It's the way it has always been.

Sold Raya and signed Kaminski and Pickering wasn't it?

These sort of comments don't help. The suggstion that our issues cannot be rectified quickly with a plan and joined up decision making. They can. The suggestion that things are ok and don't need changing quickly, whereas the trajectory of the club over the last 6-12 months on and off the pitch sets alarm bells ringing and tells me there needs to be urgent change. Magic wand solutions? Remove Waggott and Mowbray - neither of which have done well enough at their jobs, neither of which if we are being truthful should have been here in the first place, both of which have squandered millions and the last 2 seasons going nowhere. On Waggott's watch income has declined along with attendances and by the sounds of things morale behind the scenes is at an all time low. Replace them with a conventional structure with competent staff. A CEO or Chairman appointed on merit rather than the recommendation of the manager. A CEO or Chairman empowered to recruit and fire managers and coaching staff based on results and performance who can recruit based on suitability for the club and performance rather than who is cheapest/most desperate or has a popular agent representing him. A CEO or Chairman given a budget in good time to plan and prepare and work with the manager on recruitment. A CEO or Chairman judged not just on how many pounds he can save the owners but on growing, nurturing and progressing the club on and off the pitch - increasing attendances, improving the atmosphere and image around the club. A CEO or Chairman who understands supporters, listens to and has the ability to act on concerns rather than lying through his teeth and refusing refunds of hard earned cash. Maybe even responds when people write in with concerns (too much to ask?) There we go - 5 minutes on here and I've performed 'magic'.

Thanks for the research. I'm not going down the attendances road again. It makes me angry how oblivious you are to how self inflicted our issues are. Of course Middlesbrough get more fans than us. Not because of Mowbray's narrative that they are a giant football club but just through competent management and not operating disgracefully like this club does. We've made a profit since 2019 on player trading and if Armstrong is sold it will be substantial. So why do we need to release half the squad and can't even sign free agents? Venky taps are off folks. They've given up on St Mowbray but don't have the interest, balls or cash to fire him.

Just run the club properly would be a start. Employ competent people and let them run the club, treat fans with an ounce of respect, sack a failed manager, that sort of thing.

I remember the heady days when we came down to this division and our crowds were the same as Middlesbrough's. That was when they had our manager. They were also down to the teens when Woodgate was taking them down. It bounced back with a decent managerial appointment. Now we're down to 5,000 season ticket holders. See how this works? Sob stories and excuses yet most of it self inflicted. Why don't we do something about it?

Middlesbrough just signed an Argentine midfielder. When was their FFP firesale? Must have missed it.

I think that day is nearer than you think

No we don't have to kiss goodbye to anyone. We pre-empt the possibility of an embargo by getting the decent players tied down to long term deals (a novel idea I know) so that IF we are put in an embargo we have a good squad to get through it with OR have the option of selling a few to get out of it. This would of course require us to spend the coming months sorting out new deals for our assets. Our failure to do so and complete lack of any indication anything is happening on that front, the fact that none of our senior players have signed new deals (other than options in the clubs favour) since last year all suggest the club is doing nothing or is well off the required pace on this. Our lack of action on contracts is the cat out of the bag in all this - because if the club was struggling to sign new players and was worried about FFP it would be dealing with the contracts to protect its assets, so to ensure that there was a solid core there for the next few years and players who could be sold for decent fees if needed. The complete silence and lack of action on both new signings and new contracts speaks volumes. Especially having already waved off 11 players many of whom were on big money. No point whinging about FFP and then allowing all your players to run their deals down and walk away. As I said before - even if we were limited to £10 a week under an embargo - what would that change given our 'activity' this summer?

I didn't come with that rumour. Someone else said that they were ringing around regulars to try and get 35 on before booking it. I repeated what someone else on here had said. I said there was no information as of yesterday, which there wasn't.

You didn't 'quash' anything I was 'peddling' My original post was submitted yesterday. At the time of writing it there was zero information from Rovers on Millwall tickets. The information was put up this morning. If you want to convince yourself that a whole third of the fanbase won't support the team because of the manager great. Hope you feel good about it when rattling around Ewood and the club is in terminal decline. I prefer to think there are bigger problems here that need sorting rather than just shrug shoulders and blame fans.

1. Yes we could have put them on sale much earlier. Maybe we'd have sold a few more, maybe we wouldn't. Bet we wouldn't have sold less than we have now so what's the problem? Surely a sales window of more than a month is worth a try? 2. We are always among the last to release new kits. Always. Last year, and the year before. Didn't have a pandemic or new supplier to blame then did we? The only 'big picture' here is a history of mismanagement coming home to roost. 3. Away tickets have not always been the week before. The standard timing for prices and sales is no less than 3 weeks before the day of the game. It isn't just the current manager though is it? It is a decade of negligence, lies, lack of communication, having the piss taken, withholding fans money without their agreement etc. You might think it is the job of a true fan to accept being made a fool of by lowlife like Waggott and Venkys but I don't. Anyone who opts out of this nonsense, as I am very close to doing, has my complete understanding and respect.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree here. I don't think the owners have been putting the maximum in they are allowed to. And even if they have been we are completely hamstrung by a limited income and poor commercial operation brought about by their mismanagement. So this attitude of 'they're doing all they can' I don't accept. No, I didn't say that about Gallagher and Brereton. What I said was that the funds for their signings were authorised by the owners because they saw them as project signings expecting to recoup their money with a sale down the line. Due to Mowbray's mismanagement the chances of recouping that money is remote, so instead they will use the Armstrong windfall to cover it instead. I believe the owners only authorised the fees on Brereton, Armstrong and Gallagher in the first place because they were confident of getting their money back and turning a profit - not because they believed it would catapult us to promotion or because it was the missing piece of the jigsaw. What they get for Armstrong will probably just about cover the fees for those players so they will probably be satisfied. We've (allegedly) already been under an embargo this summer due to failing to get accounts submitted in time. So it can happen irrespective of any player sales. IF we end up in an embargo next summer, and I think that is a big IF and the club are skillfully deflecting blame with this one - then we end up in a state similar to now - we struggle to sign players. You do realise we've signed nobody this summer? So what difference would an embargo make? Nobody comes in, we play the kids. Oh yeah, that's happening anyway. The club and team will not benefit from the Armstrong money. It will not strengthen the squad, at best we will get some youngsters on loan, which we could do even under an embargo.

I didn't say we haven't spent money. Mowbray has had good backing and certainly better than any of his 5 predecessors Berg, Appleton, Bowyer, Lambert or Coyle. More important than any cash or wages he has had is the time, freedom and lack of forced sales. Most managers at this level get a couple of transfer windows or so to do their work, or have to sell before they can buy, or have to contend with interfering chairmen or directors of football. He's had none of that and this is his 9th transfer window. Absolutely outrageous that we have this squad after that. I disagree that providing wages for free agents or loans constitutes spending. This is where Venkys' operation of the club and my view on things split apart. Of course there are costs involved in signing free agents or adding loans to the payroll. But this is not the same as coughing up transfer fees to recruit good players. Every other club in the league also sign free agents and loans. It doesn't make us special or big spenders because we do the same. It is a basic part of football recruitment that every club takes part in. Admittedly though the manager has done poorly on this and we have been overly reliant on loans which now leaves the squad a mess. And I think there is a gross exaggeration as to how much loans such as Elliott, THB and Branthwaite cost the club. I reckon people would be surprised by how cheap they were. We've already had rumours that the Trybull deal was massively subsidised by Norwich and it is fair to assume the teenagers will have been heavily sponsored by their parent clubs to get them here and give them game time.