I seem to recall something about clubs getting an increase in exchange for the red button service. If they don't then why on earth have they allowed it to come in?

Brentford have confirmed Thomas Franks as their new 'head coach'. Was their assistant, previously manager of Brondby.

Yeah, so it needs to be one or the other. If they're desperate to accept the money then they have to use a significant chunk of it to persuade people to go to games rather than watch on tv. Alternatively, which i would prefer, though I can see why others wouldn't, is to send the money back to Sky and return to how it was before this season.

a) Go back to how it was - stop red button streaming and Ifollow coverage, or strictly limit it to midweek fixtures and not weekends. b) Use the increased tv income to significantly reduce ticket prices and increase the incentive to attend games.

The average match ticket price for the Riverside for an adult (ignoring the ridiculous surcharge) across all the equally ridiculous pricing categories is £21. If this season continues as I expect it to then there will only be about 12 home Saturday 3pm games e.g. approx. half our home games will be on TV and will be held at times that are difficult to attend (Saturday mornings, Midweek, Saturday tea times). You could therefore buy individual match tickets for the 3pm Saturday games for a total of about £250, and stay at home and watch all the others on TV, whilst saving £100 on the price of a season ticket. I'd personally never do such a thing, but I fall into the bracket of devotion on a religious level, have the disposable income and live 15 minutes from the ground. I can easily see other people who live further away, or who don't have the same determination to attend games, starting to wonder about it.

I'm not sure about it only affecting clubs with 'limited fanbases'. I can see it affecting everyone in Leagues One and Two and at least half of the Championship. One or two might cart on for a few years getting 20,000+ gates on Saturdays. Only had to look at Derby's crowd when we played there the other week. Last few years it has been 27000+ even midweek, when we played it was a good 4000 down on the last few years. I'm sure that will at least partly be due to the game being on the red button.

I'd introduce a system where the clock stops when the ball goes out of play. So mucking around on throw ins, goal kicks, free kicks achieves nothing as the clock isn't running. Same whenever the game stops due to 'injury' or for the referee to have a word with someone. Perhaps pass responsibility for timekeeping to the 4th official or someone in the stands. Cut out any more of stuff like that disgraceful 40 odd minutes of play in Cardiff v Burnley.

I don't understand why this is such an issue. Are they worried that people are going to stay at home to watch La Liga games rather than go to English matches? Surely the impact of allowing foreign games to be broadcast between 3-5pm is going to be minimal. The only potential issue I can see here is that if Eleven Sports are allowed to broadcast Italian or Spanish games between 3pm and 5pm then Sky Sports might claim it is discrimination that they are not allowed to show English games, but surely the League, acting on behalf of it's member clubs, can uphold such a thing?

Yep, and if you notice the red button games are not advertised with the same gusto as the standard TV games are. e.g. when we were at Bristol City there was no mention of it being on TV until the Friday beforehand when it popped up on Sky's fixture list as being on the red button. Same when Bristol played Sheff Wed the other week. Our game v Leeds has at no stage been promoted as a live game, instead apparently only moved on 'safety' grounds, yet conveniently Sky are able to put their precious Leeds on once again and have started putting mentions up on their advertising channel (Sky Sports News). That's before getting on to the IFollow scandal affecting League One and Two clubs when the blackout doesn't apply and all games including Saturday 3pm ones can be viewed online for less than a match ticket. It's going to take a significant drop off for them to accept what they are doing is damaging but certainly in the lower leagues I would expect that to happen.

You've hit the nail on the head with this. I think the term is 'taking people for granted'. Clubs want to have their cake by way of a big fat cheque dropping through the letterbox from Sky Sports but also want to eat it by having full grounds and healthy crowds to 'enhance the product'. Taking people for granted by advertising season tickets and putting prices up without warning them that easily more than half of home games could be moved away from 3pm Saturday to midweek, Friday nights, Saturday lunch or tea time. Not really bothered once people are paid up because the rewards of Sky cash are far greater than a few disgruntled ST holders. Club isn't bothered whether they turn up or not as long as they renew next summer. Irony is that Sky's broadcasting of all midweek games and Friday night fixtures is having a massive impact on gates, that much is obvious from the footage whilst it might not be reflected in the official figures released, yet they presumably don't accept or appreciate that this in the long run is only going to damage their precious product and atmospheres in grounds and make it less appealing to the neutral.

Got to admit that thought did enter my head earlier today, didn't want to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist though!

Maybe not moved but still taking place at times when people might well embrace the opportunity to not bother going and stay at home and watch it on tv from the comfort of their armchair on the red button. Too many incentives to not bother going. Yes its a fact of life that there will be some midweek games and there always have been, but its also a fact that crowds drop noticeably for those games. Miserable weather, cold nights, kids going into school the next day, people rushing home from work or early starts, these sort of people may well come to the conclusion that it just isn't worth bothering with. I don't mind 2, 3 or 4 home midweek games out of 23 over a season provided the remainder are kept in the sacred 3pm Saturday slot, but when there are so many moved about we're approaching a stage where even as a mid-range Championship side a minority of our home fixtures are taking place at the traditional time of 3pm Saturday.

I agree. People reading far too much into this if they believe that Rovers have the option to make it permanent but aren't obliged to. Can't see one reason why Forest would ever agree to such an arrangement. Why not just send him on loan and see how he does?

Plus add in the ones moved to inconvenient/unattractive times. So far we've had Reading midweek, Villa Saturday tea time, Leeds Saturday lunchtime, Sheffield United was midweek, we know that Preston at home is going to be Saturday lunchtime and Wigan and Derby at home are going to be midweek, and Swansea at home on the final day of the season is going to be an early kick off for TV. So even now we know that at least 8 of our 23 home games are moved, and that could easily go past ten if we get a couple of TV games chucked in which is likely. It's not just the fact that all of those games can/will be available on Sky Sports, but also that those times are all inconvenient for a lot of people. Those who work or who live a fair distance away have their patience tested by midweek kick offs and having to rush home, rush back out, not get home until late. Saturday lunchtime folk are having to leave just after breakfast to get to Blackburn and park up for a noon kick off.

Open up a bar with a choice of 2-3 decent real ales and glasses at a reasonable price and I'd be there every week. I ain't going to spend £4 on Fosters or John Smiths. I'd like to know why/how Accy Stanley have a deal with Bowland Brewery to serve 'Accy Ale' at their ground yet you can't get a pint of real ale in any of Rovers' various bars.

The FA are the real culprits in all this. They conceded far too much ground in the early 90s when the Premier League was set up. They could have retained control of the beast. Now clubs have so much wealth and power it is going to be nigh on impossible to stop them. The threat of a breakaway league could also be immediately stopped if FIFA/UEFA/FA simply point blank refused to sanction such a thing.

It's been shut every other game I think. Presume the trial last season wasn't too popular and so they aren't bothering with it.

They've opened the Legends Lounge for Leeds fans. Promoting it as the 'away fans lounge' and offering admission for £100+vat. Those who go in can either watch from inside or have a seat outside.

The more I observe Waggott's actions and read his interviews It certainly appears that his primary remit here is to increase revenues and reduce costs. That's great but he needs to be careful how far he tries to push it, no matter how positive things are at present. The main worry that I have is that Waggott and Mowbray have gone to India in January/June and said to Venkys 'back what we're trying to do and the fans will come flooding back and the club will perform much better' on the basis that thousands more would have bought tickets off promotion and now that hasn't happened they're getting nervous ahead of the next summit meeting when Mrs D might wonder what is happening and why crowds are the same or only slightly more despite buying into their vision, handing over a decent wedge of cash this summer and letting them get on with it. Hopefully I'm reading too much into it and this is all nonsense but i'll always have these sort of worries with Venkys. It does all seem a bit bizarre that Waggott is so keen to boost revenues through daft things like the 1875 club and £50 price increases whilst the owners were seemingly desperate to make a statement by spending multi-millions on a teenager. Once again lends weight to the theory that the owners want the club to wash its own face in as far as it can but then every now and again they'll chuck some extra cash into the transfer/player wage pot. So whilst Waggott and Cheston scrimp and save and come up with various ways to grow revenues and the stadium looks a mess due to zero investment the football arm of the club receives its cash for players and wages.

I find it interesting that Waggott says the top question he gets from fans is about when the owners will next be coming to Blackburn. That is surprising to me as not only is it not really important whether the owners attend or not, but also I would imagine a large chunk of the support base would prefer it if they didn't attend. Whatever they do they will be criticised - that's not trying to sympathise with them but is reality - if they continue to stay away some will complain that they aren't interested and if they start coming back some will say that they are shamelessly trying to piggy back on the positive progress recently and are distracting away from the manager and team. I personally couldn't care less as long as they don't start meddling and wrecking things again, I think there are much more important questions for Waggott to answer rather than when the owners are next coming to Ewood. I still have concerns about this whole 'trust' thing that both Mowbray and Waggott always reference when talking about the owners. It certainly seems that we're still stuck in their bizarre way of doing things where they have to build up and establish 'trust' in the staff before any serious progress can be made. Of course I'm pleased if Mowbray and Waggott have managed to establish that trust and that bond with the owners, but I do worry about what happens if things take a downturn on the pitch what happens and also what happens when one day we need a new manager whether that person will have to embark upon a multi-year trust building exercise with them before they have enough faith to let him do the job. Of course it's good that they don't want ripping off and being taken advantage of again and long may Mowbray's positive stewardship continue but I worry that there remains too much of this personal trust/bond and all hell breaks loose if that bond breaks down or ends and a new face arrives on the scene who has to win them over again.

Don't think the club announced it, but then again announcements on the u18s and u23s are hard to come by. I understand that the game v Man City which was played on Saturday morning was due to be played in January, the game was suddenly brought forward without any public announcement from Rovers.

The IFollow fiasco is going to be just as damaging as the red button. Yesterday once again, despite originally claiming that there would be a blackout on live broadcasts on Saturday afternoons, all League One and Two games were available via IFollow for £10 in the UK. So for half the admission cost, plus no travelling, food, aggravation, UK fans can watch their team from their armchair rather than go to the game. Just how much loyalty do they think they can exploit? It might not have an immediate impact but over a few years as more people try it I'm sure it will drastically impact upon crowds. Thing is I don't think the League or Clubs particularly care. All they measure success on is cash. We've only got to look at what they've done to the Football League Trophy and taking the Premier League coin to see what their motivations are.

More recently than us developing Ewood we've seen Wigan and Bolton construct brand new stadia whilst outside the top division - 28000 at Bolton and 25000 at Wigan. Even PNE are at about 23,000. None of those clubs remotely as successful as this one over the last 25 years and PNE/Wigan not as well supported yet all aiming for the mid-20's capacity wise. Should Blackburn Rovers have a smaller stadium than those clubs? Jack Walker had the ambition. He could have built it smaller but saw the club dining at the top table and so built a ground fit for that, even planning for a redeveloped Riverside to go even further. Bold, ambitious yes, optimistic maybe, but had things panned out how he expected it to we might well have needed that capacity. Easy 20 years on after his family and the Indians have taken a wrecking ball to his club to say he was wrong to build it that big. If we'd have restricted it to 24000 then we'd be turning people away. Empty seats by the thousand are a fact of life for fallen ex-Premier League giants. A sign of more successful times and those seats will only be re-occupied if success returns, not after a decent start and 4 wins from 12 in the 2nd division. Positive times at the moment but baby steps in the scheme of what's happened here Our job is to get back up and fill them then.

Not sure. It would be interesting if they had included Jack's private room on there but they haven't. Jack's room is next door to the directors lounge and has a door to access his outdoor seating area. There are definitely a couple of photos of the Desai parents hung up on the rear wall of Jack's box. I've been in there a few times but not recently, the last time i think they had kept all of Jack's things as they were. Think there is a proper painted portrait of him and also pictures of his mum hung up. Infact i think the lounge is named after his mother.

People say that our ground was built too big. But I don't think it was. Given our status at the time it was a sensible capacity and even as a mid table or bottom half Premier League club it was a sensible capacity. The problem is when we are outside the Premier League. But find me an ex premier league club that doesn't have a massive surplus of seats. As an example, Sheffield Wednesday usually have 16 or 17 thousand empty seats, similar to us on a poor day, I don't see their fans saying Hillsborough is too big. Everyone's ground is too big in this league, except Brentford and Millwall who haven't had Premier League crowds to provide for. The magic solution is to get promoted.