JHRover

Is there any other club in this country that invites/encourages almost 8000 away fans to turn up? I suppose MK Dons are the only other one but I'd rather not compare our club to theirs. I mean come on, I understand the financial rewards of large away followings and agree that a large vocal away support improves the atmosphere and can make for a better occasion, but surely we could draw the line at 5000 or 5500? That would still be a bumper gate, decent atmosphere and would put us on a similar footing to the likes of PNE, Bolton, Wigan for away allocations. It would also avoid the need for 12 noon kick offs (if the police really are insisting that happens and it isn't just being done to make life easier for certain people). As far as I'm aware we're the only club that allows its kick off times to be brought forward purely on the basis of the large away allocation. It's clear to see what Rovers' priorities are here. More interested in maximising the number of away fans in the ground than they are about making the experience a better one for Rovers fans. One or two other fixtures usually kick off early like Millwall v Leeds but they are more to do with security concerns arising from years of crowd trouble. I challenge anyone to provide any evidence of widespread crowd trouble or violence when the away club gets the whole Darwen End. We welcomed Leeds for several years with a full Darwen End. Seems things changed after a few drunken away fans made a mess in Wetherspoons. What that has to do with anything I'm not sure.

Reckon Sunderland could fill the Crown Ground twice over when they play Stanley.

Stand closures, price rises, surcharges, database only admission, ticket only admission. Mowbray is right, it would be lovely if we could get to 20,000 home fans every week. Going to do very well to almost double our home crowds whilst doing all of the above though. A more sensible target would be 14000-15000 home fans, which I believe is an achievable target but will still require a radical rethink from the club which shows no signs whatsoever of changing its pricing or policies any time soon. The arrival of Steve Waggott has actually seen the opposite occur with more deterrents appearing.

I would fully support Rovers returning the favour when they come to Ewood and giving them tickets at £20 a piece. Suspect that won't happen as Cheston/Waggott will have that one earmarked for 'Category A' pricing due to their league position and likely large away following if they are still up near the top, so it will be £27 and a surcharge on the day.

No it isn't. Bristol City v Sheffield Wednesday was on the red button yesterday afternoon, though not advertised very well. You have to go onto the Sky Football channel where they were showing highlights and then press the red button. You wouldn't know it was on without trying it. Same when we played at Bristol City earlier this season on Sunday lunchtime. The curfew on live games only applies for 3pm kick offs, I think. When we played at Bristol is was early days in the season and there was no confirmation of the red button service until the Thursday or Friday before when it suddenly appeared on Sky's website. I suspect that was deliberate to avoid significantly reducing the crowd.

Exactly, they won't advertise it as there seems to be some sort of agreement or rule in place that they don't but I'm sure it will appear on the day when most people have bought their tickets.

If the game was at 3pm like it would have been up until 3-4 years ago then I reckon 24,000+, but at noon less will want to do it. Oh well, Rovers' choice.

At 12 noon I think we'll do well to get more than 20,000 on including the 7,600 from Leeds.

Rumour is that Thierry Henry is likely to be the next Villa manager, with John Terry as his assistant. Huge gamble. Give me McCarthy or Bruce any day over that.

Delighted with the win, important that we got the 3 points before the break after dropping points at home. Always satisfying to beat them. I still long for the day we can relax in the last ten minutes and comfortably see a win out, I know it's easier said than done but for whatever reason we seem to find a way to do it the hard way and it is really difficult to watch at times. Fine margins. That offside flag not raised and penalty scored and the performance and result very disappointing but in hanging on for all 3 points it's happy days. Comprehensively outplayed by Sheffield United and not good at Bolton yet 3 points from 6. Snatch a draw from Sheffield and concede that penalty yesterday and it's 2 points from 6 but we might have felt better about the performances. I'd have given Raya or Reed MOTM personally, seems Sky default setting is to award it to the goalscorer.

Anyone know where he is? Pretty sure he hasn't been in the dugout for our last 2 or 3 games.

I accept that it is included in the terms and conditions and that if I wish to enter the ground I have to go through a search should one be requested. It's not really a question of 'being soft' but something which as a longstanding home season ticket holder who has never been in any sort of trouble I wonder why I am suddenly now being subjected to it. I know the answer - because they've chosen to move the Darwen Enders into the JW Lower and they're worried about flares etc - but why should my match day experience be affected? The people around me are pensioners who have been going for decades - are these people suddenly being searched on arrival before being allowed in? The system for doing it is also flawed - they aren't searching every person every time but are picking odd ones out as they see fit - the difficulty is that queues then quickly build up ahead of kick off as stewards are blocking the turnstiles whilst searching people. I don't notice stewards searching people on the Riverside or Family Stand so again I wonder why I am suddenly being subjected to searches when there is no recent history of any trouble from people in the JW Lower tier.

Can see the Leeds game being absolute chaos for a number of reasons. Them bringing 7,600 is always going to see the people at Rovers struggle to cope. Factor in that there are no trains and the kick off is at noon and the area around Ewood will grind to a halt as they try to accommodate the travelling coaches and cars. Of course with a 30,000+ capacity Ewood and the surrounding area is perfectly capable of hosting such games but the prospect of 20,000+ v Leeds will send them into panic mode. I also predict that to increase the away allocation to 7,600 this will mean that segregation between home and away fans will be moved from the Darwen End and into the Riverside/Jack Walker stands. The 400 or whatever empty seats I think will be the front rows which are usually kept empty. I hope any season ticket holders are not going to be affected by segregation being imposed in the home ends.

Kind of with you on this. If the 'plan' at this club is to build something over a few years ahead of an eventual promotion assault on a limited budget then we need to be trying to emulate Sheffield United who have become promotion contenders without massive spending, using a predominantly British squad of players. Trouble is from what I gather Sheffield United and Wilder don't have Mowbray's caution. He approaches every game to win and won't change his approach to counter the opposition. Sometimes that will backfire and they'll lose games and they'll concede plenty. I don't see that with us. We are a cautious side that worries about the opposition, yet aren't well drilled or organised enough to absorb pressure and keep clean sheets regularly, nor are we a side that does what Sheffield do. As you say it's lovely saying we're building something over a few years but that hinges on certain conditions and we don't know if they exist or not - will our best players stick around for that? Will Venkys sell them? If so it's a never ending rebuild. What about the fact that almost every summer we've had to sign near double figures to replace people who are out of contract and will have to do again this summer when the assortment of loans and contracts expire?

Villa fans not happy? There's a surprise. They could have Guardiola lined up and some of that lot would complain. Championship club appoint man who has spent 15 years in the Premier League and they complain. If he was Portuguese they'd be all over it. Still think I'd rather have Bruce for a promotion push than Moyes.

If you take Rovers' figures as being accurate then we're at around 12,000 home fans. I couldn't help but bite on twitter to that cheeky tweet from Leeds. Anyone would think they've a record of filling their own ground. Whenever I've been to Elland Road recently there have been 10,000+ empty seats. Bet there won't be that many at Ewood when we play them.

Yannick Wildschut, Harry Wilson, Mason Mount, Chris Martin, Andreas Weimann, Oliver Norwood (dingle), Tomer Hemed, Nakhi Wells (dingle), Marley Watkins, Barry McKay. All moved for £2 million or thereabouts or loans. I'm sure Sam Gallagher and Harrison Reed would have been available for those sort of figures too and in my opinion would have been very decent permanent signings who would increase in value. Plenty of others floating around too. Just find the whole thing odd. Completely out of club character to invest big money in one player in one position whilst dealing in loans and frees elsewhere. Conspiracy theory alert again but something not right with the Jacob Davenport signing either. I've already said that I was satisfied with our summer business, and welcomed the Brereton signing, and I'm not daft enough to be labelling him a waste of money or a failure after 4 substitute appearances in the league. Likewise the celebrations we witnessed on here when we signed Kasey Palmer have so far shown to be misplaced.

Yes but then we stuck at it for a couple of weeks and got the deal done in the loan window, so we invested quite a bit of time and money into that deal and there were no rumours of other targets. The whole thing is bizarre really. I'm not writing him on or off at this point but I am perplexed by our transfer dealings and spending. If we truly had £7-8 million to spend on players we'd have been far better splitting that into 4 and signing a CM and CB along with a winger and CF, but I get the impression that there's no way £2 million on 4 different players would have been authorised. I think Mowbray knew he had an opportunity to spend some decent cash and knowing Venkys that cash might never appear again so he had to take the opportunity even if it meant disproportionate spending.

The frustrating thing for me is that we never, ever, seem to be in control of a game. Look what Sheffield United did last night and really other than 10-15 minutes in the second half they were well on top from start to finish. Even when we had our spell of 'dominance' (by which I mean we had plenty of possession, mainly in our own half, and no chances) they were comfortable and weren't troubled. We can't deliver what they did, either because we haven't got the know-how or ability to do it. Even in the games we have won we haven't really been in control. I suppose Brentford and Hull were as close to it as we have been but even then we ended up hanging on to a one goal lead and could have conceded had it not been for good saves from Raya. Games in which we were comfortable and cruising and had done the hard part - Ipswich, Stoke, Villa, Forest - we have thrown it away or very nearly done. That's the frustrating thing for me. I can accept Sheffield deserved the win and were/are a better team than us, but it's the other games that annoy me - where we are in control for periods but end up letting points slip through our fingers because we can't do it for 90 minutes. We've shown numerous times this season that we can compete and can cause problems for teams but poor game management has cost us a lot of points in games we should have been winning. This comes in all sorts of shapes and forms - flukey goals, penalties, free kicks, moaning about decisions or lapses in concentration. The better sides don't give these things away and don't get those sort of decisions against them.

It's like with Bauer. Apparently we were keen on paying a fair bit for him, pursued him all summer, didn't get him but seemingly didn't have any other CB in place, then ended up turning to Rodwell on a short term contract with a view to converting him into a CB. Brereton similar - pursued him for quite a while, a surprising amount of cash - I personally doubt that there were other irons in the fire on that one. I've said before it has similar traits to the Rhodes deal - out of the blue unexpected amount of cash made available for one player - meanwhile the rest of the squad is still being built around loans and cheap deals. I'm not going to slate Brereton yet. I think some are keen to label him as a waste of money, but I thought Dack was poor and unfit in his first couple of months last season and Graham didn't get going last season until December and now look at them.

Two problems here. The first is that there's no way we've coughed up or committed to cough up £7 million on him. It will be half of that or maybe slightly more with addons and bonuses taking it up to £7 million in years to come. The second is that I think a very particular set of criteria would have had to be matched for Venkys to sanction that sort of outlay. It isn't going to be as simple as giving Mowbray 3,4,5,6 million for a striker and he's picked Brereton out of all those available. They would only have put that money on the table for a particular player if certain boxes were ticked, one being that the player had to be young with plenty of time and potential to improve and increase in value. Mowbray's language around the signing and spending the money was strange. Seems he felt under some pressure to get it spent because he doubted whether it would be available again if not. Early days for the lad but he's not exactly had opportunity galore coming on in the last 20 minutes either as we're trying to see a game out and hold on or as we're chasing a game and he's the lone striker.

Must win game this one for me. Some might say that's dramatic or hysterical or an over-reaction to last night or that a draw would be a good point away from home but really given the performance last night, 2 points dropped v Forest on Saturday and with the fixtures coming up later this month we need a win here to fall back on. Leeds home and Swansea/WBA away will be tough, though not mission impossible, but Bolton provides by far our best opportunity of a win. We cannot allow a rot to set in and the wins to dry up as unbeaten spells full of draws won't get you very far. That's why Rotherham aren't far behind even though they've lost 3x the games we have.

I also enter via Turnstile L. I assume that the near 8000 strong Leeds contingent will be all getting searched on the turnstiles before our game against them?

I was also searched on the turnstiles of the Jack Walker lower tier on Saturday v Forest. Not impressed in the slightest. A season ticket for 22 years and for the first time for unknown reasons I am being searched on arrival.

Is that our aim? Who has declared that as our target? I don't know. What is mid-table? Bruce and McCarthy have between them 6 promotions from this league in the last 10 years or so. Not to mention play-off campaigns. McCarthy's football supposedly outdated yet look what is happening to Ipswich now he's gone - they're sinking just as expected. How would you describe our tactics tonight? That was as boring and long ball as I've seen from anyone. Mowbray has done well, but we need to focus on the here and now and results/performances this season. I'm less concerned by our defeat tonight as I am by consistently conceding goals and letting points slip from good positions v Ipswich, Villa, Forest and very nearly Stoke which is a big problem that needs sorting out. Mowbray was praised after last season because he delivered his target. He has been praised this season after some good results. He will be criticised after a poor result and performance. That's his and the players' job. If there wasn't criticism then we would never learn or improve.