JHRover

With the exception of today (always more on Boxing Day) and the dingle game (special circumstances) the buzz has passed Rovers by, as crowds particularly in the home areas have been stagnant for the last decade. Agree though that generally around the country crowds have been surging. Shame we've managed to avoid it.

Well it can't be maintenance of the turnstiles, access, exits, concourse, toilets, lighting, catering or stairways as all those are going to be used by the 2500 people they've sold tickets to already. Unless the plastic seats in the two end blocks have for some inexplicable reason deteriorated despite not being used for years and therefore aren't fit for use whereas all the central blocks are usable then I'm really interested to know what crackpot nonsense they have got lined up as a reason why we are selling ourselves short of capacity and looking like turning people away for no reason. Darwen End upper wide areas are perfectly fine for Leeds/Sunderland fans to use yet Blackburn End upper wide areas unfit for Rovers fans to use. Tells you something. 'Mumble mumble maintenance' Or 'We've let the upper tier fall into disrepair through neglect and laziness and now we're faced with a large gate can't make the effort to sort it out' Once again problems unique to Venky Rovers. The one occasion where demand requires use of all areas of our 31000 seat stadium and ludicrously the club can't even maximise its own seating. It is beyond ridiculous, and once again totally contradicts their pleas of poverty when they are fine to turn their noses up at perhaps 1000 tickets being sold at £33 each. Just like they are fine to deter people from visiting the shop and Ewood on non-matchdays and fine not to ensure there is sufficient stock to meet demand. Nothing to do with weather, covid, Suez Canal and everything to do with an incompetent, lazy group of people.

There are no works at all that need doing that affect these end blocks. They use the same turnstiles, toilets, catering, access, exits, gangways and everything else that people in the seats across the aisle in the blocks for sale do. Liars.

Just as we did with JDT and Broughton Stoke may will bin off the 'head coach' structure and revert to a more traditional setup, especially if their Championship status is in jeopardy. You'd be surprised just how determined some clubs and owners are to preserve Championship status - see Oxford making a change this week - it's only here where the owners sit back and let disaster unfold and do too little to late to stop it.

The semi-emergence of this bloke from the shadows gradually over a 7-8 year period is itself odd and intriguing. Up until the recent fans forum meeting when he turned up there had been a sustained refusal, despite various requests, for him to in any shape or form engage with supporters. No interviews, no photos, no comments, nothing. Then suddenly, after all these years, he appears at a forum. I wonder what has changed? Way back when Gary Bowyer got the boot and Paul Lambert was employed it was clear that he was a central figure behind the scenes and responsible for much of what was going on. After this they then had the charade of advertising for an 'owners conduit' - one of the job requirements being multi-lingual - and posted this advert on the website even though it was clear only a very small number of people could satisfy those requirements, and it seemed the man they wanted was already effectively doing the job. I suspected at the time this was work permit related. I think it was 2019 before they confirmed his existence publicly by announcing the new 'Senior Management Team' where he was named as Suhail Shaikh and in January 2019 was announced as 'owners representative / operations and management consultant'. Since then he has remained but we've had a myriad of titles and job descriptions up to today where he is described as 'Chief Operating Officer' on the website. Now my interpretation of this is that he has transitioned from being an employee of the owners in India / consultant to eventually becoming an employee of the club. Like everything else at Rovers it is just very odd, unusual and strange.

Completely nonsensical indeed and I and a few others pointed this out the day it happened. I'm not aware of many other examples of clubs loaning out their captains to rivals mid-season but then again not many other clubs operate like this one. Of course as time has gone by and Travis' importance both on and off the pitch has become more and more apparent it only looks even more of a shocking decision and just imagine had we actually got relegated off the back of it. Some want to console themselves by believing the party line that it was all the fault of that nasty unreasonable JDT. Nothing to see here folks, nothing at all to do with Venkys, shadow man or Waggott, the wage savings of course just a convenient by-product. A bit like it being ever so convenient that Ian Silvester suffered amnesia and forgot how to submit a transfer form on deadline day and that conveniently saved the owners the expense of spending on new quality signings.....

I reckon about 24,000 on at current sales including their 7,300. Still plenty of empties in the Riverside and no BBE upper but yeah Jack Walker and BBE lower reasonably full.

Apparently West Brom have serious financial restrictions so that might put them off paying compo for someone else's manager. I especially can't see them paying big money which they would need to get Rohl out of Sheffield Wednesday (signed a long term deal in the summer I think). Terrible timing for them with games coming thick and fast...suspect they would be wise to appoint a free agent until the summer at least and see where the rest of this season takes them. Maybe a Robins or Mowbray type...popular, available, experienced at taking over clubs mid-season. I think a bigger concern will be Stoke. Inevitable that Pelach will get sacked soon as they slide towards trouble and their next 3 games are against Leeds, Sunderland and Dingles so you wouldn't expect them to get much there. After a foreign experiment and if they are in relegation trouble you'd expect them to turn to a British experienced manager. Eustace might well be high on their list and they've form for going after managers employed at rival clubs (Rowett, Schumacher, Neil). Of course one simple way to deal with that risk and that's to give Eustace an improved extended deal. Think we all know that ain't happening under the regime here and he will be looking elsewhere by the summer if not before with his initial deal already running down.

If you are going to pick up injuries then late December or January is the 'best' time to do it, as you are heading into a transfer window with the ability to quickly replace people and reinforce as opposed to having to wait for several months and make do. So Rovers know what they need, the manager does, over to the owners and board to strengthen...... They aren't going to be able to use the 'secretary having a meltdown' excuse or 'admin error' again so soon after the last couple of January's and they aren't going to admit the rancid owners won't back the club so the most interesting part of the next 4-5 weeks is going to be what cock and bull nonsense they come up with to explain a lack of backing for Eustace and whether he puts up with it.

We've come a long way if being 5th in the second division is seen as cause for 'plastics' to emerge and of course we've been in as good a position several times in the last 2-3 years and crowds have barely increased.

I do find it totally bonkers that the club will claim a 'sell out' of Ewood, assuming we shift the remaining 1500 on sale, when I predict the gate will be announced at 25,000 maximum if so by virtue of 4000 empty in the Darwen End and a further 1000+ in the home ends. It will only be 80% full.

At most clubs the management would be wanting to maximise the attendance in whatever ways possible. This would mean selling every single available seat and if/when necessary getting rid of needless segregation and selling those seats too. We are lucky at Ewood in that the away stand is a separate structure and entirely self contained from the rest of the ground. There is no need for any segregation as there is no way a Rovers fan in the Riverside could get to the Darwen End due to the high steel fencing between the two, not to mention heavy police presence. At the Turf fans can be separated by a shutter and a narrow line of stewards. Here I get the impression that this is all too much trouble. They have been caught off guard by the high demand for tickets having never expected to need the BBE upper and now are bizarrely cutting the capacity of that stand for no good reason and thus restricting our potential attendance. I suspect it is related to the 'unreserved seating' tickets. Amateur outfit in operation.

I'm confused / concerned. The club have just made this announcement: https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2024/december/23/east-lancashire-derby-ticket-update/ Stating that an extra 1000 tickets have been released. Checking the website they have indeed unlocked Block N09 and part of N10. A quick calculation suggests this should be another 1300 tickets available, as the upper tier holds 3000. I also don't think they've opened either of the end blocks yet which if they do would be another few hundred tickets. However the club have indicated that once these 1000 are sold there are no more available and it will be a 'sell out'. This simply isn't true, as there will only be 2500 sold in the upper tier. I haven't yet made enquiries with the club about the 'unreserved seating' but only selling 2500 in a stand that holds 3000 would indeed suggest I am correct and they are underselling for reasons unknown. What a club we follow. Moan about crowds and attendances, get a chance of filling the place and sell ourselves short for no reason at all other than bad organisation.

I wasn't making it up about unreserved seating. Madness if so.

Anyone else got tickets for the BBE Upper that say 'unreserved seating' on them? Hopefully they're not that stupid, it would be total chaos if so.

About 900 left in the Riverside, 200 or so in the open BBE upper and then another 1300ish not available for sale. Total of around 2400 remaining.

We'll look into it

Hopefully the penny is dropping though after 7 years under this CEO and 14 years under these owners it must be the longest drop of a penny ever witnessed. I suspect they've known this, deep down, for quite some time but simply can't be arsed or don't want any objections by making efforts outside of BWD. Easier to just keep your heads down, tick boxes and collect your wages.

I assume that 'N' refers to 'North' as Jack Walker is 'W' and Riverside is 'E' and Darwen End blocks are 'S' Only time I've ever seen or heard stands at Ewood referred to by their compass points, whereas it is quite common around other grounds.

I think initially they opened half of N08 together with N07 and N06. Something odd has happened where this morning all of N08 was greyed out but now almost the whole block is showing as available, whereas now the end part of N06 in the very corner is all greyed out but was available earlier. I think they will have taken N08 off sale yesterday and now given higher demand they are opening more of it up but have stopped selling the end of N06 as it wouldn't make much sense to fill that corner block before the central blocks.

They acknowledged this about 6 years ago and Waggott said he was going to 'look into' arranging buses to bring people in from non-BwD areas for games. Nothing ever happened because it was all hollow words and too much effort, he and they have no intention of driving anything. The efforts that they make within BwD whilst positive are limited both in scale and in prospects of success. They aren't paying attention to the changing of the times. Blackburn Rovers isn't a town club. Which is why I get frustrated when I see this obsession with the population of Blackburn and 'small town club' mantra. It is a regional club, with a very high % of its support coming from areas including Leyland, Chorley, Bamber Bridge, Rishton, Harwood, Clayton, Clitheroe, Accy, Haslingden, Ossy and many other towns. Where, when or why it became 'cool' to limit our engagement and interest to the 70s borders of BwD, and in doing so immediately and drastically restrict our reach and catchment area, I am not so sure. Thankfully under the previous regime the opposite approach applied, under Walker and then Williams some recognition of our regional support and serious efforts made to bring people in from those areas. Of course under the 'do the bare minimum' regime of today any chance they can get to reduce the club's reach is grabbed.

I think it is equally if not more odd when former Rovers season ticket holders start going watching Accy Stanley. I know of a few in this bracket. Season ticket holders during the Premier League days but these days spend their Saturdays at the Crown Ground. Now I know it is everyone's own choice what they do and I know Stanley offer a cheaper and easier day out but I still find it difficult to get my head around.

I sincerely hope that the Club won't be allowing them to bring in various flags and banners and display them over the netting right in camera shot behind the goals. We get nothing, absolutely nothing, when we go to their place. A couple of thousand allocation, horrendous facilities, 1 toilet, a hatch in the wall and a gazebo for pre-match and that's the lot. No corporate, hospitality, flags, anything.

I reckon there can only be about 19k home fans to date. 31k capacity. Minus 4000 dingles and 4000 empties in the Darwen End so maximum 23k home seats. Minus 2300 remaining upstairs in the BBE and 1200 in the Riverside that's 19,500, then knock off a few more for the end block of the Riverside and JW lower that are netted off (circa 500 or so)

The club seem to be quite proud of the fact that this is the first time in over 6 years since the Oxford promotion party that they've opened the top tier to paying fans. I don't know why, I consider it a major black mark against Waggott and his regime. Nor should he or his mates receive a shred of credit for such healthy sales. This is organic growth, nothing at all to do with pricing or ticket policies and everything to do with the nature of the fixture, time of year, and perhaps most importantly the efforts of Eustace and the players so far this season. Anyhow, about 2100 now remaining including about 800 in the upper BBE and 1200 in the Riverside. So impressively have sold 700ish upstairs this afternoon alone. Sell the lot, including the other 1500 not yet open and it will be 25-26000, a fine effort considering 5000 will be off limits in the DE and unnecessary buffer zone