I think it will be us and Huddersfield to join Rotherham in League One.

Wednesday have proven that they have that fighting spirit and ability to win games when the pressure is on. I am dreading our match against them.

Birmingham are poor but in Rowett have a shrewd operator who should have enough to get a win or two from their relatively kind remaining fixtures (Rotherham and Huddersfield to come).

Forget about Millwall, QPR and Stoke, they'll be fine.

Plymouth a maybe but have two opportunities coming up in Stoke and Millwall both away.

31 minutes ago, Waggy76 said:

Does this stat include the one season in league 1 ?

No Championship matches only

Leeds by no means unstoppable as a poor Sunderland side proved on Tuesday and Watford proved recently.

But they'll be well up for this especially after dropping those two points at home and after Leicester lost and Ipswich only drew.

If we keep the deficit below 3 I'll be surprised.

7 hours ago, Ghost7 said:

Ipswich have spent 4 or 5 times what we spent on transfer fees and probably double what we could offer wage wise + god knows what on loan fees. The teams that are buying freebies and spending pennies are out of their depth. We are one of them IMO.

We wouldn't have been able to afford the majority of loans or free transfers they have done. Sarmiento, Moore, Williams, Tuanzebe, Hutchinson... we couldn't touch any of them.

Even if we wanted to we weren't able to afford George Hirst at £2m and have been bringing on players like Markanday and Telalovic all season. Leonard and Garrett have also played plenty and should both be on loan in League One.

Pickering is one of the worst fullbacks in the division. He makes everyone look quick and we had half the season without a suitable backup. He is League One and probably one of the first names on the team sheet.

Neither GK would start for Rotherham or any other Championship side. That says a lot.

On top of that... 71 goals against.

We are well out of our depth this year personnel wise other than Szmodics. He's the only reason we aren't already down with Rotherham and is carrying one of the most useless Rovers teams I've ever seen.

 

We've brought in nearly £30 million in the last 2 transfer windows and it should have been more had we looked after the Brereton contract situation.

We can and could afford to do all of those things

The owners have decided we aren't because of their issues and because they want to use the money to pay bills instead.

Their choice. Their responsibility when it goes wrong.

1 minute ago, RevidgeBlue said:

*Cough Fleck

*Cough Mcfadzean

Too little too late. And certainly not enough contribution on the pitch from either of them.

8 minutes ago, davulsukur said:

Stunning to see how we've assembled a squad of such losers. The mentality of these lot has been pathetic for far too long.

It costs nothing to have some professional pride, how can none of them have any?

A large part of it is that too large a % of our squad consists of younger end academy grads with minimal experience of the hard yards of professional football. 

Many of them are used to playing their football in the no pressure on results environment of the u21s and u18s. Doesn't actually matter there if you lose as long as you 'play the right way'. 

When you fill your senior squad up with such people almost overnight its inevitable that with such a low average age you are going to have this mentality.

Another downside to the obsessive 'academy' approach rather than going out and recruiting experienced and seasoned pros. 

Another stat is that we've won 14 out of 86 Championship away games played on a Monday-Friday since we were relegated from the Premier League in 2012. 

Dismal. Hardly worth even incurring the travel expenses. 

1 hour ago, Waggy76 said:

No good blaming Eustace or JDT ..

It is all on the owners .

They have to go asap , bring on adminstration..

If ,, we stay up this season, we will be  relegated next ...

The club is set up to fail ....

Spot on.

Waggott will be chuckling into his cuppa watching fans bicker about players and managers and performances when its all immaterial. 

It is all caused by Venkys. It will continue as long as they are here. Until everyone recognises that and accepts it they will continue to get away with it. Eustace will just be the latest patsy. If he takes us down they will turn the spotlight on him and Broughton and deflect away from the real culprits in India. 

1 hour ago, jim mk2 said:

Don’t understand this. Why would they leave if we went down? Why would one automatically lead to the other? Relegation is the worst thing that could happen. 

Relegation would be a catastrophe yes. 

But its coming. This year, next or in two years. The only way of avoiding it is if Venkys leave or they suddenly change their ways and run the club properly. Neither will happen.

So survival gets us nowhere other than a stay of execution, a nice bonus for the facilitators ahead of the next round of cuts and sales.

There is some slim hope that with relegation comes the final blow to the finances needed to push them out and drain the Ewood swamp. Its a slim hope but more likely to get them out than surviving. 

I accept the most likely outcome is League One stagnation for a few years with Venkys still here, basically a modern day Crewe, but they are taking us there sooner or later anyway with their current funding and recruitment 'model'. 

25 minutes ago, Bohinen1983 said:

Ahh, so they're much lower now..  I guess the kick in the balls is, as a general rule of thumb, you finish around what you spend on wages..    

Football is an entertainment business..  If you're successful more people come to watch..   Speculate to accumulate..

Conversely, if you cut you're generally going to get worse, play worse football and finish lower.  You then get fewer fans, less revenue..  So then what? Make more cuts?  If you follow this trajectory it's a path to oblivion in football.. Make cuts, get worse, finish lower, less fans, make more cuts, ad infinitum.  

The club needs a fresh start, a clean slate,

Precisely. Immediate financial considerations are only one component of running a football club, yet it seems Waggott and the rest down there have that as their one and only remit.

There are many other factors that have to be balanced with a desire to cut costs, save money, reduce owner input.

You have to invest. Invest means spending above and beyond the bare minimum essentials. Invest means trying to grow and improve, progress, get better. Invest isn't asking the owners to pay the wages each month or for a bag of grass seed so we can get the pitch ready for pre-season.

You have to try and get better. If you don't you get worse, and with that, as you rightly say, comes less income and a vicious circle of decline.

Waggott may be perfectly competent at cutting costs, saving the owners money and doing the job they want him to do. Unfortunately for BRFC and any other professional sports club there is so, so, so much more to it than cutting costs and saving money.

As we teeter on the brink of a return to the 3rd division and a further drop off in already poor attendances maybe that message will get through. Then again maybe not.

If there is a reduction or offer it will be minimal and with various strings attached.

Thats how con men like Waggott operate.

8 hours ago, Miller11 said:

The question is would say a £100 reduction move the dial sufficiently to maintain the level of income we currently have? 

Do we need to maintain the same level of income given transfer and media receipts over the last 2 seasons?

Why can't we have more people paying less, lower revenue, be chasing the top 6 and not have a firesale of assets, e.g. like Preston?

Truth be told our revenue makes no difference to our fortunes. Just like FFP doesn't

No FFP there would be no difference. Greater income and crowds would make no difference to how they run the club.

It's chronic mismanagement.

Owners who are responsible for the club rotting away into a state whereby it needs an Indian Court's approval to keep the bills paid and lights on for the next few months and is no longer considered a viable concern then get credit from some numpties for keeping the lights on.

Bolton and Derby were the most recent two examples of 'be careful what you wish for' - now about to get promoted so probably in a healthier condition than us in every department within the next few months so they'll then shift to Reading (about to get taken over) and someone else as examples of why Venkys are great.

If, after the shenanigans of the last couple of seasons, the Club had any concern about attendances (which it damn well should given the numbers) then there's no ifs or buts, prices should be cut in all areas and for this to have any serious impact on the numbers turning up this would require adults to be no more than £300 plus a serious sustained push at trying to tempt people to buy.

As you say, dreamland stuff, not because it isn't possible, Nob end and Notlob have proven that it is possible and that it does work, but here we will be lucky to get prices released before June (as usual one of the latest to get them on sale, thus shortening our sales window) and we know for a fact there is going to be zero serious or imaginative approach to increasing sales other than the usual tired efforts

'We're committed (and getting paid a load for it) Are you?'

So combine expensive prices, poor quality product, no ambition to do anything other than survive and cut costs, a short purchasing window and disgraceful conduct by the owners and their underlings = another drop in numbers signing up.

1 hour ago, simongarnerisgod said:

the sad truth is if eustace steers us through this season and somehow has us in the top six by christmas next year,he`ll have his managerial legs chopped off and be forced to sell his best players,thats the way venkys have run rovers since they took over,he`ll either be made to sell them in the summer or the transfer window in january,no doubt there will be the big sell to get season tickets sales up then the big player sell off when season tickets sales reach their target

This is the fundamental point as I've raised several times.

It actually doesn't matter to us whether Eustace is good, bad, mediocre. 

He could be brilliant and somehow get us near the top 2 next January. Outcome? As they've shown with Mowbray and JDT there will be no backing in January and probably a sale or two just to add good measure. Ultimately he'd get a better offer from a club with some ambition or walk in frustration.

He could be dreadful and take us down this season or next. Outcome? He's got 2 years still to go on his contract, they ain't sacking him as they ain't interested and if they do they'll do it far too late.

So it's all pointless until they clear off. Even if we stumble across a winning formula they'll make sure it doesn't last.

The stagnation and death of a football club laid bare in simple stats.

Whilst all the competition engage and grow their fanbases, most without PL football to rely on, Blackburn Rovers is the clear outlier, actually seeing a small drop whilst rivals witness a boom of several thousand.

To those who care those figures are horrifying, alarming, worrying and if allowed to continue will see this club die a slow death when combined with demographic changes in the area.

To those who don't care something about how we used to get smaller numbers back in 1984 so it's all normal, natural, fine.

To Waggott and Venkys, go to hell.

To be fair to Rovers they are certainly pulling out all the stops these days 

Like arranging for the Grand National to be moved to lunchtime so that Rovers fans can watch it before we play Leeds at 12:30pm. Some effort.

The only consolation to potential relegation is that hopefully it will be the final straw and things will start to get really ugly. By that I mean the deluded folk who convince themselves that all is fine and well will realise the truth, that the financial implications are enough to break the status quo and hopefully rid us of these people one way or the other. That's the only hope I have, that there is a tipping point somewhere along the line and another relegation and £7-10 million down on the revenue might just hopefully cause a chain reaction upstairs. 

The way things are going there will be people celebrating clinging on to Championship status, as though this is some sort of major achievement for a side that has spent almost all the last 2.5 years occupying a top 6 position and probably still would be if it wasn't for the owners and their employees doing their best to dismantle the club. 

These are the important issues here. Which players are left and which manager acts as figurehead are unimportant when you've got the problems we have at the top of the club. It's like talking about what colour wallpaper you'd prefer in your living room when your roof has a gaping hole in it and the windows are smashed through. 

Whether it is Eustace, Johnson or another puppet appointed as the sacrificial lamb to oversee the next round of cost cuts and sales is of minor importance. We won't be coming back up next time around and if they continue on the course they've set in the last 3 years we will be in League One sooner rather than later. That is a fact and it is totally deserved and a direct result of their management and decision making. 

9 minutes ago, Andy said:

 

The more I think about it - and the more you read into interviews by JDT and GB, the more I come to the conclusion that Waggott is THE issue at the club.

A similar thought had occurred to me. 

I'm convinced that he is renumerated at least partly based on how much he 'saves' the owners, and of course relevant to that metric is the wage bill and transfer fees. If true I see absolutely no reason why he would want contract extensions or big transfer fees. 

But even if true the owners have employed him and have let him continue for 6.5 years and counting. So at the very least they are happy with how he's doing things.

What we can't allow ourselves to do is fall for the 'innocent oblivious naive Venkys' line again. Been there done that, and still some people fervently claim all our problems were nothing to do with them but purely the result of bad advice/being taken advantage of. 

It's nonsense - their name over the door = their ultimate responsibility and the reason why they have to go. No ifs or buts. Too much blood on their hands for that.

1 hour ago, Mattyblue said:

That reminds me, wasn’t there supposed to be another fan takeover day before the end of the season? 

 

With guaranteed big followings from promotion chasing Ipswich, Southampton, Coventry and fighting for their safety Sheffield Wednesday?

'We'll look into it'

1 hour ago, Parsonblue said:

I believe that deals were already in place for two players but it required Rothwell being sold.  Unfortunately, the owners opted to keep Rothwell which meant the other two deals couldn't be done.

Presumably even if they allowed the sales to happen we'd have then suffered the very same 'admin errors' experienced in the last few transfer windows, conveniently meaning no money gets spent.

I personally wouldn't have complained at selling Rothwell or Brereton when it was clear neither were signing new contracts IF the money was used to replace them,

Unfortunately the very reason they weren't signing new contracts, why virtually nobody other than academy graduates on their first professional deals have signed extensions, is that the club has systematically and rapidly reduced the wage bill.

So I doubt they were even offered sensible terms, or if they were they were never going to sign them as they simply weren't competitive for the standard of player in question. 

And for the same reason we were never, ever, ever, going to see the money reinvested, which is why the McGuire and O'Brien stunts were little more than con jobs orchestrated by liars. Serious money was never changing hands.

People talk about tough games when we play top 6 or 6 pointers.

Well this and Bristol City are the ones against sides stuck in mid-table in dodgy form and going nowhere.

On paper it should be the ideal fixture to target a win in. Managerless, missing a few to injury and other than a win against a poor Cardiff side yesterday have been in terrible form themselves.

Unfortunately with 2 wins in 21 or whatever it is now it is clear that this side hasn't got the capacity to target any fixture as a win and there is something seriously wrong. Put simply we aren't good enough to get results. I wonder why that is.

Does anyone actually care at this stage?

He could be Pep Guardiola's natural successor for all we know, but under these owners it is irrelevant. They'll find a way to undermine him and force him out.

They ain't going to sack a shite manager - Kean, Coyle

They ain't going to back a decent manager - JDT, Allardyce, maybe Lambert

John Eustace could be a Mourinho in the making, or could be another Kean. Ultimately makes no difference to this club under these awful people.