JHRover

No way old Tony could cope with the commute from Teesside to Norwich after his struggles with getting to/from Brockhall.

Norwich have sacked Manning at last so they'll be on the lookout for a new manager too. Russell Martin probably top of their list with his connections there.

Seems strange, only a few days ago Rudy was boasting of the owners' support and investment with their '10 signings' and now we have lost a few to injury and we are all concerned about coping with a threadbare squad. In reality they've left us short, again, by cutting corners and costs on recruitment, contracts and the squad. Only an imbecile would sell Hyam on deadline day with no replacement coming in and then seriously expect treatment table regulars Carter and Wharton to see us through a 46 game season. But that's where the difference comes in - this lot aren't arsed if it means we lose more games or plummet down the table. They'll just shrug shoulders and moan about 'bad luck' whilst collecting their bonuses for cutting the wage bill and bringing in millions.

We go to Bristol City it's 9 minutes added (Play over 10) when we have a narrow lead to protect. At Leicester it was 6-7. As usual when Rovers are chasing a game it is the bare minimum.

Not going to shift many of those surplus replica shirts by closing the club shop on a home game with 18,000 fans walking past the locked doors.

Loads of seats available in the Riverside if you want 3 together. Won't get close to selling out.

Well on numerous occasions, including Derby's manager today, you have accepted location as a reason for someone moving club. Being closer to home, family reasons etc. You did the same with Joe Rothwell to Bournemouth and others. So Rob Edwards, who comes from Telford and who played for Wolves for years, who actually seems to have very strong family ties to that area, yet you don't seem willing to accept this might play a part in him moving there rather than staying with Middlesbrough.

They expected to fill Ewood Park with home fans which is why they limited Derby to half the DE. That's right, a 12:30pm Championship kick off after everything they have done to humiliate, degrade and alienate and they seriously thought the floodgates would open for fans to come today. As it happens there will of course be over 10,000 empty seats for the biggest milestone in the Club's history. Something for them to pat themselves on the back over. I have no doubt whatsoever that the planned release of the anniversary shirt has been postponed either because they want to first sell off the remaining stock of the 3 main kits or because someone is annoyed that the anniversary shirt has been leaked online this week and is making a point not to release it now. Of course logically having FOUR different kits this season, none of which are particularly impressive efforts, was always going to stretch budgets and luck. The home shirt is the most boring effort I can imagine and has the halves wrong, the gold one I don't understand why pictures of the railway station and Wainwright bridge are being used and the green one has no connection to our history and includes a white rose of Yorkshire, but apparently matches a shade of green contained on the town coat of arms. But even if you loved all three buying them all and then being asked to cough up another £90 for a white shirt with an ironed on cross was a lot to ask. Naturally of course they should have done what was suggested on here - have a proper anniversary home shirt that was released in the summer and worn all season - an all white one if necessary - and then a decent away one like all gold to honour the occasion. Job done. Two unique shirts for a one-off season. No need for fiasco or confusion.

What if your Mrs told you she wanted to move to the Midlands?

I'd like to know why the ban is only 9 games when you consider that only a year ago the same player received an 8 game suspension for biting Owen Beck. So to twice in a year be found guilty, this time of an 'aggravated breach' suggests that there is a big problem with this player and his conduct, and the League have effectively handed him the same punishment as he got last year (one extra game ban and £6k more fine), rather than a more severe one you might expect for someone with a recent history of serious conduct issues. Presumably Preston, who support him in his plea of innocence, will be referring the matter to higher authorities than the FA to clear his name ? Will be interesting to see if they do.

Someone on Twitter (I can't access the link now) has suggested that the 150th White kit won't be released until the New Year because someone at Rovers is unhappy with the sales of the 3 other kits. Would make sense, they've been trying to drum up interest in the kits recently with a discount on the kids sizes.

They've won 3 of their last 10, one of which was against Sheffield Wednesday, and in those 10 games have scored 10 goals. Quite a lot of their fans say they've been lucky to get the points and results they have up to this point and the signs of a slide down the table have been there for a while. Edwards will know this and know that if he can jump ship to a PL club now whilst his stock his high before it goes wrong he's laughing. Leeds and Burnley are hovering just outside the drop zone after Forest and West Ham have had stinking starts and changed managers (Forest twice) who have also had to contend with European demands. That includes some fortuitous wins such as Burnley's last gasp grab at Wolves the other week. Both of them will be there or thereabouts come May.

Let's see what the police have to say about this. Remember Rovers wanted us to believe that our 12pm kick offs against Preston were on police safety grounds. So how they tally that with an 8pm Friday game will be interesting.

Both Norwich and Ipswich away moved to 12:30pm kick offs. Thanks Sky and the clubs for agreeing to it!

Middlesbrough are on the slide. They got off to an excellent start but results are starting to fall away. He's from Shropshire, probably a Wolves fan, played 100 games for them and worked there as a coach. If he has family still in that area that helps. He can jump up a division, get paid double what he's on at Middlesbrough, have 7 months minimum back in the PL, if he keeps them up he'll be worshipped and get a huge bonus. It appears to be a huge thankless task but this time last year they were in a similar state yet went on to survive comfortably.

Course it isn't, but remember this lot consider it too much effort / cost to keep Ewood in a decent state of cleanliness and repair or to reward established players with improved contracts so expecting them to cough up and make the effort for non-essentials like improvements, statues, celebrations just isn't in their mindset. Cheap and easy is the way of things at Venky Rovers.

Fair enough, I'm not against it in isolation but as far as I can see this week that's been about it for the 'celebrations' and requires next to no effort on the part of Rovers beyond asking these former players to record a short clip and send it in. I'd have expected a bit more than that really, at a club really making the most of this occasion.

Agree fully but remember all such things cost money. If you look at everything they have done none of them cost anything Cheap tatty range of clothing and merchandise for the shop Running off to former players asking them to record videos A fixture against the Old Etonians straight after a league game requiring minimal organisation or effort A book that covers its production costs based on pre-orders Things like you mention: Statues Permanent memorials Fascias Improvements to the ground Big events All require expenditure, pride and effort, all of which disappeared from Ewood Park many years ago.

What if Edwards' wife wants to go and live in Dudley?

Maybe Suhail could explain why the Club was paying Waggott £400k a year for 7 .5 years if his role could effectively be made obsolete simply by the remaining staff at the club picking up his duties and the slack. Because unless I've missed it that's all that has happened here. Another half a mill a year off the payroll and no senior management / board appointments since then. This all supports my theory that they have never and will never want a proper Chairman or CEO. They didn't want one from the word 'go' which is why John Williams was pushed aside and allowed to resign. We then had the charade with Paul Hunt being appointed 'deputy' CEO but no CEO. We then had Shaw as 'Managing Director' for a few years effectively semi-retired. Then another few years with nobody, just Myers, Cheston and shadow man doing bits. It was only when Mowbray got direct access to the family in India and insisted on getting in a CEO that they succumbed and let him bring his mate from Coventry in. Even then he had this weird double act with the shadow man never far away. This club will never, ever prosper or succeed whilst the people owning and running it refuse to take its management seriously. Any serious football club needs a capable, intelligent, driven, empowered board or at least Chair / CEO to run the organisation. We haven't had that in 15 years and won't do any time soon because they just don't take this seriously. The fact we now have senior management comprising Suhail, Gestede, Yasir Sufi and Lyndsey Talbot is beyond ridiculous whichever way you look at it.

I can't get over how cheap and nasty that range looks.

Yes that more or less fits with my understanding of dates etc. I reckon that the 'club badge' now used is probably quite awkward to produce on kits (which is why today we often get the monochrome plastic version used as it is much easier than stitching it with the detail and different colours). So whilst it started appearing in the 60s on print programmes, signs and stationary transferring it onto kits was seen as unnecessary or difficult. Then in the late 80s / early 90s someone realised that this was actually a pretty unique and perfect badge for us to roll out on our kits, at a time when most other clubs were adopting modern designs and where it has remained since.

We're pretty unusual as far as I can tell in the badges that we've had during our long history. There's the uncertainty / confusion / lack of evidence around the Maltese cross, but even if it was adopted and used it wasn't really a club badge and certainly doesn't appear to have been worn for very long, maybe the first couple of years or so at most. Then - I hope I am right - we didn't have any emblem or badge through most of our history from say the 1880s until the 1970s - aside from special occasions like the 60 FA Cup final when we wore the town coat of arms on the shirt Then from the 70s into the 80s we had a boring and limited effort of the 'red rose' badge with simply 'BRFC' underneath. I would be interested to know the background to this - I suspect a decision was made in the 70s in keeping with the direction of travel in football that we needed an emblem or badge and this was the easiest/quickest thing they could come up with. I also suspect that by the late 80s they realised with the rapidly changing world of design, trademarks, kits and everything else that the red rose badge wasn't acceptable in the modern era and we needed to get ourselves a proper badge with the club name on it, which is how we ended up with the current badge. The current badge - which has been through a few different forms and reincarnations - has a confusing history too. As per the above this appeared on club programmes as far back as the 60s, but not on the shirts until the late 80s/early 90s. Strange that we would design and adopt a badge to use on programmes and letterheads etc. but not use it on kits and then use a totally different badge of the red rose on kits - maybe because that one was cheaper and easier to transfer to shirts than the quite complex design of the current one. It probably all comes back to the uniqueness of the blue and white halves which have always been the club's USP and for what it is known around the world and this previously negated the need to have a badge. Obviously in the modern era we need a modern badge that meets trademark requirements and can be mass produced. Back to the anniversary, I'd have preferred either for us to 'update' the current badge for the occasion or if we wanted to go traditional either not have a badge at all for the special kit or perhaps use the town coat of arms version for the special occasion.

They stopped shareholder and Consultation Meetings under the excuse of Covid and have never even mentioned the possibility of them resuming. So perhaps one question needs to be why the Fans Forum meetings are able to take place but the others cannot. It is abundantly clear that we have now reached a stage where there is no longer even the facade of this being a fair, accurate, representative exercise. The alternative minutes posted on here yesterday clearly display an obstructive, confrontational and unhelpful group of people running Rovers who are clearly uncomfortable with and reluctant to share important information even through this limited channel of communication. The suggestion that the sit down cosy interview with Gestede, Ismael and Owen at the end of the summer or the outrageous ones with Gestede, Pasha and Waggott earlier in the year are somehow evidence of their willingness to engage, both occasions being behind closed doors, in house interviews with prepared questions and editorial power held by them suggests they think such bare minimum efforts are good enough. The comment about 'signing 10 players' as though that represents backing from the owners - naturally ignoring that more than that number left the club requiring their replacement in any event and ignoring the millions of pounds pocketed in fees in the process. Just an outrageous attitude, group of people and they really ought to be ashamed of themselves. Then to top it all off we can't even get agreed accurate minutes of the meeting out afterwards. Best off giving it up now and waiting until they are willing to take this seriously.

Standard Rovers playbook - get former players to record messages and send them in - easy and cheap Where are the other announcements they were going to make over the course of the day? I've seen the embarrassing 'VH Group' pages of the book. Amateur hour. The piece is written by a third party heaping praise on the owners for their impact on the club but really is just reciting what happened when they darkened our door in 2010. Yet beneath the piece it is signed off as 'VH Group' as though they wrote it, which they obviously didn't. Two photographs used - one when the Queen came to Ewood and they turned up for their big moment and the other with the two idiot brothers at a game. The caption erroneously states that the photo is at Ewood for a game against Aston Villa, which is incorrect, the photo used is from the final game of the season at Wolves when their operation to relegate us nearly came to fruition in their first season. Obviously there's zero reference to any accomplishments beyond becoming the first Indian owners of a (former) PL Club, vague references to investments in the Club and town (no specifics) and the Queen visiting. Quite the highlights reel from 15 years of ownership. Clearly no sporting accomplishments to mention nor any recent photos given their absence and no comments from the villains themselves who couldn't even make the effort for this occasion.