JHRover

Hughes is struggling to get Carlisle out of the National League. Leave him there. Mowbray I can see the logic in as an emergency short term measure but won't happen for a few reasons: 1) They aren't going to sack Ismael - that would involve paying up 2 years+ of his contract 2) Even if they did their pride/agendas would prevent them turning to Mowbray - going cap in hand to the bloke they got rid of - no way 3) There's no way he'd operate under Pasha and Gestede's nonsense having been here previously with his own cushy set up Yes Ismael would be gone at any other club. 2 home wins in 8 months = unacceptable, 1 win in 9 = unacceptable, performances are unacceptable, league position is unacceptable. The difference is other clubs are professional competitive football clubs that exist to win and respond to performances and results. Blackburn Rovers is no such things. It is a sham, a fake, a vehicle for non-footballing purposes. So he can sit tight and see what gifts Rudy has lined up to bolster his squad.

We either sell him in January and get some cash or he walks in June for nothing. There's no way this Regime allows the latter, and the impact on our league position / results is immaterial.

Becoming quite clear that like with Nixon someone in the Rovers hierarchy has a line to these influential people in the media to spread the lies and nonsense on their behalf. All hard luck stories about injuries, pitch, misfortune, good statistics. They've been given the script to read out.

Sad and embarrassing stuff. So, so glad that I turned down my dad's spare ticket and chose to stay at home. These clowns have the brass neck to charge £35 to sit on the Blackburn End to watch that. Sky Sports are well on board with the sob stories though, wailing about Rovers' injury list and the problems we've had with the pitch and drainage. No mention of the common denominator. Chuckle brothers in the commentary box almost commending Rovers for selling Hyam on deadline day because we'd been burned previously through players leaving for free. No mention of the common denominator. 'Desperate to try Tronstad to a new deal' - says who? There's no evidence we've been 'desperate' to keep anyone a minute longer than we've had to. In modern day fashion the Sky laptop clowns referring to an array of pointless statistics about how we are supposedly better than our results and league position suggest. Well I look at the good old fashioned results and league table and they tell me all I need to know. A word of congratulations to Pasha and Gestede though. Your excellent transfer dealings have left us in this state, a disgrace and yet another round to come as they strip away what's left and appease the ostriches with a few random loans and frees.

Preston lost £17.8 million in the last year. Strange, I thought that Rovers were an outlier and Venkys the only owners in the world willing/able to fund such losses.

So Nixon says 'substantial' six figure bid rejected for the Barnsley lad. I know he's partly employed to put a shine on all things Rovers under the rotten regime but is there such thing as a a 'substantial' six figure bid in modern day Championship terms? The most it could possibly be is £999,999 which would not be a substantial sum for a Championship football club, especially not one used to selling players for 10x that amount every transfer window.

Remember....without Venkys we'd 'Do a Derby'. Sounds good to me.

Who actually are the Rao offspring? There's Balaji's lad, who once came to a game and met with Mowbray afterwards, who I think was supposed to be attending an English university. Any others? I think the witch and her husband might have a daughter who is high up in the company these days who might once have turned up with them on the snowball day, but can't believe she would have any interest in this. I suppose there might be some logic to suggest that the extreme cutbacks of recent years have been a sign of the others withdrawing from this and basically telling Balaji and his mates that if they want to keep it then it needs to fund itself as far as it can, no more cash beyond the bare minimum sort of thing.

Celtic v Rangers on Saturday too. Wonder if Nancy will survive until then. 5 defeats from 7 at Celtic is sacking territory already.

I'm convinced it only ends when they're forced into it. That means financially or legally/logistically they can't carry on with it. I don't think they'll give it up otherwise. At least not as long as the wicked four continue to control the company. Maybe when control passes elsewhere someone with a brain will cut their losses and leave us alone.

Presumably the relatively popular 'pie and peas' or 'breakfast bap' options in Jacks Kitchen will have been ditched for this one to make way for a £150 sit down meal for the Category A fixture. Suspect there might be some backtracking on that one as the brains trust realise that on New Year's Day morning there won't be queues of people down Bolton Road wanting to watch Rovers v Wrexham and hand over best part of £200 for a ticket and something to eat. Especially not when they can stay at home and watch it for nothing on Sky. Still that extra £10-15 pocketed x 1500-2000 adults from Wrexham makes it all worthwhile whilst ensuring the home ends are empty. £35 to sit on the BBE. Total madness.

When was the last time we wore that green shirt? Feels like ages since. Just so unnecessary to have three kits let alone four. If we had any sense we would just have had a special home shirt maybe with the maltese cross and worn it all season and then an away shirt, maybe gold or with the coat of arms. Make them both really good and watch them fly out. But a home shirt that doesn't even get the halves right, a random green effort 'inspired' by the town coat of arms (but not using the town coat of arms) and this fiasco with the all white kit appearing randomly on New Years' Day almost 2 months after the anniversary fixture just slapdash as ever.

They're in good form and have a better squad than us. Amazing what investment can do. Fresh off the back of two very impressive wins against an upwardly mobile Sheffield United, coming from 3-1 down to win 5-3, and against hard to beat Preston, I can't see any more than 1 point at best for Rovers. The squad is in a shocking state and that's not down to a freak injury list but corner and cost cutting coming back to haunt us.

It shows a few things One - that the absence of any serious discussion or pressure on the manager - not even an 'Ismael sort it out' to be heard - shows that pretty much everyone knows that it is all pointless - pointless moaning about the manager, pointless trying to apply pressure or demand better or a change, pointless even going down the route of talking about change. Partly because even the Venky apologists know all too well that there isn't a functioning football club here where trivial matters like performances and results, league position, or any other metric by which the rest of the football world operates gets applied. Everyone knows this, deep down, which is why there is a stupefied fatigued silence on such things at games. No point expending energy thinking or wanting a change, even when results and performances are poor. That's a core component of following a football club gone - people have learned to just tolerate a poor product because it is pointless asking for better. Two - that those out there who think he is doing a good job in the 'circumstances' are actually in their position silently acknowledging there that the owners have ruined us with their approach - because to say he's doing a good job with a 31% win record having inherited a side in the top 6 less than a year ago and now have it staring at relegation would be frankly laughable at any other club. Here there is a genuine argument for it, not because clubs normally drop by 15-20 places in the space of six months, but because the conditions the owners have imposed us on - those that many apologists have defended - are what has ultimately caused this situation. The same people would never directly complain or criticise the owners, preferring to convince themselves that they are necessary, yet if we aren't blaming Ismael and his win record, who are we blaming?

11 wins in 35 games (31% win record) and hovering precariously outside the drop zone yet not even a hint or sniff of pressure or contemplation of a change. Just like the 'woe be us' sob stories about injuries and a lack of depth, well a transfer window opens in 48 hours so a golden opportunity to immediately go out and address these issues. But we won't, we will just plod along as we are hoping it all turns out alright in the end. Such a negligent and dangerous attitude and approach to running a multi-million pound organisation considering the extreme financial consequences, including redundancies, of relegation, yet nobody seems to give a stuff.

The regime will have been salivating for 6 months at the prospect of packing Gueye off to the Gulf and getting a decent fee for him after the interest that emerged late in the summer. This is just the culmination of that. I agree he's poor, like most of the squad, but in the state we are in we can't be leaving him out of the squad for supposedly 'not running' enough in training. I doubt Ismael has much say in this matter, they've cuts to make and money to raise, what the 'head coach' wants won't be featuring in this.

Not really the 150th anniversary shirt is it? Released months after the 150th anniversary Not going to be worn in any competitive games People buying will be lucky to get their hands on it the same year as the anniversary As predicted something that should have been simple, straightforward, easy - release a special kit for the anniversary season - has become a fiasco requiring a convoluted bidding process and long list of steps and rules. Why the hell couldn't they have just released this in proper volume in the summer at a normal price and just let people buy it in the lead up to the occasion in November.

Maybe that's why they refused to sell Sheff Wednesday tickets....save people money so those disappointed fans could instead enter a ballot to try and win an £80 shirt that probably won't ever be worn by the team....method in the madness.

Everything back to front as per. Releasing the anniversary shirt 8 weeks after the anniversary and 4 days after Christmas strange behaviour to say the least. Applying a facade of 'exclusivity' to what should be a celebration everyone can participate in not just the 'winners' Obviously this is just because they wouldn't order a good supply of stock in so have to come up with an elaborate scheme to sell them. I got dizzy half way through reading that trying to understand the process of selling some shirts Is there any mention on whether this will even be worn by the team in a game?

We had Sports Direct running the Ewood shop when the Walker Trust owned us. Don't you remember the Lonsdale days? To be honest if the biggest worry is the state of the club shop it's not a big issue Personally I'm not really interested in what Newcastle fans think. If he'd have splashed cash like they wanted the Saudis probably wouldn't have been interested in buying them as a loss making/debt ridden club. I don't need to think about it again. I can say without any shred of doubt that I'd welcome a proper businessman with a brain like Mike Ashley over the poison that has ruined Blackburn Rovers. If that means having 'sports direct' boards around Ewood rather than mouldy 'Venkys' ones fine by me.

I don't think there's any more to it than them just cutting corners, as per. As this game straddles the Christmas period and shop/ticket office closures someone down there, who probably has never bought an away ticket in their life, will have come to a decision that it was a whole lot easier for them to just stop selling on 23rd when they were shutting down for Xmas and then they could forget about it and come back in the New Year with the Wrexham game to occupy them. They won't have stopped for a second to think about inconvenience to fans, or that there would be a lot of people unable to commit over a week in advance, especially during the Christmas period, or that the Middlesbrough game/performance/result might affect decisions, or that plans change at the 11th hour. They just treat fans as an inconvenience and appear amazed when their decision making gets called out. In familiar fashion we get a hastily cobbled together 'statement' with no name to it making a number of excuses and offering no assurances but trying to point the finger of blame away from Ewood. They are good at that part of things. Just stuff that never happens anywhere else. But that's because all other clubs are invested in helping their supporters and ensuring as many as possible get to games. Clearly that isn't the remit at Ewood these days, and it shows.

Interesting. So you would oppose Mike Ashley owning us - a man who had Newcastle as one of the most profitable and financially stable clubs in the country, and due to his financial management attracted the Saudis to buy them, and would rather continue with the current disgrace where we - somehow - continue to lose an 8 figure sum every year as we circle the plughole to oblivion and the club decays. There is a big inconvenience to the 'who would buy us?' brigade - there's zero evidence to support those claims (except that people don't - and won't - ever publicise interest in buying something that isn't for sale - yet there is plenty of evidence that shows that Championship loss making football clubs ALWAYS attract new owners. Some good, some bad, some rich, some not as rich - but clubs change hands with regularity and I think you could count those that rival Venkys for appalling mismanagement on one hand.

Of course he did. Notice we never get any specifics when this gets thrown out there. Just a random 'the owners' and never any detail of who out of the gruesome four (if any) were on the other end of the line or what was discussed. I suspect if anyone had any interest and asked Ismael which of the 'owners' he spoke to and more importantly what subjects they spoke about information would be very thin on the ground indeed. Similar to when we get the AI manufactured 'statements' from the 'owners' every year or so that don't have a name to them.

They won't even speak to the manager or club staff, or visit the place, so meaningful engagement with prospective buyers ? Forget it. They're lazy, arrogant, stubborn. No way are they making any effort to pass the club over to others who will immediately do a better job. They've shown over the last few years that the club and its performance are utterly inconsequential to their decision making. It's preferable to them to keep hold but let the club rot into oblivion than do the decent thing and pass it over to suitable custodians. I see the £20-30 million figure is appearing again though. Still waiting for an explanation as to how Preston, Millwall, Watford and numerous other smaller clubs than Rovers can compete in this league whilst losing half or less of that amount each year.

"We've done all we can" claxon again. Amazing how these issues never seem to plague all the other clubs around the country, including those that easily sell out their allocations, yet poor old Rovers are always the ones who suffer from these things. Almost as though there's a common theme here of a tinpot corner shop operation always looking to do the bare minimum