JHRover

All I'll say is that I find it remarkably convenient that all the top earners and players who can attract interest from elsewhere end up becoming 'surplus' to requirements and moved on. Almost as though someone is working their way down a list of the most senior/expensive assets and getting shut one by one. Of course the key issue, regardless of the cause, is we lost another senior pro and had zero intention of replacing him as we slid head first towards League One. £10,000 x 24 weeks is a saving Waggott will be enjoying let's put it that way.

The day they shut the Riverside they will approach it in the same way they did the Darwen End closure. Basically no consultation or advance warning just an announcement that it's shut and 'find somewhere else to sit'. They don't think far enough ahead or care about fans enough to plan for this or run a process of discussing it. They'll just make the decision based on their immediate cashflow and targets and tough sh*t if you don't like it.

I think regardless of whether it tipped JDT over the edge (and I'll maintain until my dying day that the move was 100% financially motivated and nothing at all to do with football) I am certain that offloading your captain in the first few days of the window to a league rival on loan will have had a serious impact on the dressing room. Travis might not have been best mates with JDT but he will have been popular with quite a few in the dressing room I'm sure of that, and when such a decision is made people will rightly start asking questions and be miffed.

Bolton sold 13,000 season tickets for next year. They don't know what league they are going to be in. What are we doing?

Wednesday confirmed a 7000 sellout. Waggott confirmed a Rovers sellout but not on the ticket front. The bad news of being humiliated at Bristol City last night quickly buried by 7000 Owls coming to town and boosting his balance sheets.

Same with Allardyce and Lambert. Never really liked from the off by a large portion of the fanbase and many glad to see the back of them, whereas St Tony, whose first act was taking us down to the third division, should have been given the job for life and will be yearned after for years to come. Looks like Eustace falling into the same bracket. A dismal run of results so far with no end in sight and yet I can see it playing out now - blame JDT for everything, nothing to do with Venkys, Waggott, Eustace, lets all pull together and rebuild in the summer.

This is the Rovers paradox. You'll have scrotes like Waggott making efforts to save a few quid on grass seed or boost ticket sales by a few grand yet longer term their mismanagement of the club on the pitch is costing us tens of millions. Negligence has already seen Lenihan, Rothwell, Diaz waltz off for nothing, next up will be Gallagher and Dolan, and relegation to League One will cost circa £10 million overnight before we get on to ticket sales and sponsorship. A bit like the last few Januarys where a small yet sensible spend may well have been the difference and got us into the top 6 and potential promotion yet they do nothing but weaken us.

Both will surpass us in the near future. Owners who invest and want them to get better, redeveloping their grounds, full houses every week.

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.

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.

When the CEO is going public that his ambition is to stay in the division and develop more players just weeks after missing out on the play offs on goal difference and the manager then spends 6 months taking the mick out of him publicly for those comments then yes, it's certainly a culture of failure.

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.

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

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.

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.

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'.

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.

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.

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.