I suspect Cheston's days are numbered one way or another based on the new bloke they've installed from the Venky end.

Probably not, it seems their response has been a simple copy and paste job so far so I'd be surprised if anyone has the aptitude to respond to specific questions.

The ingredients don't bode well. Midweek away trips seem to rarely end too well for us, we're in poor form and conceding too many goals. Coventry are very hard to beat. They've only lost twice in narrow away defeats to Leicester and Cardiff, but having said that have only won twice against lowly Middlesbrough and QPR on Saturday. I expect us to lose this one and sadly we are also due a 'poor' display after positive(ish) efforts against Plymouth, Ipswich and Leicester left us empty handed. If we can grab 3 points or more from these two away games I'll be satisfied. We need to stop the rot before it advances and that requires a couple of solid if unspectacular away days.

They just don't give a stuff as to the impact their policies have on people or the club's reputation. As you say, what happened in January was not only an embarrassment for the club, but also probably dragged our reputation into the gutter. Other clubs, if they weren't already, will treat us with extreme caution, knowing that even if we say we want a player, even if we get all the work done on it, we are capable of letting it collapse at the 11th hour due to various ridiculous reasons. Such nonsense can cause havoc to other clubs and their players. If what I've heard about Moran is correct then that's another example of us treating other clubs and their players like rubbish. My suspicion is that the club has also mucked around numerous players over recent years at least when it comes to contract extensions and departures. I believe that many of those that have left in recent years have done so after Rovers have failed to make them appropriate offers in appropriate timescales and so they have felt little other option but to look elsewhere. I'm sure such stories spread in players circles which only contributes further to our struggles to attract proven quality (if it wasn't already hard enough with next to no budget). The way we've treated Broughton and JDT again a further example of taking people for fools. It seems they were both undermined mid-transfer window having previously agreed to already stringent restrictions and planned accordingly. The arrogance of the people owning the club is such they clearly think they can do whatever they please and care little for the consequences. Fans have been treated like dirt for years now. Taken for granted, taken for a ride on tickets and pricing, dropping shareholder and consultation meetings from the calendar, then they have the audacity to claim that fans' views are important and taken on board. Are they b0llocks. Ultimately an unprofessional and classless football club. You only have to glance at the state of the owners and CEO to see they are well short of what is needed. They clearly take no pride at all in the club, its appearance or reputation, Ewood Park is a disgrace and as we've said many a time could be tidied up and maintained for an insignificant amount of money, but when the owners treat the club as 'out of sight, out of mind' and employ charlatans to run it in their absence, people who boast about getting the pitch ready on time for the new season and hiring a new coach, it is clear to see what standards he is measuring himself against.

I think the simple and logical interpretation of that sordid affair was that Broughton was led to believe he had the capacity to bring in player(s) of that ilk and cost and then certain individuals along the chain intervened to stop it happening at the 11th hour. Broughton clearly put a lot of work into it and was confident it was getting done. I don't believe it fell away due to incompetence or the secretary forgetting to fill the paperwork in correctly or the EFL coming up with daft unexpected requirements. We know the slimeball upstairs has a remit and is probably paid according to our performance on that. As you say paying O'Brien £30k a week for 5-6 months would have blown a hole in the outgoings. Conveniently it was stopped and then no similar deals lined up this summer using the money left over.

I've said it a few times but it isn't VAR that is the issue, it is the people using it. The fiasco in the Spurs v Liverpool game was nothing to do with a technical failure or VAR being ineffective. Taken together with other incidents including the Wolves non-penalty at Old Trafford a few weeks ago the question that should be on everyone's lips is whether these 'failings' are genuine errors / mistakes or in the alternative whether something more sinister is going on. Again, I don't think anyone can realistically argue that technology was the issue. You might accept the Spurs / Liverpool offside decision if it was one man sat on his own and he'd genuinely missed something or not heard something and got the complete wrong end of the stick. When they are sat with a group of other officials that possibility disappears. My conclusion is that this is deliberate.

Why should they get their money back? Can I have my money back for things I've bought in the past? Can I get my car insurance, service, MOT costs paid back for the last 10 years? Same principle. Their spending is running costs much of which they have created. I take exception to your use of the term 'investment'. That word implies they are doing more than the bare minimum and are doing it to try and improve or grow the club. What they are actually doing is meeting liabilities and running costs each year, which whilst technically an investment is really just their tab. Same principle. They assumed responsibility for outgoings and losses the moment they darkened our door. Don't like it they can stop.

Good grief. The town is eminently capable of sustaining a 2nd division or 1st division team, which we have been for all but a handful of the last 135 years. What the club can't sustain is negligent ownership and management dragging it down and backwards every year.

The owners, or should I say the bloke they delegate running of the club to, decide to only sign young players, to adopt a 'project' of creating value in young players. This 'project' requires that players are prioritised depending on their likely re-sale value, that 'older' players are phased out and removed, and I firmly believe there is a desire for us to play this suicide football because it will aid the 'project' of getting more value into people. It's easier to attract bids for people like Szmodics and Leonard when we're creating loads of chances under this system than it would be playing the way we were early last year. When JDT arrived he was pragmatic and conservative in his approach. 12 months on he's suicidal. I believe that's either because he's been told to play that way by people above him or more likely feels he has no other option but to do so due to the suicidal transfer policy they have installed.

This time last year we alternated between wins and losses, picking up more points than we are at present, but generally the football was dull to watch for long spells. JDT was criticised by many for the style of play. 12 months on we are doing what people wanted. We are playing the wide open passing football so many crave. We have offloaded the 'old' players and are throwing our fate into the hands of the academy lads. Those of you who moaned about the football last year, enjoy it. The chickens are coming home to roost. Unfortunately the scumbags overseeing it are either on the other side of the world or hiding away in the directors box whilst the manager, players and fans are the ones who suffer.

So basically what Venkys have been doing here just with a big public statement / more childish approach

The Club lost the right to use FFP as an excuse for anything when it allowed Diaz, Rothwell and Lenihan to walk out the door for nothing.

United v Newcastle is nailed on. Then I think Arsenal v West Ham and probably Bournemouth v Liverpool are more likely to be on than our game.

It's 45% each way and then 10% to the league I think. So yes he'll be rubbing his hands for this one.

They should have had season tickets on sale at the Oxford game and offered some sort of discount or reward to those attending the Oxford game if they committed to a season ticket. But instead they left it for weeks after the season ended before finally releasing them for sale and when they did they slapped another price increase on top. A captive audience of 25000+ Rovers fans in the ground for the last game of the season and not a single mention of season tickets for the following campaign. If it isn't deliberate you'd struggle to think up a more suicidal approach.

And probably before / afterwards head off for a few days at home in Kent. Suspect there will be gravy train requests galore going in for this one.

The two clubs must mutually agree ticket prices in advance. So fear not, I'm sure 'man of the people' Waggott will be doing his bit to keep prices down to a level in keeping with what he has been charging at Ewood.

And how about the non-existent attempts to cash in on Brereton mania? I mean how often does a Championship club have something like that drop into its lap? An incredible story which culminated in him playing regularly for Chile, developing a massive fanbase out there and even landing sponsorship deals with Pepsi etc. Yet the sum total of Rovers' involvement was to put a couple of t-shirts on sale in the shop. Even when a glorious opportunity to market and promote the club comes along no effort was made. Any effort is just too much effort with this lot. There's no way they'll do anything that incurs cost or risks incurring cost and unfortunately for them in this business if you want to succeed you have to be prepared to take a risk. This lot aren't prepared to. They just want steady away all the time going nowhere.

After recent away games at Watford, Plymouth and Ipswich, and with long trips to QPR, Millwall and Norwich all in the next month or so, the addition of Chelsea to the fixture list is really going to test the fans.

Waggott cracking open a bottle or two tonight. Successful in his plot to shut down the BBE and boost his figures with the owners, barely a murmur of discontent, he now gets to cash in on JDT and the team overcoming his stunt by steering us to a lucrative tie at Chelsea. He's a parasite.

And remember crucially their decline and rot stopped and the turnaround began when Marcus Evans cleared off and handed the club over, debt free, to new people.

So heading into our third round game tomorrow we've got no website, can't receive emails, can't sell tickets unless people ring the understaffed ticket office and have shut our home end to supporters. Trailblazers indeed.

If I give them the benefit of the doubt and believe the website breakdown is innocent and unrelated to the ticket scandal there is a big problem with the club's Internet and website. How many times do we see technical issues and problems?

If we were in a more affluent area I could see it, but I'm not sure there is that much value in Ewood and Ewood Park for it to be worth flogging. The training ground absolutely, no surprises that Waggott had his hot sticky eyes on that piece of real estate within no time of his arrival. He'd absolutely love to get that land off the books and condense it all onto the playing fields behind St Marys' College or somewhere like that. Instead they'll just let Ewood fall to rack and ruin and gradually mothball more and more of it until we are just left with the BBE lower and JW stand on matchdays. They've had this in mind for some time IMO and the awkward part is that 1500 or so Riversiders haven't succumbed to the temptation to switch to the JW stand.....yet.

What bothers me is the ease with which they try to explain that the expected numbers are going to be low. Not an ounce of concern expressed or embarassment at selling such a pitiful number of tickets, no indication of any intention to do something over the course of the last week to bump up that number, just a shrug of the shoulders and a shut home stand. I can't believe that Waggott will have the brass neck to turn up and watch but I bet he does. He won't miss many of the complimentaries and rubbing shoulders with opposition directors. And this for me is the most difficult part of Venky ownership to stomach, not only that they are undermining the club and team by making these sort of decisions, unprecedented as they are, but also that a reptile like Waggott will be sat upstairs in the free comfy seats surveying all before him, benefiting from the decision as he gets ready to send the spreadsheets to India for his bonus review, laughing at us without a care in the world. When did he last pay to watch a football match?