Dreams of 1995

No change until the end of the season imo. We are stuck with him. Hopefully we go on a winning spell soon but my fear is that if that happens it gives a clean slate in the summer. You have to wonder how many losses it will take for him to be potted or, perhaps more importantly, how many more losses we can stomach before entering a relegation battle.

I almost don’t care. That’s bad isn’t it? As soon as they scored I knew we’d lost. 13 games out of 18 we haven’t scored now. Get your head around that. 1 win in 14. I don’t know how he’s keeping his job. It just shows you what the motive behind Maggot is. It certainly isn’t results...or performances

What do you expect people to have done by now?

Cant believe he still has a job

Fantastic work Rev, it is appreciated Is there a way you can create a tool to place an online signature? That way fans can sign it retrospectively

The local newspaper wouldn’t publish the letter? That tells you all you need to know about their priorities.

I wouldn’t mind Hummel to be honest, if someone said that as a joke! I don’t want Nike or Adidas because they design generic kits for teams like us. A smaller designer would be far better, someone who will put some thought into the kit. I would like to try New Balance as they produced a great kit for Liverpool before they pulled a fast one! Umbro have made some nice kits for us imo but always made an error on the away strip although have grown to quite like the current red and blue version. Bring Kappa on for me. Their kits were bloody good.

Saw the highlights and when Buttler went couldn’t help but think “here. we. go”

Oh no, hence the comment about the situation surrounding it. If somebody with integrity had proposed we build houses on Brockhall to fund a training centre that will be able to keep what we have + upgrade I'd be all for it. As it happens, they haven't, and it is clear as day it is downgrading. That's what I was trying to get at. I'm not opposing it for the sake of opposing a land sale but because the situation warrants opposition.

I feel like any sort of fan led petition would need to have a good covering letter. I don't know about you lot but, personally, I don't oppose the sale of BRFC land absolutely. It is the situation surrounding the land sale that makes me oppose. The lack of trust in the board - given Waggott's history of failed projects - and the general downscaling of operations since the day the Venkys arrived. Whilst BRFC is a business it is, first and foremost, a community asset and therefore the views of stakeholders are vastly important. Any petition should not be dressed up as opposition to the land sale entirely, but more opposition at the devaluing of a community asset as bequeathed by a lifelong supporter with the vision of BRFC operating on that land for generations to come. That is just my opinion though and the better approach may be to stick with outright planning appeals as opposed to trying to appeal to the emotions of a councillor.

I’m unsure how it will work in this regard though Meesh. In our accounts we will likely show profit in the year we sell the land. However, I’m fairly certain that expenditure on facilities are not considered for FFP. I’m probably asking a very simple question for our accounting posters but can we use the money raised from selling land to show a profit for FFP even if we spent that money on new facilities? ie, can we say we spent £25 million on the academy and have that wrote off for FFP, but also show a say £20m profit due to land sales despite the fact all £20m contributed to the £25m facility expenditure.

I stand to be corrected but FFP is irrelevant in respect of the Academy. Also, the club have promised to put every bit of money raised from the development into the construction of the new training facilities, including a comment about asking Venkys for additional funding of required.

I checked on some of the facilities of Category 1 academies to see if our proposals stack up. It was difficult in the limited time I set myself to get a clear like-for-like comparison. I'm sure it could be done if I spent more time reviewing old planning applications. However, in doing so I decided to totally disregard the likes of Utd, Liverpool etc as they are clubs 'out of our reach' in terms of finances, so I decided to look at Reading first. On their website it has the following: Almost immediately it jumps out the time gap between consulting supporters (even its own appointed development team!) to formal application. Whilst at BRFC we haven't seen formal application to develop yet, we have seen a screening opinion, and indeed is the first any fan anywhere had ever seen or heard of it. This is in direct contrast to a club like Reading. Secondly, the fact that they have a "purpose built first team building and a separate academy facility" is quite striking. Why would they need that when the future is "all under one roof"? Clearly, the development team, in conjuction with the fans and club, believe it is required. Note the all-weather surface. Anyway, my next check was Swansea. I remembered they had not long back developed a new training ground to achieve this status. They have since lost Cat 1 academy status however I do think that this is interesting: https://www.swanseacity.com/news/swans-open-new-academy-training-complex-facilities A "purpose built" academy facility. https://trainingground.guru/articles/swansea-city-drop-out-of-category-one So it seems clear to me that Swansea, with their recent upgrade to achieve Cat 1 status, also saw the need for two training sites to maintain their Category One status. Anyway, it is only 2 out of the possible 23(?), but the picture is clear. Sunderland recently built a new facility which is all under one roof but it dwarfs our development. It has 13 football pitches, pools, hydrotherapy suits, classrooms and is built into the ground. It has the room for another full size indoor football pitch. It just isn't on the same scale as the Academy training centre at Brockhall. I would have to check Boro, Baggies, Stoke and Norwich etc but I am going to put my cock on the block and say they will have a similar tale to the above 3 examples one way or the other.

It is funny that, almost as if you have convinced yourself that people are ignoring the positives. So far the only positive that has been given is that it will all be under one roof. That can be seen as a bit of a false dawn though when you consider the vast reduction in facilities that come with it. Before making remarks like that you should put on some big boy pants and consider whether the positives you believe ought to be considered are actually positives in the cold harshness of reality. Working in the construction industry you very quickly learn to toss aside the words within these planning applications and look at the tangible components a development promises. The club have been kind enough to produce a rather detailed plan of the facilities and housing development (for the benefit of RVBC, not us) and therefore it shouldn't be difficult for one to see the positives, or convince others of them, if they so exist. As it stands the reality does not match the rhetoric based on the current information we have got. Bleating that people are not open to accept alternative views is a quite an egotistical approach, as if you can see through the trees when they can't. Despite you proclaiming you have gone over these 10s of pages ago, as a follower of this thread, I am yet to see you make a convincing argument aside from "all under one roof" and the FFP benefits - which do not actually come into play if they plan on reinvesting every £ into the training facilities as promised. Perhaps before concluding that people are not listening to you, you should consider if your perceived "positives" are positive at all.

I think BB has got something. He can turn and move with the ball but it’s too few and far between. His balance and finishing is pretty poor but the right coaching can work on that. He’s running out of time though. As for Gallagher we all know he can get goals because we’ve seen it! He just looks like a lost little boy atm and playing out of position isn’t going to help

They look so much better

Was never a penalty

Sorry...his!!

That is a horrible comment frankly

If Tony Mowbray can't be arsed to walk across to the junior training centre can we invest in a golf buggy to get him from one site to the next?

Oh my god. I would have thought Wilder would have stuck that one out! If I was the owner of a club I'd be pulling any trick I could to get him in

On the subject of drawings for training facilities and houses O2g is right in that the cost to produce them site plans for the housing development would be minimal in comparison to the cost of design drawings for the training centre. Although they could have at least knocked up a concept design as opposed to the red box we have. Although the key is in the 'inclusions' - the concept for the training facility does not match up to the spec of what we have currently. It is a downgrade, simple as that.

If any manager came to this club and was asked to put the idea of Premier League in a box, then took the job, I would not want that manager in charge.

I don't think it is a strategy that encourages ambition frankly. It is almost resigning ourselves to the fact promotion is a dream. Instead focusing on becoming a "middle ground" club that players can come and look for the next big move. It doesn't strike me as the identity of the club I fell in love with quite frankly. I don't want to aspire to finding a youngster and selling him for £10m - I want to see us playing at Old Trafford on a Saturday afternoon with a striker up front that can bag a goal out of nowhere. It's what I grew up on and it's the identity Blackburn Rovers had prior to this era of ownership. Changing our destiny and our ambitions for the owners is accepting defeat. We are better than a club that can be used as a stepping stone. I am 27, and none of that strategy is anything like Rovers in my lifetime save Venkys era. Even when you look beyond at our history we always competed, even with the lull years that naturally occur. This strategy is almost saying let's not compete, let's just have this romantic idea of development and on the way make a few bob. My strategy would be to not reduce our ambitions, it would be to increase that ambition, and stop all talk of accepting our natural place and become that club that overachieves again. Even if we take your business minded approach it does not make business sense to accept existence in a league that has notoriously high operating losses when the right moves are proven to see you spend some time in a league with huge financial rewards. If Burnley, Brighton, Huddersfield and co can all spend time in that league so can we.

The article for me falls down on this point: Forget the Premier League. Imagine it doesn’t exist. I'm not going to forget it is there frankly. Even putting aside the money argument I support Blackburn Rovers and want us to compete in the top league. I don't want to pretend it isn't there because our current situation lends itself to wanting to forget it exists. The article tells us to forget money but then in the same instance tells us to manage our expectations on the basis of finances. Our operating losses aren't unusually high in comparison to other football clubs In fact, most of the promoted teams throughout the past 8-9 years have had quite high operating losses, even with the parachute payments some recieved. The remainder is pretty standard. Play football to win, sign cheap sell high - it is everything we should be doing. I also think the author underestimates the work involved in becoming 'financially stable' and if he thinks a 6 point programme like that would automatically produce a club with a solid financial footing I think he is in for a surprise. As with any business you have to have the logistics and manpower in place to work to whatever system you want to implement. In order to be constantly finding these hidden gems you are going to need a constant recruitment department, as opposed to the start-from-scratch nothing we have right now. That costs money. It would require a director of football type director to oversee this process, so add another 100k+ a year salary and all expenses that comes with it. There's additional costs with everything after all. I don't doubt it's an admirable thought process, intentions in the right place, but I do think it is a naïve view of the world of business and football in particular. Within our current structure it is unthinkable to produce a club that has a system in place for long term benefit. You have to work with what you have, so the idea we should try and implement a system akin to Brentford whilst running a threadbare department and overseen by owners who don't care about anything but cheque signing then it is totally impractical to suggest a change like this would work.