Mashed Potatoes

He made a mistake. You never have then ?

Could you elaborate on what those two instances were ?

Yes, he made a mistake but I think in part the post to which you are replying was in answer to the ludicrous suggestion that the referee in question should never be allowed to referee again.

Given that 2 years ago he ended up signing a 1 year deal with Norwich I suspect nobody was offering him a 2 year deal

Strange then that it is the most popular on global TV.

We got £2.5m plus contingencies for Phillips so hardly nothing. There will have been a settlement for Finneran as well. I think there is a degree of luck here in how fast players develop. Ideally you want a player through your academy to be very good indeed but not to have proven that until they are 18+ and so have been put on a long term contract rather than picked off earlier- as was the case with Adam Wharton who unlike Phillips, Tygon and Higgins didn't play for the England youth teams. Presumably that may be true of Boro players as well, certainly true of Spence.

See my post above

Isn't Balaji Rao's son at university in the UK ? When does he graduate ?

No doubt Glen will speak for himself specifically on this but yesterday his Twitter feed had a statement by the Coalition which included the following statement : " The very notion that anyone except the Rao family and Suhail Shaikh are to blame for their calamitous stewardship of the club should be rejected out of hand by the entire fanbase."

We've had pretty good managerial appointments since he arrived so I'm not sure that's completely fair.

He was 18 in March

A couple of points : 1. Average attendances in the Womens Premier League are down by 9% this season. I'm not convinced that the interest level is quite what some in the media would like us to think. 2. It's not just Blackburn Rovers who are having second thoughts. Wolves won the tier below the Championship but declined to apply for promotion because they were uncertain as to whether they could justify having to cover the increased costs arising from the new rules applicable to the Championship - and that is a Premier League club with all the massive level of income that they have.

I appreciate that you, along with Proudtobeblueandwhite and only2garners are a poster who genuinely has taken an interest in the Ladies team so I don't have any quibble with you being upset. The faux outrage about this from other posters who have never shown any interest is another matter. As pointed out above the Under21s and youth teams provide players for the first team and funding for the club so nobody wants them to go.

Completely incorrect.

The level of funding is determined by the owners. The management at Ewood Park have to work according to what budget is made available to them and decide how that budget is best spent.

From the Guardian article it appears that certain changes are being imposed on the Womens League Championship division which will lead to a substantial increase in costs - notably the requirement that players are full time professionals. That appears to have prompted Ewood Park management to have a long hard look at whether it is worth it. The level of investment required may be substantial, maybe enough to deter new investors. If one looks at the Womens leagues every team in their Premier League is in the Premier League proper, and of the teams in their Championship only Birmingham, Charlton, Bristol City, Sunderland, Portsmouth, Sheffield United and ourselves were not in the Premier League proper (there is also London City and Durham in the league).

The two matters are totally unconnected. If the club feel the Ladies team is no longer viable - which principally will be because not enough people go to watch - then closing it down is justified.

I agree with you that no employee should be told that they will lose their job via a message from their employer via WhatsApp. However it would appear that the post on WhatsApp was from one of the players.

The difference is that the Academy has a track record of making a significant contribution to the performance of the first team, as well as generating significant funds. Nobody sensible wants to see the Academy go.

It might be a good idea if all those getting worked up about the possible closure of the Ladies team said how many times they went to see them last season. To indicate the lack of interest there is, the thread on this forum about the Ladies team was begun in October 2018 and six and a half years later has reached page 12.

Thanks. Presumably everyone is free to join the group after being vetted and then the panel members are elected via secret ballot. Would you envisage there being a requirement for a guarantee of representation for female supporters, disabled supporters, gay supporters, supporters of South Asian heritage ?

Thank you for your reply, and the courteous manner of it. As I understand it you envisage an open to all forum. This strikes me as having two practical problems : 1. How do you ensure that everybody coming forward is actually a Rovers supporter as opposed to say Burnley supporters trying to make trouble. 2. How could the forum operate in practice. There are 11000 or so regular match attending supporters plus a few thousand more attending from time to time plus all the others who live far away and don't attend games. How would this work if several hundred wanted to attend ?

Grow up. See my reply to Glen above.

Given that the club are yet to announce how they intend meeting their obligations for fans' consultation I would suggest it is somewhat premature for you to describe those arrangements as "exclusive". Perhaps a more constructive approach would be for your group to publish a set of proposals as to how you would like these arrangements to work. Everybody will have their own views as to how this should work. For now I will restrict myself to simply suggesting what I think should be the composition of the representative group of fans : 3 members of the existing Fans Forum, of whom at least 1 should be female 3 members of WATR, of whom at least 1 should be female 1 member of the Disabled Supporters Association 1 member of the Pride Supporters group 1 member of the South Asian Supporters Association It would be best if these people were elected via secret ballot. More generally there have been explanatory notes setting out how the new legislation and regulatory system should operate. The most relevant is Bill 213 EN 2024-25 which I think you should read if you haven't already done so. The manner in which the fans group consultation is expected to operate is set out on pages 51 and 52.

The Football Governance Bill passing through Parliament imposes an obligation on clubs to hold regular meetings with a representative group of supporters. Are you suggesting in the above that you want something in addition to that ? I think the club may simply throw the new legislation back in your face if you are.