"Season ticket sales have already surpassed the number sold last season, and the club would like to thank all those who have purchased so far."  Interesting.

Admire your effort/computer skills! Wonder if and how many complimentary tickets are included. 7000+ is more than I expected. Guess that another 1-2000 will be added by the time they go off sale, which would be an impressive number considering the price/increase in living costs. 

149 for a six game International ticket is a bit pricey. Assuming cost of a single adult ticket must be significantly more than 25 per game! Also only 3 cat A games allowed. Hannoverover will soon become Washingtonrover so it's not an option for me anyway. 

Is anyone else tempted?

Pretty much last throw of the dice here I fear. Anything less than a win and it's season over I think. I very optimistically graded Mowbray as an 8 on the other thread assuming that we end up in the play offs at the end of the season. Looks like it'll be downgraded to somewhere between a 5 and a 6 if our form continues. But you never know, I will still be following the game hoping for a win and a playoff place at the end of the season.

No idea what will happen today, but we've got close to our strongest team on the pitch today. Not that it helped much over the last 2 months.....

8 minutes ago, rigger said:

If true, I don't think It would be very good, but I think calling it a disaster is going a bit far.

Half of our first team came through our academy.

It's the only part of the club that is at premier League standard. If not sold, the training ground may still be ok.

I was hoping on a good crop of academy players to get us promoted one day. 

Without our top tier academy, the rest of the club, apart from our history, is currently second tier at best.

1 hour ago, AAK said:

Academy is being downgraded to cat2, thoughts people?

I can't believe that this is true... wouldn't make any logical sense whatsoever. However if true it would be a disaster.

Very impressive victory over man utd u18s today. I often hear that our youth system gets their rejects.... no idea if it's first 11 vs first 11, but they are having a great season.

53 minutes ago, roverandout said:

Really? 8? That should be reserved for someone who has us consistently challenging for the playoffs not a manager who finishes bottom half every season and has a 1 off promotion push

If you ignore our current horrible run of form I think play off position deserves an 8. If our form continues and we end up mid table, it'll probably be closer to a 6. Promotion via the play offs would be a 9? 10? Definitely not expecting that to happen though. Let's see what happens after the international break

Looking objectively:

League position: relegation zone to 6th place

Playing squad: completely rebuilt squad which is younger and has a much higher value (I'm ignoring contract statuses here)

Club has a completely different feel to it than when he took over. As he's promised multiple times, the club is in a much better position.

Right now I would give him an 8/10. In 6 weeks probably a different score.

Second best all over the pitch. Still out of form. Can't see where a goal is coming from unless changes are made

We seem to be beating ourselves here. Disjointed performance, stupid decisions. Forest haven't done much, but they will win easily now. OK for Rothwell to pick up a yellow to break up the attack, but that could very easily have been a red. Frustrating.

Bad to worse....

Was just about to write that we look like a team out of form. Don't look stable at the back, midfield and upfront disjointed. Also very harsh yellow on Buckley.

Watching the game on Roverrs TV. Hoping for a 2-0 win. BBD and Wharton

57 minutes ago, OsloRover said:

Nope, along with a lot of other upcoming games

https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2022/january/16/roverstv-streaming-update/

This is getting annoying. DAZN have the rights here in Germany and they keep showing random matches with Birmingham, Barnsley and Coventry every week. Rovers vs Hull was scheduled but now as its on Sky in the UK it won't be shown on DAZN in Germany! It looks like there's no where that I can watch it in Germany 😞

1 hour ago, briansol said:

Isn't that what we are currently doing? Most of our U18/U23 are rejects from Liverpool, United, City. Travis (Liverpool), Butterworth (United), JRC (United) all examples. 

I do get your point though. Instead of using 3 millions a year to run an academy, why not use a similar amount to purchase talent? Today's model have to produce to justify the expense. 

Buckley, Lenihan, Wharton? Even the expense of training the 'rejects' from u18-u23 level must easily have been recouped due to the amount of minutes they play in the first team. I'm sure (hope!) someone does a cost per minute of each player in our squad from transfer fees and wages vs academy fees and wages.

Probably the current mix is best for Rovers.

3 down already. I haven't seen them play this year but it's a shame that they are bottom of the table and looking likely to be relegated to the 2nd division. This can't be good for a category one academy. Also development of the next batch of youngsters. Hopefully they can string some results together and retain their top league status.

It's worth £82 000 to the winner, plus gate receipts. In times like these it could pay for a signing or two...... I'm pretty optimistic that baring a disaster that we will be in the top 6 at the end of the season. The extra money could pay to bring in one of the out of contract players in January instead of waiting til after the play offs.

We are on a roll, I wouldn't rest more than 2 players plus the 3/4 that are already out

14 minutes ago, Tom said:

I mean this is just disgusting 

 

 

That's an awful challenge. Behind, high,  nowhere near the ball. Similar to the  Cardiff red card last week. VAR would have upgraded that to red surely.

Looking like a good crowd today. BBE lower almost sold out!

Hoping for a 2-1 win, BBD and Wharton. Will be a very close game

Taking of out of the blue free transfers: https://www.transfermarkt.com/elkeson/profil/spieler/103588. I know absolutely nothing about him, but maybe he has some tattoos 😉

26 minutes ago, Sparks Rover said:

That's irrelevant in this case.  People can still get it and pass it on while vaccinated. 

What they should do is make everyone take a test before they play each day so anyone who is positive (vaccinated or non vaccinated) can not play.  Using your theory everyone on the pitch could be positive and that's ok.

Anyways, 

Sorry should have put reduce instead of stop, will edit it. Of course if everyone was vaccinated it would eventually stop the spread as it would break the chain.

So yes they can pass it on, but the unvaccinated player will have a roughly 3-4 greater chance of being infected vs the vaccinated 2. This will be less with the new varient though. 5 hours sharing a table on a coach is a long time. Hopefully it hasn't spread further or I guess the match will be called off.

I agree with daily testing, especially when there are active infections in the camp. I would definitely suggest to test everyone as vaccinations don't provide 100% protection. Having infected people on the pitch/in the changing room would definitely not be ok...

I just wanted to comment on the vaccines don't stop the spread part. The teams with a high percentage of vaccinated staff will probably fair better over this winter. 

25 minutes ago, Butty said:

What difference would that make? The virus still spreads whether you’re vaccinated or not. 

11 minutes ago, Butty said:

That was the point I was making to Neo who was questioning why a lot of players aren’t vaccinated because even if they were you’d still be having games called off left right and centre!
 

They don’t stop the spread just helps the severity of the symptoms, I can only guess a lot of footballers would back themselves to beat the virus without being jabbed which is fair enough and is their choice. Everyone should have that choice and be able to decide for themselves if the want to be jabbed. 

Vaccines do stop the spread. Without being vaccinated you are contagious for a longer period of time and emit a higher concentration of virus over that period. 

I think the confusion in (social) media came due to research showing that for a short 1-2 day period infected vaccinated people spread almost the same amount of virus compared to non-vaccinated people. However over the 10 day period, non-vaccinated infected people emitted far more virus and can thus infect more people.

If you have any questions have a look at the coronavirus discussion topic.

Hoping for a 2-0 victory tomorrow. BBD and Buckley to score.

4 hours ago, Ulrich said:

https://the72.co.uk/257870/blackburn-rovers-comment-3-transfer-alternatives-tony-mowbray-should-consider-instead-of-josh-maja/

Some alternative suggestions, the Belgium lad seems worth a scout. 17 in 20 🇧🇪👍

Good player, but won't come cheap now. He was amazing at U19 level, then struggled a bit for a couple of years but seems to be doing really well now. Daniel-Kofi Kyereh is another ex-Halvese player that we could have signed on a free recently. On his way to the Bundesliga with St Pauli now so may be a challenge to sign him. 

4 hours ago, RevidgeBlue said:

The issue isn't really WHETHER they've been offered new contracts, it's whether those offers are tempting enough to get said players to re-sign and seemingly they aren't.

Not really going to be worth us letting them go for peanuts if we're still in the top 4 come January either is it?

If we are still in the top 6 come January, staying at the club will become a more attractive proposition. Especially if they are forced with being sold to a mid-table championship club for a slightly higher wage