I have a feeling the system is such that they have to take the seat map offline in order to manually change things (make unavailable seats from non-renewers available for purchase). They've been at it for 33 hours. Is it really the case that so many haven't renewed, yet? Or are they actually having a change of strategy? My heart sinks when I read that our club is delighted with 7,000 ticket sales during the Super Saver period when the likes of Ipswich Town have sold 21,000. The outward appearance of operations at the club is amateurish. That's usually a tone set from the top.

Time to start a new thread for the upcoming season? I'll start with something I've just seen related to one of our new opponents for the season. Imagine Venkys coming up with an open letter like this. No, I can't either.

MORE THAN FOOTBALL... "Chips are quite good actually"

It was down for around two or three hours last summer.

The season tickets haven't been available to buy online for over eight hours. I wonder if something is afoot.

I'm looking for a burger pun. There isn't one. Welcome to my ignore list.

Give it four years and Adam Wharton running his contract down, and I reckon that's nailed on for season ticket prices.

I will when they lettuce into the system. It's be down for over six hours. 😩

I'm not answering on behalf of Waggott, which is what you appear to be thinking. If he's lying about why he won't reduce ticket prices (which he has rarely done anyway), that's another issue. I'm just stating the problems and what should be done to solve them. We all realise Waggott is short-sighted, but I reckon he'll be given short-sighted targets, too. A CEO that stood up to the owners and managed to get them to listen wouldn't go amiss!

Except it could. If he reduce the prices by, say £100, and only got 1,000 additional ST holders out of it, then he's lost. I'm not saying he shouldn't do it, or that we'd only get another thousand supporters out of it, but I reckon that's what he and his team think. There's a risk attached to doing it, which is why he probably doesn't do it. Regarding player sales, why Waggott was never publicly raised it as an issue, and yet Broughton has, probably says something about the aims of the two. I don't really care if Waggott has or hasn't said something because the actions by him speak louder than words. However, at least Broughton has raised it as an issue and is looking to do something about it. It's been an obvious problem for us for too many years, and I doubt anybody could deny that if we brought more revenue in from it, then other problems could be solved. Don't ask me why Waggott hasn't publicly acknowledged that, but I maintain it's part of the problem.

The club loses ~£20m per year, of which the owners are apparently "plugging £13m, and we have to find £7m (to prevent ourselves from entering FFP), which is what you're getting at with the above figures (?). And so if ST prices were dropped, and uptake wasn't massively increased (which I think is what Waggott is afraid of), then we actually start having gaps. Put some player sales in, problem solved, and then some.

I just think he'll be given a figure of revenue to generate at the club (excluding player sales), and it's then up to him. So you could say, a bit of both. You see the results of it through season tickets, outsourcing to Sodexo, the state of the stadium, etc. Or we could just sell players at the right time and alleviate the pressure on all of that. It's like there are two separate things going on in order to avoid FFP. Keep the players, lose out on revenue from their sales, but make it back up through supporters, maintenance, etc. It's all wrong, but it sounds like things will change in terms of player sales at least.

Not selling players causes losses into the millions, or even tens of millions in our case. Waggott is trying to get that back by penny-pinching from supporters, closing stands, not maintaining the stadium, etc. It all stems from stupidity by the owners. If we start selling players properly, we might actually see some improvement in terms of what we can spend in the transfer market, and all of the match-day issues that affect supporters.

If the owners have to sign-off on everything (this is a small family business trait if ever I heard one, having worked for a few for my sins), I think the bigger problem is the owners. Broughton is right about one thing - we have to sell as well as buy. It's blatantly obvious that you have to do this in order to achieve financial sustainability, as has been banged on about for some time, now. And yet it seems that the owners are the ones who have blocked all of those avenues. I bet part of Broughton's presentation in India will be why we should sell players in order to buy new ones. 🤦‍♂️ I'm convinced, twelve years in, that they still don't get the game at all. It would be great if they provided the money and let people who know the game make the correct (and normal!) decisions. The problem is that Venky's are unlikely to ever put their trust in anyone ever again. And that's the irony of today's problems. They trusted Anderson, Kean, Shagnew, etc., and now they won't trust people who could actually get us out of this hole.

My hunch is that Waggott feels he has no choice but to keep season ticket prices at this level. I think he is given annual financial targets, and there isn't much he feels he can do ("we've done all we can"). This could be solved if Venky's stopped being stubborn and sold players properly. This is something I wholeheartedly agree with Broughton on, and it's surely the correct way to run a club such as ours. I honestly reckon our lack of selling activity is a big reason as to why the club is trying to claw that money back from supporters. If we sold players properly, some of that could be used to alleviate pressure on supporters' pockets and behave like a normal club again, and one that looks like it cares about supporters. I think that's all supporters ask at the moment.

The difference for us has to be a few smart signings, and blooding our top-grade academy. That's the only we can realistically get into the top six. Truthfully, I'm expecting another top-half finish outside the play-offs next season. It's possible we can do a Luton or a Coventry and get into the play-offs on our lower wage budget, as we nearly did this time around, but I think it will be the same recipe for us. Over to Broughton and Tomasson to see what they can pull off this season. I'm hopeful, but not expectant.

To be fair (and this isn't aimed specifically at you), I think most supporters believe that we never expected those two chances in the first place! It was really surprising to find ourselves in the positions we found ourselves in during the last couple of seasons under Mowbray and Tomasson. The problem has been piss-poor transfer windows in January to see us through to the play-offs (or more!). We run out of steam because we essentially run out of players. I personally wouldn't go anywhere near as saying that the last two seasons have been utter failures, as some suggest. I see imperfect progress at the club. For the last few seasons at least, I see us with an outside chance of the play-offs because we are certainly not one in the top six when it comes to strongest clubs in terms of resources and playing staff. We need to cut out certain silly mistakes in our transfer dealings, and I think we are in with a great shout of making it.

Seat map is getting updated... 👀

You would expect almost every senior player would, particularly those on high wages. Relegation release clauses, as per Aaronson and one other player who I've forgotten the name of, should help to shift players. Having said that, Leeds United bought Aaronson for ~£25m, and given that he reportedly didn't show much of that worth, they might have to sell him (and others) for less than the release clause. Even the stupidest owners will understand that you can't maintain certain wages in the Championship, even if you're a club with the revenue of Leeds United and parachute payments. If Leeds United's hand is forced by selling certain players at cut prices, the only sticking points might be wages. You'd expect the highest earners to be moved on at any cost. Rodrigo, Bamford, Rutter, Sinisterra, Roca, and Harrsion are only on wages of more than £60k per week. Surely even Leeds United can't maintain that in the Championship.

Apologies if this has been discussed before, but an article from Sharpe states the following regarding last season's season ticket sales: That's ~9,700 season tickets sold altogether, including half-season tickets. Is that figure correct? Or have there been any corrections to it? I want to determine whether 9,300 or 9,700 are marked as "unavailable" from last season. I've been assuming it 9,300 because I thought that was the figure of full and half-season tickets.

Alan Fettis has returned! 🙌

According to Nixon, they will be big spenders this summer.

As we saw last season, clubs can easily come down and stay down, with the occasional club getting relegated twice in a row. We've seen Rovers brush aside well-resourced clubs like Watford and Norwich, and then struggle against teams like Rotherham or Preston. That's the Championship (at least from a Rovers point of view). The advantage for us is that at least we know what it's like and what to expect.

Good. There could be some big casualties next season. Let's give 'em all a bloody nose on our way up.