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Championship Season 25-26
StHelensRover replied to arbitro's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
I just checked and McLoughlin has 124 championship appearances, the other summer signings have none. We'll have to see what that means. Ohashi had never played in this division but he ended up doing alright. Gueye had never played in it and he looked a donkey for at least 6 months before he got going a bit. Fingers crossed they all adapt fairly quickly, because if they don't we're a bit stuffed! 🤞 -
Championship Season 25-26
StHelensRover replied to arbitro's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
"Expectations? An easier one to answer when the transfer window has closed. Rovers have lost more than 1,200 Championship appearances, combined with the summer departures, with arrivals totalling so far well under 150 appearances combined." Worrying stat IMO "Expectation is probably higher than this time last year when many feared relegation." They might want to ask a Rovers fan about that -
Yeah I agree with this. No club has a god given right to top flight football or any type of success, but if you trust the people at the top are doing their very best then you can accept when you fall short. I think Steve Gibson is the best example of this at Middlesbrough. He must have been there about 30 years now. They've spent most of that time bouncing between the top and second division, they've won a cup and played in a European final. The last few seasons they have been bang average, mediocre. But fans aren't protesting and booing him, because they know he loves the club and will do whatever he can to at least try and bring success.
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It's such a tough one. Ours is a bit of an outlier case compared with most of the other shite owners. Wrexham, Portsmouth, Coventry, Morecambe, Luton Bolton, Bury, Reading, SheffWeds and probably 15 others I've forgotten to mention all had owners that were so catastrophic that they put the club either at serious risk of going out of business or out of business altogether, usually within a few years. Our decline has been so managed and drawn out over 12-13 years that it has slipped under the radar and so doesn't quite compare to the other examples. Our owners have always just managed to do the bare minimum to escape legal and media scrutiny. Kept us on life support as cheaply as possible. As long as we're fielding a team of paid players and ticking all the EFL's boxes, no one can technically say they're doing anything wrong. This is why no one outside of East Lancashire really cares. To outsiders, it looks like we're complaining at a lack of on-field success, which most clubs go through. As opposed to circling the plug hole very, very slowly, which is actually what it feels like we're doing. Fifteen years is a long time for a club of our stature to go without even a sniff of success, I don't mean winning the top division or trophies, but for the majority of our history we have been in the top flight and we should be at least aiming to return there every season. I don't remember anyone in the last decade at the club saying that promotion has been a goal. I'm pretty sure the goal of most other championship sides is to win promotion, but we never hear it at Ewood and we don't behave like it. Every season we behave like a club that has just been promoted from League One. That to me has always been unacceptable. The lack of ambition is galling. (I don't class our promotion from league one as success either, it was only the third time we'd ever been that low iirc). The 80s was before my time, but I'm aware that before Jack Walker we were skint and had low attendances, but were somehow still getting into the playoffs and trying to be ambitious. Under this lot the best we've mustered in 15 years is to have 'missed out on goal difference' which sounds better than it actually was, we flattered to deceive.
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I'd love the last point you made about seeking out new potential owners to be the route for fan groups to go down, but I don't think we're at that stage. The owners are seemingly as adamant as they were 14 years ago that the club is not for sale. Ultimately, I know that everything is for sale and that if someone offered them a billion pounds they would sell us by the end of the week. But the fact that they've seemed at best stubborn or at worst hostile to the idea of someone buying the club from them has likely put many parties off. I'd be worried that they probably overvalue the club as an asset, or expect by selling it to make back all or most of their outlay. But we are a sunk cost to them and they should be looking to offload us as easily as possible (not for free obviously, but accepting that they will have to take a big hit). I sadly hear from so many fans 'who would buy us' as well and I think that's a non-argument. So many clubs are bought and sold and if we were 'for sale' I think we would be seen as a good investment. Large stadium, elite category training ground/academy, just over an hour from an international airport, longstanding history and pedigree in the game. I hope the increased scrutiny on Pasha and the constant pointing out that we're operating well within our means on a cheap and cheerful, bargain basement strategy which lacks any ambition will wear him down to the point that it's untenable and even he has to express the futility of this to the owners. I might be dreaming that this will happen.
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You might be right, but I don't think even losing ten on the bounce would have produced that bizarre 'press conference' from Waggott, Pasha and Gestede or the flurry of other media appearances/interviews from Gestede, Yasir Sufi, et al. For a decade, most Rovers fans hadn't even heard of Pasha, now everyone knows he is the main man at the club and he's under much more scrutiny. For that reason alone, I can't accept that it wasn't a good idea to change tack. I had no personal involvement in it whatsoever, I've nothing to gain from saying it was a good idea btw. On the other hand, if you're right and the majority of Rovers fans don't think it was a good move, we're back to the problem of what can/should anyone be doing about the situation? I don't think people should sit on their hands and accept our lot. I don't know what much else there is that can be done which is within the law to get attention at the ground or in the media. Was it not better to try something different? I'm glad they gambled and did something else. The 'majority of fans' , 'young and old' seemed to think it was a good idea to wave inflatable snakes and boo John Eustace throughout the Derby County match. Was that a good idea, no? Was he blameless in orchestrating his move? No, but the fans deciding to target him non-stop for 90 minutes was embarrassing, achieved nothing and was the perfect outcome for the people running the club.
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I think the request that Pasha, Waggott and Gestede not attend matches was a good move, in hindsight. It was an unusual and quite petty request that the fan groups surely understood would be ignored, but it was a different angle of attack to the blanket "venkys out, sell the club". It caught people running the club off guard a bit and it got media attention in the way that the last ten years of "venkys out, sell the club" hasn't. I think since then they've continued to trip themselves up when speaking on the record and showed a level of incompetence many of us expected. Every time we're able to force the leadership out in the open they continue to expose the rubbish job they've done and continue to do. Given Waggott's speedy departure and then now coming out and threatening to ban fans, I'd say it ruffled feathers more than anything else in the last half-decade
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v WBA (a) - 9/8/2025 - The Big Kick-Off!
StHelensRover replied to Herbie6590's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
I'm going down for this game (or up? It is England's highest altitude football ground), anything can happen on the day. I was there when Richie Smallwood kept a clean sheet and I was there when Big Mak turned into Haaland there last year. Both very bizarre matches. I'm not optimistic though, I would take a draw now. -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
I said earlier in thread that we were much better in the second half but inevitably that didn't last. We probably played well in total for 15-20 mins of a 90 min game which is nowhere near good enough and ultimately 3-1 flattered us -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
I know it's preseason and players won't want to pick up injuries but I thought the same thing about Travis, he doesn't look interested. I reckon you're right about his head being turned, all his mates moving on and earning more money than he is, probably texting him about how much better everything is now they're away from our circus. -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
We could easily have been level with the chances we've been making but we have paid the price. That was a great bit of football from them. -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
We're much, much better than we were in the first half 👍 -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
That middle-eastern bid rumoured for Gueye, I reckon they're trying to recall the email after that miss 😄 -
NEC Nijmegen (a) - 2/8/2025 - Friendly
StHelensRover replied to philipl's topic in Blackburn Rovers Fans Messageboard
Kargbo on and instantly running into the box and trying to cross/pass it in 🤞