StHelensRover

Just a minority of fans who don't go to matches anymore though apparently according to some quarters?

Did I hear the away fans chanting "we want Venkys out" on the telly just then? 💪🤞

We've probably got the best defence in the league before 88 minutes, but we've no resilience, game management, 'match IQ' or whatever we want to call it, which has stemmed from poor investment in players and managers.

I don't think there is anything that can be done which hasn't already been done in the last 15 years, which isn't illegal. Fans have involved MPs, spoken to regional, national, international press, supporter federations, protested inside the ground, outside the ground, brought livestock into the ground, done planned walkouts, thrown a snowball, chanted endlessly, made banners and at least two thirds of the fan base have just stopped attending. No one outside of East Lancashire cares about the issue. I'm not aware of anything else that people can do. Emptying the stadium is the one final thing which hasn't been done.

One thing I have been thinking about regarding the boycott. Even if the owners themselves don't hear about it, or don't care, it would send an alarming message to everyone else in the club. Players and coaches might start to think that something is seriously wrong (those who don't already realise and are prepared to block it out), they might start getting on to their agents to look elsewhere. It might start some awkward conversations in the club that pasha and rudy can't ignore. Crunch time is going to be May and season ticket renewals, regardless of the division we're in. They won't have a "150th anniversary. Be a part of the story" strap line to guilt trip me.

Maybe there is a better way to communicate to the wider football community the scale of resentment and apathy at the club. There's a few news articles, local and national that acknowledge "attendances are down". That's not the same as saying "when Venkys bought the club, gates were 24,000, now sometimes they're below 7,000 and the club are publishing official attendances which are way higher. During the period of their ownership almost every club in England has seen a rise in average attendance and BRFC buck this trend."

None of us know whether a boycott will work at Ewood, but there is evidence it has worked at other clubs, so there is hope. After 15 years of failure, mediocrity, countless embarrassing PR stories and zero ambition shown, there is no other realistic set of options for ways we can protest the regime that are within the law except a boycott. I hope as many fans as possible will bite the bullet and boycott just the one game to see if that makes a difference. It's just one game to send a message, the sky won't fall in if we all just miss one game to let them know how we feel. As a fan base we can assess the impact and go from there. We need to think about the long term, not dwell on missing one 90 minute match which will mean little in the grand scheme of things.

Do people think the club will pull out all the stops to entice people to the Watford game? Slash prices, bring a mate, kids for a quid, family fun day, tons of free tickets to local schools etc? If they suspect only a few hundred will actually boycott, they might be able to plug that gap with a big one-off push/giveaway, so that they can then point and say there was no drop in attendance, no boycott, etc. That is something I would do, if I was in that position. Let's say real home attendance circa 6k, but 500-1k boycott. Imagine they could claw most of those back in other sales if they offered hundreds of free tickets and had a huge one-off ticket deal.

I'd be really interested to know what the main decision is for those who go as to why they're not prepared to boycott, ones I can think of myself are: - the owners don't care and it won't work - not fair on the players - it's really important part of my routine or the routine of my dependents (e.g. children, elderly or vulnerable) which I cannot forgo, even for one game - I don't care about what happens off the pitch, I just 'back the boys' no matter what - No one tells me what to do That last one in bold is something I heard a few people saying at Ewood on Saturday, that included people who chant against the owners etc. I don't really understand that last one, just sounds like oppositional defiance. For each of those above reasons not to boycott, it's hard to get a message or interaction across that can interact with each point and put something convincing across without attracting hostile responses. I sympathise with the coalition on that point, it's very difficult

The best thing you can do is to use the mute feature. I'm going to take part in the Watford boycott and I am having to seriously consider season ticket renewal after 27 consecutive seasons. However, the responses I've now seen on here, social media more widely in addition what I've heard down at Ewood at the weekend have left me resigned to the fact that it won't work and that many people are going to ignore it. There are certain people on this message board who probably cannot wait for it to fail and you're best muting them.

I'm not too surprised, they were complete rubbish at Ewood (both teams were). If they play like that most weeks they will join Sheffield Wednesday in L1 next season.

Only just listened to this latest episode, got a very important question ahead of our huge FA Cup 3rd round tie at Hull... Can we have the names of these fish and chip shops? 🐟🍟

No doubt there will be a big tribute to Chris Rea at the Riverside on Boxing Day. Insert your own remarks about Rovers, Venkys and the road to hell.

Height is not a given that a player will be good in the air, see Sam Gallagher or Maktar Gueye.

When Birmingham's current owners came in, one of the first things they did was give St Andrews a facelift. Obviously in the long term they're planning to move to a new stadium, but the existing ground had a load of issues, looked shite and knackered. I went there last time we played there and it looked miles better. In most parts all they had done was clean it up, repaint it, upgrade signs and billboards, add new digital/electronic features, etc. but I definitely noticed the difference. It probably cost a million quid, but like the Venkys, they're not short of the money. It's a small thing but it doesn't go unnoticed and it puts pride into the club and the fan base.