Another article on atmosphere from yesterday's Independent, including a league table of stadium noise

Rovers 14th in the Premiership, ahead of Utd and Liverpool. Can't say that the table makes much sense from my experience overall though - Tottenham 2nd?!

Quite rightly so. Benni was unmarked stood next to the penalty spot. At this point the game was close at 2-1, had he squared it to Benni for a tap in we'd have made the game comfortable, Benni would've ended his bad run and we could have been sat here today discussing a 4-1/5-1 win, with both strikers back on top form.

For Gamst to shoot given the options he had was absolutely crazy. If I were Benni I'd still be bollocking him now.

Of course it might have had something to do with about 1,000 Rovers fans in front of him screaming "shoot".

Interesting article on MGP in today's Independent

Probably been said already but I completely disagree with that Hasta, there seems to be an increase of around 2500 home fans this season for the lower profile games, which is undoubtedly attributable to the new pricing initiatives.

There were also another 2500 - 3000 fans on top of that in home areas yesterday producing the first 30000 gate for nearly five years.

That must say something and again has to be attributable to the price reductions (tickets available from 25 quid as opposed to 36 quid in recent seasons) combined with our great recent form.

I think we actually now have two home matches which we can guarantee a 30K crowd, Liverpool and Man Utd. We have more or less done this in previous seasons with higher ticket prices and clearly the market for these two games could stand higher prices (not that I'm proposing it). This is not the case with the other two higher ticket price matches - Arsenal and Chelsea, mainly because of geography. With Liverpool and Man Utd there are large numbers of fans in the Lancashire area who can easily get on Rovers database - it only takes coming to another match (or even just buying a ticket). There were two behind me yesterday who were clearly local from their accents but were Liverpool fans and knew little or nothing about Rovers.

Overall crowds are significantly up on last season. ST numers are 20% up - overall it will be less because we have presumably converted a number of those who picked their matches last year into ST holders this year. It's also complicated though by the team's performance which must be encouraging a few more but will likely be negatively affected later on with kick-off changes for TV - notably the home match with Sunderland.

The Portsmouth owner rewarded the pompey fans by paying for the coach travel to the Wigan game thats one main reason why so many went to Wigan and not here.

Coupled with the fact that Wigan are only charging £15 for their category C games, £5 less than Rovers.

Why, what time do the Pubs close in Brum?

Being local I also like the 5.15 kick offs. It gives you all day do to any family type stuff you have to do and then 7.30 is a great time to hit the Pub for Saturday night out afterwards!

In general I like the 5.15 kick-offs as well, but it will create a problem for the Liverpool match in November when I'm due to be at a dinner in Sheffield at 7.30!

Mark Patterson no longer at Scarborough as they've gone bust.

It's great that you speak for 99% of supporters. I'm part of the 1% that want him to stay. Not to start every week, but to stay on as cover for Benni and Roberts.

I'm in the 1% as well. For a guy who has come first season into the Premiership, back from horrendous injuries, been troubled by niggling injuries, a goal scoring record like his is highly commendable. Frequently overseas players take a while to settle in England - Drogba and Vidic were mentioned above. He just might turn into a bargain. There's an element of risk but at £2m for the devil you know rather than £xxm for the one you don't in the Summer it seems decent business to me.

Really, where did you hear that?

Happy if its true by the way - it wasnt doing us or him anygood just sitting on the bench/reserves

It's on Ipswich's website, although not yet on Rovers.

Despite which side of the Lucas debate you're on, is anyone else amazed at the arrogance of Rick Parry's comments today? Effectively he's saying we don't need to sell Liverpool to a player - if you don't want to come you want your head examined.

We might need to calm down a bit - FiveLive is reporting Mark Hughes as saying the club have received no contact from West Ham....

*dons protective shield in case of flak*

I'm ambivalent about dunny coming home. No doubt i like him, but i take issue with the price we're paying. Assuming we've matched Bolton's offer of 1m upfront and 1m on appearances, it still means a total outlay of 2m for a player in the final 6 months of his contract, who has played 53 times in the last 3 years. That for me, is just not rational economically.

(ps: my main gripe is that 2m could have gone towards a more 'established' or less injury prone midfielder of a suitable quality, or it could in itself secure us a fairly useful left back, rather than being gambled on a 'risky' dunny).

Except that it's presumably only really £1m. If he plays 50 times for us in the next couple of years that will mean he has been good enough to hold down a regular spot in the first team. If he does that paying another £1m will seem a bargain. Yes, there's a risk but he has the best medical and fitness people to work with here - if anyone can knock him into shape it's Rovers.

FiveLive have just reported John Williams as saying Rovers would love to re-sign David Dun, particularly in the light of the latest injury to Reid but it will come down to whether Rovers want to match Birmingham's valuation. Watch this space...

He seems to have a knack of making a sound point look like an outrageous rant, but if it came immediately after last night's match then I can't blame him for being annoyed. 2-1 up in the 88th minute and your player gets flattened by a foul in midfield. Ref fails to stop play and West Brom score and then, roared on by an excited crowd they get the winner in injury time.

Charlton's adult season ticket prices go from £340 (£15 a game) to £580 (£27 a game).

The £20 tickets on sale for their home game against Boro are all in the corner blocks- the expensive tickets are sold out.

I don't think I am far wrong with my £20 per seat sold yield guestimate.

The population numbers I quoted are if anything an underestimate. They are competing with the other London clubs but they have a far bigger and much more afluent population to market to.

Philip - where do all the concession prices come in then? there must be significant numbers of children, senior citizens and young adults there as well, all of whom get very significant discounts.

I am working on the basis that John Williams was correct that the average ACTUAL yield per seat (after allowing for child, young adult and senior citizen discounts etc) is £13.

Charlton's ticketing pricing seemed pretty reasonable last time I went there by London standards but they don't seem to need to discount like Rovers do. A £7 premium would be in line with the difference in average income in that part of London and in Blackburn. Their bussing from Kent is all part of developing their fan base/hinterland as THE Kentish Premiership club. My guess is there is probably the best part of a million within Greater London for whom Charlton is currently the local Premiership club and another million in Kent.

Well Charlton charged £20 when Rovers where there and a quick look on their website shows tickets available at £20, with concessions at £15 and £10 for next Saturday's game against Middlesboro. Whilst I'm sure they can charge top prices for most London derbies and Man Utd they have the same problem as we do with other games. No doubt they are taking more than £13 a seat but no way will they be getting £20.

Hmm... I'll say it again. Derbyshire needs/deserves 5 games after his performance today v Wigan!

Derbyshire's performance today was fine and he put away an easy chance. It was no better than Nonda's though, who has played excellently in my opinion in the last four matches (all of which I've seen). Nonda didn't create a great deal today but then he and McCarthy hardly had the ball at all in the first half. Derbyshire was playing most of the time against a Wigan team pushing forward trying to get back into the game - there's always going to be more space in that situation for a striker. There will be a time for Derbyshire, and if Nonda is injured it might be at Everton, but at the moment I'd choose Nonda first every time if fit. He did score 4 in December...

In truth it would probably be better for Rovers' finances if we didn't play Liverpool on Boxing Day. We would get a pretty good crowd whoever we played and we can guarantee a big crowd against Liverpool even on a wet Wednesday night in January (probably a lot more than we will get for Arsenal). If the Liverpool and Middlesboro matches had been reversed I would guess we would get more spectators in total and the club would charge high prices on both days. Not an argument to appeal to non-season ticket holders with not much money though...

Having started this with my comments on others at the ticket office on Tuesday i thought I'd better come back into the discussion. I stated in my original post that I could understand why the club did it but I did feel sorry for any genuine people wanting to say buy a ticket for the match as a Christmas present. I was pleased to see Lee's comment that in these situations they normally ask for a letter explaining the circumstances so if it was for a genuine Rovers fan it would be sorted. As others have said, just because the woman was clearly local doesn't mean she wasn't buying a ticket for a Liverpool fan.

I think if the club are suggesting writing a letter to explain circumstances then it's as much as they can be expected to do, although as I pointed out to Lee I don't think this was suggested in the case I saw.

They'll have been asked to submit their request in writing, we aren't refusing anyone a ticket unless they are Liverpool supporters.

Lee - the lady I mentioned definitely wasn't asked to write in. She was advised if there was anyone she knew who had a purchasing record who she could ask - this was when she mentioned her grandson working at Ewood, but he was now away until after Christmas.

Just been down to Ewood to get Arsenal tickets and a couple of extras for Liverpool. In the five minutes I was there no less than three people were turned away from the next window as they wanted to buy tickets for Boxing Day but had no previous history of purchase. Clearly a couple could have been Liverpool fans but one was clearly not - an elderly lady with a Blackburn accent whose grandson worked at Ewood. Now I know why it's done but I just wonder whether we can really afford to be doing this now. It's not as if there won't be tickets being bought for Liverpool fans in Rovers' areas. Maybe we the club should be reserving a small part of the ground to put these sales in which can be closely monitored and and Liverpool supporters removed immediately?

Lens or Panathinaikos should we beat Leverkusen.

One thing to take into consideration if we meet Lens... Lille are also sharing their ground for Champions League games, and I'm guessing that depending on how the draws pan out if there is a ground class Lille might take preference cos they're CL team.

No Champions League games on the week we would be playing them so should be OK.

Should find out a little after the draw is made and the sides have sorted out the details. Possibly later today, but if not within the next couple of days.

Just posted this on the other thread...

I'm assuming that the draw will be split in two and half played on each day to maximise TV revenue. That's what happened this week when there were no Champions League matches. On that basis I would have thought that it would be part of the draw to define the day of play.

Are we definatly playing on the Wednesday. No chance of it being on the Thurdays or Tuesday?

It's a 50/50 chance of being either Wednesday 14th or Thursday 15th.