Can't believe that a player who gives 100%, has scored 6 and assisted on 4 (nearly 5 last night) gets such a lambasting. Sure Kuqi is not the best with ball to feet, but his laid off headers are the best I've seen from a Rover for a long time. He's not first choice and he gives us an effective Plan B, which is fine by me after several seasons of not even having a Plan A. Without the big guy our season would already be over and we'd have had no cup run. Bellamy is as bad with his head as Kuqi is with his feet, but I never hear a word about that, which is fine because it doesn't matter as long as their team mates play to their respective strengths.

For a business that wants to build back the habit of going to matches, in my view it has no chance when the fixture list is chopped and changed as much as it is. Would the same TV executives who blithely rearrage match days and kick off times for Rovers do the same with their popular programmes? Of course not; a big part of destination TV is having a fixed slot around which people can build a routine. The blame has to go back to the clubs for greedily allowing this and then assuming the Sky money would be 100% incremental to gate money. Making it more difficult for customers to enjoy your product does not usually build sales, and reflects an arrogant and out of touch industry. Going back to points raised a while ago on this thread re affordability, the fact that Rovers prices are among the cheaper of premiership clubs is interesting but irrelevant. Rovers do not compete with other clubs for customers, albeit maybe at the margins with Wigan, so what counts much more is the cost versus local affordability - just because beer is cheaper in Blackburn than London does not mean that Thwaites should enjoy higher per capita consumption. The big increase in our gates post Jack didn't, in my view, come from 200% more breadwinners attending, but was largely driven by increases in the number of family members who came, thus greatly increasing the burden on the typical Rovers-supporting household budget. I think it all adds up to a "tipping point" example where many people simultaneously and independently reached the point where the combination of fixture hassle, games on at the pub, and burden on disposable income combined to trump the benefits of being there live. And once habits get broken, they are very difficult to reinstate.

Cobblers. You yourself said on another thread that transfer fees are insignificant these days compared to the remuneration packages players get. If we spent your alleged 5 million on transfer fees, we'd pay the new superstar in washers would we? Given the kind of hard bargaining on our side that left us with a raft of useless has-beens sat on our books, unable to be moved on because of ludicrously high salaries, at best that money over the same 3 year period would have covered a transfer fee of around a million and then the salary etc for one measly squad player. Hardly transformational.

And over the same timeframe the cumulative club turnover has been well in excess of 100,000,000 quid. Given the extraordinarily high costs of even one bad signing, all the time and effort put into hand-wringing over attendances by our hansomely renumerated executives would have been better spent doing more adequate due diligences on the kinds of signings you mention or going on some negotiating courses.

All fair points Shaddy, but even so, trying to scare punters into coming isn't likely to be effective when they can see that the entire lost gate income wouldn't even pay the salary of just one of the first team squad. Still, the half empty stadium doesn't seem to be adversely impacting player motivation and home results! Having seen the goals from the game (for which I pay Fox a monthly fee and hence indirectly Rovers, whether we are on live or not), I cannot but be amazed at Bellamy's scoring prowess - Shearer reborn. Both Boro goals seemed to go straight through Brad, but then he does still keep pulling out the reactive shot-stoppers. I also though there was a hint of hand to ball for Savage

While Tris makes many good points in his post a few pages back, the one area I think clubs are going to have to learn to live with is the negative influence of televised games on attendances. Personally I think it's peeing into the wind to think that pubs showing games from dodgy foreign channels can be stamped out. Firstly, as far as crimes in Blackburn go, I think this is quite a way down the list of priorities for the powers that be. They really do have better things to do. Secondly, in most people's eyes, it is at worst a victimless crime. Remember, Rovers have already been paid by the satellite companies. Thirdly, the clubs were naive to think that there would not be cannibalisation of punters at the gate. Satellite companies paid a lot for the rights and consequently want to sell to as many people as possible to turn a profit. If that includes dodgy channels from Timbuktu then it's all the same to Sky, they don't care. Fourth and last - universally unpopular laws always end up being ignored or repealed. Look at prohibition. I can't believe that any punter going to pub for the game feels that they are doing anything wrong - as evidenced by all the Rovers fans who complain about it for home games knock the doors down to get in for away games. The genie is out of the bottle now and clubs are going to have to factor in higher cannibalisation levels next time they negotiate. The other factor that never seems to get mentioned is that feature of being able to see 60 mins of the game on the Saturday evening. Given that the average game has around 60 mins of actual possession time, I assume this means that one can see virtually the entire game, on game day, for half the price of attending but with none of the hassle. I'm sure many fans would prefer that a few times a season on cold, wet days against crappy opposition. The clubs only have themselves to blame. They let Sky get away with far too much and are now bleating because Sky are doing such a good job selling the game to foreign channels and armchair punters - which is exactly what they should be doing given how much they paid.

What a load of cobblers from the club. By my calculation, a decline of 3,000 fans over 19 games at the club's stated income level of 13 quid a seat works out to the massive sum of 741k. If we were to finish 5th, that would be a rise of 10 places at 500k a place - 5 million. Attendance income comes a poor third behind Sky and commercial incomes, so for the club to state that it drives our purchasing power in the market is simply misleading. Fans won't come out of fear, especially when it is so transparently ungrounded.

Mixed emotions - negatives first. We played plenty of good football but Robinson only made one save of note from Bentley. Forget the decisions, our defending was poor for all three goals. A throw in down by the corner flag should not result in a goal; Brad yet again turned a shot back into the danger area, and the third was just awful. I was hoping we'd seen the last of Emerton and yet again he had no impact on the game. The pluses though were heartwarming. Two excellent goals fashioned by our two strikers; Bellamy was outstanding and Sinima put in his best shift to date. Bentley seems to have much more confidence now and I think will get better and better. Neil is terrific coming forwards when he cuts inside. Excellent free-kicks and corners by and large. And even Kuqi added something to our attacks in his 10 minutes. Champions League was too big an ask this season, but we should be gunning all the way for a Uefa spot.

Your conspiracy theories get more outlandish every day. Keep them coming though; always good for a chuckle.

I was at the back of the Blackburn End for this, in the middle of the gap. The atmosphere before kick-off was the most intense I have experienced apart from VE Day; a combination of top of the table clash, having lost 2 weeks ago at Plymouth; their thousands of fans in t'Darren End, and the stories of their early morning mayhem in the market hall - no doubt all clamouring to get at the sarsaparilla stand. The low after 30 mins was even lower than the Derby play-off, and the high in the second half was even higher for me. No second leg to face etc - this was it, we were going to go up for sure after crushing them 5-2. If we had lost this game, Lee would have gone anyway, we wouldn't have attracted Bald Eagle and we could well have never risen up again. The only thing it lacked was a goal of the decade to match Mike Newell's in the Derby game (why there isn't a statue to this man I'll never understand) but Don Martin's goal was quite special and Mike Hickman did a Speedie. Post the relegation in '66, I think this game, Derby and VE day are head and shoulders above any other home games, and I feel blessed to have been there for all three.

Makes sense to me Florida, particularly what I think is your key insight above. Hardly anyone but the Glaziers own football clubs for monetary reasons; owners are either fans, publicity seekers or money-launderers. Since our current owners are clearly none of these, BRFC may well be of more value to someone else than it is to them, which is always a good basis for a transaction.

Lets not kid ourselves here. I would find it inconceivable that Jack would not have discussed the terms of the Trust with his close family - his unfortunate death was not sudden after all - one of whom is a director on the Board of BRFC, so at least one member of the Board would know everything there is to know. Whether this had been shared with a mere employee, the Chairman, is more debatable and I could well believe not. But then this particular Chairman doesn't really need to know anyway, given that we have an overwhelming majority shareholder who would call all the shots on whether or not the club is sold. The key question for me is: who was the inside source for the story and for what purpose?

I agree with the capital investments - if they were that keen to sell then they should have been milking the business rather than putting in money they might not get back - why redo your kitchen if you will be selling the house soon - (or maybe Trust terms prevent that?) And maybe I'm just being a bit thick, but doesn't converting debt into equity make things a bit easier to sell? If a loss-making business also has $14m debt on its books, surely that is less attractive to a buyer than one that just has more equity, all of which could be bought for, say, 1p?

That was my thought. The journalist in question I don't think has a reputation for being a shyster; he has written for the Telegraph for many years on football financial matters. If he says the club is up for sale then most readers would assume that it is. And what sources in the club are there that are worth listening to other than the two in the corner office - or maybe there's a board member who has close links with the Family....?

I personally am not shocked by the 13 quid per seat statistic, but then I am not sure it is the most relevant in a business that has high fixed costs, almost zero marginal costs and tons of spare capacity. Average income per seat would be far more relevant in a business that had no spare capacity - such as Man Yoo - or one where the marginal costs of increasing sales were a factor. My concern is that Rovers do not act like a $40 million turnover business in how they try to tackle the issue of fan-derived income. Any professional marketing outfit with access to the kind of customer database that BRFC has would have some inkling as to the following: i) Existing customer "churn" - % of regular customers lost in a time period ii) New customer retention rates - % of new customers who come a 2nd time, % of those who come a 3rd time and so on iii) Optimal promotional strategy - EDLP vs. hi/lo iv) Price elasticity - x% change in price results in y% change in sales. v) From all of the above, a "value" to the club of a new customer and hence the level of investment sensible to put into attracting them - for example, satellite radio in the US invests $150 per new customer which, as they have a profit margin of 10%, comes from their belief that each new subscriber has a value of over $1,500. At the executional level, Rovers are not the first business to have to contend with how to target offers such that existing customers don't get pee'd off or that existing revenues aren't unduly compromised. Retail banks spend a lot of time worrying about this. The price route is either valid or it is not. It is not at the moment because over half the fans have season tickets which have been sold on the premise of "best value." But then Sky has changed the equation and the season ticket concept based solely on price is now largely redundant as being the main promotional tool. It needs to be re-invented both to be more effective in its own right and also be less of a barrier to price-based promotional activity. Why is there minimal added value for season ticket holders beyond price - a benefit easily eroded by Sky messing around with the playing schedule and also a millstone that hampers attracting new customers? Starwood Hotels are pursuing a regular visitor strategy that offers exclusive access to events e.g. Victoria's Secret fashion shows in their W hotel chain. Regular visitors get less upset if some walk-in got a good price for the night as price is no longer the main benefit of being a Starwood Preferred Guest. Why not have monthly meet the player sessions available only for season ticket holders; free upgrades to boxes/lounges - they're never full anyway; exclusive use of the shop (ha!) at certain times; 2 months head start on owning new design playing kits etc. etc. as the main benefit? I for one refuse to accept that either the club have done all they can or that the Blackburn public are to blame. Williams and Finn get renumerated at the level of a fairly large, professional company which for me means that they should be expected to have a sophistiocated approach to growing the business and also be accountable for results, no matter how challenging the circumstances. In my corporate career I never got paid as much as they do, despite being on the board of a company with 6 times the turnover as BRFC, but I was expected to be employing best practice capabilities and to be wholly accountable for outcomes.

Good summary Col. Waggy scored after only a few minutes to set the tone - as I recall he took forever to actually put the ball in the net. Fear nipped in front of the keeper to toe-poke in a shot from Hird I think - there was a great picture in the LET of Stephenson down to scoop up Hird's shot while Fear had already scored and was wheeling away. The 3rd by Noel was pure magic - through on his own, walked it round Stephenson to create pandemonium in an overly packed Longside visitors section. I got caught by a piece of brick on the back of the neck, my mate got a golf ball to the head - both going back with topspin - and a bloke in front of me crapped in his beer glass and lobbed that over. The second half was made worse by what seemed like 17 minutes of added time with Bumley camped in our area. Happy Days!

No chance we'll catch them now. Who'd have thought it?

Hopefully that't the last we've seen of Emerton. Well done Sparky.

Looking up the stats, he's already been benched for 10 games this season and been subbed in over half of his starts - 7 in 13 . Oh, and scored one flukey goal. Hughes clearly doesn't rate him - please get rid in summer.

Chairman's commentary's in annual reports can hardly be categorized as "fair" - they are usually the epitomy of positive spin - unless of course the chairman has just come in from the outside and wishes to paint a bleak picture to make his subsequent achievements look all the greater. The decline in fanbase seems to have plenty of causes and not many solutions in the commentary. "We must try harder and we will" needs to be backed up by concrete plans with targets and consequences for failure. That's what executives get paid for. I didn't realize Bancroft had been turfed from his honorary position.

Or passes it back to Lucas. I think its virtually certain Hughes will sell him in the summer while, in theory, we can still get some cash for him. He's benched him too often for it to be a "gee up" ploy.

I have to say that until now I thought all this big club bias to be a load of ######, but seeing Man Yoo's 3rd today has finally convinced me there must be something in it. I think the combination of Murdoch's $600m/year coupled with "professional" refs have combined to ruin the honesty of the game. No surprise really, money sloshing around, greed, plus livelihoods and reputations on the line are all bound to combine. I really felt for Chris Coleman today - good for him standing up to this crap

Haven't seen anything from today, but Hughes must be worried that we've conceded 11 in the last 4 games: I know I am

That was the most exciting game I've seen for years. No doubt the many who have bleating on about Bentley not being up to it will be cheering him to the rafters tonight. A hat trick against MU - that alone puts him in my hall of fame. While Kuqi's efforts with his feet were agricultural - no news there - there was a lot more played to his head tonight, which he won most of, including the one that put Ferdinand and VDS in a muddle. He gave us some options. Brad came out evens on the night - gifted the first but a stunner save from Rooney early in the 2nd half. Todd also evens on balance. Everyone else did very well, especially Emerton, but then we've seen this movie many times - gets dropped for being ineffectual, comes off the bench and impresses, gets his place back, is even more ineffectual, and so on ad infinitum (so it seems) Great energy, great tackling - proud to be a Rover One last thought, we seem to have gone from bully boys to being the bullied. Someone shouild be deputised to sort out Ferdinand next year

I like the fact that Hughes drops players for making big mistakes - they all realise that there are consequences for lapses in concentration. Game being shown here with 2 hour tape delay, so I'm off into a soundproof box until then. Rovers to win 1-0, Kuqi swallow dive