Just making it up as they go along, switching from policy to policy, week to week, cup tie by cup tie. Where’s the direction? The strategy?

A transparent money grab preying on FOMO for a tasty away game. But with the only derby being PNE (where you get a huge allocation anyway) and no tiny Championship away ends this season, not a chance he was getting more dosh out of me for 1875 (ok, no midweek at Harrogate then, but I can live with that).

A combination of a ruthless cost cutter like Swag and a lot of young and inexperienced people in the Commerical/Marketing teams, neither with any feel for how our fanbase works, leads to such bizarre and totally counterproductive decisions like this time after time. The whole commercial operation needs gutting and re-built, and quickly too before even more damage is done.

‘Instead of a printed ticket, you can print at home ’… nowt to do with costs, of course, purely a green initiative!

With some of the most expensive STs in the league - far more than our comparable neighbouring clubs, the closing of the Blackburn End in the last cup tie, to now purposely excluding non digital-savvy people (so especially a lot of older fans that make up a fair percentage of our match goers) and preventing walk-up sales on the day… the answer to that can only be ‘yes’.

The only ‘business’ I know that never stops looking for innovative new angles to prevent people from purchasing its products.

That will never be open again for a cup tie (unless Man Utd/Liverpool etc)… and maybe permanently before long.

Though not sure I’ve read this right. So an old timer without a smarphone/internet turns up to the ticket office to buy one and they are turned away? https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2023/december/14/digital-day-comes-to-ewood-for-cup-fixture-/

Blackburn End is open for Cambridge. A ridiculous decision back in September they rightly got pelters for and hopefully it won’t be made again.

Jack Walker looks far busier than it would normally with nine days to go. As a rule of thumb we played Wigan on the 23rd December 2019 at tenner a ticket and there were c17k home fans there. But that was a night game on Sky, so you’d hope we would top that this time for a 3pm, but I don’t think it will be much higher than that figure by KO. But of course with only 9k ST holders in a 30k ground you need to sell a hell of a lot of walk on tickets to get the place looking even remotely full.

They happen to be one of just three league clubs in the whole north east of England. Ergo they can attract big crowds and obviously as a result of that there’s a hell of a lot of potential there, especially with an oil state’s sovereign wealth fund backing them. Good for them, but there’s nowt special about them regardless of what the media makes out.

Can’t say from what I’ve seen of them both this season that Travis is a ‘far better’ option. He’s far more experienced, certainly, but he hasn’t been pulling up many trees when in midfield this term.

‘We gave it a real good go’… after 90 minutes of doing the exact opposite.

‘Et al’… being a brfcs regular? 😀

Don’t rate him one bit, but the quality of their players in comparison to Swansea’s will get him plenty of results anyway.

If you don’t find your club winning loads of games exciting then you may as well give it up.

Think that was a ‘best XI’ interview on Sky, where he picked the best players he played with. From memory not a single Rovers player got a mention even in passing, never mind put in the XI… and just think of some of the players he was with here from 1996 to 2003.

And that’s fair enough, we all see a game from our own standpoint. My response was that a decade of low crowds, particularly for cold midweek red button fixtures, obviously has nothing to do with a fella that only arrived in summer 2022.

End of the day it’s the way football is now going to be for the next few years, so all you can hope is that we master it quicker than our opponents.

Midweeks are a red herring, so put them to one side. The standard Saturday home fan turnout is c12/13k - Coyle season and post Covid aside that’s pretty much how it’s been every Championship season since 2012. The club is in a deep commercial malaise that’s lasted for a decade, it’s especially noticeable in recent years as football booms across the country. So it’s obviously bugger all to do with the bloke that’s been here less than 18 months.

Hmm, wonder what the difference might have been down there…

Not saying otherwise. But you say you aren’t enjoying the football ‘at present’, so presumably then you were enjoying the football on show in recent times from other managers, who?

Who has played better football here in the past decade? Who has got better results?

The football was more prosaic at this stage last season, but yes we we were in the top 6, ergo exciting, so it IS all about results then.

Always makes me laugh how irate football fans get these days whenever the ‘soccer’ word gets used like it’s some modern phenomenon worming its way in from those pesky Yanks. But as the above shows it was often used interchangeably with ‘football’ in days gone by.