Mattyblue

It was ‘just over 8,000’ a month ago. But at least they’ve got their cash flow in early from the core, bugger trying to actually grow crowds on the back of a decent season.

The support for the side was huge in the Sven era too, and he achieved bugger all. Just think of the atmosphere around the country for the Japan WC and Euro 2004 when Rooney burst on the scene.

He was grafting his arse off in a first round Carabao Cup tie days before getting sold (cup-tieing himself in the process.) No complaints from me.

We’ll sell c8,750, they’ll sell c11,000, but revenue wise it will probably be similar. So shrugged shoulders all round from the powers that be at Ewood.

Maradona, perhaps?

Argentina have won things without a world class player? Interesting take.

Two of your key players with a year left and they haven’t even been offered anything. This club doesn’t now even pretend to be a professional one.

No Im not saying he was some contractual guru, he just happened to be in situ at the time when funds were available, they now aren’t and that’s that.

The fella reckons that older lad that’s been released after spending the season at Chesterfield and Leyton Orient is the better player, so don’t expect a sensible debate.

No issue (briefly) in signing players up when Gregg the Egg was here. There’s ‘no money left’ is the start and end to it.

Be what Markanday will be getting next season.

Plus Jimmy Greaves who wasn’t even in the side!

Of course unlike the plethora of players that have been given a go over the past year or so, Wharton would need to be actually given a chance.

Say what you want about Dolan’s level of talent, but to try and make out his grafting on the pitch is only a recent thing in order to get a nice contract is total BS.

He’s been brought in as a short-term mercenary (both sides are happy with that arrangement) with the one target of one tournament, the fact he was appointed last autumn but got to swerve the games at the back end of the year tells you that. So he obviously wanted to rely on experience, which makes perfect sense if you are only in post for 18 months, I.e the likes of Walker and Henderson. Problem with that is, in the modern game, ‘experience’ can very quickly end up as ‘over the hill’, in contrast look how young and dynamic the likes of France and Spain are. Still a year to go, so first remedial action is for the old timers to be jettisoned immediately.

It was ‘live on Norwegian TV’, ergo all the Scandinavian advertising. It was all very exciting!

As Swiss Ramble rightly points out salaries obviously only go one way in football (⬆️), so without increasing the wage bill a club will ultimately find it harder and harder to compete on the pitch.

Not anymore as you don’t need anywhere near 40 points due to the promoted three increasingly being a mile off PL quality.

We sold 9,100 last summer, this time we were ‘over 8,000’ at the end of phase 1 and I doubt we’ve sold many since. I imagine we’ll probably have limped to 8 thousand and something by KO… another sterling effort all round, bonuses well earned 👏

Whatever it looks like just send Brittain and Travis (presuming they are still here) to pose in front of John Lewis’ grave, job done.

So many clubs are doing throw back shirts now, especially away ones incorporating old badges etc. So for something as momentous as the 150th anniversary of founder members of both the Football and Premier Leagues, surely, surely the forthcoming shirts will be commemorative, and I don’t mean just ‘1875’ on the collar or whatever.

Nah they wouldn’t want to pay a hiring fee to the council.

£31million for Jobe and folk are still trying to argue that Palace didn’t get the bargain of the century.

England stroll through every qualification group, they are literally strolling through this one. Means bugger all as the vast majority of the time, for the big nations, tournament qualifying is no longer ‘competitive’ due to so many small European sides just making up the numbers in groups and so many tournament places up for grabs due to expanded competitions. We’ll see next summer if Tuchel has brought anything. Just scrap the qualifiers and merge it into the Nations League, all a waste of time, and the players know it.

I’m just being wistful about when football used to be about winning things. Obviously now it isn’t, in reality if Levy thought he’d have them away from the European spots again he had to go. But for Tottenham fans they’ll remember Bilbao and Ange far more fondly than another season that merged into the next ‘who remembers 2022 when we finished 4th?’.