Mattyblue

Nobody scapegoated BB throughout his years of poor form, he’d have got far more abuse elsewhere than he got here. We have a very patient set of fans on the whole, all that ‘Ewood jury’ stuff certainly isn’t true these days.

‘Face it Rovers are a small club, fans need to get real’.

To have 3k walk-ons tickets sold already when usually that’s the total number sold by KO (with the majority sold in the last day or so) sounds positive… a win today would help, of course!

With our fantastic brewing tradition as a nation going back centuries serves folk right for drinking ‘macro lagers’.

Riverside pricing is another Swag ruse. Move the cameras and make it no cheaper than parts of the JW and coax Riversiders to move, and plenty have. The JW is a fair bit busier than it was pre Covid, Riverside a fair bit quieter - exactly what Swag wanted, now the vast majority of the c12k home fans are facing the cameras in the main stand and a lower tier behind the goal. Gives the illusion of a decently populated ground to the wider game, especially if a decent away following in the DEnd lower, but scan across the ground from the JW and it is anything but.

Been standard policy for cup ties here for the past 30 years, even if only for a week. You might have noticed that there’s still quite a few non ST seats for a walk-on fan to go at, and still plenty of time post any claim your seats deadline for that non ST holder to then take it. But yeah, feck it, might as well put season tickets straight on general sale next summer too, feck the ST holder that has had his seat since the ground was re-bullt, feck the friends and family he sits with. A football ‘club’ indeed.

Even through (some very long) poor runs of form, he always put a real shift in, that’s why he never lost the support of the fans - but you honestly reckon he was doing the same post World Cup till about late April last season? Well obviously you do reading the above post. But for me, he hid a little. Now human nature means it was probably done unconsciously to avoid picking up an injury etc, but it was very noticeable to me and I’ve never had an axe to grind with him, a wholehearted player, which is why it stuck out like a sore thumb.

So the only thing about what happens on the pitch you don’t like is risky passing (ball control? A reason not to renew a ST? Come on!). The rest I totally agree with but is nothing to do with JDT or the team. In reality we are 2 points from the play offs, only the relegated PL 3 and Ipswich have won more games than us, we’ve the fifth highest number of goals, Sammie is the league top scorer… all done with a bottom end budget, more Venky nonsense in the summer, an inexperienced team and an injury crisis that has left us with 15 year olds on the bench. ’Crap’ indeed.

What’s crap about it?

No guarantee they’ll renew even in the paltry numbers we have now, remember we didn’t even hit 7k ST sales in 21/22. Doesn’t take many to think ‘bugger this, £400-£500 when half the games are on Sky anyway’ etc and with such small numbers to start with sales can very quickly collapse.

Swag would take one look at that and think… ‘Nah, I’ll keep things exactly like they are, I’ll hit my revenue targets by milking the core 8/9k, and that’s with minimal effort and risk for me’.

The away support over the past few seasons is consistently the best it’s been probably since the 90s.

Another in the long series of ‘ticketing fiascos’, to go along with ‘merchandise debacles’ and ‘catering shambles’ A commercial operation completely unfit for purpose. A total embarrassment that a club as prestigious as Blackburn Rovers has to suffer this.

Probably would be a bit of risky signing because of wages/injuries… but ‘not Championship quality’, I mean, come on 😁

Of course plenty of older people are tech savvy. But plenty aren’t, so why are they being excluded? Not very ‘inclusive’, is it?

Because value is value, I’d back the opposition to beat us if it was a good price, that’s the entire point. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be ripping the betting slip up with delight if we actually won the game.

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.