Mattyblue

They seem fairly representative of the fanbase (away from brfcs, of course). They have never been as popular as they are at the moment, can’t remember the last time I heard a dissenting voice towards them at Ewood.

Well at least they’ve now remembered the other teams actually need to ‘buy’ them, not ‘be given’ them bit…

Exactly, the future autobiographies of Buttler et al will be a telling a very different tale of this World Cup…

The only honest thing this club ever comes out with is the fact that promotion is not remotely a priority, merely developing players. An academy with a professional club bolted on.

When do players, in any sport, come out and blame the manager/coach? The truth always finds its way out in the end.

He did well to actually get hold of a shirt.

To be fair we had plenty of spankings down there in the 2000s… 90s another issue though.

Exactly that. The wider fanbase generally still think the owners are ruddy marvellous, so in reality if it had been made clear that due to this oh so very temporary cashflow issue they are struggling through and how every penny counts at the moment they'd largely have understood.

What was Swag saying again? That you would need to staff/operate the the Blackburn End in the same manner for one person in there as 5000? Obviously total nonsense. It certainly was logical from a on paper straight cash in/cash viewpoint as with no owner liquidity coming in, lets try and find any piddling savings where we can. However, it was illogical in the round as it obviously led to fewer punters on the day and a disgruntled customer base, so what savings were actually made?

It's the disingenuous-ness that gets me. Why not just come out and give the real reason for the Blackburn End closure instead of tripe about occupancy rates, I suppose 'the club' has spent so long engaging in smoke and mirrors on behalf of these owners it's just second nature to them now.

At 16 when living at home like most of these lads and lasses will be? Of course. Like tomphil says just a Saturday job for a bit of pocket money that I bet we all did back in the day. The £10 adult rate is the far bigger issue.

Matt Jansen is a prime example. Obviously different circumstances but post the accident the moves on the pitch he used to do by instinct he was suddenly thinking about, ‘should I pass or turn?’, ‘should I make that run?’, and at the highest levels that hesitation is fatal.

That’s the Mowbray who you backed to the hilt.

Resorting to semantics so yeah I’ll leave it there.

I know, as you’ve now made it clear you know nowt about the other teams, which makes thinking our side should be at the bottom an even more odd opinion.

It’s called a ‘league’ jim, it obviously matters how crap other teams are, we don’t play amongst ourselves at Brockhall every week.

So you can’t understand how we aren’t at the bottom even though you don’t know much about the other teams, how does that work then?

You said: ‘That's such a weak team it's hard to understand why we're not struggling near the bottom.’… But we aren’t, therefore many other teams must then be worse, ergo you must be overestimating them if you think we should be at the bottom (not discounting the JDT effect). Of course that doesn’t take away from the fact that this Rovers team is much poorer than many other sides of ours in days gone by, luckily that doesn’t matter in the here and now when you are in a league of crap teams and journeymen footballers.

A decade down here and folk still overestimate the players playing elsewhere. If you think this is a weak team have a look at most non parachute sides, all much of a muchness.

Almost as embarrassing as crowing about a ‘war chest’ all summer…

I know, I was being a little facetious, but I stick by that on the pitch they have a minimal influence in comparison to other sports.

Or just don’t bother with captains? Pointless in football (unlike say cricket where they are in essence the player manager on a matchday), especially at the top level where players are coached to an inch of their life.

A fair bit weaker, but not calamitously so. However, it certainly won’t be stronger like our rivals will be - something we’ve learnt the hard way two seasons in a row.

End of the day elite cricketers are now guns for hire. You can see it in how even ODIs are on their last legs as T20 has proliferated - which is fine by me as long as Test cricket survives. But in reality in 10 years time all we may see is just the big 3 playing marquee Test series with each other and a shed load of T20 franchise and ICC tournament cricket everywhere else.

This is not a promotion winning squad, and that’s before whatever carnage January brings. Some very decent players, a very decent manager. But it isn’t enough when the squad is this thin and inexperienced, and unlike all our potential promotion rivals it won’t be strengthened in January (indeed it will be quite the opposite).