Mattyblue

This budget, this squad won’t suddenly change to automatic promotion because of a couple of highly promising teenagers (and Phillips will only start relatively few games anyway) and because Gregg can find free transfers. Head in the clouds, I’m afraid.

Love the optimism, but you do get carried away for such a wise old owl (Wharton better than Bellingham at the same stage wasn’t it the other week?) it’s not the norm for non parachute clubs to get top two and I’m not seeing this squad of players being close to good enough/large enough to get there - there’s a reason the parachute clubs pull away in the run in most seasons.

Clubs like that (I.e plodded around in the lower leagues for a hundred years) can suddenly build crowds because they have big catchment areas - Bristol City another. Ergo that in itself makes them ‘big clubs’ in their eyes - they ain’t.

And how many post Rotherham in January? Obviously we had a fair few teething problems in the first half of the season (yet we were still in the top 6 throughout by the way), it was to be expected with an average bunch of players adapting to a new broom after five years of plodding about.

Not sure about that, JW is actually busier than it was for full STs last season, whereas the Blackburn End is quieter - which makes sense as it is balancing out overall to hit pretty similar figures to last summer by KO. It's bleak generally at this club as pretty much everywhere else booms, but it's no worse than last year.

Perhaps 8,100 is paid for STs? The additional few hundred you counted were comps?

Been moved to next week O2G was saying.

To be fair, there's three and a half weeks to go, most walk ons buy in the week running up to the game.

8,700 full STs when they went off sale last September, so we'll probably just about crawl back to that by this September. 👏

So 8 thousand and something yet again this season. Absolutely piss poor when ST sales records are being broken across English football. Just retire for f*ck sake.

Twenty years ago… good surgeon has our Souey 🔪

Of course, and that would always be the excuse the apologists would hide behind - ‘well we can’t compare ourselves to [insert pretty much every other Championship club here]’… until our neighbours started doing it too.

O captain! My captain!

Tough crowd is yankfan 😄

Hull, yet another club closing in on record sales this summer. Anyone would think there’s a crowd boom going on in English football or something.

The one ‘weakness’ of Phillips last season was he looked a bit slight/lightweight playing as a Championship centre half (obviously no surprise as he was so young he couldn’t even have a vape related sponsor on his shirt!) Looking at him on Saturday he’s even sorted that out! Going to be some player.

If saying he wasn’t as bad as Ke*n is me getting ‘offended on his behalf’, then I’m happy to be a snowflake.

London Euston with its marvellous arch, look at it now. St Pancras just avoided the same fate.

You can’t see the odd ‘Cambridge blue’ bit of collar when they are on the pitch, so all good.

*Away from this message board he was well respected by most Rovers fans.

London MUST have its two Tests (used to be three) as the ECB make a fortune from corporate sales. The rest of the grounds can fight over the crumbs.

Well I have one hundred and four friends.

An example of how much cricket has changed these past twenty years, especially for centrally contracted players... Mark Wood has got to 33 and has never played at Old Trafford 🤯

I don’t particularly want any reflected glory for Venky’s when we go up in May either but that’s just how it is.

I know what you are saying Bizzle, when the early run towards the top fizzled out it was pretty tedious either side of the World Cup, but I thought it all started to come together later on, getting the ball forward quicker etc - just no bloody striker. I personally think we’ll see his team playing his way next season so I’m intrigued to see how we go.