I see, you know this how?

It’s the Championship, if we end any game with a 2-0 win, 2-0 defeat or a 2-2 draw it isn’t s surprise.

He’s the manager, if it feels it works then crack on. Only on brfcs can he be deemed ‘Moggasaurus’ one week and then given pelters for using modern management practices the next! 😁

… and now the upper tier is back off sale from this evening, and the lower tier back on sale on the day. 🤷‍♂️

They had sold 3,500 in the bottom tier when they took those off sale and made the upper tier available, so they’ll be struggling to hit that much more at this late stage you’d think…

Oh of course, always great to get chatting to all the random folk supporting the Rovers on southern away days.

Probably not, but then it wasn’t us that was always giving it the big ‘un of how ‘if we were int Prem, we’d never take the pathetic away followings you B*stards do’. But as an aside, it’s notable that we consistently sell more away tickets now as a largely mid table second division team, a 1,000 minimum pretty much every game (north or south, even midweek), than we did in the later PL years (price, and consistent thrashings are factors, but interesting all the same).

Of course, a club of their size are not going to keep their away followings high and home ground full, when it isn’t cheap, and the PL novelty has worn off and you are just trying to survive. All fair enough, but they certainly didn’t want to hear it from us back in the day, as it would all be very different if we switched places…

There was absolutely no point in the £20 midweek change, price is not the main reason crowds are lower at night - red button, work pressures, far fewer kids etc. On the back of a 7-0 mauling we had double our usual home turnout for Sheff Utd, sounds good to me. And it was still £15, not a £5, so a decent crowd all things considered and a good start in trying to re-engage. £30-£36 was never standard match day pricing prior to Swag losing his mind this season, and it’s not some big giveaway if you knock it back down to a far more sensible £25, as is the price at many grounds.

I’m not asking for them to be ‘slashed’, just a reasonable price - once you get past £30 it becomes a big psychological barrier - I’ll tell you now if they’d have been, say, £26, PNE would have sold a shed load more for a start. It is up to £36 in the Jack Walker (THIRTY SIX POUNDS!) , the most popular stand for match day buyers. That is a quite ridiculous price for a second division football match, and that would be the case across the league, not just here, as many clubs are not charging their own fans anywhere near £40 for a game.

All goes back to the 90s. They absolutely hated seeing Rovers shirts in what they see as ‘their turf’ - South Ribble, Fulwood etc. Even though places like Bamber Bridge have had plenty of Rovers fans residing there since day dot. Yet, they have never seem to have any issue with the fact that you see more LFC shirts around Preston than you do PNE - maybe if their town hadn’t been so packed with glory hunters they wouldn’t have spent sixty years outside the top flight…

Without a Leeds/Villa/Newcastle in this division this year, PNE was obviously seen as Swag’s remaining banker for a 7,000 cash in. On what should be a fantastic, bumper derby occasion with our present form, hopefully a less than half full DE, mirrored in the home ends will put to bed the ridiculous pricing in future seasons (he has already dropped the even more laughable Cat A+, so fingers crossed).

‘Hovering between L1 and L2 without Jack’… we’ve not spent a single season in the fourth division in our history! Unlike the rest of the Lancashire town clubs. Come on lads, must try harder! 🥱

Well if ‘legendary’ status is based on how bulletproof a manager is in the stands, then he has to be up there. I can only think of Kenny (and maybe Hughes) in my time at Ewood that has had as much consistent, steadfast backing. Indeed, you literally cannot say a world against him with much of our fanbase… even after 7-0 home defeats.

Would he have gone at a normal club last season? Yes, he had lost the plot big time towards the end and even he was pretty much asking for his P45 in interviews. But we aren’t normal, so all you can do is hope he learns from his mistakes - and he has us 4th going into December with a pretty small and young squad. You can only say kudos to the job he is doing this term, he has a hell of a lot of flaws, but he obviously has a knack of galvanising a tight unit of young lads and having them running through brick walls for him and their teammates. Is there a decision to be made at the end of the season? Yes, especially as we usually tend to fall away in the new year and revert to the mediocre mean, but he’s obviously safe as houses until at least May, so let’s just hope he continues with his back to basics approach.

I’m with you Gav. Why on earth would you sell one of the players in their last year, all of them key men, for a pittance when we are 4th heading in to December? ‘Well, they could down tools’. Possibly, but I’m not seeing it with this bunch. They leave on a free in June after sending us to promotion or at least a stab at it, then fair enough and hand shakes all round, absolute madness to let them go now.

Evidence? Sheff Utd literally a month ago, we sold double our usual walk on volume. Reduced prices across the board are the only things that do work. More evidence? the reduced Wigan night game the other year saw our biggest home areas attendance since relegation. Though I do agree that multi game deals, additional tickets for friends/family etc don’t work. If you honestly think a derby match at £20 a ticket instead of £36 won’t sell more, especially with the club 4th in the league, then there’s no point carrying on this discussion.

PNE won’t get close to selling the DE at the ridiculous price this season. Hit the £30 barrier and it psychologically puts plenty off. And at, say, £20 a ticket instead of up to £36 there is no question that many more floating fans would be buying tickets this week on the back of yesterday, plus a sold out away end (though obviously not close to 25,000). So the tactic of pricing out potential Rovers match day buyers and ignoring the chance to re-engage our own fanbase for a juicy fixture, so to rinse the away support has backfired, as PNE aren’t buying the tickets either! Saturday will be the lowest Ewood attendance for a PNE game since the 70s, considering we are 4th in the table on a cracking run speaks volumes to Swags price policy.

Not sure we’d have been close to 25k (we’ve only got around 7.5k ST holders remember), but yes, a reasonable price for PNE would have seen a real spike in sales over the next week, coupled with a big away following, it would have been a cracker of an occasion. *Sigh*

Be clear then, 1864. So many empty seats are, of course, dispiriting to see, but the ones that do attend are nothing but supportive. I’m sure you agree?

Err they do? They get nothing but support at both Ewood and especially away from home… oh, sorry, you obviously mean the division and spats that are all over social media and brfcs.com that mean absolutely bugger all!

‘Improved’ offers. Pretty much all pro players will get an ‘improved offer’ across football, as standard. Means nothing without knowing the figures. If it is just a nominal increase they’ve been offered and they turn it down then that isn’t simply a case of ‘greedy players’, is it? But it certainly gives Waggott an easy way out by saying, ‘well, we did offer them an improved offer’… and of course, plenty of the fanbase will lap it up…

2500 sold as of dinner today looking at their forum. No chance they get close to filling the DE… so that master plan of two fingers up at home fans and any attempt to market an attractive fixture to our own supporters so cash can be raked in at £30 a pop from 6/7000 PNE has worked a treat then. Lowest crowd for this fixture for decades incoming? Bravo once again Swag 👏

Of course, but unfortunately the current Chief Exec obviously has no strategic vision for re-building the fanbase, just month to month incomings and outgoings. A John Williams would have sniffed the opportunity for a big crowd for this weeks ago, especially on the back of a decent run post Fulham.

Just the £36 in the JWU… THIRTY SIX POUNDS!