Cracking player in his pomp, but his performances declined markedly in his later years here…

‘Why is the Queen dying a bigger deal than Joe Bloggs in Blackburn Royal? ‘ Hmm, tough one that!

We might not have played ‘elite’ clubs in 06/07, but the trips were great. Salzburg, Krakow, Feyennord, Bayer Leverkusen.

I suppose because of all the plastic Old Firm fans you see across England…

Aye, if we we going to get knocked out in the group stage anyway, at least let it be a glamorous group.

Sorry, thought Joey was after *good* boozers.

Wigan Central in the railway arches is a favourite, always plenty of Blues in there. The Anvil and John Bull are also good ‘uns in the centre. Nowt near the ground though.

My rule of thumb is that £25ish and under most fans reckon it’s reasonable enough and buy without giving it much thought. Once you start hitting £27/£28+ people start thinking twice with £30 being an even bigger psychological barrier.

Both games were/are £29.

8.5k ST holders, they’ll probably get around 5k if there’s a bubble. So to get around 30,000 we’d then need c16,000 walk ons at £30/35… not a chance we get remotely close.

Is a derby match the best gauge of that though? If you only went to the Dingles game, you’d think ‘bloody hell, these Rovers fans are full of pride and passion!’ And on the flip side with Boro, I can’t imagine passion would be flowing from the stands if you watched them play out a 0-0 with QPR in front of a half empty ground instead of winning a derby in front of a near full house. Ewood is no more or less passionate than most other second tier grounds, it’s just bloody empty due to ridiculous ST prices.

*Real* Lancashire is the heartland of the game, end of. How many clubs in a 40 mile radius of Ewood? And as you say the whole north east of England only has three clubs in the top 3 divisions! Three! There’s four between Preston and Burnley alone! So it’s no wonder that clubs like Boro, who have support across Teesside/County Durham/North Yorkshire can muster 27k for their only derby.

Makes me laugh when we get ripped off somewhere the reaction on social media is always ‘charge them bastards the same’, like it’s Dave from Standish setting Wigan’s or whoever’s prices. Let you into a secret, those that actually set the prices get *paid* hundreds of thousands of quid to watch the match, oh whilst they quaff a load of food and drink in corporate hospitality…

Unfortunately when pretty much every away is now around £30 it makes folk think twice, a bit of a psychological barrier, when at say £24/25 folk just buy without giving it much thought.

Unlike a few years ago, if they came next week they’d get a largely decent reception, but as they don’t give a flying feck, they won’t come, so won’t get any reception. Not sure what else there is to add and why we have this debate every season. The ball is in their court, there’s nowt stopping them - the fanbase doesn’t need to roll out the proverbial red carpet (though the nouveau riche cretins would expect the pleb staff at Ewood to lay one down anyway).

They’ve had home fans in there for a few years now. The whole stand is 4k, with around 1.5k home fans.

Until the owners decide to keep him instead on a whim and he runs his contract down. You see, these ‘projects’, ‘models’ soon hit the buffers when the Rao’s just do the polar opposite.

One win in five, one draw in five? So happy with relegation then?

That’s me told 😅

No option, in reality.. We threw away a position at the top table at the very worst time, we lost 10k fans and the game has completely transformed since financially. I’ve accepted our fate that non withstanding some miracle, treading water in the second division is the best it’s going to be - looks as if many others still haven’t found my place of zen and actually expect this ‘slow build’ of largely lower league signings and academy players to somehow end up with a ‘sustainable PL club’ as per the latest club strap line.

Slow builds in the Championship lead to you chasing your tail year after year, especially with 6/7/8/9 clubs having some kind of parachute payment, crowds of 20k+ You can get lucky, a season out of nowhere etc. But generally speaking we will be treading water. It’s been a decade now and we are as far away as ever.

Sounds dubious to me. Bigger budgets to when Wolves, Leicester, Southampton, Norwich etc were down there? We certainly got lucky with a poor division, especially when compared to who’s down there now. But an enormous budget? Bigger than anything *ever* seen before at that level? Not sure.

Did we have the ‘biggest budget in L1 history? ‘ How was that measured?

Fair play to you Chadster for listening to Murphy. I either mute or change the channel if he’s speaking.

Welcome to Championship refs.