But what I would say, though it is ridiculously expensive to buy a match ticket for a Cat A/A+, we’ve never sold many match day tickets, the crowd has always been vast majority made up of ST holders. The biggest issue and the reason crowds have dropped, again, is because we’ve lost another 2,000 ST holders this summer.

£38-£42 in the JW Upper for a fair few of the games. Absolute lunacy for this level of football, area and fanbase.

£38 at Ewood in the JW Upper. The most popular stand for walk on purchasers. That is certainly expensive for a mid table second division club. And generally you aren’t going to get good numbers travelling away when it’s £30+ just for the match tickets every other week, then add your transport, food and drink.

Thought a number of folk had heard he was giving it the big ‘un about ‘a number 10 flying in’ in the corporate suites last Saturday?

Because they are the only league club (newly promoted Hartlepool aside) between Newcastle/Sunderland and Leeds. Massive catchment area.

Some of these new ‘digital journalists’ need to learn how to construct a coherent paragraph before chucking in a load of jargon.

Middlesbrough is just an in between kind of place that a lot of fans just give a miss. Not exactly local, so you don’t get the kind of fans that would go to a game in Lancs or somewhere like Huddersfield and it’s not a weekend trip type like Newcastle. Or a southern venue where you have a good number of Rovers exiles living. Ergo we just don’t take many (especially at £30).

Good to see that the Old Trafford test that I have tickets for won’t be a dead rubber (probably!)…

I know it does, that was the thrust of my post, but heading into FFP shouldn’t mean the vast majority of your senior players potentially walking away for nothing. Of course a superior manager would’ve made a better stab at it than TM, but it’s a moot point. We won’t have a renaissance because the owners won’t appoint a Wilder.

All true, but it is still the fault of the owners, as we go from one extreme to the other - Firstly they allow managers here far too much of a free reign for signings and contracts when FFP is over the horizon somewhere. Then, just like in the late Bowyer era, the taps are suddenly turned off and we see a summer of transfers and contract negotiations as farcical as this one. Completely dysfunctional, it never changes, nobody ever learns, so your ‘maybe next year, Rodders’ optimism that once they let TM run down his contract we’ll begin some kind of renaissance is sadly misplaced.

Was just thinking that, never seen so few shocks in the opening round with top flight clubs… lots of hammering too.

Good format is The Hundred and Twenty. Maybe the ECB and it’s useful idiots in the media should have spent the summer cherishing and promoting those 18 institutions of ours instead…

Winning matches and seeing your club at the top of the table is the best entertainment.

Absolutely all sorts they could do, a captive audience of thousands of people every other week… there’s just no drive or direction down there to actually do something.

Please enlighten me Rev to how these ‘custodians’ are suddenly going to change course, as after a decade plus of this ownership the club is in absolute dire straits from where I’m standing.

‘Progressive carries’ … Harlequins sniffing around Rice, I take it?

Ok rigger, I’ll rephrase, just for you… the announced figure will state 9,500 ish home fans each week. Just like they used to state 12k home fans when there was nowhere near that amount either.

No, 3,000 or so tickets will be ‘issued’, I.e a load of complementaries in that figure who get counted if they turn up or not. I doubt we’ll be selling that many week to week.

Yep, I would imagine this season will see 9,500-ish home fans most weeks. 2019/20 was usually around 11.5/12k. So that’s another 2,000+ fans down each week, which mirrors the 2k or so lost ST holders (I assume we’ve sold around 6,500). I thought we’d hit our ‘floor’ with 8,500 ST holders, so Christ knows what it is now.

https://twitter.com/80sAging?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author

‘Good first steps’ etc etc I read on here (from folk who should know better) when that statement ‘from Bilaji Rao’ was published. Let’s be frank, nowt’s changed, there is no revitalised interest from the owners, in fact the club’s whole infrastructure is becoming increasingly decrepit as the very basics of running a professional football club are neglected.

Happy to charge £120 a pop at Lord’s though…

So not the ‘improved service and quality’ that was trumpeted by some on here on its launch then?

Just the basics of a match day, lack of pride and a total ‘can’t be arsed’ attitude around the place.

Noticed they haven’t bothered taking off the ticks and crosses stickers put on seats when they thought it would be socially distanced seating last season.