Yet the Blackburn End concourse looked anything but…

Noticed after the game that the queues for the club shop were snaking right down Nuttall Street. Never seen that before, even in the good old days. Kits and Morecambe tickets flying out, obviously … or skeleton staff?

Fans react to adventurous/positive football and commitment. Can’t fault either yesterday.

He went on to win 50 cap for Northern Ireland, went to a World Cup and was sold for some decent fees. Then a decade plus in management. Some ‘ruined career’.

What ever happened to that Wilcox lad?

See Quest has started in its usual professional style.

That first 11 (plus Dack) can compete at this level easily enough. There just ain’t much else in reserve. Without a few decent loans then we will be in big trouble by the time the inevitable injury crisis hits

I see. Did this demographic change occur over the last 18 months? And considering a large (and increasing) percentage of our fanbase lives outside the town of Blackburn, the size of the population within municipal boundaries are increasingly meaningless as people become more transient.. We’ve never gone into a season with fewer ST holders than both those clubs ever before. And if you think it’s normal for Blackburn Rovers to sell fewer season tickets than Preston bloody North End and third division Bolton then there’s not a lot else to say.

Hope so, but history tells me we’ll sell perhaps a few hundred more, but thats your lot.

About 9,400 home fans out of 10,600 for the first game of the season. Says to me standard attendances will be 7-9,000 most weeks . Never thought I’d see the crowds like that again at this level. A sad indictment of a shocking decade of mismanagement.

He’s a canny bugger. As the club lets its key assets decrease in value, paint it as really an act of working class solidarity by salt o’ earth Tone with furloughed Joe Bloggs, total nonsense, especially with furlough winding down by October., plays well with the gallery though.

Exhibit A, Sharpe’s tweet adding the spin that the lowest ST sales for c40 years was some kind of positive.

You know, I used to really care what other fans thought of us, how they were often misinformed etc and needed correcting. Now I really don’t, every club and fanbase has its unique issues. Crowds wax and wane everywhere (well, not here it’s been a fairly clear graph over a decade) over a whole host of issues. So today’s ‘tinpot club’ is some other one this time next year.

It’s many of us! Your namesake is certainly among our number.

Is this the same Gav ‘polluting’ numerous threads saying how doomed we are under these owners?

We always sell more than 1500 walk ons on a Saturday, I imagine there will be at least double that sold today - opening day, post lockdowns novelty etc, so with 6,000 ST holders, I imagine we might get close to around 10k home fans - still piss poor, and the most depressing thing is we will rarely sell that amount again for the rest of the season (the 7,500 home fans you predicted will very much be the norm).

A WhatsApp group I’m in was absolutely buzzing for the new season last night. Fair enough, especially after the last 18 months. I’m certainly looking forward to getting into my old pre match routine, couple of pints, the walk down Livesey Branch etc. But the season itself? A three quarter empty Ewood (not today, as there will be plenty of walk ons, but certainly as the campaign progresses), the same stale people going through the motions, the undoubted fractious scenes in the stands, the probable resurrection of the disgraceful shenanigans over Brockhall and the decent chances of a relegation battle, just makes me feel completely deflated. But hey ho, it’s my cross to bear and I’m clinging to the hope that one day, the club will begin to resemble a professional, proud institution again and there’s enough of a fanbase and infrastructure left to re-build from.

Always made me laugh at his haughty attitude in League 1, ‘my methods aren’t suited to this division’ etc. As if Wigan, Portsmouth etc should have been honoured to have Tony bloody Mowbray on their premises.

I honestly couldn’t give a toss either way if they had a weekly Q&A at the Blues Bar or we didn’t hear from them, AT ALL. We didn’t hear a peep out of the Walker Trust for years and that was fine by me, as they appointed top executives to manage the club on their behalf. That’s all I want, a professionally run football club, absolute basic stuff that they inexplicably can’t, or won’t put in place after 10 fecking years!

But it isn’t an ‘opening attempt’, as my links above show, ‘they’ do the same routine every couple of years. Though I suppose we don’t normally get the honour of the golden egg coat of arms. Nothing ever changes, and the inaction is now sending us backwards at a rate of knots.

For those saying ‘small steps’. I’d say retracing well worn away steps… https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/14773708.we-remain-totally-committed-club---blackburn-rovers-owners-venkys-release-statement-fans-meeting/ https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/15272635.we-deeply-hurt-events---venkys-release-statement-following-rovers-relegation-league-one/

‘Approaching 6,000’. So sell a few more over the next couple of weeks and we’ll probably hit that 6,000 mark before they go off sale. Six thousand ST holders, SIX! I would imagine that’s the lowest sales in the entire second division and you’d have to go back to the mid 80s (when attendances across the country were much lower than today) to see such dreadful sales here. What a complete shit show of mis-management over a decade that has led to this sorry state of affairs.

End of the day, they are keeping the club out of administration, but they are letting it wither on the vine due to chronic mismanagement at a local level. Basic decision making like hiring a competent Chief Exec, changing managers when things get stale etc is the absolute basics of club ownership, choices that cost relatively little as a proportion of the cash injections, but make all the difference, and will also help reduce the yearly haemorrhaging of cash. Until they start actually grasping the fundamentals of football club stewardship, stuff that should be learnt in 10 weeks, not 10 years, then it’s all just hollow words and can be filled away until the next ‘Open Letter’ comes along in League 1.

On the flip side, if we were on one of TM’s intermittent winning runs, I’d imagine they’d get a fairly rousing reception…

That coat of arms! 🤦‍♂️ Anybody else think we’ve part of some elaborate decade long practical joke?