Mattyblue

It also perhaps shows the difference in structure. TM was running the whole place, very 80s/90s, but if that main man is someone of fairly average competency, then it’s a sense of Jack of all trades, master of none. The modern game now expects the Head Coach to be exactly that - someone to improve the performances of the first team squad and to find ways to win matches, the other stuff is looked after elsewhere…

Crowds can only go so high with just 8,500 ST holders as you need large numbers of match day buyers turning up every week to take up the slack to turn it into a decent gate - something you obviously don’t need to the same extent if you have 12/13k. But if on Sunday and onwards we can pull in 4/5k walk ons at £25 -£30 (so not exactly give away prices) then that’s a good base to build on. Last season we then supplemented that with good numbers of half STs… alas that will be a struggle this time however well we could end up doing when the energy bills start coming through the letterboxes…

Of course if you win it works, that’s the whole point. TM’s tinkering rarely did, as for me he didn’t have the tactical nous to pull it off - a prime example being wasting a year trying to play like Swansea are now (i.e without the players to do it) in the lockdown season No surprises that when he stumbled across a settled personnel and formation last season is when he got results.

In the present day, most Rovers fans I come across, hope, not even expect, that in a good season we will be ‘in the mix’ for the second tier play offs positions… something we spent the majority of the pre-Jack 1980s doing. Doesn’t seem a particularly ‘spoilt’ fanbase that has such an outlook, and it certainly shouldn't lend itself to barbs of ‘too high expectations’, ‘it’s not 1995 anymore’.

Home turnouts around what we had for QPR will do for me for now, as the opening game normally has bigger numbers of walk ons than the matches that follow. So if we stay around that figure it certainly shows a spike in interest… but just imagine what kind of crowds we could be seeing if we’d not priced STs at £429-£529 for any potential new purchaser.

They are still down the side for league matches. Just don’t think they bother opening that shed stand for cup games.

£6/7 the monthly magazine, wasn’t it? What another daft initiative that was. I imagine most copies were given away in the lounges.

Produced for a crowd of just a 1,000 people… don’t they know that ‘there’s no profit’ in programmes? Imagine just wanting to provide a full match day experience for your fans.

But they have added a few thousand members this season. Had 17,000 on last week, miles up. It doesn’t seem to be taking off anywhere else, but an interesting experiment all the same…

https://www.wearehullcity.co.uk/tickets/memberships/

Obvious quality, yet spends season after season loaned out without a chance of getting a game for his parent club. Everything that’s wrong with the ‘Big 6’s’ stranglehold on the modern game from academies onwards.

You honestly think a single fan thought we were about to sign Ronaldinho?

"How it descended into that, I don't know. What they've done is left us open to criticism on mentality.” What a plonker he is 😀

Hull offer it, no?

You’ve convinced me, so that’s my gas bill sorted.

Just the nine Championship clubs knocked out by lower league opposition tonight… so definitely nothing risky about putting a Merce on that near certainty tomorrow.

If it was a late season dead rubber and the young loaned player was about to go back to his parent club, of course play your own youngsters over the loanee. But at this stage if Morton is expected to be around the first team, then this is exactly the kind of game he should be playing in to get his match fitness up.

c3k did for Swansea, as remember we only had 6,995 ST holders by KO last season. But still, walk ons do seem to be consistently higher since the charge up the table last season… until gas bills knock that on the head in winter.

Very likely. That’s why it is so important to have as high a number of ST holders as possible already in the tent… whereas here, just 8.5k folk signed up going into these headwinds won’t give us any kind of buffer when walk ons and away support falls away.

Who’s wound up? I find it amusing more than anything when they come out with it all in such earnest tones. And fair play to them for getting a career out of it…

You are never by yourself at Ewood once you get settled in a ST seat.

Exactly right. All non-renewers probably think they’ll ‘pick their games’ and still be down at Ewood on plenty of occasions through the season. Some will, of course. But many others quickly get out of the habit. It’s much easier keeping hold of ST holders than trying to get them back. But Swag’s ‘met his targets’ so who cares about that…

Some big crowds and away followings over the first couple of weekends. Most clubs holding of reducing ST prices this summer has played a big part in that. So high ST numbers will help to protect a lot of clubs from any potential drop off in walk ons and away followings over the winter. Our poor ST sales will mean we are one of the few clubs that could really suffer…

Is it poor for us when it’s Swansea? It’s always our smallest following of the season. People I know that go pretty much everywhere didn’t bother. If we start taking 500 to weekend London games or to the midlands it would be more of a worry that the away support has dropped off after a good few years of growth. Sheff Utd will be interesting as generally when it hits £30 you see a lot of folk swerve it.

A BILLION quid on players since Ferguson to be this bad. 😁