Am I reading you right longsiders? Even though the likes of Palace and Southampton aren’t interested in Dyche, the sovereign wealth fund of one of the richest regimes on Earth, who are in a sportwashing arms race with Qatar are going to take him?

With so many European nations these days (post Yugoslavia and USSR collapse in the early 90s), qualifiers have become a procession (largely) for the top teams. Long way from the days of really tough groups, as you say we’ve got both San Marino and Andorra in this group! The South American qualifying group looks a right battle in comparison.

I’d say easily a 1/3 of fans at away games won’t be Ewood attendees, however is that 1/3 made up of ‘boycotters’? A few will be, but I’d say the majority will be like some of my friends and family that were at Blackpool and Barnsley - they just think Ewood is a morgue and they’d rather have a good day out on the lash and with a good atmosphere away from home. They may be tempted to say the PNE game at Ewood - but not at £30.

The Geordies don’t seem to think he provides a good game too often…

Because they get 45k crowds. End of. They are no more ‘passionate’ than any other fanbase. Are they more passionate than the 4,000 watching a club in non league or the Carlisle fans travelling to an away game at Exeter? The fact they are a one club city, one of only a handful of pro clubs in the whole north east of England doesn’t seem to compute to the media and the lemming football fans that lap it up around the country. Indeed there’s been 10 thousand empty seats most weeks at SJP both this season and in 2019/20. The REAL hotbed of the game is right here in old Lancashire, twenty odd pro clubs.

‘Their fans DESERVE success’, don’t ya know!

On match day prices, yes. Happy to see some initiative taken, though still far too expensive. However, as match day tickets are a small part of our ticket sales, it’s small fry. The horse had bolted, I’m afraid on the much more important sales strand of season tickets, as they are still pro rata far more expensive than the last in stadium season, and you just won’t be getting back the lost sales in October. We won’t be able to see if they’ve actually learnt their lesson until next summer when 22/23 STs go on the market. But yes happy to see that haven’t lost all sense of what constitutes value down there - even if it took fan lobbying to make them wake up.

£30 is just one of those figures that psychologically puts plenty of folk off at a stroke, make it say, £27 for a ‘high profile game’ (though still ridiculous for a mid table second division club in a town like Blackburn, but hey ho) and you’ll pique their interest. And like I said on the previous page, the £20 night game price will make no difference at all to the previous £25 as you only get the very hardcore of the walk on buying anyway due to the myriad factors stopping floating fans bothering midweek - red button, freezing winter nights, kids in bed, work issues etc. £20 or £25 won’t change those factors. Getting STs back on sale, good move, we are a ST heavy fanbase, always been our match going culture. Sheff Utd, bit gimmicky, but why not, they’ll fetch plenty too, so will be a decent gate. Though it is largely tinkering at the edges, at least someone has woken up to what a compete mess they’ve made of ticketing since L1 promotion.

If it’s the Saudi’s I’d say it’s very much more likely to be a City - all about regional rivalry, they don’t want to be upstaged by their Arab neighbours - Abu Dhabi and Qatar (and especially Qatar).

It’s fine making midweeks £20, better than £25-£30, but you still will only get a minimal amount of folk buying, midweeks get low crowds due to the inconvenience, school nights and the red button, not price. Make a few Saturdays £20 to get folk in the ground.

Still less than our 10.

We have comfortably the most with 10 major trophy wins.

Fair enough to try and get some more folk back in the tent, as I repeatedly say, our match going fanbase is always heavily reliant on ST holders and they buggered that demographic up royally in the summer and we just ain’t selling decent numbers of walk ons at £30 a pop. Though a win at Blackpool might have tempted a few more, alas the top 6 bottle job strikes again…

I’m sure those inside ‘the club’ are engaging you in good faith, but what will actually change if a semi detached family in Pune aren’t fully on board?

Bloody hell, 1864, if ALL senior pros in their final year bugger off, then we are clearly a club that can no longer offer competitive wages to second division footballers, and that is a sorry state of affairs for Blackburn Rovers brought on purely by this ownership.

Pretty much all senior pros in their final year - Rothwell, Nyambe, Lenihan, BBD (post 12 month option) all don’t sign and that’s nothing to do with the ownership and the unambitious, stagnant club they’ve left to rot, 1864?

IF they appoint x, change y and transform z… IF, IF, IF. They haven’t done any of the things you outlined in 11 years Rev, so why would they start now? ‘I’ve heard that there are BIG changes in the offing, plans to… ‘ If I’ve heard that straw clutching once this past decade, I’ve heard it a 100 times. Maybe they are just content to run the club this way, content to inject the cash, content to let the likes of Waggott tinker at the edges, content for ‘nice men’ like TM to quietly plod on. Minimum of fuss for all involved and they can concentrate on their poultry, their vaccines etc. For me, it’s fantasy land stuff to expect this ‘new dawn’ that we’ve always heard plenty about, yet never remotely see any evidence of, over this sorry decade.

I wouldn’t be offering him a new deal, but I’m talking about the ownership and executive structure we actually have, not want brfcs posters would like us to have.

Are Venky’s expecting promotion with the current budget? Is there anyone at the club capable of sourcing a replacement? I’d say no to both, so why will they let him go and actually go to the bother of bringing someone else in? Surely a new deal is in the bag if he wants it?

‘We can’t operate without their funding due to low crowds, match day and sponsorship income’. Owners come in and totally dismantle the team, executive structure, support base and income streams and then be completely reliant on their good will to avoid oblivion. Some operating model.

‘If only they would appoint top managers and executives’. It’s been 11 years of this same tune, and they still can’t, or more worryingly, won’t grasp this basic premise of professional sport - why will they change now, when they leave the club to its own devices, never visit, never seem to set any targets for progression and seemingly have no issue in the status quo of throwing money down the proverbial toilet year after year?

So what if there would’ve been ‘uproar’ on brfcs. It’s for the club to protect its assets, it’s bugger all to do with us on here.

I’ve absolutely no issue with whatever it is he’s doing, hope it comes off. I’ve also no issues with the little cryptic tidbits posted by the likes of 1864 or Rev, or whoever. It’s no different than a bit of transfer gossip, livens up the board and you can take it or leave it. I do have an issue with 1864 calling ‘negative’ those that don’t believe they have changed just because they haven’t had the dubious honour of a sit down with those that have said a lot this past decade and delivered the square root of feck all. If he wants to take what is being fed to him at face value after a decade of BS then good luck to him (especially after he’s been stung before) but I and others reserve the right to be just a little sceptical.

To be fair to you Rev, you’ve seen the positives in this ownership throughout, which has been a very lone furrow at times on here, so no issue with your optimism, it just rankles to be lectured by others who have been far more militant in their anti-Rao beliefs than most on here (until they were flattered with some tea and cakes and platitudes in recent times, by the sounds of it) but now are decrying those as ‘negative’ that are still wary of this lots ability to change. ‘Fool me once… fool me about 36 times’.

Yes, a St Paul conversion…