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?

‘Whoever replaces Mowbray next season’ Most optimistic take yet.

Who keeps him employed?

‘Uptake in season tickets have been positive this last couple of weeks’, according to Sharpe, he’ll reveal all tomorrow. I imagine that to be the case, always that late surge. Alas, with only around 3k sold a fortnight back, I just can’t see it getting close to what has been our standard 8/9k over the past 4 or 5 years.

Pretty sure in 2019/2020 (prior to March, obviously) their average gates had dropped to around 17/18,000

Taken on their own… Does having an away coach on sale two weeks later than usual REALLY matter? Does having the club shop/ticket office closed three days out of seven in the last week before KO REALLY matter? Does scrapping the programme REALLY matter? Does having STs on sale later than every other club REALLY impact sales? Does the U23 head coach going matter? Does the Head of Physiotherapy going matter? Does the Head of European Recruitment going matter? Does the Head of Academy Recruitment going matter? Does going into a season with zero new signings really matter? Is selling our lowest numbers of STs for c40 years really terminal? On their own, a lot of those aren’t particularly ‘scandalous’ or the end of the world, but ‘in the round’ for them all to occur over one summer they point to a club that is rapidly going backwards (that’s without even mentioning Brockhall).

So brfcs IS now representative of the wider fanbase when it helps form your argument? 😏

Oh I see. Sack the fanbase!

If things ‘aren’t that bad’, why do you think that Blackburn Rovers now have fewer ST holders than third division Blackpool (!), Wigan (!!) and Bolton plus fellow Championship also rans PNE? We had double the numbers of two of those just a couple of years ago. Bolton now have double ours. *As an aside. Away tickets have always been 3 weeks before. Week just for ST holders, two weeks on general sale. Same with travel.

They’ll be scattered around the ground now to make up for the lost ST holders.

Have to agree with Jim, of course the schedule of the English season is a right mess - Buttler hasn’t played a first class match since February. Yet, NZ came over here with very few long format matches under their belts and gave us a lesson in our own conditions. Looks as if India will do the same and they’ve been largely just netting up at Durham for the last six weeks. But they are adaptable cricketers that show you can quickly move across from limited overs to Tests and still thrive with the right attitude in the modern multi format sport. For England, a lack of Test quality batsmen and poor application is not a good mix.

According to the sages of the LT comment section, it’s the fans fault anyway for these departures, not buying enough STs. (I’m sensing some very fractious fan v fan rows this season… especially with those in my vicinity in the Blackburn End.)

Won’t somebody think of the families! 🙀

‘It’ll take three years to have the European scouting network up and running properly’ was a certain poster’s regular refrain, so we’ll be seeing the results any time now, which dovetail’s well with our slow buil…OH.

But who’s going to be creating it? Most fans now left won’t have much truck with a ‘toxic’ atmosphere. ‘It’s the first day FFS, just get behind ‘em’.

Totally agree with the sentiment, however we’ve got to a stage where the owners and manager are the most popular they have ever been this past decade - so considering we could never get mass protests in 2011 or 2016 (when Venky’s and Kean/Coyle were actually unpopular) going, then we’ve no chance now. Going to be death by a thousand cuts.

Is it buggery ‘nonsense’, charming way to discuss matters too. As have I, midweek games and the like. They’d often fill one and attempt to fill a second, if they couldn’t, they’d cancel. One Away Travel trip for us got cancelled to a Tuesday night at Watford back in 2001, we rang around and my long standing relationship with the Birdy Bus was formed. The club was a much better institution in every way back then, but these things can happen. However, we have never not had a single official coach on sale just a week before the first away game of the season on a Saturday afternoon.