Mattyblue

The fact any team ‘laboured’ to a mere FIVE NIL win tells you how daft it is having sides like this in the competition.

He’s a second/third division journeyman with nothing to write home about in the club game, so of course he’s happy to rack up the international caps, which he’ll always have a chance to do as NI have such a small pool of players. The ‘niggles’ he always seems to get around the international windows is a bit of a running joke, but does point to a lack of professionalism and commitment to the institutions actually paying his wages.

No idea why Frosty always seems to quote me when he decides to do his fortnightly emergence. I’ve absolutely no issue with folk having other opinions. For one, I’m not particularly anti Mowbray, he is what he is and will not be going anywhere, so he can crack on. I do think Waggott is a poor Chief Exec and I’ll say so, largely because this club could and should be doing much more commercially- if that’s ‘negative’, then so be it. As he says, this place is certainly not the mainstream when it comes to Rovers opinions, and I have always agreed with that sentiment. However, I stand by the post he quoted, anybody can criticise whoever and whatever they want on message boards, in pubs and the like and still ‘get behind the lads’ at the ground. Wanting the best for a club isn’t just merely clapping lads in blue and white shirts every other week.

So fans can criticise the club/owners/execs when away from Ewood and still ‘get behind the lads’, then? Anyone would think you were just trolling last night…

You’d never get a united fanbase even post these owners and/or an administration. ’It was our crap support’s fault for admin, Venky’s put in more money than Jack!’

We’ll struggle this year trying to get any kind of festive bumper crowd, with the two home games this season being a midweek against Barnsley and then a Sunday 2nd January fixture against Huddersfield. Though saying that there is surely an opportunity to do a Sheff Utd-esque promotion for Hudds with it being a bank holiday the day after… I won’t hold my breath.

And often it isn’t even the players getting grief online either - I.e if you slag off Waggott or Bilaji Rao, you need to shut up and just ‘getting behind the lads’ 🤷‍♂️

Of course, they are a fairly honest, hard working bunch of lads, some pretty young. They certainly need supporting at the grounds. But then they always do, yet that doesn’t mean the wider club, the executives, the owners etc should get a free pass too… ergo I never get the ‘just get behind the lads FFS’.

We had 7,200 ST holders when that new 17 game ST went off sale the other week, didn’t we? (I suppose the minutes from tomorrows Fans Forum will tell us one way or the other). So well over 5,000 match day tickets sold is an absolute mile more than usual - as the Jack Walker and Riverside gave very visual evidence to. There is not a chance in hell we are selling a similar figure in home areas at £30-£36 for PNE. Now the club may not give a toss because there will be 6k away fans paying top dollar, but that’s a choice Waggott has made and home walk ons will take a hit as a result, and he will know that, it isn’t the have your cake and eat it situation you are trying to make out.

You do know that you can ‘moan’ about the club on brfcs, to your dad, to your pals, in your house, in the pub, at the office… and still get ‘behind the lads’ at Ewood or away from home, crazy ay!

Like I said, a reason, especially for slow starts. The main reason, obviously, was poor sides and managers that just couldn’t get a tune out of them.

Do you lot actually take a blind bit of notice of qualifiers? The proliferation of new sovereign nations across Europe post Cold War means that England usually have little bother (Wally with the Brolly aside) as they are always top seeds and share groups with a load of middling, generally poor and part time sides - case in point this group has Andorra and San Marino in it! What is anybody learning from spanking sides like Albania 5-0, or comfortable wins against a Montenegro or Lithuania? A long way from the 70s, 80s and 90s in which it really was touch and go most qualifying campaigns. It’s behind why the FA try and arrange high profile friendlies, UEFA have set up the Nations League, indeed it’s probably a reason why we always struggled to get to grips with tournaments as we just weren’t used to competitive games (a reason, not the main one!).

8000 home match tickets being sold? So a 24,000-ish crowd?! No chance that we would sell nearly double the match tickets we did for Sheff Utd, especially at £5 a ticket dearer.

He’s on his way back… Brazil? Obviously a tactical yellow to be fresh for Ashton Gate!

I’m all for imaginative pricing/marketing. But there’s not a chance we’d be hitting 20k crowds, even at £250 in our usual position of second division mid table. Indeed STs were actually cheaper than that around 2014/2015 time and we were nowhere near then.

End of the day the ‘going rate’ is only that at individual clubs when folk are prepared to pay it, value is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s all moot anyway, as if Rovers fans think it’s value or not, the pricing is purely down to squeezing as much as possible out of potential large followings of away fans - indeed that’s why we have Cat ‘A’ (PNE, Blackpool, WBA etc.) and ‘B’ (Luton, Millwall etc) in the first place.

£36 in the Jack Walker Upper which is the stand of choice for many match day ticket buyers… and that is an utterly ridiculous price for a second division game… though small mercies, it was going to be £42! Cloud cuckoo land down there.

Not even certain that the usual sure thing of ‘6-7k nobbers’ will happen at those prices, their current form and general fan unhappiness with the board. So it will be a failure all round. No big cash in from away fans (which is the actual reason for such pricing) and a potential to market a juicy fixture to our own supporters missed. Absolute fools down there.

‘The Preston fixture is a revenue driver’ ’We need to protect season ticket holders’.

I’d be surprised if we topped 15k at those prices.

‘Loved the Sheff U game, lets get two tickets in the Jack Walker for PNE’. ‘That’ll be £72’ ‘Err nah’.

I suppose Bradley Dack being ‘sensational’, is like the club tweeting about the ‘club legend’ in the form of journeyman striker Danny Graham. I thought they’d have been retiring his shirt the way they went on. As standards get lower on the pitch, so do those of the fanbase…

He’ll be going upstairs.

Almost 5,500 walk ons is excellent for us, especially as it wasn’t that cheap, still nearly £15 for a run of the mill second division game on a rainy November day. That volume of ticket buyers is very seldom seen here, Ewood had always been a ST dominant crowd - the issue is that we’ve lost so many ST holders over the past 3/4 years is that even a big walk up doesn’t pull in a big crowd. Now if we still had the 10k+ ST holders of that long and distant era of Gary Bowyer, we’d have seen a crowd well in advance of 20k on Saturday. Lose ST holders, lose crowds. Simple.

I see Sky are back promoting this individual (I refuse to even add the link), I thought we’d finally seen the back of the puff pieces that kept emerging on a yearly basis. He won the league with Brunei, ya know! That plucky underdog that happens to be the only club in a sovereign oil state! Any other one job management failures you can think of that still gets interviews published in national media a decade on? Wonder how he manages that? 🤔 Yet, he still can’t get a sniff of a job in the UK, even as a bib and cone man… how odd!