Without doubt he lost his express pace after that 92/93 injury. Though he was no slouch until he got another injury after his first season at Newcastle in ‘97, he was then markedly slower but reinvented his game, turning himself into a target man who still banged in the goals. What a player and pro.

‘Tony you talk about how it is a 5 year journey to just get close to Brentford. So how do you explain Barnsley?’ Andy, Rich, what you reckon? Nah didn’t think so.

Woodgate’s appointment has gone down as well as you’d imagine... https://bournemouth-forum.vitalfootball.co.uk/threads/woodgate-out.13433/page-10

And 4 isn’t possible without clearing out 2 and 3

Extraordinary really that a decade on we have owners that are still content for a prestigious football club with a relatively large turnover to not bother with a proper recruitment process for the top executive positions, indeed are happy enough for former agent spivs that have already popped up at various lower league outfits to run the place into the ground. I’d take pleasure in the fools repeatedly having their pants pulled down if it wasn’t so tragic for our football club.

The QEGS Illuminati. 🙄 Bloody hell Paul, grow up a bit, or at least remove the chip from your shoulder.

It’s going to take a ‘Taking Back Ewood’ style campaign of monumental proportions to try and re-build the fanbase. But without PL cash or status to underwrite it and cretins like Waggott in situ instead of John Williams, coupled with the changing demographics of the area, a far more geographic disparate fanbase than previously, plus local competition, never mind the Covid impact on attending habits, I have real worries for the future of this football club.

No chance, it would be the exact opposite if you attempted a protest now. The owners are massively more popular than they were even three years ago, never mind 10, plus half the fanbase has long gone.

I can see it now - ‘Club Statement- The club is delighted to outline its new model for player pathways. We are now following what is widely seen as the future of development, our Development Squad (B Team) will play across the UK and Europe, pitting their wits against the best talent’ 👏👏👏 ’Excellent from the club’ ’Look at Brentford’ ’We need to cut our cloth’ ’Be great for Tony this’ ’Fans need to realise it ain’t the 90s’ ’Amazing how people can be negative FFS’

Behave! How naive are you! Football execs constantly row back on commitments. Blame ‘challenging environments’, ‘Covid’, ‘extraordinary circumstances out of our control’, ‘we did all we could, but unfortunately...’, whatever.

Think today’s winners get a Papa Johns instead

You’ve just said it on the Brockhall thread: ‘ Waggot committed himself to the academy’ You obviously do think his word can be trusted or why say it.

And you take Waggott at his word, because?

Well he seems to trust Waggott on Brockhall, so go figure...

So you are against it, but you consistently troll others that are also against it by regularly posting silly emojis and labelling them ‘hysterical’ etc And yet you were constantly on here asking folk to join/attend your fans group. Funny way of going about trying to get folk onside...

Because darren went to QEGS x amount of years ago... yep, Paul really is being that infantile.

I was the same. At least in normal times you are still doing your match day routines and feel that connection, a pint or two, the walk down Livesey Branch, meeting up with friends and family. But watching a bang average side go through the motions in an empty stadium with a bulletproof manager shielded by uninterested owners and executives ( who are more interested in attempting to flog off half the training ground) makes you question the point of all of it...

Hauling the pair of them off at half time neatly summed up the total waste of £12 million.

The club needs totally re-invigorating, Darren’s enthusiasm is to be lauded, but these kind of schemes work best when there is a bit of momentum behind the club. At the moment the extended fanbase is totally detached from Blackburn Rovers. As an example, if you made season tickets £199 next season after another season of nothingness, you’d do well to shift many more than the standard hardcore. However, if you did the same on the back of, say, a losing play off final in front of 30,000 Blues with a big campaign of ‘One More Push’ or whatever with a decent summer in the transfer market to back it up, you’d sell a shed load. (Relative) success on the pitch is the driver of the fans, not the other way round.

I honestly can’t fathom what’s going on with 1864, the WMC group turning into another set of nodding dogs a la the Fans Forum? Is there an actual group that is going into bat against this? I’m struggling to work out what the stance of even the Rovers Trust is, for example. Is it being left to the NIMBYs of Brockhall Village?

It’s obviously possible if L1 Charlton who are a similar sized club to us do it, if it’s obviously possible as pubs are still organising coaches from Darwen and Rishton. But of course it’s going to be bloody tough to get a good take up post pandemic and with the general malaise the club is in. That’s the problem when you dismantle club infrastructure (like affiliated supporters groups) and then try and re-build from a low base - a bit like putting housing on half the training ground...

The club has a hell of a lot of ground to make up. The dismantling of regional supporters clubs a few years back was a real short sighted move. Go on the website of many a club our size and there are whole sections on each of their supporters groups who organise transport, meet ups, Q and As, awards nights etc etc. Wolves have over a hundred, a dozen plus in their Black Country heartland but spread worldwide, all affiliated with the club - a real connection to the club is formed https://worldwide.wolves.co.uk/find-a-club/ A club like Charlton is another prime example, they realised that a sizeable part of their fanbase no longer resides in their old south east London heartland due to demographic change among other things and many are now around Kent and Sussex. So they’ve run The Valley Express coach service for years that picks up across those areas. https://www.cafc.co.uk/tickets/home-game-travel A hell of a lot of our fanbase no longer resides in BB1/BB2 and the further away you are, the easier it is to get detached, especially when grounds have been closed for 12 months - yet I see no urgency within the club for what is an existential issue for the future. Great idea, and let’s hope the club wakes up. It can be done as the highly popular London Branch shows.

Anyone else noticed how ‘Wexford Rover’ on the LT comments leaves a general pro Mowbray comment on most articles and gets a shedload of ratings for it, taking the post to ‘Highest Rated’ on every piece below the line... far more than anyone else positive or negative, which is odd...

First and B team on adjacent training pitches, you say?