Mattyblue

Read that 3 times and I’ve absolutely no idea if that’s supposed to be a sarcastic or not...

Was there an uproar out in the fanbase over refunds and ifollow? I didn’t particularly detect much... though there’s a chance it was suppressed as ST holders will be expecting their loyalty and understanding of the situation to be reciprocated when prices are announced.

Major difference is that lots of Championships clubs are proactive and due to getting them on sale early every year they had thousands signed up for next season before the country even went into lockdown. I imagine relatively few have been sold between April and now, but it doesn’t particularly matter as the cash flow is there. But as our leadership team have to wait for the annual summons to Pune to get anything signed off, it can often be June before we usually finally get them on sale, this dysfunctional state of affairs always puts us behind the curve, but this year it leaves us with little room to manoeuvre cash flow wise, as of course, with yesterday’s announcement adding to the uncertainty, you ain’t selling many if they were put on sale Monday morning.

Changing tack slightly, lets presume fans are back at some point next season. What happens to ifollow? We, unlike the majority of Championship clubs now have 0 ST holders, so obviously a ST holder streaming service can no longer be offered to a non existent ST base. So those first few months of the season, is it £10 a pop every 3 or 4 days? Or will ifollow for UK residents even continue? The connection to the team will get ever more distant...

When the time comes, there is going to have to be a hell of a marketing campaign, and a proper enticing price structure, or even selling 4/5,000 will be a real struggle. Many months (a year?) out of the ground, ongoing reluctance to gather (especially amongst our sizeable older contingent) as presumably no vaccine, mass unemployment/job insecurity and generally being out of the habit is some heady brew. The club needs to wake up to the fact the game is facing an existential crisis, and it won’t be business as usual for a long time. Alas I worry that those running the club just don’t get it and they will be expecting the core match going fanbase to just march straight back to Ewood paying standard prices after the usual minimal marketing - if they do they will be in for some rude awakening.

Murphy is on there too now? Christ.

Is a force majeure clause, which a pandemic could be classed as, mentioned in the rules? If it isn’t, then what’s the line of defence?

Contracted players go on loan all the time, bloody hell every team in the EFL is full of loanees. The player never misses out financially, it will normally be a wage split between the two clubs. Smallwood stands out, as he didn’t go on loan for some game time, which he’s perfectly entitled to do, but the fact it was so noticeable shows it’s not the norm to sit out a year when fit.

To be fair if he does get a move to Sunderland then it was a canny move all round...

Made me laugh the other day that ‘Instagram Influencers’ were hysterical that they are no longer getting free meals to post on their pages because the restaurants are skint.

Maglorie is never going go make it as Championship level.

I don’t listen to it, but on the odd occasion I did in years gone by, they seemed to find it hard enough to fill the air time in a normal season. I mean how many phone ins on Arsenal’s goalkeeper can you have? But what the feck did they do in lockdown?

They should, but many don’t... but they are straight out with the platitudes after moving on, ‘so happy to get going again after a tough season not getting the games I’d have liked’.

Yes from agents, from Nixon type hacks, from someone in the club as we need the cash. Its not a sleight on Sharpe, from his point of view it simply fills a page of the paper in the close season, which is hard enough. It’s all part of the ecosystem of the murky world of transfers.

What’s fine? They can print anything like about whoever they like. JH however believes that when they print stories like ‘clubs linked’ about our top players without naming said clubs, it’s just the paper doing the bidding of agents and the club to get an auction going. Considering Sharpe has never broken a transfer story from what I can recall and gets half his info from places like this, it’s not exactly far fetched and probably common practice. Fair enough if folk want to call it ‘conspiracy’, but it’s how Nixon and his ilk have carved out a career. Naive to think otherwise.

Smallwood, a whole hearted player on the pitch, giving up a year of a time limited playing career to sit on a contract for 12 months, shows that ‘playing football’ isn’t the be all and end all when you know you won’t see a deal as lucrative again.

Maybe he’s happy living in Wrea Green and taking the cash?

You’d think with everything that’s gone on this year, that that odd section of society that seem to obsess about no marks like his missus, would have moved on. Celeb culture generally seems to have taken a hit .

He did it way into the PL days, though maybe not right to the end of his time here.

To be fair, JH’s point is about the club’s top assets, the likes of Pope, not deadwood.

Will it be like Gazza’s ‘The Real Me’ VHS? https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/love-islands-olivia-attwood-fianc-22445928.amp?__twitter_impression=true

He did it pre every game as he ran towards the Blackburn End ‘Colin, show us your arse!’ ? ‘Wahhheyyy’

Wouldn’t surprise me one bit, as the EFL seem to have a very fast and loose relationship with their own rule book, but it’s an open and shut case, in reality. The fact Barnsley have got involved says they will impose it.

Doesn’t Sharpe purport to be a Rovers fan? Or his ‘second club’ when growing up? Which is an improvement to the motley crew of scousers and southerners we’ve had since Andy Neild.

Blackpool didn’t go into administration. They went into receivership, key difference.