Samba made his debut at Luton in the cup... so almost (geography aside )

I always thought Roberto and Dino Baggio were brothers... until the latter trapped up at Ewood.

I think there will be a much bigger crowd than if it was still on the Saturday, as it would have been the usual core paying £25-£33 a ticket.

Love to see it chadster, but that would mean us selling 6000 or so matchday tickets around the £30 mark, so can't see it personally. Though selling a decent amount of half STs would help...

I can't see the Boxing Day crowd being much more than 15k or so as it's Category A, especially as a few floating fans may plump for Wigan at a tenner instead. it was never going to happen, but £10 for Birmingham would've seen a 20,000+

Yeah I think so, didn’t pull up any trees, but ok.

Samuel was ok in League 1, never a Championship player, so you’d assume he’ll be off in the summer when he’s out of contract.

I thought it was up to the home club. So Leeds let their game against us be shown last Boxing Day as it was a sell out, our NYD against West Brom wasn’t shown.

Nine day gap between their game yesterday and when they visit us on the 23rd. If they are going to pot him, you’d think every chance it will be next week...

You tell ‘em Dunny

A point from the playoffs as we hit the festive period. The club needs to blitz the database to get folk signed up for half STs. ‘Join the play off/promotion push’.

Interesting read on the madness of Championship finances... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50674331

Morten is talking about the mid 2000s when gates had dropped massively. Indeed we had an opening day crowd against Fulham - two cracking goals by Tugay and MGP- in front of 16,000. Not long after we brought in ‘Operation Ewood’ and they shot back up on £199 season tickets - we sold 20,000+ of them and we were back to 25,000+ averages. No chance we hit those levels if Waggott looked to cash in (which he would). But anyway let’s get there first!

Sure it will be announced as 11,000 or so in ‘attendance’.

I know it is, but from memory it’s only in the middle of the concourse and fixed. If you gave an away club 3500 seats they’d need two thirds of the concourse, ergo movable barriers.

A narrative spun by bitter Dingles and Nob Enders who spent the 80s trying to stay out of non league. Unfortunately lapped up by a lot of own gullible fans.

Amazing when we ended up in the play offs for the third time in 4 seasons in 1992 and we were known as a ‘perennial Play off outfit’ we wouldn’t be in them again as of 2020 (getting on for 30 years now).

The Huddersfield away end has it right. It holds about 4,000. 2500 or so for away fans, leaving around 1000- 1200 for home fans after segregation. Hudds home section is therefore about half the size of the old DEnd home section and could easily be replicated. Ignore the metal barrier in the middle of the stand, get one of those moveable segregation gates in the concourse and give away fans, say 3,500 lower tier seats (they can have extra upper tier seats, if needed). Then the segregation netting and leave 800-1000 seats for home fans. I’m in no doubt that we could fill 800 or so seats if we promote it as a singing section, help with flags and banners etc. The atmosphere at Ewood would be immeasurably improved.

Pricing is an excuse? It was £33- £35 if you made a decision to go on the day and fancied sitting in the Jack Walker on Saturday. Mid table second division football! But anyway the match day prices are a bit of a red herring. In the PL we only had around 2/3000 match day ticket buyers, it’s not much different now, we just had 15 to 20,000 ST holders instead of 8/9,000. We didn’t sell enough season tickets this summer and as ST holders make up the vast majority of our attendees, crowds are stagnating.

Even if we get a ‘decent crowd’ against Wigan, say 17,000 or so. It will still look awful on TV at that end of the ground, as the thousand or so Wigan fans will be in a corner of the DE upper tier and all Sky viewers will see will be an enormous empty bottom tier and other empty seats in the JW lower.

Theoretically, as it’s peer to peer. But you don’t usually just put one bet on for/against an outcome and let it ride, it’s a trading platform largely, so you would look to back high and then lay low (or vice versa) just like a stock/currency market, so a ‘losing’ bet is often someone closing out a trade for a smaller profit. Example, back a horse/home win at 5/1, lay it (offer a bet against it) later at 2/1, locking in a profit, even though that 2/1 is a ‘losing’ bet as the horse/home team wins - doesn’t matter to you as you’ve hedged your bet earlier.

The ‘bookie’ on an exchange is the platform provider, I.e Betfair take a commission on winning bets/trades you’ve made against other punters in the market, so not a million miles form a stock market platform like Fidelity or Hargreaves Landsdown. The exchanges are a different world than your traditional bookies.

To be fair, a hell of a lot of people make good money on the betting exchanges like Betfair. As you can ‘hedge’ your bets by backing and laying the same selection (I.e offering and taking odds against other punters, not a bookie) it behaves much more like a stock/currency market than a traditional straight bet to the bookies.

End of the day there are not thousands of floating fans out there willing to pay £30 a ticket (JW on Saturday) for mid table Championship football, 3 wins on the bounce or not. As I’ve said repeatedly, our match going fan base has never consisted of many game by game walk ons, it has always been built on ST holders, we just didn’t sell enough last summer. Increase those, increase crowds, end of.

Catergory A prices a few weeks before Christmas and it was going to be nothing but a poor crowd. Obviously it was an ‘A’ game as it was ‘big club’ Derby who would without doubt be bringing 2,000+ , easy pickings for Waggott to fleece. They actually brought around 1200, which was no surprise to me as for a club with sizeable home crowds they don’t have a particularly large away following - obviously our Chief Exec has as much of a clue on what away support to expect as the home.