Mattyblue

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, if he means the training complex, I.e. ‘The Tony Parkes Senior Training Centre’, ok, that’s an idea. A ‘pitch’? He can feck off and delegate this to fans groups who should decide. It’s OUR club who will be here long after he’s pitched up somewhere else.

Without doubt, but they ain’t Bolton.

I’ll tell you now Sheff Wed won’t be in the fourth division in the next decade. Anderson stripped that club unlike anything we’ve seen in a long time.

Would I buggery feel embarrassed, it’s a message board. Most fans are ‘respectful’, think you’ve read to many sport management/psychology books.

Sheff Wed and the like won’t end up like Bolton.

Does make me chuckle how star struck and proud as punch Paul is just for spending some time with club employees, I thought it was a regular occurrence?

I don’t expect him to have any that’s the point. Dry topics, yet vital ones and it seems that TM is wheeled out to take up half the meeting with his ‘jumpers for goalposts’ routine and what fan wouldn’t love to hear it, even if you went with the best intentions to talk about other matters.

He is a passionate football man, I’ve always liked that about him. As usual his charisma at these meetings come in handy for Waggott and Cheston. But he is only ‘absolutely the man to take us on for as long as he has that desire’ if he gets results, his ‘desire’, his ‘honesty’ , ‘his passion’ are not how he will be judged (or shouldn’t be).

Paul will just drip feed it in... ITK ya know!

Some supporters. Was the same here with Allardyce. Pulis is another.

Generally same old stuff, ‘we’ll look into it’, ‘we did have a budget, but no value’ etc etc. However, the Academy comments did seem a departure from the norm. These meetings have previously been an opportunity for Waggott et al to give full throated commitment to Category 1 status. Indeed, from the owners down to us fans, I thought it was accepted that in this FFP world, the Cat 1 Academy of ours is a real string to our bow and is vital to our entire future as a club. It is certainly something all of brfcs agrees on (a real rarity In itself!). So this comment... ‘At the moment we are carrying on as a Cat 1’ Was most odd, unless misquoted? Can any attendees clarify?

‘At the moment we are carrying on as a Cat 1’ That isn’t the most re-assuring of statements...

Official opening of ‘The New Ewood’ that day, Jack himself cutting the ribbon... so obviously we spanked Forest 7-0! If you go to the main reception of the Jack Walker stand there is a plaque commemorating it.

Derby away now moved back a day to Sunday 8th March as their cup tie against Man Utd is on the Thursday before.

Strangely even after losing Dack, Holtby and Rothwell I still feel more confident in picking up results then when we lost just Lenihan at the back. Our results fall off a cliff every time he’s out.

And there it is...

I don’t know, between sips of his brew TM often just drops bombshells in pressers like ‘it’ll be a month or two before he’s back on the grass’.

About what I thought. Just unluckily timed both with our results tapering off and train prices. Only the away day regulars would have snapped up the 12 week in advance cheap trains, nobody knew about the £5 offer then. Match tickets aside, a few days after they went on sale trains were shooting up towards £60/70, add your spending money, that’s a dear do for an away day across the country to watch a team fairly innocuously plodding along in mid table.

I think what makes this even more poignant is the fact he’s now a bona fide Blackburner too, along with his family. A lot of legends, your Shearers, Kennys etc, come and go and you just have memories (great one’s like!). Tony spent not just 35 years at the club, but lives amongst us too. Anybody that lives around Wilpshire and Brownhill can testify to that.

We’ll have had 4 night matches at Ewood between late December and late February. QPR aside they will all have been available on Sky. Also a good chance that with them fighting for automatic, either (or both of) West Brom and Leeds will be shown. So that would be pretty much half of our home fixtures from the Christmas period onwards to be shown on Sky. End of the day Sky coverage is the deal with the devil football has made in the top two divisions, nothing new, but now also having all night matches (unless a re-arrangement), of which you play plenty of in the Championship, shown on TV, plus a few more through the season can only make non renewal of STs and non purchase of a match ticket at up to £30 a pop easier and easier as time goes by.

Wouldn’t work in reality OEB. As tomphil says, a lot of ST holders buy out of habit. If they felt their ST had got too dear they’d just stop coming, they wouldn’t convert to match day purchasers, so crowds would plummet. The main reason cup ties see big reductions in crowds is ST holders not being arsed to buy a match ticket. The ST discount has to stay or things really will look dire.

£28. £30-£32 in the JW. For a mid table second division side. (And this fixture is tagged as Cat B, our lowest price category!). If that’s the ‘cheap end of the pricing scale’ for this league be thankful for small mercies.

At £22-£40 we are certainly not on the cheap end of the scale for match tickets. A standard game is usually £30+ in the Jack Walker (most popular stand for match day purchases). Our season tickets at £350 -£500 are also not anywhere near the cheapest. They are actually fairly standard for the league, which is fair enough, but this myth of ‘dirt cheap STs’, ‘cheapest in the division’ still lingers. We used to be cheap and renowned for it. £199 STs etc.. However, they have steadily crept up over the last few years. Our low revenue is because we only sell 9,000 of them with 2/3000 walk ons (plus away support). Not because we are at the ‘lower end of the pricing scale’.

A couple of full (or near full) Darwen Ends a season means they won’t do a Deepdale style simple price structure, as Waggott knows he can charge around £30 (£40 for Leeds) and still have 6,500-7,500 coughing up.

Yes we are Cat 1, but that doesn’t mean we can attract the raw talent. We share a region with 4 big (very big) clubs from the cities of Manchester and Liverpool, as well as all the other clubs in this area. Old Lancashire is THE hotbed of the game. Ergo, a lot of our top talent, I.e. the likes of Travis and JRC are brought in when they are discarded by said clubs, no shame in that as they can be polished. But our reality of a Cat 1 will never the same as a Liverpool or Man City. They attract world and cream of the local talent. We just don’t and won’t ever. However, to have Raya (until this season), Lenihan, Nyambe and Travis as core players, to now have JRC emerging and others knocking on the door tells me we ain’t doing half bad - and in an FFP world it’s a must.