Mattyblue

You’d imagine they’d give it to Burns, now established in the side and has actually captained his county, which is a rarity these days. Will mirror Australia and Tim Paine.

His mum and stepdad used to run the now gone Sportsmans pub at Four Lane Ends, so certainly connected to Blackburn.

Oxford was a one off game. Bank holiday, nice weather, £10 a ticket, late KO that allowed a day on the ale, promotion party with an outside chance of a title win. Liverpool had around half a million lining the streets when they won the CL, are all of them committed fans that would go every week? No of course not, just there for the craic most of them. Thats just how it is. When John Williams took over as Chief Exec in 1998 the board told him ‘you have 8,000 fans’, Williams replied with ‘but we have 20,000+ home fans through the gate every game!?’. They meant that we have 8,000 that will turn up, no questions asked, however dire, the rest have varying levels of commitment. Some will pick their games, some will buy a ST on the back of a good summer in the transfer market or a strong end to the previous season, some will only turn out for £10 or a glamour cup tie or Burnley games. And yes some are just PL fans. We are not alone in this, Burnley’s gates have doubled. As will Preston’s if they go up. Just par for the course for a club based in a deprived town in east Lancs with little in the way of catchment area, challenging demographics and the most competitive region in the country for professional clubs. So with all that being said average crowds of 13-15,000 when we’ve spent the majority of the decade in the doldrums in the second tier (and third) ain’t too bad.

Ever? In this league, I presume you mean? We had 20,000 ST holders in 2010. We still had around 15,000 under Ke*n.

At least they give the fans what they want...

The reality is that he’ll have 12 months left in the summer. So his value, not withstanding how much of an impact this injury will have on him, is now on the slide. The days of hoping for £10/15 million have gone, unless the club pulls a rabbit out of the hat and agrees a new deal. So not sure how much of a knock on this will have on our future budgets as the mood music from TM in recent months was that he’d be off sooner rather than later with that fee to be used on a re-build.

No. The Hudds and Forest games are though...

Amazing people still come out with this. Established Premier League side full of quality footballers. ’Dire’ indeed.

Nowhere near 3,500. 1500 in the upper and about 7/800 in the lower.

There were 16500 home tickets bought for last night, the most we’ve had for a Championship game since 2012. A night match on Sky to boot. Considering we’ve 8,500/9,000 season ticket holders. That means 7,000 people bought a match ticket, these are figures we NEVER get close to getting, even in the Premier League days. £20 in the Blackburn End, £25 in the Jack Walker wouldn’t have seen much of an increase on a normal game. Of course crowds would fall back if you did it £10 every week, but last night was not ‘poor’ whichever way you slice it.

They probably do and I think it’s really sad, especially as you see how strong Yorkshire identity still is, which is no surprise as when their county was split up in the 70s, the new ‘counties’ were known as North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire etc, whilst we got lumbered with ‘Greater Manchester’ and the like.

Nope. All part of the Lancashire palatine, unaltered for 800 years. All Lancastrians should be proud of it, not trying to diminish it to that pathetic rump on the map that was only created in 1974.

www.forl.co.uk

I can’t work out if Williams was just rusty or because we’ve quickly got used to Tosin’s quality that was just a standard performance from a lower league clogger.

It did in the run up to KO... so of course we put in that stinker of a first half performance and it soon dissipated. Par for the course here!

I meant tonight, always a chance we’ll hit 20,000+ with a full away end.

Similar story to us re owner issues. But it’s been exacerbated there with them scrapping season tickets in favour of memberships, with no concessions at one point.

It’s not about away fans being down there per se. If it was up to me, I’d be creating a singing section in that stand akin to Huddersfield, with flags, banners and the rest of it. That would do more for the atmosphere than anything else... oh and that way we can keep those marginal gains too.

Looking on their forum, their fans still seem to be fairly behind him and ‘his project’ I doubt they would if their manager was say, Tony Mowbray. Amazing what a big foreign name can do.

Ok. Sorry, my mistake.

It’s not an either/or. I’d have us playing on a dog shit infested pitch at Pleasy if it guaranteed promotion, of course that’s the priority.. But a full looking Ewood can only help in giving an impression of a big Championship football club. A club aspiring players, managers, potential academy sign ups and sponsors want to be part of.

Work it out.

I’ve just explained why. If you don’t get it, fine.

Well obviously it’s about the win chaddy! But I would prefer away fans in the bottom tier as a full looking ground is good PR for the club, if that’s ok with you?

I’m very dubious about these supposed ‘marginal gains’, Stuart. Some of our best performances come when the ground has some atmosphere in all sides of the ground, Leeds last season springs to mind. Difference being, the bottom tiers at places like Millwall, Sheff Wed that are usually kept empty only hold 1500 or so. The Darwen End lower is a vast bank of 5,000, so even on a night like tonight in which we’ll be pushing 20,000 it gives the impression of a poorly supported, struggling club playing in an empty ground. You may not care about the aesthetics of that, but many do.