Think he was injured to start with, came off the bench for 20 minutes on Saturday.

We’ve always had a good fanbase outside of Blackburn. From Darwen which is a hotbed to the towns of Hyndburn, Bamber Bridge and other parts of South Ribble, Chorley itself and the villages on its periphery, Haslingden, Whalley and Clitheroe and on I could go. Jim Wilkinson posted a programme from the early 80s on Twitter recently that listed all the supporters branches from around Lancashire, properly organised organisations with chairmen, secretaries etc. So of course we have, as an aside another big mistake of the club was to disband all such groups around the time of the millennium. All clubs use the actual town they are based in as a barometer of how well supported they are. It’s all a bit of dodgy accounting, but everyone does it, Burnley do it constantly, as do the media ‘another full house at Turf Moor, amazing as Burnley is a town of only 80,000’. Great stat, but we all know that large amounts of their support has always come from ‘Greater Dingleland’, Colne, Nelson, Bacup, Rawtenstall, Padiham, Keighley, Barnoldswick Etc etc. So yes thankfully we’ve always had good support outside Blackburn and a good thing too, because demographically the town has changed massively in 20 or so years. So what has changed is now many more born and bred Blackburners are living outside of the town across Lancs as well as non Blackburners who have always been Rovers fans and have travelled in to Ewood on a match day, that’s why I believe that Blackburn addresses have never made up a lower percentage of our ST holders as they do today.

Barnsley is a smaller town than Blackburn (91,000 to 120,000), though Barnsley Metropolitan Borough is bigger than BwD, but the Yorkshire metro boroughs cover large areas, big parts of that borough will contain areas that aren’t particular Barnsley FC friendly as they will be closer to Sheffield, Leeds etc, , but whatever way you slice it, nobody would see Barnsley as a club with more latent support than Blackburn Rovers (or at least they wouldn’t previously) Our support per population has always been very good and comparable to anybody. But that’s not the point, the Championship is now full of clubs with bigger catchment areas than us with crowds of 20,000+ each week. In 2001 our crowds were comparable or higher than Nottingham Forest, Wolves, Norwich, Sheff Wed etc. Now we are on a level with PNE and Barnsley. Getting 11,000/12,000 of our fans to the ground considering our decade of crap, our catchment area and the changes in the town ain’t bad. However, many clubs in this league have left us in the dust crowd wise and that is the league we are trying to competing in. In 2001 we had an average crowd of 20,700 that had us as 2nd highest average in the league. Our average crowd last season of 14,550 would still have seen us a respectable 10th in 2001. To show how the league has changed, that 14,550 saw us 17th in the list last season, whilst even if we had an average of 20,700 it would have only seen us 13th! Our crowds have actually stood up well considering the nonsense of this decade, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Championship has moved on a pace on the back of an attendance boom with city clubs engaging their much larger catchment areas and getting them through the doors, whilst we tread water year after year.

A howler in his one appearance (against the Bolton kids) won’t have helped him...

You’d think so but the stats don’t bear that out. Our home crowd has always been ST holders plus 2/3000 walk ons, whatever division. It’s just that used to be 18,000/20,000 plus 3,000. Now it’s 9,000 plus 3,000. Some fans aren’t particularly interested in buying match tickets. I know a couple of people myself that didn’t go at all last season and have bought STs this time.

Like I said the other week, clubs like Bolton are not going to get 10,000 people buying match tickets every week. I bet a good percentage of that 4,000 were folk that always walk on, with the vast majority of long standing season ticket holders not bothering.

Don’t disagree with those. Blackburn Rovers will be much more reliant on the non Blackburn based fanbase as time goes on as the town’s make up has changed massively in 25 years. It was no coincidence that the club is now advertising in areas with a PR postcode, as more and more of our fanbase has left the town and is in other boroughs like Chorley, South Ribble, Ribble Valley Etc. I would wager the percentage of ST holders we have with a Blackburn address has never been lower.

Only one left though, isn’t it? I came across loads of Rovers fans in Birmingham centre last season.

Our attendances didn’t go backwards in League 1. Most clubs don’t actually lose much support, if any on a relegation to the third tier. They went substantially backwards in the summer we appointed Coyle. We’ve clawed back some lost support since but not yet to the Bowyer era levels. But ever since relegation in 2012 we haven’t had 10,000 paid for season tickets. The club is stuck in a rut. Being in this league is where we’ve largely been this decade and it looks as if it will continue to be the case (at best) and we are now a relatively small fish in it. This decade long Venkys induced nadir is of course why, most other clubs have seen substantial increases, we know why we are treading water and who’s to blame, but the reality is we are now a club with a similar income to the Barnsley’s of the world and that doesn’t look like changing any time soon.

Being the saddo I am I do enjoy looking at the crowds across the country in the paper on a Sunday morning... my happy place As an example, Barnsley, yes Barnsley consistently over the last few years have more fans in attendance than us. Not by vast amounts, but higher. They did as a League 1 club, they do now. Quick google and their season ticket prices are very similar to ours, so no Bradford discounts at play. Their post early bird prices were actually much higher. As I’ve said before crowds have shot up across football this past 7/8 years, we are one of the few clubs to stagnate. However, I am sill shocked and I suppose worried that a club I have always seen as a fairly small second tier/third tier yo-yo club like Barnsley are now bringing in a bigger income through the gate than Blackburn Rovers. Something is sill badly amiss at the club.

Isn’t that Garry Monk? I always get those two mixed up too!

Thinking about it wasn’t it one of the site’s resident contrarians... Jim?

Apart from the cup tie against Bolton in which his error led to a goal, Magloire hasn’t got off the Rochdale bench.

Who the f*ck said that?

Bolton now being threatened with a Tuesday expulsion too... https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/17859314.bolton-kicked-efl-club-sale-delays/

We haven’t sold enough season tickets, simple as that. Our crowd has always been heavily made up of ST holders. We’ve only ever sold 2/3000 walk on tickets, we still do. Unfortunately with only 8/9000 season ticket holders, crowds aren’t going to get much higher than this.

11,429 home fans which is pretty much exactly what we had on the August bank holiday Saturday last season. So not sure crowds will be down, but they certainly haven’t increased and that’s another set of targets missed by Waggott.

Ripley and Wilcox were classic wingers that were a major factor in us us winning the Premier League title! ’Not pretty’ like having a lanky striker out there indeed!

Unfortunately towns like Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, that aren’t small places by any means, are full of locals that would rather ‘support’ the Manchester clubs than their local institution. Armchair United fans on social media ‘what a shame for my local club’

I don’t agree on the upper tier, but it’s here to stay by the looks of it so I may as well stop mentioning it. West Brom next week will be full of fans that don’t go near Ewood (glamour cup tie or Burnley game aside), ‘it’s shit at home’. The stats bear that out, we’ve often sold a few hundred away tickets to ST holders before general sale, 2,000 then turn up at a West Brom or Stoke. A PROPER singing section could bring some back, but there seems little appetite at the club to help bring one about. Since relegation in 2012, for Championship seasons (apart from Coyle season) we have pretty much sold the same amount of STs give or take a 1,000 either way, between 11500 and 13000 home fans in the ground week by week (if you believe official figures). Only two things will change that 1) promotion or to a lesser extent but at least a spike, a season challenging- how many weeks since 2012 have we spent in the top 6? A near decade of mediocrity. 2) Reduced ST prices ideally in conjunction with a singing section. Huddersfield, a club with a similar fanbase to us are a prime example of how it can be successful. But for me that needs to be timed correctly, you do it on the back of finishing 15th, I’d wager little take up, do it on the back of decent season in which we were knocking around the top 6 and an exciting transfer window and it could work well.

It’s all tinkering round the edges, in reality. All comes down to one thing, Ewood at 31,000 is far too big for a club with 8,600 paid season ticket holders...

‘Campaign’? What a suggestion from a couple of posters? And what evidence is there that it is more effective? I’d say we play better with a bit of atmosphere in the ground. Newcastle have about 10,000 home fans in the tier below, if we could fill the DE lower with our own fans then fantastic, get them out of the way, but we can’t. Millwall is a very small bottom tier and that is on police orders anyway. Nowhere else in football has a bottom tier the size of the DE lower (5000 seats) left totally empty. Does it really matter? Not particularly, just in my opinion it makes Ewood look and sound even worse and on TV especially. And I’m not on my own from talking to people on match day.

Jim’s spider senses aroused...

That’s some praise from you!

Nothing to do with stewarding costs according to Waggott, all about the ‘marginal gains’ Of course it still looks crap either way, but that is a hell of a big bottom tier to have completely empty (though they have to open it anyway for a handful of disabled fans and their carers. So toilets, food outlets still need to be opened and staffed. Bloody daft).