Mattyblue

Jim White is putting on his best faux concerned face. Like Count Dracula. In a sport full of compete tosspots he’s got to be right up there.

End of the day I don’t think most clubs take this competition particularly seriously in the early rounds as you’ll see with the changes made tonight. Sad in many ways as why do any of us bother if not to see your beloved club actually achieve something? Probably more of a pertinent question for mid table PL clubs that make 11 changes, lose and still finish 12th. But get to the last 16/QF stage and it focuses minds a bit.

Since the opening day Bolton haven’t been allowed to register players, so no other clubs can ‘help’.

Thought they weren’t allowed to register any more players? Their centre half Hobbs re-signed a few weeks ago but the EFL won’t register him. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/17822667.amp/

Just under 15,000 at OT today, a non Roses game crowd record broken for the second time this season. Definitely need to invent a fourth format of the game and scrap the counties to drum up interest

No problem, any excuse to get gabbing about my favourite topic

Good article on the travails of Stoke. A lot of similarities to us in 2012/13 time (without the crooks). https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nathan-jones-faces-challenge-to-restore-stoke-citys-sense-of-identity-mzswqsftw?shareToken=4a681dd1a6397bdb3dd4061e198fc1d4

When did you meet all these Bolton fans? In the 90s PL days certainly, we had non Rovers fans from all over who wanted to take in the top players, and in the olden days fans would often watch one side one week, another t’week after. Football is much more tribal now. Doesnt matter if they can’t get in to the Manchester clubs, the kids will ‘support’ them anyway. Many Bolton supporting parents would much rather buy their kids City shirts then go to Ewood. Look how narky Nob Enders get about an odd Rovers fan over there, yet have no issue with the literal thousands of Liverpool and United ‘fans’ in Preston. Sad but true. Is it worth doing? Yeah why not, but I doubt much take up.

The vast majority of current match going Bolton fans wouldn’t attend Rovers matches in the Championship if you let them in for free. I certainly think the club should be in the schools, big old area is ‘Greater Bolton’, I.e the town itself, the villages near Darwen, Horwich, Lostock, Westhoughton Etc. Like vultures, aren’t we...

I think the issue is the administrators don’t think the club have the cash to last the two weeks with wages for 150 staff due on Friday.

The issue is always tribalism. Would I go watching Bolton if roles were reversed? Would I hell! I’d be trying to get FC Rovers off the ground or I’d give up on the game entirely. However, if the worst happened to Bolton you can get into the schools. Especially in areas like Turton, Belmont and Bromley Cross that are very close to Darwen, indeed large parts of that area are in BwD borough even if they see themselves as Boltoners. But in reality the kids of Bolton will become even more City/United than they are already.

Clubs like the old Accy Stanley, Maidstone and Aldershot going are one thing, but a club the size of Bolton? We’ve never seen this before. A fair bit of brinkmanship going on but remarkable all the same.

Repeated hamstring injuries for a winger could well mean he never hits the heights we briefly saw again. Worth a punt, but no surprise he was readily available.

Will be on peanuts, fairly low risk for a lad with potential will be the thinking. But it says a lot that another middling Championship club in Boro were happy for him to go.

Administrators say do the deal in days or liquidation. Anderson still the issue by the sounds of it... https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/17860814.amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Darwen and Lower Darwen (BB3) and south Blackburn, so Ewood, Mill Hill, Livesey, Pleasington, Feniscowles is largely BB2 and full of Rovers fans. BB1 is north and east Blackburn and that demographically is a different place than it was in the 90s, much fewer Rovers fans in those areas.

My point is, a lot of our fanbase has moved further away than a 5 mile radius to Ewood, not that the fans no longer exist. Why crowds have dropped is a different issue.

I don’t think so arbito, BB2 and BB3 definitely still full of Rovers fans, however large swathes of Blackburn, particularly the BB1 area has changed massively since the mid 90s and won’t house anywhere near the amount of Rovers fans it did then.

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.