The explosion in the number of dodgy boxes/firesticks says plenty don’t agree.

I know we are but I refer you to my previous answer.

Third lowest gates doesn't make us third worst supported. This is a small town in a sea of city/region clubs.

That’s exactly arbito’s point. How did those clubs get to the PL? By accruing points, and their rewards are those untold millions and millions. It’s all about getting enough points to get to, and then to stay at, the highest level your club can feasibly operate at. That is professional football.

Who said anything about filling Ewood? You’ve moved the goalposts to another ground somewhere. We rarely filled Ewood in the good old days, so of course we wouldn’t in this league. But it is undoubtedly true that you sell more tickets on the back of winning matches, not due to playing ‘good football’, not sure how it’s even a debate. Of course the by-product of winning plenty of games is that football usually becomes ‘good’ anyway as the players perform with more and more confidence.

It really does. You honestly think that if we are still top 6 from Christmas onwards walk ons won’t increase? If we finish in the top 6 after winning home game after home game ST sales won’t increase next season? Of course they will. That’s how it works.

It is the case. You are winning matches every week walk ons increase, you are winning matches every week ST sales increase the following season, that’s the way it is, that’s the way it will always be.

Not the case, winning football is what attracts crowds. If you can win with style even better, but it’s a team at the top end of the table that gets momentum building in the fanbase, that leads to more walk ons, that leads to more ST sales the following summer. Alas, we never really get said momentum as we fall away in the second half of every season.

Don’t most non parachute teams at this level play pretty averagely?

To be fair UD rowed back from Britain being ‘allies’ of Germany in his subsequent post.

Just think when you have a group of lads, 18 years old etc going on their first big away day. Cracking day out, plenty of beers, good win at Stoke or wherever. But one of their pals miss out because he’s an armchair Liverpool ‘fan’ and ‘Rovers and the Champ are shit’. No mate, it’s you that is having the shit football experience.

Considering he’s a year older and playing in the fourth division I’d say not.

Only 2 pages because the constant international breaks for a non-competition keeps halting the momentum for the actual football season.

The ground was built for an elite Premier League club in a small town, not a middling second division club in a small town. Not a lot else to it.

We’ve been in this league for donkeys years and still a load of posters on here don’t recognise what a Championship player actually looks like - and TD is and will be one, regardless of how inconsistent and frustrating he can be.

Qualification games provide all the low risk matches England need, then a few warm ups before the tournament to top it up.

Hmmm, appeasement was nothing to be proud of, but ‘allies’ is a pushing it just a tad.

I don’t know a single person that has an issue with Germany or Germans. And when you go there they love speaking to Brits. Culturally very similar people. Long standing allies pre and post a couple of rather unfortunate incidents in the first half of the 20th century.

How about they just get rid of it and don’t replace with friendlies either? Ideal all round for the 99% of football fans who don’t give a toss about international football outside tournaments.

You love the Nations League, roverandout? If it was scrapped tomorrow nobody would even remember it existed in a decade’s time.

How about not replacing friendlies with anything and just play less internationals? Lets be frank all that matters in international football are the tournaments. The fact San Marino now get to play Andorra on a regular basis is neither here nor there, they could set up their own annual ‘Minnows Cup’ or something instead. We then don’t need to stop the season three times between September and November to play irrelevant games that I’d wager most fans, managers and players don’t give a monkeys about (of course they won’t just have the summer tournaments and their qualifiers, as, you know, UEFA want the cash).

He’ll be in the Championship next season one way or another.

‘Err think you’ll find he still lives in west London and his son goes to school here.’

‘Well, err, I didn’t want it anyway’.

So pretty much like every season then?