Not with the young ‘uns though I find, plus the Scouse accent seems to be perturding further and further north. The Johnny Vegas St Helenser is a dying breed...

Our whole style of play is very dependent on that Graham focal point, which is what probably keeps him in the side even when his form drops. Nobody is undropable though and I imagine the manager is giving it serious thought...

12,847 with 600 odd away. So about 12,200 home fans. We are consistently 2,000 up on last season and about 500-1,000 up on early season. Which is ok and we can’t expect much more considering how disappointing season ticket sales were. Let’s hope we sell plenty of half STs to further boost the crowds post Christmas.

Didn’t feel like it on the train back from Brentford, but relegation has reinvigorated the club. It was all getting very stale, even before Coyle. The club now seems to have a plan from the academy upwards, with professional people in situ, young English talent signed up for actual cash, players swiftly signed up to new deals, the community work, the social media output and so on all seems vastly improved. Away followings are at a consistently higher level than we’ve had for years. We just now need to seriously work on improving season ticket sales. End of the day, the fact we are doing the business on the pitch is what puts a gloss on everything else, and therefore Mowbray was a master stroke. It’s been a largely horrendous decade, but for the first time since I saw the news they’d sacked Sam, I don’t get a knot in my stomach when I think of the club’s future and that must mean we are on the right track!

Edit

4,200 sold up to now according to the club Twitter.

Sounds great!

Could you not just have rung up and bought over the phone? Doesn’t solve the e-ticketing issue but at least it’s 3 quid in your pocket today.

Shame, because this team and manager deserve it.

At our level, similar to Bolton, more expensive than Wigan, cheaper than Preston. So average.

Yes, I personally think they are still good value and competitive for the league. My point was they are no longer ‘one of the cheapest in the Championship’ like some fans still seem to think.

They aren’t ‘one of the cheapest’ any more, we are about average, which is fair enough. But I have noted the ‘frog in boiling water’ view of a lot of fans, they’ve got more and more expensive over the past 8 years or so, but incrementally, so a lot of folk still think they are cheaper than most and haven’t noticed that they simply aren’t.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/17214473.rovers-boss-says-wins-have-helped-build-trust-with-venkys/?ref=mac Interesting stuff from Mowbray. He’s obviously got on their level and they seem to respond to it, canny operator is Mogga.

Not to open old debates, but for the record. Oxford was just over-exuberance, because the game was sill going, they just needed to wait 30 seconds, possibly watch us score a third as we were bombing forward and then charge on, as there was always going to be an invasion. Didn’t matter in the end as we all got to enjoy the post match ceremony. The issue at Doncaster was not the first invasion, it was spontaneous and nobody had an issue with it. However, there was a second invasion when the players tried to come back out, the players just ran straight off, annoying but ok everyone is still over excited, so still a little understandable. Then Mowbray came on the mic and said if you could stay off the ptch we’ll come back. A good few minutes pass by, everyone is back in the stand. They try to and a hundred or so run back on for a third time, that’s not spontaneity, the players turn straight back round and thats that. Many who didn’t go on the pitch or did first time round were annoyed that they didn’t have chance to thank the players, it could have been another PNE 2001 moment for those fans and they never had the chance to partake in it. End of the day promotion is all that mattered, but it wasn’t the full time whistle invasion that anyone had a problem with at Doncaster, every set of fans does it these days.

From today’s Times: Burnley’s attempts to appoint a technical director to support manager Sean Dyche are being hampered by the reluctance of several candidates to spend much time in the town. The club want the new appointment to spend three days a week working between Turf Moor and their Gawthorpe Hall training ground but several candidates have indicated that they would prefer just two days a week in Burnley, plus match days.

I haven’t. If a club is bringing a following of 3000+, certainly start with filling the upper tier and put the overspill downstairs, but for a club bringing a few hundred I personally think having over 7,000 empty seats at that end with no fans visible kills the atmosphere which isn’t good for us either.

What are you talking about. 26,000 Rovers fans turned up that day, around 17,000 of them were non season ticket holders. A tiny minority of them (a few hundred) were pissed up and ran on the pitch after after a day on the ale for a promotion party. How is that in any way comparable to a decently priced game in the middle of a season? I don’t know why I’m even replying, as you didn’t agree we needed to do any deals last season, then Oxford started selling like hot cakes and you were delighted with it. So, you would be just the same this season if the club offered it.

Veiled?

The 90s really scarred our neighbours. The Dingles have had their own relative success, so have moved on a bit, but Preston fans are still extremely bitter towards us.

A few Championship clubs often have an empty lower tier behind a goal - Millwall, Bolton, Sheff Wed, QPR, so it’s not that unusual to see on TV But at the ground it’s pretty eerie just because it’s such a big end.

That’s that then, 2500 will turn up, so don’t try and tempt more? It was a general point about trying to increase crowds.

How’s it ‘average’ then? You just think more could come, fair enough.

It won’t. The club does run a fairly simple structure. ‘Are they likely to bring around 2,000? Or more? Yes? Cat A so we can rake it in. Everyone else B and C, it’s as crude as that and nothing whatsoever to do with home fans or ‘attractiveness’ of the fixture.

Ok, who’s our support ‘average’ in comparison to then?