Mattyblue

There’s no point harking back to the 90s, we were the best team in England with all the hangers on that came with that, that club and it’s extended fan base has gone. Jack was right then, he wouldn’t have had the foresight to see the changes in the game and our fairly rapid decline from the elite, we didn’t have the time to fully cement ourselves as THE club outside Liverpool and Manchester in this area for fans wanting to watch top football before we fell away. But modern BRFC, I personally don’t believe will ever need a ground this big. Much better comparisons would be with the post Jack club, we’ve only come close to filling it with the ‘Taking Back Ewood’ campaign. End of the day it’s 31,000 and that’s that. But we will never fill it at the prices we charge now, even in the PL. But with TV revenues we certainly could have a go with reduced pricing.

I personally think it is too big. Think we sometimes look back at the PL era with rose tinted glasses. Post 90s, we rarely had more than around 20- 22k home fans in the ground, often lower. Slightly higher with the £199 ST period. Which is excellent for a club with our demographics, but it doesn’t need a 31k ground. Sell outs only really happened with 7,000 away fans and they often didn’t occur either - the famous Bentley hat trick against Man Utd had around 18,000 home fans in the ground. Since that time to compound it we’ve shed 10,000 ST holders from an already limited fan base. If we did go up and kept STs at £330-400 levels and I personally think we get nowhere near filling it. Now go Huddersfield pricing, like the 2009 era here then we’ve much more of a chance.

Generally agree EiT. If we ever do make it back to the PL it would be interesting to see just how much our crowds would go up by. There’s this expectation that thousands upon thousands will suddenly re-emerge. Of course, some will, as there are those that are only interested in PL. However, our already limited fan base was decimated in 2011 and 2012, this coupled with enormous demographic change in the town this past 15/20 years - ergo an ever more geographically disparate fan base, may mean we never do reach those kind of gates again - though Huddersfield esque pricing would undoubtedly help. Only one way to find out - get us up Tony!

Good insight into the world of management with Mogga: https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2018/october/tony-mowbray-life-as-a-manager/ What did that bloke say in the LT, ‘he doesn’t speak well’ or something. Rubbish! Love listening to him.

So what if the ground’s bigger? Doesn’t make our fanbase any bigger. 12,000 is a decent core to work with and not too bad considering the decade we’ve had, it just looks poor in a ground our size 31,000 seats is a capacity similar to other clubs stadiums from cities with 3/4 times our catchment area. It was built in a time of great strength for the club, but since those halcyon years it has rarely been close to being full - the £199 Premier League season ticket period aside.

I was simply stating a fact Howie, pretty much every club in the country gets substantially bigger gates then they did in the mid 80s, it was the nadir of football in this country, so it isn’t a fair comparison. We obviously have a core support of 11,000 as they’ve kept going through a horrendous period.

Of course, it’s not the Premier League, we won’t be seeing 20,000 gates, but they can improve on what they are now and we need to get away from the eye watering prices we see at the moment. I’m always up for deals, but they need to be decent, last season’s offers (apart from Oxford) were all a bit half arsed to me.

They are one off purchases to see A list musicians, who have a massive national fan base to draw from. Supply and demand. We have bi-weekly tickets to see second tier football with a relatively small, non affluent catchment area. And lots of supply and low demand. Come on chaddy, be sensible.

There needs to be a fan liaison committee set up urgently in my view, separate from the Fans Forum.

Everyone’s crowds were shite in the mid 80s, even clubs like United and Arsenal had half empty grounds, so a daft comparison. And as for chaddy, if you think £30 is reasonable for one game of lower league football you must have a serious amount of disposable income.

Of course Gav, but £30 is not in any way reasonable for lower league football.

Don’t talk tripe chaddy, match day prices are anything but reasonable. £27 in the Blackburn End (£30 with surcharge), £31 in the Jack Walker centre (£34) for one game of Championship football is absolutely insane. Bolton’s prices are bloody stupid too and all EFL Lancs clubs have thousands upon thousands of empty seats, so obviously local fans don’t think they are reasonable either.

Read that they only flew to Israel last night. 5 hour flight, then a two hour coach journey. Doesn’t seem the best preparation to play a game in your best condition...

There’s nothing major we can do about it now, as I’ve said before, season ticket holders make up the vast majority of our support and he messed that up in the summer. I can only hope he’s a bit more innovative next summer, though I won’t hold my breath.

His old approach was to slag off the fans in the ground. He can’t do that anymore as the players are supported to the hilt. So just make up some nonsense about online chatter re the sack and Warnock and hey presto you can carry on with the narrative regardless...

Waggott on our crowds: https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16977667.rovers-chief-executive-discusses-ewood-park-crowds/?ref=mac Sounds quite a petulant interview to me, he has no actual ideas to improve numbers from what I can see, just hoping that this ‘connection with the players’ will simply bring them back. We’ve lost 10,000 season ticket holders these past years, enormous numbers to shed for a club of our size. ’Does the club have a historical big support? I dont know’ Well how about you find out, it may give you a clue. As tomphil has said before, he just doesn’t get that we have a small, largely non affluent catchment area in the most competitive area in the country for professional clubs. John Williams got it, seems like this fella doesn’t. Poor stuff.

Behave Jim, the whole article is based on a premise that a section of the fan base want Mowbray out. It’s total nonsense.

‘Who cares?’ seems to be the approach.

Exactly K-Hod. The LT is still a powerful voice in east Lancs, a lot of folk use it as their main/only Rovers news outlet, so to read articles that paint the fan base in a negative outlet every week just pushes my buttons. As he often uses really minimal issues I.e a handful of idiots talking tripe on social media as the whole basis of his article.

Smith watch, the fool’s at it again. Using a couple of trolls on social media as a basis to have a go at the fans AGAIN, though he knows full well that Mowbray is the most universally respected manager we’ve had since Hughes. No idea why he continues with this nonsense nearly every week. Like I’ve said before it just reinforces this false view of ‘moaning Rovers fans’, when this team gets support win, lose or draw as their full bloodied effort is there for all to see. Dickhead. https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/16974755.our-aim-was-survival-it-has-already-been-upgraded-simon-smith/?ref=mac

I remember all too well the night we beat Liverpool, an appalling Liverpool who were just about to sack Hodgson hearing ‘Steve Kean’s Blue n white army’, I ended up having a row with folk around us, ‘he’ll have us playing proper football’. It was only when all the boardroom turmoil started emerging that such folk turned on him. But you are probably right oldjam, the ridiculous anti Sam nature of some fans just clouded all sense and judgement with them. Alarm bells should have been ringing loudly in their heads, if they liked Allardyce or not.

That aimless jog alongside our players last week as we powered forward for the goal just made me most happy that it’s not us subjected to it anymore.

Can’t find the post that said we waste a lot of our ticket promotions by choosing games with low interest. A good example was those ‘bring a mate’ games last season. One was a winter Monday night against Bury live on Sky - ergo little take up. There will be little, if any increase in the home areas against Leeds due to KO, red button, pricing etc. So why not make it one of the ‘local promotion’ games? You can still rip off the Leeds fans, but actually make it cheap for your own, a game floating fans would actually quite fancy. Big crowd and atmosphere, get folk back in the tent. Or just keep charging £30 in the Jack Walker. From the EFL website: Clubs are required to make any discounts or special promotions (in each case for one match only) available on a similar basis to visiting supporters, unless such matches are designated as ‘local promotions’. Local promotions are permitted up to four times throughout the season as per EFL regulations.

Every single non 3pm game has been on the red button so far this season. Sky are in their rights to show it, it will be on - bet they can’t believe their luck that they still get to show the one Leeds game in about 6 weeks they didn’t actually choose to broadcast! It’s all very disingenuous, if you read the Sky and paper press releases, they make no mention of ALL non 3pm games being on, just midweek: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.skysports.com/amp/football/news/12040/11478037/every-midweek-sky-bet-championship-match-live-on-the-red-button-with-sky-sports However, the EFL statement from when the new TV deal was signed does talk about all matches outside the 3pm blackout being shown. https://www.efl.com/news/2017/september/efl-agree-new-five-season-broadcasting-deal-with-sky-sports/ So Rovers must have known about it, but were happy to gamble that Leeds and PNE would bring 7,000 fans regardless.

Considering the playing staff alone were probably worth more than the selling price, nevermind the club’s assets tells me they were caught with their pants down. Just shows how short sighted it was when TV revenues were rising exponentially. Watford, WATFORD!! are now valued at £350 million. Makes no odds to us, £20 or £200 million doesn’t mean a takeover will work out any better, but it serves those idiot Walkers right.