Mattyblue

Cheers, Adam. I’ll be checking in with Gordo tomorrow.

It was always going to sell well, but nobody foresaw this well, including the club who were obviously caught on the hop. But that’s football, circumstances and momentum can lead to surging demand. So let’s enjoy the occasion and drink in Ewood in all its glory. However, one off games aren’t important in the grand scheme of things, like you said games coming straight after will be 12k - the vital thing is to increase that base level so every week sees a substantially busier ground. How? Sell more seaso…

End of the day it was always going to go this way due to increased foreign influence. But like so much else in English football that has changed in the past ten years, is our game better for it?

Then just days after the window shut JDT went too (after it was clear he was soon to be on his way all through January). So a bit of a daft decision to let the captain go, wasn’t it.

He’s right on that score though. When was the last time we all got giddy about a big crowd… and actually won

Just read through that. The plethora of random folk we’ve had masquerading as executives here this past decade. 🤦‍♂️ Amazing the club’s still plodding on at a decent level in some ways.

The Travis move was ridiculous. ‘But he’d fallen out with JDT’. So what? He was literally weeks from the sack, a completely non-sensical decision to loan out the captain when facing a relegation battle (unless it was all to save three months wages)

Not sure WBA will be going for a bloke just sacked by their arch rivals…

I have addressed your provided ‘evidence’, I just disagree with it. The club could not have possibly envisaged weeks and weeks ago when this went on sale that we’d sell more full price walk ons for this than any league match in 40 years. Just ridiculous to say otherwise (and I say this as a staunch critic of the club’s commercial operation).

Too much loyalty to players that have peaked by Pep. Ferguson would have had the likes of Walker sold in the summer, he certainly wouldn’t have brought Gundongan back.

Biggest turnout for walk ons for a full price league game in c40 *years*? You expected that for a game at £33 to £40, on Sky when we were plodding around second division mid table when they went on sale? Most folk have gone back home from all over the place by 4th Jan, it’s not Boxing Day when that is the case, we drew a game there four months ago, is that some big event? The six game streak wasn’t on the horizon when they went on sale, Nobody could have foreseen this, so let’s not pretend otherwise. *However, that doesn’t mean the 1,000 seats the club are deciding not to sell shouldn’t be put on sale right now, they have foreseen the demand this past couple of weeks so no excuses.

We would be stronger, absolutely no question. Yeah I’d take it.

Nobody could have foreseen this. For a full price match this may well see more walk ons sold for a league game for probably c40 years.

We’d be straight back down an infinitely stronger club. We got beat 9-0 but ended up in the Premier League, I’d get over it pretty sharpish.

Why is it crazy to think we might lose this game?

Yep, if we lost 4-0 in a couple of weeks but then got to wave at them as we went past to reach the PL it would be just as sweet, maybe even sweeter, the game would have been a total pyrrhic victory for them. Anybody obsessing about one fixture is as small time as that lot used to be (and what we used to take the piss out of them for).

What on earth are you talking about Rev? What ‘work’ is Travis ‘doing’ for him? No inkling that Tronstsdt’s discipline in there has freed Travis up?

Yep, if we ‘collapsed after Christmas’ how were we still in with a shout of the play offs on the last day considering we were never actually right up in the top 2 to start with (I.e 1991/92)? We were pretty consistent till April.

So if it isn’t unreserved seating why won’t they be selling the additional 500 seats in the upper tier, if required, then?

No, we won’t, however we do have a good Christmas for once and you can imagine another spike in demand. ‘Sorry, you can’t come as we’ve decided not to sell a few blocks of the ground’.

There’s the two closed blocks in the Riverside and JWL too currently. But of course we can’t sell them as we need that Berlin Wall level of segregation for such an uniquely hostile Derby.

An often half arsed attitude in training is what I’ve heard re Buckley, which Eustace doesn’t stand for. His career will quickly fade away if he’s not careful.

Strange season, appalling away from home, as good as ever at Ewood, Shearer possibly even better than before considering he was in a rapidly declining team. Massive strategic errors that summer and our chance to have a sustained period at the top (my view was one that we could’ve have competed to around the Abramovich era, then petro-billions would have usurped us), and that decade at the top would have made us the undisputed club in the north west outside Manchester and Liverpool, especially considering the likes of Burnley and PNE were nowhere, just think of the coaches that came from all over, the supporters clubs that had been set up. The fanbase would even now be substantially larger, a Venky buyout would probably never have happened. We blew it in the summer of ‘95, that team stumbled over the line and needed rejuvenating, loyalty should never come before progress - Ferguson was the master of that, he was ruthless in breaking up his teams when he had spotted a few had peaked, it was all a bit too cosy here, and that was that.

I bet if the club came out with a figure right now it wouldn’t be 24k. It’s all guesswork as we don’t know what the ‘true’ capacity is anymore, especially when it comes to how many corporate seats will be full in JWU central as they are always greyed out.

I would’ve have done if results were poor, they weren’t.