Darlo FC have long left it. A lower league rugby club uses it now with gates of a few hundred folk rattling around it.

Because he’s an FA blazer to his bones. You’d imagine the ‘ethics committee’ or whatever would give him a job for life if they could.

Plenty. Far more cash is thrown about for a start. He had a long contract. You don’t bundle him straight out the door to a middling club who is offering a pittance…but of course the disgraceful owners gave us no choice.

It’s not even a debate. It’s dead simple - it’s the only price he could’ve gone for with the seller being a distressed one. So I suppose it’s ‘value’ then.

Couldn’t care less who they play as long as they are a decent standard to help the players get back up the speed. Get fit, don’t get injured is all that matters. But it just amuses me that it’s the same 4/5 sides year after year after year. Though to be fair we can’t be letting the club secretary organise anything more complicated, they may end up playing Wigan Warriors by mistake.

Obviously a decade in the wilderness has meant a lot of folk on here have forgotten what a top player looks like.

What-ifs of course, but always wondered what Jack’s plan would’ve been if we had gone up in 1989. Would he still have bought the club in ‘91, or earlier? Or carried on with the bits and bobs of investment he made in the late 80s?

Wasn’t there those fans that went to clean Jack’s statue (after asking club permission) and Swag actually went and got security to move them on?

Exactly, and those lost thousands would worry the powers that be at a normal club far more than a couple of hundred folk at the back of a stand chanting about the CEO… here they couldn’t give a feck about the lost fans, but they didn’t half move quick at purging when Swag got an odd chant aimed at him.

Think you know where the friendlies are… Accy, Fleetwood, Wigan, Stockport. The ‘friendlies’ Rolodex is obviously as small as the ‘potential sponsor’ one.

So wait the owners *weren’t* serious when two years ago it was definitely a new dawn (with our sparkly new structure) this time. We had a ‘model’ that was definitely the way forward. ‘Sell on and invest’, ‘incremental improvement’, ‘Brentford’. And the usual Eeyore brfcs-ers who were a tad sceptical weren’t just being their tiresome glass totally empty selves… but might just have learnt something, over, you know, a decade.

Two and a half weeks before they hike them 80 quid. So there’s a long way to go to even get close to last season’s tally by then (as you ain’t selling many more post hike). So stop pissing about and extend the early bird to at least the end of the month, so covering a payday for most folk.

As a Blackburner I’m proud of him. The club themselves, hmmm, all comes across small time, like everything else these days - bit like when fellow feeder club Crewe presumably showed pride in a David Platt or Robbie Savage playing for their country.

I see this debate is still going round in circles. Seems pretty simple to me. Four months after leaving he is strolling around for England like a Rolls-Royce, so how possibly could a measly £18million objectively be a good price? But could this club, at that time, have got anymore? No, because they had pretty much stamped a ‘please buy him, we’re skint ‘on his forehead.

It is very sad, because the game is so cherished here, you can see that with the relatively huge crowds even clubs way down the non-league pyramid get in comparison to any other country. The top division has turned into a monster out of all proportion.

Despite a decade of utter shite for us as they hit the ‘heights’… we still live rent free in their collective heads. Always in our shadow.

He’ll never get near the England side with the likes of Mainoo arou… oh.

And some on here had no issue with the fee, bloody hell 🤦‍♂️

Think people on here fundamentally misunderstand large chunks of the fanbase. It’s not that they don’t have enough fight to go after the owners - it’s that they don’t have any particular issue with them in the first place.

So more Wharton instalments, Sammie and Raya, that’s the bills for this season sorted then. Who we selling next season to get us through more than about one payroll?

They are ‘cheap as chips’, so looking forward to see us heading towards 12k+ sales.

So £350-£450 is actually cheap then? Bloody hell PNE, Bolton, Hudds etc must literally be giving them away. Very similar clubs with very similar fanbases, difference being they want bums on seats, our lot want to hit some arbitrary revenue target the ‘owners’ (Suhail, I imagine) presumably came up with on the back of a fag packet.

£350-£450 is not ‘cheap as chips’, which is why we won’t be selling many more than a pathetic 9k.

*24

I presume the thinking is purely to ensure Swag/Suhail consolidate their power, much easier with all manner of ‘Heads Of’ appointed with discrete roles over one high profile DoF with a large portfolio.