J*B

A dreadful footballer who despite having all the attributes is either nowhere near committed enough or intelligent enough to see the opportunity that’s fallen into his lap. I can’t wait to see the back of him.

He didn’t have many in, to be fair.

Let’s throw the cat amongst the pigeons, given it’s Saturday night and I’ve had a beer. Over the last 8-10 weeks, I’ve somehow been in contact with (supposedly) investors and advisors to the current owners of an Australian football club who have significant investments in land, offices and commercial property across the land down under. They said they have investment (I’ve no proof) to the tune of circa 150M to spend on buying an English football club and are actively in the market to buy one as their main business expands into the UK. I was told Rovers where a club they had identified as a target. Why me, I hear you ask? I have no idea, other than they knew (very loosely) what BRFCS was and I was introduced as a “leading fan’s voice”, which I went along with for the ride Via email (I have the receipts) and one slightly insane 30 minute conference call, I was asked about the potential of Rovers. On the call, they had a very simple mandate: They want a club they can increase the revenue of, has a link to Australia and doesn’t require “Billionaire money” to be successful. I did a sales pitch - mostly because I’m so pissed off with Rovers - and explained that having any owners that weren’t Venky’s and gave a shit would increase fan attendance, the stadium needs investment but the most expensive bits are done, we have a very good academy on some expensive land (which they’d have to buy, too), we loved Lucas Neill and Brett Emerton (I chose to omit Vince Grella) and in my opinion “success” to the customers would be something the town could be proud of, not a top 6 Premier League competing club. I’ve not heard anything in about 3 weeks now and I assume I won’t hear anymore, especially after posting this. There is of course the chance I was duped and equally, the chance they’re real but no better than our current owners. But if an Australian consortium buy an English club for less than 150M in the next few years - or are in the mix to do so - they where interested (theoretically) in buying Rovers and I’ll name them at that point, although with some semi-decent googling I’m sure you can find out who the people are just from this post.

This chap did nothing but mither me on Twitter for weeks. Eventually I got quite sick of it and offered to meet him for a beer in any Salford pub. He told me to meet him at The Stocks Hotel at 5pm and against all sensible advice, I turned up at 4.30pm and sat there with a lime and lemonade until 6pm, at which point I decided he was all talk and potentially not even a real person. If anyone here is clout chasing, it’s “Martin”.

I made the choice 10/11 years ago that the owners and management aren’t to what k want so I go elsewhere or away games.

Of course it’s not, the post literally says it’s a classic shirt. If you keep being an idiot we will ban you.

I can’t blame anyone for trying but I too fear anyone interested in taking part in a boycott to get rid of this lot is already doing so.

You deserve Venky’s.

Honestly this doesn’t need half as much thinking as you lot think it does. It needs 50 local people willing to make a real nuisance of themselves at home games within the law and some funding.

Well they didn’t like us targeting Suhail and Gestede and banning them from the stadium. So start there.

Engaging with the club should have been panned as a plan 10 years ago. It’s a completely pointless exercise.

No. A few hundred, at maximum. There’s already 10,000-15,000 fans missing, that is the boycott. A boycott protest now will be spun as a few hundred and evidence most fans back the manager/board.

When Yasir sees this you’ll get banned from Ewood.

They will almost certainly hire a worse manager. Any decent manager won’t touch it. It doesn’t take a genius to see it’s an impossible task. We don’t really need to do anything if you’re happy not to watch Rovers at Ewood for somewhere between 5 and 10 years. They’ll leave themselves no option but administration if we leave them to it. They’re totally incapable of running a successful football club. The crowds will continue to reduce, the inevitable relegation(s) will come, the budgets will get smaller and smaller and eventually we’ll start again.

And there’s the in-house fighting that always lets us down. It’s no wonder they get away with owning us, we spend more time bickering between each other. For what it’s worth I agree. The coalition has gone very quiet. I would imagine mostly because Glen has taken on a role with the trust and nobody else can lead it. I too completed the Trust’s survey and have seen nothing since. But let’s not forget history. Whilst you where Chair of the Trust - an unenviable role, for the record - the Trust spent years being the “critical friend” to no avail, attempted to get to the Owners through Waggott which plenty said in advance was a waste of time and set up an agreement which the club which they totally ignore. Glass houses and all that.

Almost as if all us “doom merchants” might have been right saying the squad lacked depth and quality all summer, isn’t it?

Which is exactly the stumbling block every time any protest group is started. The only person that’s ever risked putting himself above the pit is Glen Mullan, who had financial and family issues because of it as well as death threats. Until someone’s willing to lead, nothing will really get off the ground. And I’m saying that as someone who’s not brave enough to lead!

“Alan, can you write something to get them excited again after our latest fuck up?”

It's literally only a group of Rovers fans that insist this club disappears if Venkys disappear that can't grasp you can be competitive - and even successful - in this league if you have good operators and a well thought out plan. There's plenty of clubs in recent history getting promotion with smaller budgets, but they get ignored.

I doth my cap to your superior knowledge.

I can see why a data driven approach would show De Neve, Tavares and Henriksson as potentially good signings. They all (currently) fail the eye test though.

I mean you’re the expert. But from where I’m sitting, the ball wasn’t even on the ground, Morishita hadn’t touched it yet, he was maximum a couple of feet ahead of the defender and was about 30 yards from goal. If the ball was at his feet and he was sprinting towards goal ahead of the defenders then I’d totally agree, but given he still had to take the ball down, control it and move 15-20 yards with it before shooting, I think a yellow is fair.

Which is why it can’t be a red. Morishita never had the ball under control, so anything could have happened, therefore it wasn’t a goal scoring opportunity.

Whilst I agree, the screenshot is irrelevant. It only becomes relevant once Morishita has the ball under control.