Stanley like to get the ball down and play football, Smallwood would genuinely struggle in that set up. A huge reason they are spending circa of £400k on the pitch this summer is to curb the cancellations but as much so they can play their game.

I often toy with the idea of the club literally going for broke with pricing to answer any doubts about attendances. For the ease of maths 10k @ £200 is the exact same amount as 20k @ £100. The club could be transparent and say we are doing this to tempt back fans, encourage new fans and reward existing fans. If it doesn’t work and the club is worse off the pricing strategy will revert to original pricing the following season. A problem does obviously arise when a tiered season on season price rise comes in, but the hope obviously has to be the experience has made fans want to come back season after season and pay a little more. More footfall will surely bring in higher revenue, as the vast majority of matchday items for sale have huge mark ups and also more footfall encourages bigger advertisement revenue in the ground etc.

I think he made a few appearances for Stanley in the Checkatrade Trophy, I seem to remember they had a few wallopings in the games he played in.

Thanks for the detailed info, much appreciated ... I still don’t want to buy a football club!

I suppose when times fall very grim (now!) you start to look back and pick holes in the considered "successful" past of a managers record. Was last season as good as it could have been? We didn't completely take the league by storm with the biggest financial clout and certainly didn't destroy every team in our way. A lot of last season was mirrored by actually winning games against some awful competition and a magnificent social media campaign that had fans feeling we had our club back. This run doesn't look like ending because we keep trying the same things that don't work, you just don't feel like the manager feels any pressure due to distant owners and his mate being the Chief Exec.

It’s complete and utter madness. I always say if I had £100m and Venkys gave me the club debt free, my cash would run out before the club could self sustain, how as fans can we ask people to spend that money. Some long hard questions need to asked of how much is being taken out of the game by players, managers and agents.

Jeepers!! £187 in wages for every £100 of income. Venkys have “spent” over a quarter of a billion quid. £108m in loans and £147m in shares ... madness! Football is crazy!

Another thread on same topic.

I don’t think it helps who was in the picture to be honest, of all the players in the squad we had the most woefully under performing player of the season and a fantastic player that fans feel doesn’t have the right attitude to make good of his undoubted talent. Had the picture been of say Danny Graham, id personally think he has busted his balls all season and deserves a break. Footballers are spoilt babies and cancelling this break would have been counterproductive and if anything would have been seen as “giving into the fans” by players. I regularly listen to the John Parkin and Chris Brown podcasts and they talk of the mentality of players and fans relationship to time off and going out drinking , if you are winning it’s team building if you are losing it’s taking the piss but it’s the same players having the same down time win or lose.

Agreed, he needs dropping for his own benefit. I don’t ever want to see a goalkeeper look as lost as Jake Kean did in the end so for his own sake Raya needs taking out of the firing line.

At least we completed our away day checklist - Awful goals conceded. Raya concedes a howler.

Is it “devaluing” the product long term though. In the 90s as a School kid in Accy I got free/ cheap tickets through school and became a season ticket holder for 20 years. A massive problem is that we employ people in Waggotts role who have to get short term results and hammering loyal fans is a freebie. Joys of modern football hey!

I’ve always thought Hyndburn in terms of Gt Harwood and Rishton was Rovers, but in Accy I always found it to be a far closer mix but swinging towards the “higher achieving” of Rovers and Burnley amongst the young. I do believe that Stanley are actually hurting Rovers, as I strongly believe that a good percentage of their increase in fan base has come from fans walking away from their own clubs rather than being new to attending football matches. I strongly believe that Rovers should be doing all they can to pull in the young, as others have said get hundreds of tickets out to the schools every game. I simply cannot see how it cannot make money if as little as 2-5% take attending Rovers more regularly. I think that a good number of our fan base have gone long term/ forever, can you really blame them? Football is an absolute mess, as a football club whether we want to admit it or not we are on life support. We need somebody (like pretty much all clubs outside the top 5 premier teams) to fund the club as a huge loss making venture, not so we can see great football and be vastly entertained but so footballers, agents, managers and Sky can get richer. I understand why fans are broken, as life gets harder for people the rich want to get richer and inexplicably they want more brass from Joe on the street to fund it through higher ticket prices, higher in stadium food and beverage prices and higher Sky tariffs.

My bad, I’ve been wrongly informed. It’s £110k per month. Still eye watering really!

I’m still absolutely astounded that the guy is on £120k p/w at Chelsea! He declared it on his court papers over a driving offence.

Exactly, lack of effort and imagination seems to flow when it comes to the Ewood experience. I know a lot of people don’t bother with a pint but I’d say a hell of a lot of people who don’t attend have found other things to do on a Saturday and a chunk of them may well go and enjoy a few beers. If you can enjoy a few decent quality beers at the football before and after the game with friends or family the game kinda falls into the background and the “day out” is the important thing. I actually think the club should be trying small things to bring back hundreds of season ticket holders just as much as the headline cut price ticket deals to tempt thousands of walk ons.

I remember a few years ago, might have even been during the premiership years they had a wainwright stand at the back of the Riverside. I often went and had 3 or 4 pints, then a pie. The stand disappeared after not too long and I haven’t bought a pint at Ewood since as it’s all over priced rubbish. I do often think that having a proper set up of decent beer in the fan zone would be profitable, Burnley do it, Stanley do it. We seem to just offer beer that has the highest mark up and nothing on the real ale front. Our nearest geographical rivals seem to have deals with Bowland Brewery for good beer, why can’t we?

I have to admit of late I've seen two instances when I would expect team mates to "step in", yesterday Smallwood was surrounded by Sheff Utd players after his challenge and I would expect even for mind game purposes our players to front them up and say "we are up for this fight" it didn't happen and the rest of the game certainly proved we didn't fancy the fight! Also when Birmingham scored their penalty, Raya did some messing around with the ball and he was barged by their lads and not one of ours backed him up. Little battles and mind games are not being contested which I find hard to swallow if I'm being honest.

Teams pay huge sums to analysts to come up with ways of winning. Yet most people on here could tell you how to beat us - We tire dramatically after 65 mins leaving huge gaps. Attack our useless left backs. Swing balls into the box as we seem to have an inability to defend crosses. Slide passes between the centre half and full backs they don’t have a clue what to do! If you get one keep coming at us as we won’t stop wobbling. I’m so pissed off at making the same woeful mistakes.

Have to admit I felt a little sorry for Steele too in the end, he just looked like he wanted to cry! At the same time I still remember when he played in our relegation season and no matter how well we started the opponents always seemed to score with their first attack, terrible goalkeeper. I don’t really think any of the managers came across particularly well, the chairman was an absolute moron too and basically felt all problems were down to Rodwell not walking away from about £3 million for nothing!

Zero arguments from me on that point BUT I stand by my point. Give me the club debt free tomorrow and I have £100m in the bank, I believe I would run out of money. How the club can be appealing to anybody to buy astounds me.

Every time the finances come out at pretty much any club I am always staggered that anybody would own a football club. If I had £100m and Venkys gave me the club debt free tomorrow, I’d still be of the belief that my money would run out before I could get the club “self funding”. How much longer can football continue to run in this way, multi million losses are just the norm?!

Not sure if it’s new news but “price of football” on twitter has put up details of our finances up to March. Major points drawn on are. - Debt is £124 million. - £15 million loss for that year. - Venkys put in £19 million in shares. - Wages were £15.7 million. - Net transfer income was £471k. - Highest losses in League one history.

Woah, the corporate quote will be “well we tried an offer AGAINST TABLE TOPPING Norwich”. Waggott won’t miss a trick!

Rodwell for the penalty was pure hungover on a Sunday morning pub league stuff!!