Hope so, John. May just get a couple of pints coming my way.

Wouldn’t create any sort of atmosphere at Ewood. When the singers relocated there, during the last few seasons of our PL days, instead of sitting up next to the fence next to the away fans, to create some atmosphere/banter, they all positioned themselves as far from the away fans as they could get. Under the Radio Rovers studio, you couldn’t make it up, can’t think of any other fans, anywhere, that would have done that.

My lad has £10 on him to score 20 goals this season, at 1000 to 1. 17 to go.

An excellent piece. As he says at the end, he had twenty years playing, twenty years coaching and then almost twenty years in the media. Yes, he was lucky but, at the same time, cream rises to the top and that’s one of the reasons that he’s been right up there for that length of time. I know a few ex work colleagues who are Burnley fans, who are quick to take the p!ss at our current predicament. The Clarettes are in their seventh PL season and apart from a couple of very good keepers, they’ve had barely a good outfield player in that time. All bread and butter journeymen footballers, nothing more. My reply to them would be Dunny, Duffer, Berg, Short, Jansen, Hughes, Cole, Friedel and so on. Despite our rise to the top and winning the League during the Dalglish years, I think I enjoyed the Souness years just as much because there was a nice blend of experience and youth, with the latter having come through our academy when you include players like Tiny Taylor and Damien Johnson. Well worth the listen if anyone is still thinking about it. I think Graeme had a tear in his eye at one point. I certainly did.

I’ve not even mentioned the riches of the vastly improved tv deals that came along only a few seasons after we were sold. TV deals that have meant clubs like Burnley have been able to maintain a presence at the top table with relative ease.

‘In it for the long haul’ normally implies owners who are willing to put their heart and soul into a club (or any other business, for that matter) and stay involved for as long as it takes, to either maintain standards or improve them. This set of uninterested, absent landlords have done the exact opposite, have relegated us twice and put us in a position where our standing in the Championship is looking frail to say the least. We are only going in one direction and it’s not an upward trajectory. Protect Jack’s legacy? What a fucking joke! And a question you posed earlier about where would we be if we had run them out of town. The answer is probably still in the Premier League. We were an attractive, stable, relatively successful, family run PL club with state of the art training facilities and a supporter base of 20-22k, most of whom were season tickets holders. The Walker Trust sold us down the river and got rid to virtually the first buyers who appeared on the scene. Given time, they could (and should) have found more suitable buyers and certainly ones who would have upheld that legacy.

Probably a good half, or more, of our present fan base think Venky’s are a good thing. ‘Where would we be without them?’ comes the whine…’Nobody will buy us,’ comes the whimper. Well have a look at little Wigan Athletic then. Almost relegated from League One. Selling all their best players after going into Administration. Almost lost their ground. Tiny fan base. Surprise, surprise, somebody has bought them. Who would have thought it? These things don’t happen. Well, that’s what the bleaters of Blackburn think. Wigan now sold 6k season tickets as a L1 club, and they have only been on sale for three weeks. If Venky’s aren’t kicked out (and they won’t be, our passive supporters have already proved they haven’t the stomach for a fight), the status quo will remain. Except, it won’t be a status quo because there will be a downward trajectory. Until Venky’s leave, we are only going in one direction and our crowds will continue to diminish accordingly. If we aren’t already, we’ll become the laughing stock of the Lancashire town clubs. We had the chance to do something about it but fecked it up.

You’re not far behind Andy 😉😆

😆 I keep in touch via one or two Facebook sites Tony, so I’ve seen the pictures.

If you can’t see Darwen Tower, it’s raining. If you can see Darwen Tower, it’s about to rain. 😆

Corporate speak for, “we know we don’t have enough people answering the phones but we don’t give a feck.”

As a guide to the level of crowds we may now expect to see at Ewood, I am currently in my twenty first season of following Wigan Warriors. The attendances at Wigan, on the whole have been pretty good, ranging from 10k or so when we play an average to poor team with a small following to a full house of 25k, when we play St Helens on a Good Friday. The last few seasons have seen a gradual decline in numbers, for a variety of reasons but I have never experienced a sub 10k crowd, for a league game, in all that time. Friday night’s game against Wakefield (who brought 25-30 fans) drew an extremely poor crowd of 5,555. 😢

NM the goalkeeper..

I would give Grealish that link up role between the two holding midfielders and the attack. Whilst he has played mainly from the bench, whenever he’s come on he has caused problems. He’s good in tight situations and the ball sticks to his feet. As soon as he came on, last night, the Italians either stood off him or fouled him. For me, he did more in his cameo parts than the likes of Mount did in the whole tournament. I think Maguire in particular and also Pickford deserve special praise. Only two goals conceded in seven games speaks for itself. Both of them were immense and gave an assured confidence to the team. My main criticism of the players is that they are still unable to play their way out of trouble when they are pressed and playing against the top teams. The passing and movement from the Italians was top notch and they also pressed right up when Pickford had the ball in his box. He was then unable to roll the ball out to any of our defence and ended up hoofing it. If you hoof it, you lose it unless you are able to win the second ball which, last night, we couldn’t. It was a lesson from the Italians. We’re getting there but we’re not there yet.

Terrible foul on Grealish. Could easily have been a red.