Stuart

Just catching up. Its incredible the sheer delight from some people that Raya didn’t get promoted to the PL presumably because that somehow “proves” Mowbray was right to sell him and buy Gallagher, while loaning an inferior keeper. Rather than admit Mowbray was wrong and be disappointed that we didn’t get a cash windfall. Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face! Raya is a huge prospect and will eventually get to the top division. 24yo, huge amount of experience in a position whose peak age is around 30, and finished third in the Championship in the final game. Lets hope any sell on isn’t time bound.

We seem to have such bad luck with sell-on fees. We need to start putting proper price tags on players.

I take your point but some areas, e.g. the family stand would have a problem accommodating everyone. If it is currently 75% subscribed (it’s more like 90% mins) and they can only have it 50% occupied then one-third of existing ST holders there will have to be moved - which will probably end up being the BBE upper (as the Riverside as is will probably be spaced out and full - and not in a good way). If they didn’t mind the iFollow element they could easily get them on sale and start this season like they finished the last. Our club is amazing really and so inconsistent. Don’t want to entertain refunds but don’t want to accept money from any fans willing to support the club. Now the beer idea is a good one - and one long overdue in terms of treating fans like human beings instead of cattle. A few of the bar staff walking round with beer on tap, masks, visors and a card reader. Especially if there are empty rows between people.

If I was to buy a season ticket today, what would my seat number be? Would I be able to sit with my mate and his family from a different household? If everyone renewed would they just space everyone out until they run out of seating and just shunt people into the next stand? Those clubs who have already sold tickets have no idea how they are going to deal with it. Presumably the guess is iFollow until normal service is resumed? Rovers won’t want the expense.

What saddens me is that right now just getting the club to REACH it’s 150 year anniversary will be an achievement under this bunch of unfit owners and inadequate club officials. “Penny wise and pound foolish” just about sums up our lot - except for the “wise” of course. The height of our club’s import placed on its heritage is Jack’s head stuck on a lolly stick and stuck to a metal railing. They don’t even bother to clean the stadium fixtures of the mold.

Next season is one of the most unexceptional championship line ups as I can ever remember. It will be fine margins between every section. We need someone who has the edge in tight games and can mastermind a win when going behind or to change a 0-0 into a 1-0. For a neutral I expect it to be very competitive again. For Rovers fans under Mowbray it will just be more of the same week in week out. WDLWDL repeat to fade. We need a spark. A talisman who can lead the team. Not a Bennett at full back or a Gallagher out wide. Massive rebuild this Summer before we gear up for another go in two years. Right now only the most hardened of hardcore fans would renew with the state the team and club are in. The idea of growing the fanbase hasn’t entered anyone’s heads and the COVID restrictions will be a blessing for many at the club. Top half would be a good finish given the state we are in but surely nothing less than a top six berth will keep Mowbray in the job? Would 8th be seen as yet more progress to many? Any building supposedly done to date has been out of papier-mâché.

Shares an agent with Conor Mahoney and Sam Hart (and Hayden Carter) https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/omni-sports-ltd/beraterfirma/berater/4434

Another factor... Many other clubs have fans who care about their club very deeply and will happily put in the money to see them through these hard times. Perhaps they are even sufficiently well off that they can afford to do so, and with a large catchment area, even a small percentage of the local population could generate this kind of cash and easier commitment. Maybe they don’t have rich owners so they know that if they don’t help themselves nobody else will. Conversely, we have a board who think nothing of alienating their supporters because the supporters don’t pay their wages, Venkys do. We keep being reminded that without them we go under (so our money is worthless). Our catchment area is small and further dwindling, with no effort by the club to address that - instead just putting up prices for those who have stuck it out. Our local fans live in a hugely deprived area, which is singled out as being especially susceptible to COVID-19, and remains under further sanctions meaning earning money is even more difficult (heck, in the height of irony even the club has furloughed staff - almost certainly local people!). As a result of all of this, the numbers of Rovers fans that would be prepared to handover their cash without any guarantees would be small. Then we don’t even bother to put them on sale?! The reason is probably two-fold. The prices that the FD will have calculated they are going to have to charge, and the need to get this backed off in Pune before they can even do so. Yet, in all this chaos, we are supposed to be grateful to have Venkys as our owners?? The club is being run on an shoestring, with no decision making powers in the UK, let alone Blackburn but they continue to cover the loses generated while trying to minimise them. This is what this club ‘washing its own face’ looks like, fine, I get it. But I could stomach it far more if the Raos weren’t the mega rich owners that we are led to believe. We would at least have STs on sale and a belief that it was our club to protect - and the CEO wouldn’t be on £300k!

I’m genuinely surprised that every club hasn’t taken the opportunity to do this. Everyone starts on -12 so nobody does. Cynical and immoral but with the pandemic potentially taking out half of them you’d think it would be something they’ve considered.

What has the guy got that Tyler Magloire hasn’t? Oh, yes, Spurs on his CV. Next.

Yet somehow he was outbid by Coyle during the Rovers reverse auction interview process!

Did you even read the conversation before joining? Context.

BCD makes it easier.

Personal view: Arma’s goals will drop off when Dack returns and takes up that free role position. Arma back out on the left and getting fewer opportunities. I doubt we could shoehorn in two false nines so either Arma makes way or becomes a true nine, just not a target man. Let’s hope I’m wrong because if Dack and Armstrong can get 15 goals apiece we will be well up there. All we need now is a keeper, 2 centre backs, and a left back.

I see what you did there. ??????

Bauer was coveted by Mowbray for at least 12 months and became available on a free with us in pole position, and it fell through because Mowbray apparently told him he would have to earn his way past Williams. He has since gone on to be an ever present for another Championship club having made the step up from L1. Sub-standard he is not. Even Adarabioyo had to wait for injuries to get into the team but he didn’t care because it was part of his apprenticeship for City. He may be a good player but ultimately it counts for nothing, and we are back to square one despite having allegedly thrown a fee at it - probably in desperation - and are no further forward. Bauer with 12 months in the team would have at least been a start, rather than renting a stopgap. This old fashioned “when men were men” approach from Mowbray is why we are even having this debate. Mowbray would I’m sure insist he was right to test Bauer’s “character” even if it has ultimately cost us more money that we don’t have.

Didn’t say I agreed with it. I was suggesting why Mowbray did it - and trying to find a positive. No way would I have given out month long extensions in our apparently precarious financial state (at a day-to-day level) but the mistake was giving these players new deals in the first place rather than just this last month.

Seems to me that there is a journalist and/or agent somewhere trying to big up a fee by lazily creating a link to his Spanish nationality. Raya, Arteta, Guardiola. He’ll probably end up at Huddersfield.

What that says to me @philipl is that fans matter. 12th man and all that. Influencing referees is our job, our duty, I’m pretty sure I’ve personally got players booked in games. Usually by drawing attention to opposing players’ misconduct and making a referee deal with a situation. In BCD those situations don’t occur. It’s why teams like Liverpool and United have always had favourable decisions in home games. Is it a bad thing - or is it the essence of the game?

Did he say he would if we didn’t get to 70 points? Genuinely missed that.

If I was betting: “because it was the right thing to do”. Knowing you will be treated well by “the club” may go some way when dealing with player personal terms. Players talk to each other and a quiet word of “don’t worry he’ll look after you” won’t hurt if the wage is a low ball. While I think that Rovers should have been more on the side of fans (stop the guilt trips about a few refunds “harming the club”) instead of rewarding non-contributing players, which must have hurt the club financially, at least we aren’t giving out paydays to the likes of Murphy and Etuhu.

What needed to happen was not selling Raya but bringing in a keeper who could at least push him for the number one jersey. Leutweiler just made him (and subsequently Walton) undroppable - which is a very unhealthy position to be in. For club and keeper. We also needed (need) a new goalkeeping coach. Someone respected in the game with ‘gloves-on ‘experience. A scientist with a laptop should be involved in fitness and conditioning and not in an area which requires learning from yours and others mistakes. Watching videos of other keepers may be fine for inducting youngsters but not an elite footballer.

The Championship is much lauded as being ‘highly competitive’ but it could just as easily be described as ‘highly inconsistent’. In this division, teams get promoted with the momentum of stringing good runs of form together. This happens when you keep the same team week after week, with some quality off the bench when needed. Managers who build this kind of team rightly get the plaudits but it is the approach that gets promotion to the PL. Conversely L1 is about having the best squad, and the slog of attritional football. Mowbray was successful with this but seems to think he can use this same tactic in the Championship. It’s interesting the parallels with Smallwood Smallwood as a player is a cameo of Mowbray as a manager. Respectable and successful in L1 but not up to the required standard at the next level. (Even Mowbray Mk1 knew what was needed when he fired West Brom up as Champions but has since regressed). Now that Smallwood has gone everyone agrees that his level was L1 and the same will be said about Mowbray. Right now it feels as though we have a test match batsman trying to win at Twenty-20. Yes, he might stay in and steadily get runs but that isn’t what’s needed.

Now we have no keepers!

And yet the opposite is also true. If they get away with it, it would be a travesty. Hugely unfair on other clubs - especially Barnsley. The rules were known before the season started. That said, despite having no sympathy for Wigan at this time, I agree with your sentiment. What I would prefer to see is that owners are held directly accountable and NOT clubs - which I firmly believe are “owned” by the fans - mainly through emotional investment but they are also helping to fund it. Trouble is, what would happen if owners or limited companies were punished - a huge fine might mean the entire club folds as a bitter owner liquidates rather than going into administration? Some ways I see that this could change: One, the FA, PL and EFL get serious about the fit and proper persons test. There has to be a five year plan with some guarantees - I.e. cash up front for at least two seasons - with future debt not secured against the club or it’s assets (e.g. players or buy-and-lease-back stadiums) - goodbye Glazers et al. Two, move to the German model where any owner only has a 49% share in the club, with 51% owned by clubs. This would be symbolic of course as the 49% would be stumping up most of the money but they would no longer be able to treat the fans with utter contempt. They would be involved in decisions about change of ownership. Some owners don’t see a club, a community, they see prestige, kudos, and maybe some kind of tax benefit. This needs to stop. Fans cannot be the only ones who suffer when things go wrong. This is where points deduction works yet doesn’t work: it can take away the prestige from an owner but it also impacts fans - for off-field events. Bonus Three, scrap FFP in it’s current form. Control, not cash injection but debt secured against the club. Unpallatable Four. Franchise the PL and leave the rest of the proper football league to be run as a sport, not a business - and watch the leeches crawl back to their swaps. Leftfield Five. Clubs can only be owned by local people - and not conglomerates. The Jack-was-right-and-everyone else-was-wrong model. Football Armageddon but with the new football hierarchy genuinely linked to their communities.