7 hours ago, Exiled_Rover said:

Hasn't Fleck retired?

Well if he has that'll be his contract paid up then !

We got 16k home fans on for Watford when there'd have been 11/12k max and they brought 1500 when there'd have been about 700 so i'm sure they didn't lose much.

Waggot and Broughton have wasted several hundred thousand to maybe half a million taking over Flecks contract for 6 months presumably out of the Wharton first instalment.  That money would have been better suited put towards subsidising season tickets in a significant early bird discount.

Keep selling the good players, leave the team struggling and can't sign any decent new ones then the least they can do is give a bit back to fans by encouraging more to commit.

No agents commission in that though.

11 minutes ago, DeeCee said:

Ambitious or out of his depth?

Time will tell.

5 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

Now a ‘pre awards night night’ for 30 quid.

A club that has done bugger all to raise revenue for a decade is suddenly coming up with all kinds of ruses… must be a cash flow issue or something 

Probably just a new ambitious commercial manager who is trying a few things the old farts can't be bothered with.

3 minutes ago, Upside Down said:

Clutching at straws perhaps?

A gimmick, Waggots version of Rwanda.

JDT got this one all wrong when we went down there trying to play an open game against that lot signed our own defeat before we'd kicked off.

Lucky to get away with only 4 so hopefully Eustace will offer something a lot more organised and if we can get a goal up anything can happen.

11 hours ago, Armchair supporter supremo said:

I recall @glen9mullan saying Tugay wouldn't even take part in a charity game unless he was paid well and treat like royalty... So i doubt he'd take a role like this unless he was being offered a small fortune

Unless there is more to the role than the random tweets imply then it does all seem pretty pointless and just a deflectory tactic as others here have said

Whilst most would welcome Tugay with open arms t a role like this everything under this lot is tainted.

Why now and why him ?  Biggest name they could find who they'll throw a fortune we haven't got and he'll pitch up for a while then quietly disappear after the window dressing has been done.

Why haven't we had one of these before ?

The trouble if or when the budget is cut again and more sales follow with little to no reinvestment we simply have to have a guy like Eustace.

If you need to tow a horsebox you won't buy a sports car even if you'd prefer one you have to have something that plods through the shite mundanely everyday.

So in many ways he's the ideal man for that job just grinding enough points to stay in this league whilst using about 40% youth/young loans and hoping one improves enough to be worth something.

All that isn't his fault he's just going to apply substance instead of style to minimise risk, it isn't our fault for baulking at the prospect either.

We know whose fault it is and collectively they continue to take any ambition or hope away on purpose by the looks of it. The dumbing down process, as predicted a while ago, is now in phase 3.

Selling it to anything other than the hardest of the remaining hardcore will be nigh on impossible.  Changing gaffer without improving the budget though is also rather pointless.

14 hours ago, 47er said:

I thought that when Mowbray came, we had a plan to gradually build up the squad over a few years and make it to the Premier League.

Instead we allowed contracts to wind down, couldn't afford to replace those we lost with same quality and have virtually given away half a potential EPL team ( I'm including Ash Philips in this).

The result is we are farther away from promotion than ever, we are struggling to avoid relegation to Div 1, there is no plan, no money and no hope under these owners.

That's why some of us called out all this journey talk bollocks right from the beginning despite TM doing his pied piper job with 2/3rds of the fanbase.

Reason being we knew it would never work under this ownership and something always comes along to throw a spanner in the works.  Just like talk of 'models' was time buying pie in the sky, unfortunate Dack got injured as he might have kicked off the trading model but we all knew deep down anyway that money would disappear quicker than Tony could say ' bag of revels'.

The signing, handling and subsequent losing of Brereton sums up this ownership better than anything, complete farce.

5 hours ago, aletheia said:

Van Hecke. Think i've raised it before -the issue of the quality of loans which has declined.

Never liked Mowbray as a manager but he did seem to get some good loans. Tosin, Elliot etc

Is that:

down to cash

down to Mowbray's network -agents/personal contacts being better than present incumbents

the dysfuntion at Rovers is so well known that we are a last resort

Cash will play a part plus Mowbrays steady hand but we'll have paid bigger loan fees or wage contributions back then.

Now though we have Waggot unchecked by any manager controlling him just picking up the phone and committing 6 month 20k a week deal for a player with a 9 out of 10 chance of getting re-injured.

Well i did say Sunderland had nowt to play for and their crowd wouldn't be putting the usual pressure on them.  Nice of them to switch off completely on the pitch and bugger off home out of the stands nice and early.

We still had to be on the money we've found ways to cock up situations like that in the recent past.

Saints are feeling the pressure so if we can actually follow that performance up there's no reason we can't get a result.  

6 minutes ago, jim mk2 said:

How many goals have we given away not through poor defending but to downright bloody awful goalkeeping. It just should not happen at this level. Priority number one in the summer has to be a solid proven goalkeeper. He doesn’t have to be special, just one who doesn’t keep letting the team down with silly, basic mistakes 

Between the two of them they've gifted several points directly to the opposition this season it's quite ridiculous for a club of this stature to be so weak in that position.

We are right back to the Steele, Jake Kean level of a decade ago and that's pathetic given how much time it took to get the keeper dept decent again.  Jake didn't cost 800k either and a Simon Eastwood would be number 1 in this set up.

It's happening a lot this season bot Cardiff and Brum resembled Ewood there was thousands less in there than the stated gates.

It's making us look normal with stated crowd figures and i think at some clubs it goes beyond just a bunch of ST holders not pitching up.

Sunderland seem to have a lot of empty seats and sparse areas going off tv but gates are usually late 30s early 40s thousand.

Odd, must be a lot o complis issued at these clubs but why ?

Every time i speak to a Bolton fan they say you lot need to do what we've done with the tickets it's one of the single best decisions the new regime made.

My reply ?   Well first we need a new regime because all this one will do is keep it at current levels at best and long term we'll go the other way.

Not been able to hide the usual 20 million in them this time so more number crunching needed to give the appearance we aren't going bust.

By the way how can they sign them off with guaranteed loss covering for the next year if they can't provide the funds ????/

Make yourselves hard to beat boys, hard to beat then build from there.....😃

44 minutes ago, TheKitGuy said:

Say we do get relegated unfortunately, would anyone take Mowbray back on a 1yr + optional 1 yr should he take us back up? 

That's not really going to happen (Mowbray) so it's a pointless debate however i'd say no because we are in a far worse position this time.

4 hours ago, RoversTilliDie said:

To rub salt in the wounds, BBD scored 2 for Sheffield United on Saturday. Just imagine BBD still here  with Sam Szchmodics backing him up. We would definitely be going for the top 6. Hopefully we can remain in the Championship, then John Eustace can build his own team in the Summer with some decent goalscorers signed, the main ingredient missing from the Rovers team this Season. I know we have Sam Szchmodics, but you cannot but all the burden on one player.

We are away at Sunderland and their crowd won't be nervy they've nowt to play for therefore no pressure.

One of the most refreshing things about JDTs time was more often than not we'd be attacking from the off and looking for an early goal.  Not always the case obviously but even then you knew we could move the ball from back to front in the blink of an eye and create something of score against the run of play.

Of course it had its flaws and drawbacks but now we are back to square one as the mostly tepid dour stuff under TM and Bowyer before that.  We had bigger better squads then but if you want nay need to win games you have to show intent especially at home to the Plymouths and Millwalls.

That in turn gets the crowd up and gives it something to get behind and a little expectancy is healthy after it was drummed out of us over the years.

I can understand some of it now and the just don't lose mentality and if we stay up Eustace can point to it being justified and it was the right way.

To go into next season whatever division we are in and know that's going to be served up every week it will be very hard to convince fans there is any intent to do anything.

26 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

Boycotts can and do work… they just don’t work here as the collapse in crowds have shown - they couldn’t give a monkeys.

And it's written off as shit fans instead of a display of desperate angst against the never ending nonsense.

1 hour ago, roversfan99 said:

I dont recall any bids for Brereton mid season. Just the ones including from Nice in the summer when Tomasson came in.

We've been known to actively try and sell players before.

I think the truth with BBD was we were being too nice again with the player just like the others who left for nowt because no one at Ewood really gives a toss and the owners only seem to become involved or made aware at the last min.

If he was made available at that point someone would have bought him, where did the 8 mill talk come from ?

Anyway as i said way too nice they knew the Spanish club wanted him and he wanted to go there so no boat rocking just let him run the contract down and go for free. I often wonder if these issues are the real reason they decided to ignore Mowbray and let him walk as he seemed to have a job for life here.

Waggot should have been booted straight through the door after him i'd lay my last fiver we'd be in a better position now even if only slightly.

I think it's quite possible Waggot was brought in by the same people who brought in TM and several managers before him.

That in itself should say something and also there was talk years ago of the shadowman being involved with a certain agency at some point in the past.  

For me it's quite simple those two have a cushy number here and did for years under Mowbray but because of forces higher up that came to an end.  A new model and way of doing things was implemented that way alien to them and took away their total grip on things in Blackburn.

They ended up with a DoF and head coach who were telling everyone how things really should be done if we want success.  That signalled a potential end to the cushy just give us our budget we'll cut costs and hit modest targets and plod on and not bother you gravy train.

Now they've helped stick a knife in all that they are desperate to get back to what they were doing before.

He just hasn't got the bright goal capable options here that he had at Brum after tightening them up, tight games you need people to nick them or options on the bench to chuck on.

Here he has one good spell a season Dolan, one goal every blue moon and always crying off Gallagher, always trying to get fit again JRC and a bench of Telalovic and Markandy who couldn't hit a barn door.

That's the difference.