RevidgeBlue

The Derby Arms used to be fantastic about ten years ago before the current chain took it over. Nevertheless terrible news to see the loss of another 10 pub/restaurant outlets.

Do you? If you're expecting Mowbray to wheel and deal his way to success I suspect you'll be sorely disappointed I'm afraid. What's happening to the much vaunted set up of our European scouting operation which seems to have been in the offing for eons now. Still not had enough time to set it up?

To play devil's advocate the previous owners almost certainly wouldn't have hung around to pump in £150m plus to keep us afloat. Imo if we'd been relegated on their watch they'd have run for the hills leaving us high and dry and we wouldn't have seen them for dust. Nothing I've seen from the way they treated their other businesses reeked of class either. They even flogged off Fred's baby Stanley House to the Eurogarage mob and the operating losses on that would never have made much difference to their overall position.

Yes, what's that got to do with anything?

It's still a business. Ideal scenario: Rovers do all they can by offering a full range of options including a refund. Fans recognise the Club are doing their best and no-one asks for a refund. Obviously in practice a few would ask for a refund but the way we've gone about it seems the worst possible approach to me. As for "future offers" what future offers? I'm not aware of any to press. It seems to me that the Club are dipping their toes in the water and seeing if they can get away with it and will only grudgingly offer any sort of concession if people kick up enough fuss. All very grubby and unseemly looking and completely lacking in class.

I have a bit of sympathy for where you're coming from with that comment, but can you imagine ANY other business in this day and age going: "We're going to be offering you an inferior product to the one which we agreed and advertised, we hope you'll just let it slide and not ask for a refund now or expect any sort of credit note in future.' The customer is king and a refund should have been offered as part of a full range of options.

You'll have to excuse my ignorance as I've rarely watched a stream on my laptop before, but wouldn't that make the picture worse? My experience of watching the red button has been that the better quality HD your TV is the worse the stream looks!

To paraphrase from another old classic Stingray "Anything could happen in the next 9 games". I think we see some very odd results, some 5-3 type scorelines and home advantage probably won't be as useful as normal. Fitness will be absolutely key. From our point of view, if we decided they weren't good enough before, I hope we dont revert back to the likes of Smallwood, Mulgrew and I would also say Williams which will probably make the latter an automatic pick.

Great programme, and one that seems to be very rarely repeated.

I thought Bell was much improved before the season shut down. Might have had something to do with him trying to impress enough to warrant a new deal but still miles better than the dreadful Williams at LB imo.

I said something similar to my mate's son, only my T shirt would read "Mowbray out!"

I can't decide if this is a stroke of genius or utter insanity but hot on the heels of the announcement the other day I'm more inclined towards the latter. That said, I'll no doubt have a go so it probably say a lot about me! ?

Do you think it's a wise move letting your girlfriend go round the training ground with Bradley Dack? ?

But if we did sign him no doubt you'd be saying it was a managerial masterstroke! ?

The main thing that strikes me from that list is how heavily we relied on Mulgrew's input from set pieces. And he hasn't even played for us since the opening day.

That would be the worst possible move. He is absolutely useless. It beggars belief that we didn't exercise our option to end him back in January as it is since it seems we knew we wouldn't be looking to take him on permanently then. "He's not good enough and we won't be looking to sign him permanently but hey, I know what we'll do, we'll give him another few months until the end of the season!"

The goalkeeping part surely shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

I did wonder about this, but from the opposite perspective, whether he had made the decision off his own batt and the owners might actually be upset with him about it. Whilst Rovers seem to be a very expensive filly where the V's are concerned, they do still have experiences of running much larger concerns than us and you might have thought that they'd raise concerns about losing core customers in the long run over a relatively trivial refund.

You've got to applaud whoever compiled the report on the game for bare faced front. Saying we now need to "fine tune" our preparations in time for the start of the season. What, so we only get beaten 5-0 next time out? That's the sort of thing you'd write if we'd battled our way to a plucky 1-1 drawer something!

I'm not sure I follow this line of argument. Firstly, I'd be astounded if the Authorities didn't temporarily relax FFP to allow for losses caused by the Pandemic. It would be unbelievably harsh not to. Secondly doesn't FFP run on a rolling 3 year basis whereby you can lose £39m in that period? It would have to be a very specific and unfortunate cut off point for a few refunds to make the difference between us going over or being compliant with FFP. Let's say we have to give back 3k refunds. (If we'd handled it better and "done a Derby" I'd bet the numbers would have been in the hundreds) Even at 3k refunds you're only talking sub 200 k which I know is a lot if you've not got it but surely that could be saved somewhere on next year's budget and if you piss a ST holder off, for the sake of that £60 refund, you'll probably lose a £350 renewal and the year after and the year after that etc etc.

Agreed. If you really can't afford to give a refund, be honest and up front about it and say you can't afford it, it's on you, and you're most deeply sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Don't be sneaky about it and put the supporters on a guilt trip and try to shift the blame and insinuate that whether we remain competitive or not going forward hinges on whether or not you demand a refund. Which of course is complete and utter cobblers. Ironically, if we'd have done "a Derby" and looked like they were being magnanimous and offered a full range of options they'd have kept fan dissatisfaction and requests for refunds to a minimum. By doing it like this, not admitting we're actually in a lot of financial trouble if that is indeed the case, but not offering a lot of refund either and stating it's purely a matter of supporters' conscience, we've probably guaranteed the maximum possible number of requests for refunds and subsequent non renewals if there's any prevaricating thereafter.

Not very encouraging. The "Liverpool are ahead of us in their preparation line" is a bit thin when they only start 3 days before us. 11 subs and Chapman still couldn't get on. What must he be thinking?

I'm not as offended by the £3 matchday surcharge as most. I understand the argument it is unnecessary and that t might discourage floating fans and I wouldn't object to it being removed. Overall though my view would be that if you really object to paying that extra £3, buy your ticket in advance. For those who genuinely don't know until the day whether they can attend, then if you're put off by paying an extra £3 then you probably weren't that bothered about going in the first place. However £7.50 for a (crap) pie and a pint and then advertising it as an unbeatable offer we as fans should be falling all over ourselves to get - do me a favour it's like sticking 2 fingers up at everyone.

They haven't said specifically they are allowing refunds, they have only said that they would prefer it if people didn't take them. They've then attempted to guilt trip everyone with the "We won't have enough money to be competitive if everyone asks for a refund" line. We know all this and I would never have dreamed of asking for a refund personally. However there will be some who would have preferred a refund and I think this is absolutely atrocious customer service from the Club. They should have offered a range of options similar to Derby and specifically acknowledged that they realised some supporters would still want a refund and that any such requests would be met by a prompt no quibble response. We don't know yet either whether any actual requests for refunds will be met with a prompt cheery response, a refusal or a protracted dragging out which will be like getting blood out of a stone. Either of the latter two would be absolutely disastrous for Club/fan relations. You really do wonder what Waggott does to justify his salary. Any old mug could just sit there and test the loyalty of an ever dwindling hardcore by charging them the maximum they think they can get away with. Actually trying to entice more fans into the ground requires a bit more ingenuity and thought. Actions speak louder than words and the longer he is here the less impressed you become whether it is in the form of yet another disastrous transfer window or unimaginative interaction with the fanbase.

I remember that game for the fact that Barcelona, one of the best teams in the world, couldn't get the ball off Damien Duff. They couldn't get near him. Phenomenal player here and in his first year or two at Chelsea.