RevidgeBlue

In the light of how things eventually panned out under Souness I think "insightful" and "prophetic" are more accurate descriptives than "negative" USA.

The biggest plus about these changes is David Brown's closer involvement as Trust representative. This really should have happened a long time ago and can only help matters assuming he likes what he sees. Also good news if Tom Finn has a more influential role. Always comes across very well in my experience. A crucial part of John Williams new role will presumably now be to attract new sources of investment into the club. All I can say is let's hope he has more joy with this than with filling the ground. Judged by any objective criteria his performance over the last couple of seasons has been singularly unimpressive. We've failed to hold onto our best players, and attendances and performances on the pitch have declined dramatically. He's created a negative amosphere around Ewood in the past by continually banging on about survival and the message will have to be a lot more positive in future before any other suitably interested parties are likely to come aboard.

OK, having got rid of the best striker available to us on the books we're now looking at forward options of Dickov (ugh) Gallagher (much to prove) Jansen (even more to prove) and Johnson (not good enough). That lot would struggle to make much of an impact at Conference level on last season's form. I sincerely hope Stead's departure signals the arrival of a slightly cheaper "older" signing like Cole or Phillips AND a top quality signing like Keane/Bellamy/McCarthy otherwise we will be in big trouble.

Excellent points Glenn, I've never understood the potential attraction of being able to purchase a S/T in April myself, I would have thought the object of the exercise for most people was to keep the money in your own account until the last possible minute. There has to be some incentive (i.e. reduced price) to buy a season ticket early so would the advertised price reduction satisfy people in the event we were subsequently relegated? Would the people buying later not expect it even cheaper than in the first place after the discount? These problems of course would not arise with an all year round rolling DD scheme. All that would be required would be an adjustment of the monthly payments.

I would agree that I can't see why we're letting a young striker with great potential like Stead go for the sake of a fee that could possibly rise to £1.8m. I do not agree that Savage is a waste of money. In a recent interview with the LET he was refreshingly honest about his time at Ewood thus far stating that he hasn't shown anything like his best form due to injury. He said that whilst obviously no Gerrard, Keane or Viera, he believes he is the best player of his type in the Premiership and compares favourably with anyone else. I expect him to show that next season. Must say Savage is getting a lot of stick for one injury hit half season compared with the likes of Emerton and Neill who have been pretty abysmal for most of the last two campaigns.

As far as the direct debit scheme goes the cut off date is again ridiculously early. IMO this would work best as an all year round rolling scheme which you have to cancel if you don't want to go any more. This would have the advantage of keeping monthly payments to a minimum and people would have to make a conscious effort to cancel rather than to apply. Inertia might just win the day. As far as the marketing aspect of the club is concerned, the only positive comment I've seen has come from Hughes about wanting to compete in the top half of the table. The silence from above has been deafening, nor has there been any transfer activity or speculation to whet the appetite. In terms of declining attendances it's a case of trying to stem the flow after the sale of star players, several seasons of negative comment about survival being the be all and end all, and a couple of seasons of poor performances at Ewood. Having initially salvaged the wreckage of the Souness era, hopefully Hughes and his seemingly very capable coaching staff can achieve this.

A renewal of my ticket in JW upper central would be £540. On perusing the season ticket pack it seems I could relocate to the family stand, (£385) and take my 2 daughters age 14 and 12 (£70 and £60) and still save £25!!! This doesn't seem right from the club's point of view somehow, almost like stealing money off them. Not sure what this says about our prices, probably that the pricing for juniors is truly exceptional value, (too cheap really?) possibly also that the pricing in JW upper central is too expensive in comparison to the rest of the ground.

I wanted Preston to go up if only for the fact they'd have been absolutely nailed on to go straight back down. If Wigan are actually given a £25m transfer kitty by Whelan, I can't see any of the three promoted clubs being the usual automatic relegation fodder next season. I think the likes of WBA,Portsmouth,Charlton,Fulham,ourselves and Newcastle will have to be very much on their mettle next season. When he was here Souness constantly said that being in the Premiership for 5 years would be the making of us as a club. Unfortunately, unlike Bolton we've not moved on at all in that time.

There were a couple of interesting Scum stories in the press yesterday. Firstly it was reported that a condition of Glazer borrowing so much money was that he had to undertake to cap spending on players to around £25m p.a. until 2014. That may not buy very much by then. Secondly Nike were making noises about possibly taking their option to exit their £300m 13 year sponsorship deal in 2008. A spokesman commented that with Chelski champions, Arse winning the Cup, and Liverpool the Champions League it could be argued ManUre were only the 4th best side in the country. Things seem to be unravelling nicely.

Have to agree with 1864 and SG194, I don't mind a modest 6% price increase over 2 years bearing in mind prices were frozen last season but as we are competing in the Premiership and receiving Premiership TV and place revenues I want to be watching Premiership standard players. Three seasons ago we were watching Cole and Duff, now it could be Dickov and Kuqi? C'mon Rovers get a grip!

Hear, hear. 318592[/snapback] Yeah like we are overwhelmed with british talent Friedel USA Neill Australia Nelsen New Zeland Todd English Matteo Jock ( non talent) Tugay Turkey Reid Irish Pedersen Norway Emerton Australia Mokena South Africa Dickov Jock also add into that Gresko, Encklmen, Johnson 318611[/snapback] Fair point, was thinking about this after complaining about Liverpool's lack of British talent. We usually field at least five British players in our eleven. 1) Gray or Matteo or McEveley 2) Todd 3) Savage or Flitcroft 4) Reid 5) Dickov or Stead or Gallagher That sometimes becomes six if Thompson starts ahead of Emerton. There's a big difference between two and five or six which I actually think is the right sort of blend. I still can't really see how the neutral British soccer fan can be expected to be any more excited about the current Liverpool outfit achieving success than say someone like Deportivo La Coruna. To the extent it was a stirring comeback and a triumph for the underdog then yes it represented everything that was good about the game. Again not something necessarily associated with the Liverpool of the last few seasons.

Can't quite agree with that, how many British players are there in the Liverpool side? Spanish coach? I can't muster up any affinity for them at all and I used to love Shankly's and Keegan's Liverpool and had massive awe and respect for Paisley's Liverpool. I also agree with Abbey that anything which makes one of our rivals stronger is a bad thing from our point of view. Recently the top 3 have been light years ahead of the rest with nothing much separating the rest in pure footballing terms. Anything that propels a fourth club onto that loftier plane can not be good for us. All that said I am extremely pleased for Gerrard who has had to carry a very average side on his shoulders over the last few seasons and who has had to take some very unfair criticism recently IMO.

Hmmm.............. I'm really no more of a fan of Benitez's Liverpool than Houllier's but I suppose you have to give them credit for coming back from 3 down.

Now 3-3 after a flukey penalty rebound after the keeper saved. Pass me a strait jacket.

Oddly now 3-2 after two goals in a minute from Pool. Surely the second rate scousers can't do it can they? THey're not even the best side in Liverpool.

Without playing the video.....I don't think he scored against Forest in the 7-1 I think he scored a screamer into the top corner from 30 yards in that game as well col. Was a fantastic player for us at a bargain price. Came in from the cold at Chelsea and re-invented and re-established himself so successfully he became England's left back. Was quite vocal about the decline of the club post Kenny. Don't blame him for that at all. Let himself down in moscow but I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. Good luck to him.

I really must've been watching a diiferent game. Maybe these chaps should see a few games from the Seventies, then they'd know what a kicking was. Foreign poof. 317243[/snapback] I know this point has been made before, but just wait until Arsenal and the Scum are kicking lumps out of each other on Saturday. Al the commentators wll be chortling about what a wonderfully committed full blooded affair it is etc.

Excellent post Paul, couldn't agree more.

And your reply Rev conveniently ignores the fact that as the Ewood wage bill is already around a dangerous 75% of turnover, it needs cutting not maintaining ... ... and our club cannot gamble sums of £6 million on the assumption that one single player may improve our league position by 6 (or even 2 or 3) places. And the ones which turn into "substantial capital assets" are the exception rather than the norm. Do you think Robbie Savage is going to be a substantial capital asset this time next season? To get back to the initial point before we lose sight of it - there is not one single summer signing that Rovers can afford to make which is going to boost season ticket sales. End of story. 317216[/snapback] I agree fully that the wage bill needs to be trimmed, hopefully though this will be done by cutting down on some of the fringe members of an overbloated squad rather than by lack of investment in the first eleven. When all is said and done every club, not just Rovers, has to take an element of risk in order to try and preserve premiership status. Savage? Maybe not a player who has any potential for profit on resale but a substantial asset nonetheless if he helps bring about a wortwhile improvemnt in our league position over the next couple of seasns. I guess the main point I'm trying to make is that it matters relatively little if any new signings boost attendances, what is more important is their potential to earn us more place mney.

We've even tried the entertaining football bit over the last few years, but although that brought a cup win, 6th place and Europe twice, Rovers fans (at least on here) have since made it clear they prefer 4-5-1 and security. And at the time, ST numbers fell by 3000, which I'm afraid leaves the "playing well" argument redundant. 317182[/snapback] Err......... no Rovers fans on here have made it clear they prefer playing 4-5-1 and winning games 1-0 or failing that not actually losing them than the dire fare and results served up under Souness last season. Two seasons ago we finished 6th and responded by selling our two star players. That had an obvious effect, as has a prolonged period of largely uninspiring home form. Just as damaging in my view has been the air of doom and despondancy created around the club over the last few seasons by John Williams and Souness in insisting that survival was the best that that anyone could hope for. Thankfully we now have a bright young manager who is rightly promoting the hope and belief that we can challenge in the top half of the table next season. I would expect this to halt the decline in season ticket sales, substantial increases will probably have to wait until the players show they can perform consistently well week in week out.

This argument is made again and again and needs to be quantified. Look at what a "quality signing" - the sort which brings in new ST holders or persuades existing ST holders to renew - actually costs. His name is Crowd Pleaser. Lets's say £3 million as a basic fee, and a modest 20K a week on a 3 year contract. Again, rounding down (and ignoring bonus payments and all other costs), you're already at 2 million pounds per year. If each and every Season Ticket at Ewood Park brought in £400 (this is way too high given the number of kids and discount STs), the signing of Crowd Pleaser would tie up the revenue from 5 THOUSAND ST holders EVERY SEASON. There is no way - even if Rovers re-signed Duff, Shearer and Dunn and also brought in (say) McCarthy and Gabbidon - that 5000 Blackburn folk are going to alter their intentions over buying a season ticket. And that little lot would come for a combined fee of around 25 million (assumes Shearer would be a free) and annual wages of at least 12 million. Or 50 thousand new season ticket holders (full price) at Ewood. So the idea that the club should gamble on some "crowd pleasing" signings in an effort to boost Season Ticket sales is totally and utterly out of the question. It's going to be down to the same hard core fans again, and they will have to be content with more astute business from the club in the transfer market - which means frees, loans, cheap gambles and cast offs from elsewhere. 317179[/snapback] Fair point but on the other hand Tris your post (as usual) conveniently ignores the fact that ticket income is currently relatively insignificant in relation to place money. Assuming he is not an additional squad member and someone else is offloaded to balance up the wage bill "Mr. Crowd Pleaser" only has to stimulate an improvement of six places from our current 15th to pay for himself in twelve months leaving the club no worse off with a substantial capital asset on their hands.

Wonderful, wonderful night, didn't think I was going to be able to make it but skulked in at 8.15 and was delighted to see the kick off delayed so I didn't miss a thing. Was a surreal feeling in the first half with the crowd willing on the 95 side as opposed to the current side! Shearer appearing and scoring and finally getting the reception he deserves totally made my evening, let's hope some enterprising young wag obtained his signature on a rolled up contract disguised as an autograph book! Of our side it was a much more fitting send of for Shorty. Tugay did things with the ball that hardly seemed legal, plenty of life in the old dog yet. After a very disappointing campaign Gallagher also showed he has bags of natural talent if he can harness it with the right attitude. Conversely even at this level of play Stead failed to impress on the night and Jemal Johnson looked woeful. The one thing that really caught my attention though was Matt Darbyshire's stunning strike, so clinical it made me shiver. Plenty of hope there for the future perhaps.

Quite a generous report from 1864, I thought this was a very poor performance and even worse game. The main problem was that the whole team was at least a couple of yards off the pace which I can put down to only one of two things: a) Feeling the pace after several very important games in quick succession. or The "phew" factor and mentally relaxing after virtually guaranteeing safety on Wednesday night. I suspect it was more than a). Not one player performed anywhere near as well as he is capable. As such the game barely rates a mention. That said it is harsh to be overcritical as the players have been superb recently.

That article says nothing of the sort. The rule clearly states that if the Champions League winner does not qualify through domestic League position it is then up to the National Football Association (The FA) to make the case out for the team in question (possibly Liverpool) No doubt in practice if the FA intervened then the decision would go in Liverpool's favour, but if hypothetically they declined to get involved then it would be tough according to a literal interpretation of that rule. Of course it seems ridiculous that a country otherwise entitled to 4 teams can not field a 5th in those unusual circumstances.

It's not possible to slander a club but by way of example if a tape could be obtained of the post match comments on talksport on saturday imo much of the stuff said about Todd was libellous and a lot of ill intent on Hughes' part was also implied. speeedie is right though, we somehow need to woo the press back on our side, not alienate them further.