Agree with Chrisene to a point, but I think Pickering would still be above him in the pecking order and Georgie Gent will probably be around the first team squad. Disagree on Ayari, he saw very limited minutes in this current squad and we now have Travis back who’d be way ahead of him.

If we are looking to bring back any of the loanees we had last year the conversation should start and end with James Hill. The only loanee who added real quality rather than just padded out the squad.

Well that should do Adam’s chances of starting the first game the world of good! Dreadful display, particularly in the middle of the park.

I really can’t be arsed arguing. For about the hundredth time the question of a sell on has come up with people doubting its existence or speculating the figure. It’s 15%.

It is standard. Armstrong was an exception. We got him cheaper than Newcastle valued him at because of the higher sell on.

The sell on is 15% of any profit. Basically the standard sell on.

You can get 50/1 on Adam to win the Young Player of the Tournament award. So long as Southgate is brave enough to start him in the first or second group game I think he is a shoo-in.

We had a far superior player to O’Brien in Wharton. Unfortunately he was dropped for a prolonged period and always played second fiddle to Tyler Morton until he got injured.

We are also hampered by the ridiculous current state of the player identification and recruitment industry. We were frequently told that everyone was aware of Wharton, which I believe this was true, but opinion was based largely on a set of data, and as such he had a fairly arbitrary value attached to him that was met by Palace. I have it on good authority that bigger clubs were concerned about his lack of physicality. They also felt they needed more evidence (data) of him playing at a higher level, so again a lower end Prem club was going to be his destination. There were loads of Rovers fans at the time claiming selling him was a great deal because he was only a player with potential, and “his numbers” didn’t support what those of us who actually watched him properly with our eyes could blatantly see - that he was fast becoming world class. In the immediate aftermath of the sale, anyone who thought we’d had our pants down was in the minority. I was called delusional for suggesting it. Honestly, I doubt that very much negotiation happens these days at all over permanent transfer fees as players pretty much have a book value determined by people sat in front of a computer screen. By subscribing to this way of working we have little to no chance of unearthing any gems in the transfer market, or getting really good deals for our players. Hopefully we move away from being so reliant on data, de-prioritise “adding value” to players, and scout with eyes with a priority on improving the first team.

A lot of players who are praised for their off the ball work aren’t great on it. Wharton will never need to run around like a headless chicken because he reads the game so well. Faultless cameo. Get him on that plane.

Adjusted for inflation there is probably very little difference in what you paid then and todays price.

How low would you like to see the standard adult ticket go? Would dropping them down to £300 be enough? Or would that be not too different enough from what they have actually done? Again, Preston are seen as the benchmark. They don’t offer any reduction in their early bird prices on either senior tickets or young adults. We are far cheaper in both of those brackets. And if a parent is taking kids of secondary school age then our tickets come in quite a lot cheaper than theirs. Our adult tickets are £55 more expensive, but our tickets for those aged 11-18 are £75 cheaper, and our young adults (that run a year longer) are less than half the price of theirs. I’d argue that this focus on providing real value for younger generations is a step towards the exact sort of long term thinking we need. I can’t argue with the phases and I hope to see the early bird period extended. I don’t think the £10 charge will be a preventative factor for people, but rather a minor annoyance. There is definitely a reluctance to provide a flexible alternative, I think largely due to a fear that people who are renewing would opt for that instead of a full season ticket rather than seeing it as a source of potential new sales. There may be some truth to your last point, but to counter, there are a number of fans who are very vocal on here, twitter etc. who are incredibly unhappy with all facets of the club and the people responsible for ticketing decisions, and are also naturally inclined to view everything in a biased way too.

I can only speak for myself, but I’m really pleased with the offering this season. I don’t believe that there is any sort of magic formula that the club could’ve used to spike numbers this season. It was difficult to give tickets away last season. If we had dropped them to £300 across the board rather than £350, how many extra do you think we’d sell purely based on price? A long term plan to re-engage support and make attending games at Ewood a more attractive proposition is needed. At the most basic level, the club will always judge season ticket sales in terms of revenue, and supporters will always judge them in terms of numbers. With concessionary tickets at the level they are - undeniably the cheapest they have ever been - I see this as a step from the club to attempt to boost the numbers while protecting their revenue target. Before any official announcements it was widely accepted/suspected by a large portion of the fanbase that we would see an increase across the board. On here and on Twitter it was stated that people had inside information and a 5% increase was happening. I’m delighted this wasn’t the case. While I wish they had gone in a bit more committed on the Riverside introductory offer with something closer to what we proposed, and I wish they would bin the idea of early bird and tiered pricing completely, they have exceeded expectations in terms of concessionary tickets and offered a discount across the board. So yeah, I think it warrants being pushed as a success story.

I’m no fan of the whole early bird thing, but it seems absolutely standard across football for some reason. We pushed on making season tickets available at a pro ratad rate right the way through the season. I think there’s a lot of work to be done on making attending games more attractive. Watching on TV is definitely an inferior experience, but every game at Ewood needs to be treated like a major event to get people off their sofa and in to the stands, particularly with the new TV deal. There is obviously a way to go, but the pricing has certainly taken a move in the right direction, particularly with the focus on affordability for younger fans. This will offset some of the attrition that will undoubtedly occur, particularly in terms of numbers. They could halve the price of all tickets across the board and we’d still get nowhere near to selling out Ewood - people have plenty of reasons they wouldn’t buy them including all of the ones you’ve stated above and more. I expect a higher number of new season ticket holders than normal this year though, along with a decrease in renewals.

There are people who struggle to feed and clothe their families, and it’s an issue than goes far deeper than season ticket prices. Unfortunately some people will always be priced out given their personal circumstances, this applies to everything. In terms of what the club have done with the current season ticket offering though, it’s really good value for families.

I think the club have actually made a real commitment to making it affordable for families. Kids tickets have never been cheaper. Obviously Preston are seen as the benchmark by a lot of our supporters, but when comparing the two complete offerings you can see that we fare a lot better on seniors, young adults and secondary school age kids. The three tickets I’ve bought this year would’ve been a tenner cheaper at Preston, so neither here nor there. If my nephew was 11 rather than 7, we’d be coming in 121 quid cheaper.

If you ring the ticket office and ask them to link the accounts they will do. You will then be able to renew in a couple of clicks. Worked for me anyway.

A complete overhaul of the scouting department could be a real positive. Supposedly we’ve been stuck on the same player lists for every window in recent memory, so hopefully this will represent a clean slate. Our permanent signings over the last couple of years have been very hit and miss, and our loan business has been diabolical. As long as we get replacements in in a timely fashion I don’t think the current exodus is much of a concern.

I sympathise. I was only relying my own experience, which was pretty painless.

I’ve tried to renew mine, my brothers, my nephews, and add a new one for my Dad who is getting one again for the first time since Covid. I managed to get 3 of the 4 pretty painlessly, but it wouldn’t let me do my brothers as he will need to do that renewal on his own account. Can’t really say that’s even a mild inconvenience really. I was fine to do my nephews under 12, and presumably as my Dads was a new seat that was ok. I think the reason my brothers was problematic was due to his seat being reserved. Also, 3 season tickets for 3 generations of support for £600 is really good value I reckon.

- Yes, my language was probably a bit more vague than it should’ve been - Yes - Don’t know. Possibly because we didn’t have a lot of room within p&s rules to spend much on transfers

I honestly couldn’t even hazard a guess. I would expect a busy summer though with both incomings and outgoings though.

He was stressing that the investigation was into the activities of the parent company and not the club itself. It’s all pretty public knowledge what has happened, he has only reiterated that it isn’t any activity the club is responsible for. There was no attempts to be evasive, he was reiterated what is stated in the court documents around the first remittance. He believes that the club will be able to remit funds as required, as that is what Venky’s have told him.

I’m not really following here. For clarity, we weren’t given any assurances that all money generated would be put back into transfers. This is purely my opinion, but… We have been hampered by FFP/P&S rules in recent years. Yes, we have contributed to our own downfall in this regard with failure to properly protect playing assets and losing them on a free rather than generating a fee, but we’ve more or less operated on the cusp of the FFP threshold for a rolling 3 year period since we got back into the Championship. If we had really “gone for it” and failed, we’d then have to basically pay for it the following season or two (expect to see Hull do this over the next 2 years). it’s a risky strategy, and the current board are very risk averse. Avoiding sanctions is massively high on the agenda. Through a mix of factors, we’ve generated a lot of additional funds this year. We’ve obviously needed to use the cash for the ongoing running of the club, but what it has done is put us on a good P&S footing ahead of time. This makes “going for it” a lot less risky - forgetting the cash situation, we have enough leeway in the accounts to increase the wage budget over the next few years and to add significant transfer expenditure to the balance sheet. If Venky’s don’t have the permission to remit funds to us for the forseeable, this won’t happen as the money we do have and are scheduled to receive will just go into running costs - like practically all Championship teams we operate at a loss ordinarily. If Venky’s don’t have the inclination to remit funds for us to fund a push, then the same applies. I’d hope that conversations have happened to highlight that there is currently a window of opportunity to actually progress. They have previously had to provide a breakdown, the basic idea appears to be to show that the funds are not leaving the country and are going in roughly the right direction. There isn’t anything to say they can only use these funds for certain expenses. While the last lot specified things like PAYE and HMTC commitments there wouldn’t be anything to stop them adding any other expenses on there, ie transfer fees.

The statement was us minuting what we were told during our MOU meeting. In that meeting it was reiterated that the club wasn’t the subject of any investigation and that future remittances would be allowed to happen, providing a break down of proposed expenditure was given. We weren’t party to the legal discussions and only saw the publicly available court documents, so we can only go by what we are told by the club. Similarly they can only go by what they have been told by Venky’s. I expect it will become very clear in the coming weeks if Venky’s are able and/or willing to continue to send funds over.