Rovers at the Toon FA Cup 3rd Round: Saturday 5th January 2019 - 5.30pm

[Stuart]

10 hours ago, The Fish said:

I suppose that's fair enough. If I'm honest the nonsense that the Venky's came out with (Signing Ronaldinho etc.) was pretty entertaining for an outsider. But I honestly don't know of anyone who was particularly bothered about how you treated Kean. 

I wouldn't say Ashley has spent a lot of money. Most if not all of the transfer spend can be attributed to funds recouped from transfers, and of course the monies rec'd from tv deals. We're £150m in debt to him because he didn't do due diligence before buying Sir John Hall out. Also, Benitez approached NUFC about the job, Ashley didn't seek him out and convince him. It's not as rosy a picture as some may assume.

Just goes to show that you only really know your own club. Sounds like you are in a similar position with Cashley as we are with the Raos.

Interesting that you say Benitez approached Ashley though. Unless he has a Geordie grandma the only reason to do that is to get himself back in the PL shop window. Having got you promoted you’d have thought he’d have been tempted elsewhere by now. So he’s either happy (despite moaning about transfer budgets) or on good money on a binding contract - or can’t get a gig elsewhere. Whichever way, I’d sooner have Benitez than Mowbray, no matter how nice a guy TM is - at least in public.

[The Fish]

14 hours ago, Stuart said:

Just goes to show that you only really know your own club. Sounds like you are in a similar position with Cashley as we are with the Raos.

Interesting that you say Benitez approached Ashley though. Unless he has a Geordie grandma the only reason to do that is to get himself back in the PL shop window. Having got you promoted you’d have thought he’d have been tempted elsewhere by now. So he’s either happy (despite moaning about transfer budgets) or on good money on a binding contract - or can’t get a gig elsewhere. Whichever way, I’d sooner have Benitez than Mowbray, no matter how nice a guy TM is - at least in public.

Benitez saw our potential, he speaks openly about the "project". To be fair he's an elite coach (goes on the annual UEFA Elite Coach Forum) with limited options given his criteria;

Has to be an English club (wants his family to stay in the North West where they're settled.)

Won't go back to Liverpool, won't join Everton of Man Utd because of his ties to Liverpool.

Won't go back to Chelsea.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd and Spurs wouldn't want him for a variety of reasons.

So who does that leave? He wants a "big" club (I'm not getting into a boring big club debate), with potential to grow. A sleeping giant. So really it's a club like ours, Aston Villa, or... well that's about it really. A lot of the other clubs have a glass ceiling they cannot realistically break in his time. Wolves, Watford, Bournemouth, Leicester, and their ilk are surpassing us at the minute, but there comes a point when geography and ... renown? stymies their progress further. I honestly believe that with an owner who has ambition beyond Premier League survival Rafa Benitez could push Newcastle United into the top half of the Premier League. To join Everton as the best of the rest. 

He genuinely seems to have an affection for the club, has worked hard on rebuilding a relationship between the club and the fans, spent a lot of time getting to know the area and so on. Were we to be taken over by someone who permitted Benitez to spend the money he recouped from transfers, and tv deals I'm sure we'd be watching better footballers play better football in the upper reaches of the Premier League, in the later stages of the Cups and on pitches across Europe.

[gumboots]

Except I'm from the north east so i watch Newcastles results and, apart from that win in the inter cities fairs cup back in 67 that's never really happened despite Newcastle being a big city team has it. In fact, even the Boro have had more success in recent years and they're hardly multi billion pound projects. 

[Leonard Venkhater]

3 hours ago, gumboots said:

Except I'm from the north east so i watch Newcastles results and, apart from that win in the inter cities fairs cup back in 67 that's never really happened despite Newcastle being a big city team has it. In fact, even the Boro have had more success in recent years and they're hardly multi billion pound projects. 

69!

[gumboots]

Sorry about that! My memory playing tricks. The first live football match I ever went to was at St James Park in 1968 when Newcastle played Celtic fresh from their win in the European Cup. I've sort of always assumed it was because we held both European trophies at the same time that they played one another. Blame it on old age. Anyway, Newcastle beat Celtic that day and I was hooked so when my friend suggested we went to watch the Boro at their next home game I was more than up for it. 

[Peteb2014]

replay confirmed for Tuesday 7:45 Kick Off Live on BT Sport

[Stuart]

Well done Rovers for not milking the fans. £10 adults, £5 under-21 and seniors, £2 under-17.

It would be nice to get a sizeable crowd down to show that price matters.

[roversfan99]

Is there not a rule whereby replays have to be priced the same as the initial game?

[AllRoverAsia]

26 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Is there not a rule whereby replays have to be priced the same as the initial game?

I am not sure if there is an actual rule, having looked but unable to find.

£10 is the minimum that can be charged, excluding concessions. Away fans can only be charged more if both Clubs agree.

So good work by both Clubs on ticket pricing.

[Husky]

3 minutes ago, renrag said:

Newcastle fans should be restricted to the top tier of the Darwen End. It wouldn’t be a big loss to Rovers, probably no more than £25k, more than compensated by tv revenue, and would keep the volume down at that end. 

I don't know - the last time I heard F.A. cup away fans making a proper racket at Ewood - a certain player deemed not good enough for mid-table Championship football scored a hat-trick and a Premier League team was dispatched 4-1.

[only2garners]

The last time the Darwen End was full we beat Leeds 2-1. And the last time we filled an away end we lost 4-1 at Deepdale. I would be putting away fans in the lower tier to improve the overall atmosphere. 

[Mattyblue]

I think the top tier away allocation experiment has been a failure and I'm not sure why it's been even brought in. 

Don't think it has impacted our results either way, just makes Ewood look even more desolate.

[Ozz]

Had an awesome 36 hours at Newcastle-took my lad-who is now 10 for Gods sake! His first proper big away stadium (he went Oldham away last year so that doesn`t count).

He loved the atmosphere and was singing the Aberdeen song still going into school Monday morning. 

[gumboots]

That looks like our pics. You can't see the background at all. It just blurs into light

[Mattyblue]

I don’t think our away support has been consistently as good as it is now, numbers and volume, for many years.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Mattyblue

[Stuart]

52 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

I think the top tier away allocation experiment has been a failure and I'm not sure why it's been even brought in. 

Don't think it has impacted our results either way, just makes Ewood look even more desolate.

Disagree. Get them out of the way. It makes them less able to put pressure on the officials for one thing, and keeps the noise at a much lower volume.

We couldn’t have been further away from the pitch at Newcastle.

[Mattyblue]

If a side brings say 4,000+, certainly fill the top tier first and put the over spill downstairs, great way of spitting up a potential noisy following.

But when the likes of Ipswich bring 300, I personally think having them in a corner of the top tier makes that whole side of the ground look pretty tragic.

[Rover_Shaun]

6 hours ago, Peteb2014 said:

replay confirmed for Tuesday 7:45 Kick Off Live on BT Sport

Typical. Never TV for the common man

[Stuart]

8 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

If a side brings say 4,000+, certainly fill the top tier first and put the over spill downstairs, great way of spitting up a potential noisy following.

But when the likes of Ipswich bring 300, I personally think having them in a corner of the top tier makes that whole side of the ground look pretty tragic.

The whole ground looks tragic because of a lack of home support (thanks Steve). The away end I’m happy if it looks empty.

Being the home side should be about home advantage and three points.

[Mattyblue]

Indeed, and we’ve only won one home game out of 4 since the move upstairs in early November, and that was a penalty in a terrible performance against QPR.

2 wins  from 2 when they were put back downstairs - Sheffield Wed and WBA.

So back downstairs for standard followings for me.

Edited January 9, 2019 by Mattyblue

[tomphil]

11 hours ago, Mattyblue said:

I don’t think our away support has been consistently as good as it is now, numbers and volume, for many years.

Touch of the Don Mackay era feeling to it ?

If Mowbray could pull off a flash striker signing on loan with the Venky backing it certainly would feel that way, the belief creeping back in. It takes bold moves like that to kick this club really back into gear. Missing out in the play offs three times on the bounce was gutting but it gave something to play for to the death every season after some very lean seasons at least so after the last few years i'd take a stab at that right now !

Edited January 9, 2019 by tomphil

[MarkBRFC]

2 hours ago, tomphil said:

Touch of the Don Mackay era feeling to it ?

I think the last time we had a regular away following in terms of numbers and volume like we have at the moment was around the 1st division promotion season under Souness and the couple of seasons after.

It then seemed to fall off a cliff after the first few games of 03/04.

[JHRover]

I was long a supporter of putting away fans upstairs away from the pitch. That was less to do with the atmosphere or perceived advantage to the opposition and more to do with being able to charge away fans higher prices than home fans. As a regular away traveller I feel aggrieved that other clubs hit us with high ticket prices and home fans get admission for less and yet we do nothing to those coming to Ewood.

There isn't really much point if we only move the small supports upstairs whilst allowing those with more than 2,000 to remain downstairs.

The way it should be done is, for example, when we play Bolton at home, they should be upstairs purely so we can charge them £30 each to get in, whilst allowing admission to Rovers fans for £20 or less in the lower tiers.

It starts getting silly when for example we played Norwich and there must have been 100 Norwich fans downstairs. Some will have been disabled supporters but there seemed to be quite a few who clearly weren't disabled as they were sat further back and were jumping up and down when they scored.

[Mattyblue]

Exactly, they’ve got it the wrong way round.

[Pedro]

On 05/01/2019 at 20:52, blueboy3333 said:

In the two games against SUFC and WBA he had something like 90% pass rate so that can't be right. Didn't see the game tonight. 

It can be right. 10% of passes were daft ?