January Transfer Window.

[Miller11]

  On 02/02/2023 at 11:15, Paul Mani said:

Nah, just saying it as it is. I liked the Hughes era too. Vs what we’ve had since it feels better than it was. Vs us at peak…it was just, ok.

As for “superb” Mark Hughes managed us 04-08. During that time, our average crowds started at 24k, DIPPED to 22k then 21k before a little resurgence to 23k at the point where Hughes left. Awkward.

SO, going back to my point….the drop off in attendances started from 96, having won the league in 95..if you pull the timeline out it’s a fairly consistent, shallow drop until we fall out of the PL when it drops off a cliff, For the reasons I stated. 👍🏼

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Obviously our attendances rose in Jack’s time and peaked at the time of our greatest success. There were fluctuations over the following years, largely depending on the pricing.

You’d be mad not to expect some drop off when we were relegated from the Premier League, but not to the extent we saw. Back to the point I made in the earlier post the hardcore or core support should’ve grown. It’s crazy to presume that the 10-15k we’d grown the fanbase by during the Walker years were all flighty, fairweather spectators there for a day out, who’d simply stop bothering once Ipswich were coming to town instead of Man Utd.

As I said before, there is only one comparable “off a cliff moment” in our history. 1960. See the fairly crude graphs below!

What we have now isn’t a natural level, it’s a fanbase that has been battered down by poor ownership decisions and a badly run club. There are a large number of supporters who are still engaged enough to care deeply about the club who don’t attend games for a multitude of reasons. Price is a big one, obviously, but there are plenty of people on this forum who aren’t priced out but have made a conscious decision not to attend. They still care enough to come on here and be furious about our transfer ineptitude, analyse our performances, and discuss all things Rovers with fellow fans. And there’s lots more in the wider world.

You could argue that in the 80s pretty much anyone who was really interested would go to games. It’s not the case now. There’s a hell of a lot more the club need to be doing to re-engage the existing supporter base, and that’s before we start talking about attempts to grow it.

[den]

  On 02/02/2023 at 11:32, Mattyblue said:

You are saying it like it isn’t.

In the Venky’s arriving year of 2010 we had just registered a 26,300 average crowd for 2009/2010, the highest since 95/96.

The support was in no way declining. These owners are 100% behind the decline.

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I think you know that Paul’s trying to say that crowds dropped under Allardyce because of the non entertaining football. Without actually saying it.

They didn’t.

[DavidMailsTightPerm]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:05, den said:

I think you know that Paul’s trying to say that crowds dropped under Allardyce because of the non entertaining football. Without actually saying it.

They didn’t.

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When did John Williams cheaper Season Tickets come in - this will have influenced attendance as well.

[Paul Mani]

  On 02/02/2023 at 11:47, tomphil said:

You'll find in the Hughes era a season ticket hike that didn't go down well as well as match day ticket increase which impacted the crowds. Then there was a better deal and reduced walk on prices, all this can be fact checked if it doesn't fit your agenda of course but often it's a case of basic economics.

As we've seen with cheap deals at Preston, Bolton and good early birds at the other lot.

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Jesus man, what agenda!? The point I made was based on attendances that in fact started to tale off from 1996, steadily (barring a couple of years) until Venkys came in which accelerated the drop off, such is how utterly shit they are at owning a football club!!!

The attendance drop off before Venkys isn’t a criticism. It was a symptom of our population, socio economic situation which was leading us back to our previously steady 8-10k gates.

Do I think we’d have retained another 10-12k supporters by staying in the PL? Yes, lots of people are enamoured by elite level sport. Are Venkys culpable for that subsequent drop? Yes.

So, it leaves us with 10-12k of die hard fans attending games now, much like the 8-10k’s we had in the 70’s. 

 

[ben_the_beast]

Why are we talking for for multiple pages about attendances? Threads get derailed but could this not be discussed on its own thread. With the mess we've made of this transfer window it's not as though there is nothing on topic which we can discuss. 

[CrouchingNunhiddenCucumber]

  On 02/02/2023 at 09:51, goozburger said:

Slight correction to what I said earlier. According to Sharpe, it's a 09:00 deadline today, with an expected same-day decision.

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Just can't see how it gets through, it'll set a precedent that the won't want other clubs to follow 

[Mattyblue]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:09, Paul Mani said:

 

The attendance drop off before Venkys isn’t a criticism. It was a symptom of our population, socio economic situation which was leading us back to our previously steady 8-10k gates.

 

 

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Highest gates since 1996 the year they arrived, 26,000 average crowds.

So how were we heading towards 8-10k gates before they arrived? Tied yourself in knots here.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Mattyblue

[Paul Mani]

  On 02/02/2023 at 09:07, Mattyblue said:

But they weren’t falling as Venky’s arrived. They were at their highest level since the mid 90s, so your whole argument is moot.

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Zzzz look at the numbers. There is drop off if you draw a line from 1996 until Venkys turned up. Venkys seasons in the PL were actually similar to the messiah, Hughes average attendances!

Going down creates the most noticeable drop. Which is exactly my point.

[BankEnd Rover]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:14, CrouchingNunhiddenCucumber said:

Just can't see how it gets through, it'll set a precedent that the won't want other clubs to follow 

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Yeap it can’t happen in my eyes. Imagine if it did, we got in the play offs and he scored for us to go up…I would be outraged if it did get approved & if I was any other club in the EFL…Have they approved anything like this in the past? 

Edited February 2, 2023 by BankEnd Rover

[den]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:08, DavidMailsTightPerm said:

When did John Williams cheaper Season Tickets come in - this will have influenced attendance as well.

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Of course, every bit helps. ST prices aren’t the biggest driving factor for attendances though.

[Mattyblue]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:17, Paul Mani said:

Zzzz look at the numbers. There is drop off if you draw a line from 1996 until Venkys turned up. Venkys seasons in the PL were actually similar to the messiah, Hughes average attendances!

Going down creates the most noticeable drop. Which is exactly my point.

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You are making so sense whatsoever. Crowds were literally at the highest level since the mid 90s as they arrived. 

 

[BankEnd Rover]

Did it not happen to West Brom last year with Onomah? They said it’s similar and it get rejected…therefore surely this has to be the same.

Edited February 2, 2023 by BankEnd Rover

[den]

As for the two transfers, I think if the league have asked for the other documents there’s every chance that the deals will go through.

Edited February 2, 2023 by den

[BankEnd Rover]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:20, den said:

As for the two transfers, I think if the league have asked for the other documents there’s every chance that it (they) will go through.

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Is it just not an appeal?? Everyone has the right to appeal don’t they? 

[Northcote blues]

Take the attendance drivel out of this thread please

[phili]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:17, Paul Mani said:

Zzzz look at the numbers. There is drop off if you draw a line from 1996 until Venkys turned up. Venkys seasons in the PL were actually similar to the messiah, Hughes average attendances!

Going down creates the most noticeable drop. Which is exactly my point.

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When we were relegated under Kidd we lost a small % of fans.

When we were relegated under Venky's it went of a cliff. 

I am not sure you can say it was the relegation that caused attendances to drop, it was rank mismanagement as well as the fans not being listened to.

[Paul Mani]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:14, Mattyblue said:

Highest gates since 1996 the year they arrived, 26,000 average crowds.

So how were we heading towards 8-10k gates before they arrived? Tied yourself in knots here.

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Read my first post and this is REALLY really simple.

There WAS a drop off in attendance between 96 and Venkys landing from 26k to an average of 22/23k with a couple of 25k’s. It certainly wasn’t improving. Fact.

The drop off accelerated once Venkys got in with the critical point being relegation, where we lost 7k supporters overnight.

Then a mixture of terrible leadership and not winning dwindles that 15k down to the 10-12k we have now of hard core fans.

Which is historically where we were until Jack Walkers intervention.

 

[den]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:22, BankEnd Rover said:

Is it just not an appeal?? Everyone has the right to appeal don’t they? 

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The league rejected the two loans because the complete paperwork hadn’t been submitted in time. 

[Ewood Ace]

  On 02/02/2023 at 06:43, Paul Mani said:

I think you’re mistaken. If you look across the board, fan attendance for any club is dependant on several factors. Including, primarily - population size, economic profile, fan/club culture and success.

The standard ‘8000’s’ in the 70’s & 80’s were artificially modified by Jack Walker in the 90’s through winning, creating aspiration and improved culture (I’m 41, it was without doubt the greatest time to be alive). 25-28k supporters at Ewood was Uncle Jack wringing every bit of feel good factor out of a working class town. Incidentally, the last time we had 25k+ at Ewood was final day of League 1 season we won promotion because that is our potential when things are going well.

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Attendances dropped pretty much throughout the country in the 80's mainly due to rampant hooliganism and record unemployment. Every club in the land gets bigger crowds when they are doing well (other than those few that sell out every week regardless) but 15 years after we had won the league and a decade after Jack had died we were still getting average crowds of 25K. 

 

[Paul Mani]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:22, Boz said:

Hells bells, it's rare that I ever respond to an individual's point, but this is just so tiresome on here.

Paul Mani, multiple folk have tried to write down your error that it was 25 years ago when there was a downturn in attendance, whereas it was 2010, plus shared tables and also as Miller11 just did in a surely easy to see graph.

But still you are not grasping the facts, please take your nonsense elsewhere, cheers. 

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The facts. Go and look for yourself. 

[Mattyblue]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:24, phili said:

When we were relegated under Kidd we lost a small % of fans.

When we were relegated under Venky's it went of a cliff. 

I am not sure you can say it was the relegation that caused attendances to drop, it was rank mismanagement as well as the fans not being listened to.

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Keeping Ke*n on in the summer of 2012 was the biggest factor for such a huge drop (a drop you don’t see anywhere else on relegation). 

[CambridgeRover]

Mod clean up soon please, watching paul ramble about imaginary attendance figures for 4 pages has been tedious

Edited February 2, 2023 by CambridgeRover

[Mattyblue]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:25, Paul Mani said:

Read my first post and this is REALLY really simple.

There WAS a drop off in attendance between 96 and Venkys landing from 26k to an average of 22/23k with a couple of 25k’s. It certainly wasn’t improving. Fact.

The drop off accelerated once Venkys got in with the critical point being relegation, where we lost 7k supporters overnight.

Then a mixture of terrible leadership and not winning dwindles that 15k down to the 10-12k we have now of hard core fans.

Which is historically where we were until Jack Walkers intervention.

 

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We had 26,000 average crowds the year they joined, the highest for 15 years, ergo by definition they literally had been improving.

We were not in decline, simple as that.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Mattyblue

[Ossydave]

  On 02/02/2023 at 12:20, BankEnd Rover said:

Did it not happen to West Brom last year with Onomah? They said it’s similar and it get rejected…therefore surely this has to be the same.

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Yes

I don't think the exact specifics were ever revealed, Bruce moaned about it for some time though.

Hopefully something like this is dealt with on a case by case basis and some common sense will prevail.

 

Ultimately this IS the EFL though and their incompetence is usually off the scale so........

[Sweaty Gussets]

Have we signed anyone yet??