JHRover

Try to improve and get better as a club? Show a shred of ambition in our approach? After finishing 7th not go out and actively and deliberately dismantle the squad to save money? Don't force out good managers and players and lie about it? Don't treat the fans as idiots (even though a lot are) and treat them with honesty and respect? Make a shred of effort on ticketing to try and increase numbers rather than just income levels? Don't close down areas of the ground and force people away from seats they have occupied for years? Invest in Ewood Park to make it a place people actually enioy going to? Start with replacing the knackered big screen and sound systems? Just a few ideas for starters, things that the club hasn't done anything to address in years and won't. So the chickens come home to roost - people have had enough of what amounts to a group of liars and charlatans running the club into the gutter and expecting people to continue turning up handing over their hard earned limited money for the privilege.

The first available date would have been a week or two after the original date. Can only assume Rovers/Ipswich felt that to be inconvenient but it could have been played and dealt with. Agree it is ridiculous to be squeezing it into this period of the season

Suspect what we are seeing is simply the stooges at Ewood, probably just Suhail and his little gang, feeling some pressure about falling short of their financial targets from India. So probably a storm in a teacup, because all that usually happens is that India has to send some more cash over to make up the shortfall and on it goes. Now if India is unwilling or unable to do that then things could get really interesting. But ultimately it's probably just Suhail and Sufi panicking that, amazingly, after what's gone on here over the last few years, that people aren't buying it any more and are walking away/cutting their financial support. Who could have seen that coming? This lot are so clueless they probably don't draw any sort of link between their appalling conduct and decline in income/support.

The last time I checked the rules allowed up to 4 'local promotions' a season where home fans can be charged less than away fans. So provided that still stands they could designate this as one of those and charge £10 for Rovers fans and more for Ipswich fans. Just as they could put the away fans upstairs in the DE and charge them more for upper tier seating as opposed to the lower BBE. They don't want to do this. They never use the 4 local promotions each season. Any offer to fans usually has various strings attached to make it harder to benefit from it.. Ultimately they don't really want to fill the place up or put out a serious ticket offer. They just want to appear to be doing something probably to cover their own backsides. All this stuff with bundles and bring a friend just doesn't work, especially not in the midweek fixtures. Time and time again the uptake proves it. They don't learn because they don't want to. I doubt they even know about the rule down there. But they'll be looking forward hoping Wrexham bring 7k (unlikely) based off what they did in the cup a few years ago and to that end it's £35 in the Blackburn End for a New Year's Day early kick off. They're only looking at one thing here and it isn't the benefit of Rovers fans or the home ends.

They've won 4 on the bounce and have settled into the League. With the standard of the division they'll be fancying a play off spot. This time last year we were in the top 6 of this league and they were in their first season in League One. Now we go there as underdogs. I wonder if anyone at Ewood wonders why a side like Wrexham can invest and improve whilst we are flailing around as a total irrelevance in the Championship. Must be the project bearing fruit.

Agree. Whilst he remains and they clearly trust him as long as he's collecting his pay packet and playing god at Ewood whilst filtering back to India that all is well they'll probably just leave it and trust that things keep on ticking over. If he goes as you say they'll never bring in competent empowered people to run it. So either they have to plant another stooge to do his job or cut it off even more. I don't read anything into Pasha suggesting we might be for sale at the right price. I doubt he knows any more about the legal owners' intentions than anyone else. I reckon he is just told every summer to run it within certain budgets and that's that. I think during / after COVID the money people took control as opposed to the gruesome four who are in ultimate control. Now it is just a cost management exercise. To what end nobody really knows. Clearly the tab previously was causing them some problems, requiring drastic quasi-administration level cutbacks and reductions. So perhaps when the tab starts creeping back up again and they've no sales to plug it with we might see some action. At the moment they seem content to manage as a lower cost base, but if we remain in this league they won't be able to sustain it.

And just remember, the money they make/save by sidelining Cantwell and selling him in January is more important to the stooges than having the best side possible at a critical time of the season with us embroiled in a relegation battle. It's never been about the football. All about individuals and targets/bonuses.

'January ain't easy ya know' will be getting an airing soon, then it will be 'window doesn't close until the start of February so as long as we've got a few bodies in by then it's fine'. We needed defensive reinforcements yesterday, suicidal decision to sell Hyam on deadline day to the mighty Wrexham, potentially cost us Championship status there and then but hey, at least that money will help them meet their targets from the accountants back at HQ.

Is all this related to why the Rovers 150th exhibition was based at Blackburn Museum (oddly ending months before the actual anniversary) rather than at Ewood Park?

I'd be surprised if it actually happens. Maybe I'll be shown to be wrong but suspect this is as much a publicity stunt as anything. It gets their owners all over the news and loads of positive PR, wins people over. The cringeworthy media videos with Brady, Bellingham and Peaky Blinders. Yuck. But actually getting it done - shovels in the ground and chimneys built - takes a lot more than big talk and famous faces doing videos. Again might be wrong but I'd be amazed if they or anyone else were coughing up £3 billion or whatever it will be to build this in a derelict corner of Birmingham whilst they are a Championship club struggling to fill a 30k stadium. If/when they get to the PL maybe a different matter.

We can't afford to do that. But administration stricken still on negative points Sheffield Wednesday can. Great being owned by billionaires innit?

And all by design rather than accident

They think we are all stupid. I don't really blame them, the majority of the fanbase are. One look at the nonsense they've got away with over the last few years alone tells us that. When you've got people hissing and booing at the likes of Eustace and Travis and silent towards the likes of Venkys and Suhail it's no wonder they come out with this sort of thing. They could literally say or do anything and most of the fanbase would believe/defend them.

Yep but from their point of view it is nearly transfer window time and all that means is another opportunity to raise a few quid, earn bonuses and get the wage bill reduced. Top of the tree there is Cantwell. Probably top earner and likely to fetch a couple of million with 18 months left on his deal. The gangsters running the club will be salivating at the prospect of getting him out the door in the next 8 weeks and in one move meet their target. Reference to relegation suggests that league position/status is a measure of performance here, there's no evidence that anyone from ownership down has ever had any interest in league positions.

I'd be surprised if Cantwell was here beyond January to be honest. We've seen first hand over years now what the people running the club are all about and what their priorities are. Cantwell in no way shape or form fits the 'model' they are imposing and that's before we speculate as to his wage, which is rumoured to be substantial. No way on earth they are renewing or improving a big earner contract so they'll be looking at him, half way through his deal, and the question will be is January or the summer the time to sell? It staggers me that some people still seem to think this sort of thing isn't happening and that there's no way there could be more to it than meets the eye. There's been more than meets the eye on most of the departures over the last few years. Tends to be when it's the club and those running it trying to force people out to achieve their own agendas.