"I really like to play here. I like the players and fans, the club in general, and the league. I would like to stay." Tronstad on pre-match media duty today. Good news, if we were a functioning club worthy of the name. Bad news for Gestede and co, because there goes the excuse they were hoping to rely on that Tronstad has family and roots abroad and that he's set on a move back to the continent. It was obvious in the 3 stooges' interview that they were starting to prepare for that being trotted out as the excuse for him 'refusing' to sign a new deal. Looks like they'll just have to resort to the old 'greedy player/agent' one instead.

We know for sure that over the last few years there has been a significant cut in the amount of money coming out of India to fund the club. Now that might be because the owners simply would rather not send it, it might be that they are unable to send as much as the once did, it might be that the stooges are advising them they don't need to send as much because they can get the club washing its own face and in return get hefty bonuses and perks from the savings they achieve. End result is the same - less cash moving from India to Rovers. They've got away with it the last few years by demolishing the squad and selling off the family silver. Low hanging fruit stuff. You don't need to have a particular set of skills to flog an Adam Wharton or Sammie Szmodics off the back of JDT's outstanding work in nurturing them. You just need to ride on the coat-tails of the coaching staff work, sell them, get a pat on the back from the money men. That little party is coming to an end now, because best case, and it probably relegates us to League One, is they sell off the remaining few assets for a combined few million. However you view buying or not buying a season ticket, or whether you consider it significant in the scheme of things, it all comes back to the same source - Venkys and their ability/willingness to keep funding this. The music is slowing and pretty soon someone is going to be left holding a time-bomb. At best they can stave it off by going to India cap in hand for more money. Maybe the morons in India will simply cough up and keep the party going, maybe they can't/won't any more, and then this wretched monstrous regime comes crashing down for good.

He wants to play 'at the highest level' and of course knows that isn't going to be possible staying here. Says it all given the positions we have been in the last 3 Januarys. When he rocks up at a Stoke or Derby some people at Rovers might consider that to be vindication that he 'wasn't much good anyway' but I'd argue a lad established at this club who would rather join a rival Championship side is the most concerning thing here. Plus we know that whoever we get to replace him will likely be inferior or not our player.

Struggling to think of any other industry or business in the world where paying customers are expected to hand over hundreds of pounds of their money every year to witness that business be deliberately or negligently run into the ground and provide an ever deteriorating product. Where the ownership and management of that business give not a single solitary toss about the views of any of these paying customers and will not shift their approach in the slightest to try and improve, grow, advance the business, quite the opposite infact, they'll do just about everything they can to hinder and restrict it. The regime owning and running this organisation would long ago have delivered total collapse or destruction in any other industry. Yet in football it just starts again in the summer for another year of more. Where everyone, from employees, players, down to fans are treated with nothing but disrespect and contempt, yet come renewal time it's over to those people to come up with the cash so that bonuses can be collected next time around. 'No brainer' seems like a good description of this to me but probably for very different reasons.

Only a few years ago the favourite 'go to' clubs for the naysayers were Derby and Bolton 'Look what we could become if we changed ownership, we'd go the same way as them' They've had to give up on those now that both clubs are in better financial and structural health than us, are getting far better crowds every week, know how to renew contracts and aren't having their coaching staff poached off teams below them in the table. Fortunately the Bury example can still be trotted out although worth noting they are still in existence and they are upwardly mobile - set to clinch another promotion this weekend and expecting over 7000 fans on Gigg Lane to witness it. Their gates are better than times in the Football League and I'd wager they'll be back in the Football League before we are rid of Venkys or see the top division again.

We know one thing - the longer the heat is on Venkys / the stooges the higher the chances of something daft like this happening. It is project distract/divert. They will do whatever they can to turn the gaze away from India and the directors box and if that means sacrificing a manager or making a rogue appointment or two so be it, that grazy train needs keeping on track at all costs and another re-shuffle in the dugout is well worth the price if it gets them another 6-12 months of focus elsewhere. Will this happen? Probably not unless there's serious trouble behind the scenes with Ismael or some sort of renewal clause in the summer that the club are easily able to let slip and him leave. I don't think they want a high turnover in managers really because it draws attention and costs to hire and fire unless you get the very desperate. But I'm sure they will use every weapon in the armoury if the pressure on them and their season ticket targets is high enough.

So today they've released a 'Message from the Captain' about season tickets and 'look forward to writing the next chapter of our story together' I'm at a point now where I'm questioning whether they are deliberately attempting to wind people up or they just have absolutely no idea how ridiculous they are. In his last interview the captain admitted that nobody from the club had so much as mentioned a new contract which expires in 1 years' time. Most of his team-mates are gone either this summer or at the same time and none have been offered new deals either. So I'm not sure how they are expecting to 'write the next chapter together' given such a negligent and reckless approach to contracts and squad building. But I think they are so totally short on ideas and deluded they don't think people will pick up on this.

Isn't it remarkable how just after the big time pressure of the last couple of weeks and fiasco of an interview delivered by the three stooges that all of a sudden we are getting transfer tittle tattle and then Talkshite running with this. Like someone somewhere has pressed a switch and all of a sudden all the talk is back onto players, signings, contracts and managers and not the owners or stooges. Also a coincidence that these stories are being spread by Talkshite and Nixon given their previous alliances and activities where Venky Rovers are concerned. Quite a few of the Arsenal / Glasgow / agency mob have been through the doors at Talksport towers over the years....

Leicester, Southampton and Ipswich will all be dominant in the Championship next season unless they get things very wrong in the summer. The days of relegated Premier League clubs imploding and spiralling down the divisions in chaos seem to be well and truly over, as they are mostly now structured to cope with a relegation and be pretty stable for at least a few seasons to allow them to bounce back. Even those that you might expect to struggle horrifically after failing to bounce back - West Brom, Stoke, Swansea, Norwich - have been fine because they've been able to rely on substantial support from their owners or have been taken over just as things were about to get nasty The only semi-outlier to that has been Luton if they go down this season but I'd argue they were always an anomaly in their promotion and set up and financially are probably set for years once they get their new stadium built.

Two of our directors are Ganhi Babu and Sreenivasa Rao. I'd love to know the grand total of times those two have ever visited Ewood Park, yet I expect both will be on the payroll and won't be on peanuts.

Are those 'Venkys Indian problems' the same ones that according to you aren't anything to do with Rovers and to which Waggott and Suhail have both said aren't preventing the owners sending money over?

If we won our next 3 and by some fortuitous turn of events had a slight chance of the play-offs come the last day I am sure that the 'powers that be' would come up with a way of ensuring we didn't get there. The club don't want the play-offs remember. Waggott confirmed this in his interview in 2023, JDT learned this, so did Eustace.

That's likely still the case yes, Rovers will be still the most supported club in such places (as it bloody well should be ahead of such other clubs) But that's down to location and history and not any efforts the club has made in the last 15 years. And it doesn't excuse the club not lifting a finger in all those years to try and retain or grow the numbers.

All of what you say is true and all of what you say has been self inflicted by the owners and board. It didn't need to be this way yet they have created this mess that is going to take a miracle to navigate through and avoid anything other than a prolonged struggle. I hope everyone remembers this when the shit hits the fan big time, rather than hiding behind nonsensical claims about FFP, parachute payments, low gates etc.

Why is that 'the market we are' and how does that stack up with signings like Ohashi, Weimann, Batth and McFadzean?

Just think, two out of Coventry, Bristol City, West Brom, Middlesbrough and yes Millwall are going to end up in the top 6. Had we shown even average form in recent weeks during a kind run of fixtures we would be right in there and probably in the driving seat for it. Had we kept hold of Eustace I would be pretty confident of being able to overcome any of those sides in a play-off contest, then you have a Sheff Utd side self-destructing, losing to sides like Plymouth and Oxford recently, and a Sunderland side in the strange situation of having nothing really to do for weeks on end as they wait for the play-offs to start - could take their momentum away as we saw yesterday. Another gaping, glorious opportunity squandered and now we get to watch on as dingles get automatic promotion and the likes of Coventry, Bristol City etc, clubs with no advantage over us, get a shot at the Premier League. And our CEO is busy telling us how hard it is and hiding behind 'trampoline payments' The anger and contempt I have towards these people is hard to put into words.

They have decided, or have convinced themselves in a desperate bid to find an excuse to justify their non-efforts, that areas outside of Blackburn with Darwen are 'off limits' due to some supposed rule of the League that we can't market our club in other rival clubs towns. Yes it's that crazy, it is nonsense, even if it was true, which it isn't, it would probably break numerous laws, yet the executive at Rovers hide behind it because it is an easy and ready made excuse to throw out there to cover for their laziness and small minded approach. That way they can just focus everything on BWD, makes everything so much easier. Which is why we have the ludicrous situation of Accy Stanley going into schools and marketing themselves in places like Rishton and Ossy, and nothing at all from Rovers.

I think that's the whole plan. All the talk about rebuild, signing new players, strategies, plans, new ideas, ways of playing - it's all baseless fancy talk to cover for the real agenda which is that the majority of the current crop will either be out of contract (due to the club refusing to offer new terms), want to leave (due to the club being a joke) or the club will want to sell (to raise money to pay the owners bills). Sounds a lot better than the truth of the matter though, which is that cost cutting is the only aim, signing a load of new players is the inevitable result of that approach.

After finishing 7th on goal difference in the first season under an exciting ambitious new head coach, our highest points tally in this league since relegation in 2012, and missing out on an FA Cup semi final at Wembley due to a lasp gasp defeat away at a side that won automatic promotion that season, our CEO goes public with his target for the new season which is to survive in the Championship and expects credit for relaying the pitch and hiring (not buying) a new team bus. Totally and utterly bonkers but a perfect snapshot into the mentality and ambitions of the people working down there. Equally ludicrous is that after making those comments he wasn't immediately axed and shown the door. Any engaged ambitious owner would not have tolerated such but this lot know that they can keep their heads down, not rock the boat and they're on a lifetime gravy train ride. Another 2 years on and they're still going, managed to avoid relegation, pay has gone up, owners must be happy with things, what's not to like? Who cares if we've flogged or soon will flog all our remaining quality and assets, our fanbase has shrunk further, our two last managers have walked out in disgust and in doing so we've lost a shot at promotion. These are all immaterial insignificant issues to these people.

Have we had any of that at any time in the last 15 years? We've scratched at the surface under well meaning but restricted people. Communication improved briefly under Alan Myers, we seemed to have the outline of a workable footballing structure under Mowbray and then JDT/Broughton. They've dabbled with 'next generation' with stuff like the Ewood Express, though positive I do think the actual scale and impact of these efforts are actually quite limited and in comparison to other clubs it is nothing at all special. Accy Stanley make greater efforts with their school shirt initiatives. But ultimately because of the owners these limited efforts have achieved minimal success and have collapsed or broken down in a relatively short period of time. And that will continue under the latest incarnation under Gestede and Ismael.

I'm pretty confident they will be able to scoop together upwards of £5 million if they get things right this summer. Brittain, Travis, Tronstad, Carter, Hyam and one or two of the academy lads, probably Harvey Higgins top of the list. They'll also have their fingers and toes crossed that Adam Wharton gets bought by a big club and then they've a sell on fee to trouser, which at those sort of figures will probably take care of the annual losses in one swoop. Not only that but they will be able to boast about the Rovers' academy and how good it is that he's got a move to a giant club, utterly failing to read the room and recognise how totally ridiculous they are having bundled him out the door mid-season in the first place. In theory sales of 2-3 of those above ought to significantly cut the wage bill again particularly when we factor in the departures of Sigurdsson and Dolan on top, but one thing that never seems to drop very much is the old wage bill / outgoings. It seems whatever savings we make on that front are quickly matched by costs somewhere else....

Yep. Focus your attentions on Gestede, Ismael, players, recruitment, budgets, transfer targets, changes in the academy Don't focus your attentions on Venkys, curtain twitcher or Waggott

The nonsense Gestede has been spouting about budgets, recruitment, summer transfers and plans, all carbon copy of what has been said ahead of the last 3-4 summers. They've shown what they are all about and this year will be no different. They're going to come out with more and more of this stuff as they become increasingly desperate. Only the totally naive would believe them or give them the benefit of the doubt. They're going to dismantle the foundations that served us so well under Eustace, slash the wage bill and then worry about the rest after that. Bored with it now.

Indeed. Whilst any positive change seems a long way off, and getting shut of one or more of the stooges seems by far the easiest option, I think it is important that the focus needs to be on the owners, not their stooges. I predict that in the coming months they will probably turn on each other and Waggott/Gestede will be sacrificed in a desperate bid to protect the owners and their dogsbody from further grief. I hope if that happens people don't see that as job done and a new era being born. The aim/target here must be to remove the root cause of our ills - the owners - and the rest follows quickly. Removing the symptoms of the disease - the stooges - just sees the problems come back again later in a different form. The roots have to be pulled out or it is at best a temporary reprieve. People near me last night suggested that they'd be content if we removed Waggott/Gestede and then got the owners back involved somehow so that they came to games and spoke to fans. No no no. Too late for that.

I found this photo on the Rovers website of the directors box in the late 90s just after Brian Kidd was appointed manager. An interesting comparison almost 30 years apart. The seat once occupied on matchdays by Jack Walker occupied now by Steve Waggott, and old Bob continues to sit there in silence.