Yeah same. Booked it immediately after the game was announced. Got it for 26 with my 26-30 card, 40 without

Mine gets into Glasgow about 12:40 from Preston at 10:04

When I looked this morning it was £40 return or £26 with a railcard? Have they gone up?

Amateurish. No other way of describing it. No such issues for Derby, Hull or Brentford and we are back of the queue again.

I'm intrigued to see what Mowbray will say or do should these new defenders not come in this summer or if we sign a few but start the season with the same team. He made a rod for his own back at the forum promising more than one new defender to replace those here so he's going to look like a fool if he doesn't get them. Nevertheless here we are with pre season only days away and only tentative links for familiar faces and Mowbray talking about how difficult it is. The only comfort blanket people seem to have is that some other clubs haven't yet signed anyone. Great.

It is what it is. West Brom might have a hangover from the play-offs and a new squad to bed in. There's logic behind it being better to play the favourites early. Fulham another unknown under new inexperienced management. No reason to believe that they will be particularly strong next season yet. Brum at home will be another Waggott Category A game.

Mowbray has hardly helped the situation. If he doesn't want to lose his best players and doesn't want rumours to start perhaps he shouldn't spend his time in India talking about selling him.

Charlton and Brentford away consecutive weekends in February. Will be an expensive week. Plus side is only Swansea away stands out as a real pain of a trip.

We aren't playing a home game this summer. You talk about attendances for these games - how many do you reckon will turn up at Salford on a Thursday at 6pm to watch Stanley play? A couple of thousand at the very most I would expect. Hasn't stopped them arranging it. The point isn't to make money from them or get full houses. Its to play against high profile opposition, build links with big clubs and try to enhance the clubs profile. Cardiff are going on a tour of the USA and Canada pre season playing 3 games. I'm sure it would have been easier and cheaper for them not to bother with it and stay at home playing Newport and Cheltenham but they see the merits in going to America. These sort of things require planning and some motivation. We don't have much of that. Virtually every team in the top two divisions except Rovers and a couple of others have arranged at least one game abroad. Many League One and Two clubs have. We don't do that sort of thing here. If Holt and Stanley can grow then so can we by the same if not greater margins. Easier to convince ourselves that it isn't possible though.

The club

Less than Blackpool have sold to date. Obviously the final sales figure is the important one but surely we are concerned/embarrassed by that and those sales to date?

Comes down to effort. Stanley have an owner trying to grow and progress his club. We don't.

Lets wait and see how crap he is, if PNE are above us next season with a better defensive record whilst we dollop around with the same faces and a loan or two.

Because in comparison to Blackburn Rovers they are not a big club. Never have been and never will be. Describing them as such is negative and defeatist and is getting the excuses in early. I'm well aware that they were in the Premier League for a long time. So were we until recently. Bournemouth have been in a while as have Burnley. Would you be comfortable describing them as huge clubs with the inference being that we are inferior? I'm well aware at present they get more fans than us and have more income than us. That doesn't make them a huge club. I'd rather our manager fought our corner and instilled an attitude of us being every bit as big as our rivals rather than providing himself, the owners and players with ready made excuses before a ball is kicked.

Only last week he described Stoke City and Middlesbrough as 'huge clubs' with 'huge support' and that we've to try and compete with them next season. In my opinion an inappropriate and insulting comment to make in his position as manager of Blackburn Rovers. Not only factually incorrect but unneccessary and unhelpful. If he genuinely believes that then I'm not sure he's in the right job. If he's saying it to try and take pressure off his shoulders then I'd rather he stopped talking. It's one thing bigging up bog standard Championship sides for no reason other than to make life easier for himself. It's another when most of his comments are simply incorrect. Like Bristol City filling their ground every week which they don't. The sort of nonsense comments that quickly erode my respect and patience. By all means play it quiet on talking to the press but don't dare try and put the club down in public or describe some garbage down here as huge clubs. We were far superior to all of them before his bosses turned up.

Mowbray likes to exaggerate massively. He reckons Stoke and Middlesbrough are huge clubs and Bristol City get 30,000 full houses every week. If he's telling the owners this sort of stuff and they believe it then we're going nowhere fast. It was always doubtful that Bauer or his agent were asking for that sort of cash. There's wanting a raise and then there's that. He'll have been on about 5k a week Charlton and will be on double that with PNE. Very hard to take Mowbray seriously when claiming he was demanding 50k a week

Yes I tend to agree. Let's face it these owners have previous for leading managers up the garden path only to make them look stupid at the end of it. Lambert was another promised or led to believe by someone that he would get proper backing, gave them time to deliver it and rather than be made a fool of he walked when it became obvious that they were having him on. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the goalposts have been moved or money Mowbray expected to materialise has disappeared on the whim of the owners. They're capable of anything and don't deserve trust.

What unrealistic expectations does anyone on here have? We're discussing our failure to sign Bauer from Charlton who has just joined Preston for free. I haven't seen anyone demand players we cant afford or big money moves.

No problem with that if we go and get a decent alternative at some point soon. If we don't and then we get the gradual lowering of expectations and Mowbray moaning about costs and wages etc. and we end up picking up a loan to fill in on the cheap then it's a big problem.

Correct but their manager knows what he has to work with, can make an offer and get stuff done because he has a proper Chairman with power behind him and an owner that can be contacted when needed.

It isn't that simple. IF he chose Preston over us that sets alarm bells ringing, especially given we've been interested for 12 months now. Sounds like whatever he was hearing from Rovers wasn't good enough whereas Preston have quickly got the job done. Financially I cannot accept players picking PNE ahead of us. Not when we're losing more than double what they are every year.

How can PNE offer him more than us? How can we lose 10 million a year more than them if so?

The first sentence is a fact. Everything else is my opinion.

Waggott was in India, before then he and Mowbray didn't have a budget to work to. Since then Mowbray and possibly also Waggott have been on annual leave which they are perfectly entitled to.

With Mowbray, Waggott, Cheston and Silvestre in India trying to find out what the plan is and what (if any) money was being made available, who will have being doing the negotiations and when will those have been happening? Seems more likely to me that Alex Neil sorted his budget some time ago, had his holiday at the end of the season, and has since returned and got down to the serious business of making signings to bed in as quickly as possible. We are weeks behind as usual. Time people accepted that. Its sometimes the simple things that make the big difference.