Exiled in Toronto Mk2

You’re a smart bloke Rev, surely you can’t believe that a few hundred less people in a ground that’s 2/3rds empty anyway will do anything? We usually can’t agree amongst ourselves on here the attendance to the nearest thousand. “Turn off the taps” to billionaires? They get richer each minute by more than you and I have spent on Rovers in our lives. Now, a chicken on the pitch every week would make the news globally, and might, just might, get through to them because it mocks them, and their stewardship of the club, personally.

Excellent suggestion IMO. The two potential flaws in the boycott plan are a) it completely depends on action by fans not currently aligned with the coalition, and b) should it fail to be noticeable, it would be spun by the club as showing the coalition was just a splinter group unrepresentative of the fanbase. In-ground action by those who attend would negate both issues.

Which eyeballs and to what end? The local MP has lambasted them in the Mother of all Parliaments several times so I don’t think they are going to be bothered by a few social media posts. Awareness is only a relevant goal when lack of awareness in a specific target group is a barrier to success. Who would you want to become aware and how would you think they could helpfully act once they were aware?

Come on, Man. At least give it a go, it’d be worth more than all your other posts combined!

I would think all fans would agree with something along the lines of “15 years of Venky’s ownership has resulted in gradual stagnation, decline and loss of ambition. The lack of hands-on interest at the top and parade of chancers at the helm has combined to gradually erode Jack Walker’s legacy” as a start point, followed by asking what could/should be done. Where the debate with many is lost is two-fold IMO: “Pasha Out” is meaningless to anyone outside the coalition, and the maximalist position of Venky’s Out Now is better than not is an opinion rather than a fact. Yes they are bad owners but it could be argued there’s a lot of them about, hence multiple clubs’ fans calling for their owners to eff off. I think many people not aligned with the coalition, while not enamoured with the current situation, wouldn’t see Venky’s as a terminal cancer where any surgery is better than not when past Bolton owners did turn off the taps, the Oystons openly pillaged Blackpool and Darlington’s (or was it Hartlepool’s?) owner burnt the main stand down. Venky’s give us what appears to have zero importance to them - money - but give us nothing of what is more valuable to them - time - from which would flow attention, direction, engagement, humility etc. I would think most fans would agree we need both, but currently a lot of fans place significant weight on the money aspect and worry about losing it.

The last few pages demonstrate, to my mind at least, why the coalition remains a minority group. Endless circular arguments with Chaddy, rage-hating on fans who express a different opinion as tools or club plants, and no surrender from a maximalist set of views are not, I would contend, the way to build a mass, movement that the majority of fans can get behind. Rather than seek to demolish contrary opinions, looking for common ground might be more effective. For example, yes we had 20,000+ crowds per-Venky’s but that was in the Premier League. Ironically, if we were in the Premier League, crowds wouldn’t matter any more eg Bournemouth, Brentford, Bumley etc., The notion that there are 10-15,000 people desperate to come back once Venky’s eff off ignores that fact that many of them have moved away, died, lost interest etc plus that the hopper has not been filled with new young fans at previous rates for 15 years. In other words, it’s a complex multi-faceted issue that’s not black or white, and that’s before you get to pricing, sponsorship etc etc. The coalition cannot achieve its aims if it cannot engage with the stayaways, the die-hards and the people who currently disagree with it. “How do we get bigger” should, in my opinion, take precedence over “how do we get airtime?” The latter may well play a role, but it’s not an end in itself.

We’d have been better off playing the current QEGS first 11

When Miller focuses on defending and passing it to the nearest teammate, he’s OK. Once he moves forward or attempts a longer pass, he’s non-league imo. Pratt, on the other hand, has an excellent eye for a forward pass and is always showing for / calling for the ball. I’m thinking maybe this lending them out to non-league teams is a good fast-track to getting them toughened up. They should be able to pass after 15 years at a professional club.

20 mins of flattering to deceive, then Pears offers Bannon a simple lob into an empty net and they realise they can win this. Miller abject, Hedges invisible, the front two punchless…I think Weds are right, they can win this.

Could do a lot worse than repeat the chicken stunt then run a pic of it with a mostly empty Ewood in the background alongside the original which had a full Ewood background, with a simple message along the lines of “The chicken farmers are still here, the fans aren’t” or “15 years of chicken shit” Agree on your second point.

Looking at it dispassionately, there’s only two things which have broken through in my opinion. The first was the chicken on the pitch: it was highly relevant, took the piss out of the owners, was very difficult to achieve, and consequently was splashed on all the nationals’ back pages. I think that one stunt alone was responsible for virtually all the awareness of us being owned by clueless Indian chicken farmers. The second was the snowball, as it changed the behaviour of the owners by making it personal to them. Again, it was newsworthy, a visceral display of fan anger, and bloody difficult to pull off. I think every fan would agree nothing has improved in 15 years, but the linkage from that to an “official” call for a boycott getting traction is too weak, and ignores concerns of currently attending fans. There’s no compelling answer to “who will pay the bills then”, or recognition of the money that has been put in, which weakens the persuasiveness of the boycotters. Bottom line in my mind is we have an absentee landlord issue: the asset is being badly maintained / run down, the locals they employ are useless or worse, they live far away, and are too rich to care. There’s really only two ways of getting neglectful absentee landlords out: if they continually break the law or if someone pays over the odds for the asset. They aren’t doing the former (as far as we know) and we don’t seem to have the latter. if the only thing we can do right now is keep the issue alive, then it needs something in the league of the chicken or the snowball IMO.

Good Boxing Day fare, end-to-end stuff. We’ve had way more possession high up the pitch than usual due to Hendriksson being really involved and good play down both flanks as Boro are quite narrow. Ohashi was terrible when put through, all 3 touches were abysmal, the first two making him take a zig-zag route then a scuffed shot.

That’s because social media isn’t representative. It’s the only connection to the club for fans who live abroad / far away / have found other things to spend their money on, so those groups are over-represented on here. The fans I personally know who go mostly have never posted on here, or know/care it exists. And critiquing the tactics isn’t the same as “opposed to change”.

15 years of increasing apathy, worst first half season at home in history, two games abandoned are all far more compelling causes of crap attendance.

All of those responses, in the minds of the people making them, are completely rational. Telling people to ignore what they think and act based on what someone else thinks was never going to be well received. It’s fundamentally bad strategy to call for something you can’t deliver, as not delivering it makes the Coalition look unrepresentative and ineffective.