StHelensRover

The owners and their loyalists will be looking to blame poor results on a low turnout and poor atmosphere at Ewood Park. There was a big turnout and a great atmosphere versus Derby for the 150th anniversary and an even bigger and more raucous atmosphere for the game against Burnley last season, biggest home crowd and loudest it has been for many years. We bottled both of those big occasions, we've bottled every big occasion under the Venkys, so the crowd seems to have little to do with it

I hope we scrape just enough points to stay in the Championship this season, because I know that when we slip through the trap door, that will be it for a generation. At least a decade of lower league rubbish beckons when we eventually go down under this lot. Every other enjoyable aspect of supporting Rovers has been sucked out by the ownership. I still can't (can) believe the catastrophe that has occurred since the club was in 5th place last January. Complete self-inflicted disaster.

I think one of the problems is that there is a large group of fans who are unhappy at the owners but will only vent their fury when we're getting stuffed at Ewood Park. A win or two usually makes it simmer down again. It also makes dissent look like it's just down to poor results and not the bigger picture.

Under these owners, relegation is coming either this season or in the very near future. If Leicester City had anything whatsoever to play for on the final day of Eustace's first season we would be in League One right now. It won't be like it was under Mowbray. The stars aligned and we bounced back at the first time of asking. That's very unlikely to happen again and that will be the end of Blackburn Rovers as one of England's greatest clubs. We'll be in the lower divisions for a very, very long time. We'll be lucky to get the 6000 on that turned up for Oxford at home. At what point will these venky loyalists turn on them? Bottom of League one? Would genuinely like to know what the red line would be for some of these apologists and backers of the owners.

Whoever it is will probably get a 150th anniversary cap on the pitch during the Watford game along with Etuhu and Bradley Orr

Rushed out, reactionary garbage. The fact that they think they are speaking for the majority of fans when our attendances are down by 70% from when Venkys bought the club is laughable. I'm one of the 30% still attending and I'm not in their 'majority', nor are the vast majority of people who stand around me in the Blackburn end. People have mentioned it on here before and it's the same issue, these people want to prove they are "super fans" for their own satisfaction and ego, so that other people look on them with awe for their loyalty. They'd turn up to watch us running round in dog shit on public parks as long as they're just 'getting behind the lads' and there through "thick and thin". It has all been "thin" for the last 15 years and there will be no change until the Rao family put us up for sale. I'm beside myself about these people. Referring to themselves as "actual rovers fans".

I feel really deflated about it.

I wonder what his excuse is for the fact that attendances have dropped from c.20k to now measurably under 7k? Blackburn was a deprived town when the Venkys bought the club and it still is. The town was in the same catchment area. The demographics of the town in 2010 and 2025 I imagine are probably still extremely similar. Edit- also. Every single thing he has said there applies to Burnley FC (deprivation, location, small town, etc). Yet they were bought a few years back and are punching well above their weight. Even smaller town than Blackburn (though in reality, similar catchment area). Who would ever want to buy Burnley FC? Their history doesn't get close to ours, their ground is miles smaller than ours, their training facilities were worse than ours. But they're now backed by American owners and NFL players. Edit #2 - also, using attendance statistics over the last 50 years suits anyone who wants to make his argument that we should accept low attendances, because it includes the huge drop off in attendances in the 70s and 80s due to hooliganism which impacted every single team in Britain, it really skews the statistic downward. He hasn't gone back to the 1950s where the attendances were enormous, wonder why (appreciate there are other reasons why attendances were much bigger, but why pick and choose?).

I think the real crunch time for supporter boycotting and/or general apathy is going to be this summer. We just about flogged 8k season tickets, and now people are doing FOIs which show only 6k people are turning up to some matches, which includes away fans and walk-ons. Presumably then, for some matches, only 5k out of 8k STHs are attending. Every team inevitably loses a few attendees for TV/Night/weather factors, but not by that order of magnitude (a third). This isn't sustainable in the Championship, we must be getting the lowest attendances in league, discounting the large away followings that come to Ewood. My prediction is that this summer they will either have to slash ST prices to those similar at Preston and Bolton, or we are going to see a record low uptake. They must be panicking (or maybe they genuinely don't give a toss).

Blackburn Rovers FC women are now trying to arrange friendly matches via social media. This is what the club has been reduced to. Obviously I don't blame any of the coaches or playing staff, not on them.

I've been sent this from Twitter The call for a boycott is targeting the fixture versus Watford in January, so that people who have already bought tickets for the next fixtures are not out of pocket.

If everyone could just bite the bullet and stay away for just one match initially and see what traction that gets it could be a massive moment in the history of the club. There'll never be an attendance of zero, but if we could have a game where there is max 1 or 2 thousand home fans in a 31k seater stadium it would get attention. It would surely be the emptiest ground actively used ground in Europe as a percentage of the capacity.

Can people who are more active on social media share what the sentiment is in response to this call from fan groups for a boycott? Obviously there will be some club plants and the usual Venky lovers who spring to their defence, but can people try and capture the general mood of the response and share here? I haven't used Facebook for over a year and got rid of twitter last year too. I'll boycott on Saturday. I'll probably go Sheff Weds away and Hull in the cup out of guilt, but that's paying their owners not ours. Or is this a call to boycott ALL BRFC fixtures?

I'm sure the club thought very carefully about that when speaking to Hull City and the FA about when we would prefer the fixture to be played, with our supporters in mind. I'm sure we'll get a relatively small fee for it being shown on the Discovery Channel, that will pay for adequate drainage of maybe one of the penalty areas or something. Most of our games under Ismael could have been shown on the Comedy Channel.

I don't like that at all, very glad we didn't end up putting our similar one out (even though there appeared to be a special run of one shirt that a random rovers fan on twitter managed to buy). Ours is probably going to be released the day we get relegated in May, probably with Steve Kean and the Rao's faces embossed into the fabric or something.