StHelensRover

This poster (Chaddy) has possibly posted more than anyone else in this thread. This thread is exclusively about dissatisfaction with the owners and ways which we might be able to protest against them and get them to change their strategy or sell the club. Said poster has no intention of protesting against the owners, no intention of boycotting, has no interest in doing anything which might encourage them to sell. Only under extreme duress from several other posters will they provide any criticism of the owners and it's always brief and minimal. Given all of the above, I can't understand why they constantly post in this thread, other than to try and undermine the overall sentiment which is one of anger and protest. It's a free country - they absolutely have every right to post where they want on the message board, nothing to do with me. I can't understand it though. All they are interested in doing is telling everyone else about how they'll never protest and coming up with as many arguments as possible against anything which anyone suggests. Obfuscation, obstruction and distraction away from any discussion which criticises the owners and suggests solutions. I don't actually think they're a club plant, but some of the views and behaviour on here is as close as you could get to one. I have nothing personal against said poster. I'm sure they're a nice person IRL, but I have had to mute them for some time because reading some of their views on the club in the last 12 months since I rejoined the board has made me think I'm losing my mind. No one is perfect and no one is right 100% of the time. But I can't find anything I agree on about Rovers with this poster and I find I just need to scroll past everything. Edit - apologies if that is too ad-hominem. I'm not saying the board should be an echo chamber with no disagreement or dissent, but the guy seems to be on a one-man mission in this thread to distract and obfuscate the discussion.

I obviously hope we win on Saturday, but I do worry that some fans will be pleased with the three points and yet again simmer down and forget about or criticise the call to boycott. I also think that if we win, the club's propaganda machine will go into overdrive against the protesters and that some people who are on the fence will be won over by it. This game on Saturday is a must win IMO, in really tough circumstances. We have to claw our way to 50 points this season or we're doomed. It's strange feeling that if we get a good result it will have other knock-on negative effects around the club. Not a nice feeling to have.

This is definitely an issue and something I have mentioned before. With clubs like Sheff W, Bury, Reading, Coventry and so on, the disaster happened over the space of a couple of years and accelerated very quickly to the point the club goes bust. So it (rightly) looks and sounds very serious to outsiders. Almost uniquely, our managed decline has happened at such a snails pace comparatively, that everyone else lost interest once we dropped out of the Premier League. We've never been seen as a big city or fashionable club, it looks like we are just "moaning coz it isn't 1995". It doesn't help that we have portions of our own fanbase massively talking down the stature of the club and saying "well we were shit with small support in the 70s so we should accept that in 2025". For all but a small section of the club's history, we have either been in the top flight, or in the second tier but trying to get into the top flight. There were some periods where we struggled and dipped into the third tier, but taken across 150 years, or 137 of league football, we have almost always been in the elite or on the cusp of the elite. People now saying we should be grateful the venkys are keeping us swirling round the plughole infuriate me.

I can't accept that it would be a massive wrench for anyone to not attend just one regular league fixture in January versus Watford in a season where the very best we could hope for is midtable. They're not asking people to boycott a huge cup game or a local derby. Almost everyone with a ST or who regularly goes misses a home game every season, they go on holiday, they get poorly, they have to work, a wedding, anything. Even diehards sometimes miss a game. No one suddenly says they have let the club down or they're a fairweather fan. No one individual is going to be considered a rubbish fan if they boycott once as an experiment, to see how the owners react.

This. None of us have any idea whether it will work. If it doesn't work, then just have to move on and think of something else. There will be some who sneer and go "ha told you it wouldn't work". But that's not a reason to not even try a boycott. It has been more effective at some clubs than others, let's just try it as a one-off at Ewood and see what happens. If you've been going for ten, twenty, fifty years, at some point you have probably missed a match to go to a wedding or on holiday or through illness. The sky didn't fall in. Just try missing one game en-masse as a warning to the owners and let's put the ball in their court.

Wow I had no idea this was the same person. 15 years is a long time ago and people do change and soften their views over time. But this is an extraordinary volte-face. Especially now that he's referring to other fans as idiots who don't agree with his Venky-love-in.

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).