Of course some of the 800 buying match tickets are on the database, but clearly many are not.

Some information from the Fans Forum meeting which was held on Monday. Bear in mind I'm just the messenger. Half Season ticket sales have started strongly and the club are still hopeful they will get to their 10,500 target. They need 859 sales so I personally think that will be a tall order. The Sky red button is a hot topic amongst all Football League clubs and plenty of discussion happening, but no outcomes yet. On the £3 surcharge this is what Mike Cheston said - MC said that the club wanted fans to buy tickets in advance for two reasons – to reduce congestion at the ticket office immediately before the game and to capture details of fans purchasing tickets for the database so that club offers could be sent to them. i.e. they want to get at as many of those buying match tickets to sell them season tickets. If people turn up at the last minute that information is not collected. One thing that I was surprised about was that we are averaging 2,000 match tickets a time for home games and 40% of those are sold with the £3 surcharge - that's an average of 800 a game. That's way more than I would have expected. Of course what we don't know is how many more might have come without the £3 surcharge. I suspect it's a relatively small number but still one is too many. We did suggest turning the policy on it's head i.e. advertising tickets at say £30 but with a £3 discount for purchase in advance. We brought up the coaches idea at the September meeting. Steve Waggott was quite taken with the idea then and he is still planning to do something on this (he wasn't there on Monday having been called to a FL meeting in London at short notice). The club are currently replacing all the tills in the ground over the international break (95 of them) and the new ones will all have contactless technology. This should be live for the Sheff Weds game on 1/12. It may or may not also be possible to put cash on your ST card to make contactless payments at that game (not clear yet). That will happen in the New Year if not on 1/12 but anyway regular debit and credit cards will work. This should significantly speed up service at the kiosks on match days.

You would be better going down Deepdale Road............

Given there won’t be any trains from Blackburn to Preston unless the strike is settled I doubt there will be much police presence at the station.

I was at school in Ormskirk in the 60s and Matty's right - the accent was pure West Lancs. Exactly like me in fact as a farmer's lad except the grammar school knocked all the edges off mine. Now scouse is the dominant voice you'll hear and the town is pronounced differently - you never used to hear the first R in it.

When Graham went down injured Brereton was warming up and was called back immediately to the dug-out. I assumed that they decided to wait to see how Graham felt having carried on for a bit before they made the sub.

That shows how we all see the game differently. I had Smallwood down as by some way our best player in the first half and arguably man of the match, although I'm happy to give it to Armstrong. Reed was affected by his injury but for the first 30 minutes before it did nothing save for one nice cross field ball.

Surely you must have known you would be in time for the game at 11.30 if you were home at 12.30 today?

Did you not know you would be back from work by now (or in time to go to the game)? If you did you could have ordered a ticket before 12.

If that’s what you want to do you’re probably stuck with off-peak fares. Travelling down on Friday and back on Sunday means travel at really busy times because lots of others want to do the same for the weekend. I assume all the Advance fares will have gone now - there were probably less because Virgin know it’s a popular time.

Maybe what she meant was that the centre blocks had already gone to ST holders? I just did a trial purchase online and I couldn't buy in block N but could in block L (I already have a ticket in block N bought last week).

£240 is just the cheapest for the Town End Matty. The side stands are £270 and the premium seats £300. So for the best seats PNE are £25 a game against Rovers £22.63. Not enormous differences but £2-3 a game higher.

North End have just announced their half season tickets - cheapest £240 for 12 games, so quite a bit dearer than Rovers.

I’m seeing returns from Preston for £46 return, out at 12.58 and back on the 20.31 and I doubt they will get less than that. Bear in mind the 20.31 is the last train of the day, so a bit tight but probably doable. Obviously if you’re starting from Blackburn you’ll need to get to Preston. You can park at Preston station for £6 for the day.

Trains for 12th January have not long been on sale so hopefully not too many will have committed yet.

On the other hand there has been a four week gap between away games and both are reasonably priced. Clearly for some away night games are not on and there is the damned red button but I would imagine we should end up with more than original allocation of 2,086.

I see Wigan tickets are also on sale now - just got mine online. Hopefully a good proportion of those going to Deepdale will come along to this as well.

See you in there Ozz. I got mine last week at the back of Block N.

You should be fine with 17.48. I don't think we have been held back at Deepdale in recent times, although i guess it could always be possible. It's about a 20 minute walk from Deepdale to the station (or 15 if you need to run!), so you should be OK anyway.

I think that was the linesman’s fault, not the ref. The linesman flagged when we took the quick throw-in - I think he thought that the throw-in that QPR took when he dropped the ball hadn’t gone on the pitch so should be taken again. The ref correctly saw it had gone on to the pitch and bounced out so overruled him, but by then the moment had passed. Unlike nearly everyone else I thought the ref was OK yesterday. Live from my poor vantage point in the JW I thought the Bell penalty claim was a banker and Bremerton’s dubious. Watching them back on Quest last night the ref was right and I was wrong. Bell’s clearly not but the defender clearly caught Brereton - he was going nowhere and the defender didn’t need to make the challenge but he did, therefore penalty. I thought most of the bookings were right too. Reed clearly lunged in and Smallwood’s was a professional foul to stop a quick break. It was frustrating that he didn’t punish QPR more for time wasting, but he did seem to be adding on time. I was expecting 5 or 6 minutes injury time so was surprised to see only 4, but in the end that did us a favour. Brereton’s booking was silly though. overall the game was two teams competing to see who could give the ball away more. I think he just deserved the win as at least we were trying to score. It looked like QPR planned to sit back, frustrate us and hope to get something on the break. A bit surprising as you might think they would have been a bit more adventurous given the run they were on.

Paul - there should be no problems with the hourly TPE service from the airport and Piccadilly to Preston via Wigan - less than an hour.

The weekend engineering works that have shut the Bolton to Preston line are due to finish today. So there should be trains running from Manchester to Preston via both Wigan and Chorley on 24th. Of course the Northern ones might not be depending on strikes but TPE should be then be running services via Chorley.

I would if you could enlighten us Stuart on where you got that quote from? Our current average gate after 8 games is 14,386. Yes, we've had Leeds in there, which may well be the biggest away attendance but we have also had Millwall, Reading, Brentford and QPR as 4 of the 8. Of the 15 games left I can only see Ipswich as bringing the level of support that 4 brought - there are plenty of games left where there will be decent away followings. So I don't see an average of 16,000 over the season as too far out.

It was touch and go whether he could get to Ewood by 12, not 3. It certainly read like he could make the game but might not make the ground by 12.

There may be many things to beat the club up about, but complaining because you can't be bothered to either call up or go online to order a ticket is surely not one of them. I can understand someone who doesn't know whether he can make it until after 12 would be annoyed at the surcharge but if you know you can go why don't you just order in advance?