Rovers v Blackpool

ionly, Hound, I was at the 100 Club last night although I was rushing back from a meeting down south and missed most of JR's talk. From what I can gather, there was no huge announcement, although I was told afterwards that there was an announcement about a re-organisation of the Commercial Team - to date they have been working for both the SMC and the club - henceforth, they will work ONLY for the club - so that could help in terms of focus.
From the bits I heard, JR stated that the club would need gates of 18000 at every home game to break even (of course, the capacity is only 15000 and a bit and we get nowhere near that figure). This demonstrates the scale of the task.
JR is still hopeful of taking over the stadium, but he stressed that it is loss making and that must therefore impact the price - so I sense that there are still some tough discussions to be had.
JR stated that if the club lost £1m per year, then that may be manageable but this year of course, the loss will be around £5m. As things stand, the Directors are owed £9m and they are considering writing these loans off to make the situation for potential investors more appealing - nothing on the horizon yet though (investment wise) as far as I know. John stated that perhaps we could have taken some foreign money but I think he is really concerned to protect the long term future of the club by ensuring as far as possible that its future investors / owners are right for the long term future of the club.
John also talked about the tough situation facing the club in terms of trying to compete financially - with the likes of Leicester and Blackpool being funded by wealthy foreign owners - he did express some concern about the ethics of some owners (not mentioning any clubs or names) but he clearly feels that we are competing on an uneven playing field. He numbers our core support at 7000 or 8000 and only Peterborough have gates as small as ours. On top of that, investors have poured huge sums of money into other clubs - for example, the Allams have invested £50m in Hull City. He clearly feels that the Willie Mckay scheme is the only viable way of trying to compete in terms of playing staff over the next couple of years and that for example, Spurs are paying 100% of David Button's wages as a favour to Willie.
As ever, the key priority is to build the fan base and this is not easy as we have lost at least a couple of generations to rival, bigger local clubs. I am personally aware that the club is running a scheme on an occasional basis whereby local businesses can sponsor local football teams to attend matches free of charge - this is clearly a means of trying to get youngsters hooked on and supporting the Rovers rather than following their parents' lead and supporting other clubs - a very worthwhile intitiative I think.
The bottom line as always is that the club needs our support in whatever way we can give it - nothing new there - we must start to consider what may happen after the John Ryan era - we need him to be around as long as possible but the club certainly needs solid foundations if it is to survive the post JR era in any reasonable state.

Crazy, thanks for that info.

Crazy. Thanks. He talks sense this time and I agree 100% which is a first. "I am Fed up, I am Filling up"

Thanks for the info Crazy. So did you get the impression that JR may be heading off in to the sunset relatively soon?

Hound, ionly, BKR, no problem providing the information.

BKR - I didn't get the impression that JR is looking to bail out just yet but it is clear that he is thinking about the long term sustainability of the club and as part of that, what type of investors are needed. After 14 years in the job, he must be thinking about how and when he will exit and so succession planning will be a key part of this.

Hey ExtraTime Spike ..

"Don't worry mate we will. "

.. Oh Yeah ?

No Leeds fans boasting about what could happen today BEFORE the game?
They were nervous as shi ite before the game and got away with it today.

We sure were, no doubt about it, although one of our number was predicting 9-0 .. ..

But come on, it's too good an opportunity to miss when an opposition fan has made an over-confident statement pre-match .. if the boot was on the other foot ..

This match was actually notable for the lack of Leeds attention to our board, and ours to yours too.
The first time i can remember.
Mutual respect or frightened(on both sides)?

If it's any consolation, I think you're really unlucky to be so deep in the $hyte