League 1 General Chat Thread

[codaplenty]

Has the Fishermen's Friend lot got money? I know that it was a global brand but I don't think it's as popular these days.

Last Sunday Times rich list Doreen Lighthouse was worth towards £100 m
She passed away a couple of years ago, left £40m to the town of Fleetwood. She has 1 son who is running the business, no children. On his death the business will be sold and everything will go into a trust to help Fleetwood, philanthropy at its best - Fantastic, just a shame I won't be around

 

[codaplenty]

I’m no fan of point deductions, honestly, especially in this case - the players are the ones not getting paid and the EFL by point deductions are making their job harder.

It’s difficult to really land on a proper punishment for this kind of thing. Personally, I would like to see a situation where non-payment of wages opens the doors for players to find new employers. Obviously in the current system that’s not possible, but I’d like to see fans/players not get impacted for an owners negligence - whilst understanding it’s a delicate balance.

Point deductions are the norm in the EFL and it shouldn’t be the case. Leagues should be decided by players on the pitch.

You make good points mate, afraid it's down to the EFL who will decide the punishment and whatever it is, the club will just have to bite the bullet

 

[kieran_vale]

I’m no fan of point deductions, honestly, especially in this case - the players are the ones not getting paid and the EFL by point deductions are making their job harder.

It’s difficult to really land on a proper punishment for this kind of thing. Personally, I would like to see a situation where non-payment of wages opens the doors for players to find new employers. Obviously in the current system that’s not possible, but I’d like to see fans/players not get impacted for an owners negligence - whilst understanding it’s a delicate balance.

Point deductions are the norm in the EFL and it shouldn’t be the case. Leagues should be decided by players on the pitch.

While I think there’s some merit to what you say sorry but I would disagree. Take what Wigan have done in the last couple of years spending big money to win L1 and then missing paying them I believe on multiple occasions I’m sorry that’s just textbook cheating and I think points deductions are the only way to go. You could maybe look at letting players have the power to exit their contracts but that would only really be effective if you could give them dispensation to do it outside the transfer window.

 

[leedsvaliant]

Unfortunately, the owners are part of the club, whether us fans like it or not. We're fortunate in the fact that we now have owners who have made money legally and will never jeopardise the club by spending more than we can afford. Wigan have clearly cheated to get promotion, at the expense of another team who did it fairly. The club has to be punished I'm afraid, you can't just let cheating go unpunished and a points deduction is the only way to go.

We've been in administration twice, both times being the polar opposite to Wigan. We didn't have any money and certainly didn't benefit in any way, but also got the points deductions. I suppose it's right that we also got punished for not running a viable business that was unable to compete in the league if we went out of business.

 

[leedsvaliant]

Last Sunday Times rich list Doreen Lighthouse was worth towards £100 m
She passed away a couple of years ago, left £40m to the town of Fleetwood. She has 1 son who is running the business, no children. On his death the business will be sold and everything will go into a trust to help Fleetwood, philanthropy at its best - Fantastic, just a shame I won't be around

Amazing accumulation of wealth off the back of a boiled sweet. Fair play to them for investing it back into Fleetwood too.

 

[Luke Imp]

Not a good to start to pre-season for Fleetwood and Wigan is it!

I'm guessing Piley fails the EFL's fit and proper person test (well, he probably doesn't...) so it'll be interesting to see how that pans out.

 

[valefan16]

Wigan are an oddity in that they are really poorly supported so are always going to need huge sums of money to be a Championship side, prior to their rise to the Prem they’d been a non league side and then rattled around the lower leagues so it’s probably the time they cut their cloth to sustain a long term secure future.

Fleetwood we will have to see how that one pans out, it’s so reliant on Pilley of course but I suppose they have the foundations and grown the fan base enough to maybe be able to cope even if it means settling down to a smaller budget.

The points thing always has two sides the way I look at it, it’s often the players/fans who suffer with deductions rather than the culprits, look at Vale’s previous administration (and we gained no on field benefit!).

On the flip side if you massively overspend you do gain an advantage on clubs being sensible so does need a punishment.

Ideally regulations are stricter and more controlled in the first place as to spending within your means. Does the FFP go far enough.

We realised in January we were spending more than we’d planned and five years budget had gone in 4 so cut our cloth accordingly and slid down the league so it’s a difficult balancing act I guess.

 

[leedsvaliant]

What's this I hear about Shrewsbury having an online petition to get rid of their chairman because he's not investing enough money to get into the Championship. League 1/2 is their natural level, and they historically have not been a very big club. Where have these sudden delusions of grandeur and heightened expectations come from? They've only ever been in the second tier for 10 years I their history and even dipped into non league. Strange.

 

[Floreat Salopia]

What's this I hear about Shrewsbury having an online petition to get rid of their chairman because he's not investing enough money to get into the Championship. League 1/2 is their natural level, and they historically have not been a very big club. Where have these sudden delusions of grandeur and heightened expectations come from? They've only ever been in the second tier for 10 years I their history and even dipped into non league. Strange.

I don’t know where you’ve heard it from, but there isn’t an online petition to get rid of our chairman. Granted we’re not best pleased at the minute as the treatment of Steve Cotterill is an utter disgrace as well as this, Roland Wycherley (chairman) has always been a bit of a twat when it comes to people skills but he’s really becoming a nasty piece of work in his old age.

League 1 is historically our natural level but we’ve spent 13 years at Championship level between 1980 and 1996. My old man remembers the days of Man City, Chelsea, West Ham, Wolves, etc coming to Gay Meadow infront of 15,000 fans and getting turned over. So not exactly beyond the realms of possibility for those days to come back around. Especially with the infrastructure we have at the club. Not only do we own our stadium and have zero debt, but I imagine we must own some of the most land in and around where our stadium is in the whole of the Football League. We have huge potential but we’re crying out for investment to just get us to that next step.

Next season will be our 9th consecutive season at this level. We’re the second longest serving club in this division with Fleetwood being the first with an extra year on us. The supporters are getting a bit tiresome now with playing the same teams and minus the 2017-18 season where we finished 3rd despite being top 2 almost all year behind Blackburn & Wigan, we’ve not had much to shout about. Wouldn’t you get a bit bored yourself?

The non league season you mention is a bit of a strange one as we were only down there for one season. We got relegated due to having a good FA Cup run and as most of you will be aware of when we were at Gay Meadow, it constantly flooded. At one point we had nine, yes nine, games in hand and were playing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday to catch up and on top of that had the shittest manager to ever exist in Kevin Ratcliffe, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

We bounced back to the Football League at the first attempt thankfully but that season strangely was one of my favourites. We were most clubs cup final that year and had decent crowds for the Gay Meadow days. Remember going to Northwich away on Boxing Day and they gave us three stands as we had 2400 fans compared to their 500. Wasn’t the first time we outnumbered the home fans that season either. Must have happened atleast five or six times. The main anger from that season was not only being at the same level as Telford United, but we faced them four times that year and failed to beat them once. Remember our idiots smashing up the away end when we lost to them in the league live on Sky. Dark, dark days which I don’t think will ever happen again (touch wood).

But yeah, that’s a small insight. I don’t think we’re being unreasonable to want Championship football, like I say, the foundations are in place. My Grandad still sees us as a top League 1/bottom half Championship club even to this day but granted that is a stretch imo. We’re where we should be in the tier but it would be nice to have a pop at the Championship again.

Be interesting to see our summer business as we have a solid base to build on and if Roland has an ounce of ambition, we could threaten the play off places minimum next year. Just depends how deep his pockets are with the budget.

 

[leedsvaliant]

I don’t know where you’ve heard it from, but there isn’t an online petition to get rid of our chairman. Granted we’re not best pleased at the minute as the treatment of Steve Cotterill is an utter disgrace as well as this, Roland Wycherley (chairman) has always been a bit of a twat when it comes to people skills but he’s really becoming a nasty piece of work in his old age.

League 1 is historically our natural level but we’ve spent 13 years at Championship level between 1980 and 1996. My old man remembers the days of Man City, Chelsea, West Ham, Wolves, etc coming to Gay Meadow infront of 15,000 fans and getting turned over. So not exactly beyond the realms of possibility for those days to come back around. Especially with the infrastructure we have at the club. Not only do we own our stadium and have zero debt, but I imagine we must own some of the most land in and around where our stadium is in the whole of the Football League. We have huge potential but we’re crying out for investment to just get us to that next step.

Next season will be our 9th consecutive season at this level. We’re the second longest serving club in this division with Fleetwood being the first with an extra year on us. The supporters are getting a bit tiresome now with playing the same teams and minus the 2017-18 season where we finished 3rd despite being top 2 almost all year behind Blackburn & Wigan, we’ve not had much to shout about. Wouldn’t you get a bit bored yourself?

The non league season you mention is a bit of a strange one as we were only down there for one season. We got relegated due to having a good FA Cup run and as most of you will be aware of when we were at Gay Meadow, it constantly flooded. At one point we had nine, yes nine, games in hand and were playing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday to catch up and on top of that had the shittest manager to ever exist in Kevin Ratcliffe, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

We bounced back to the Football League at the first attempt thankfully but that season strangely was one of my favourites. We were most clubs cup final that year and had decent crowds for the Gay Meadow days. Remember going to Northwich away on Boxing Day and they gave us three stands as we had 2400 fans compared to their 500. Wasn’t the first time we outnumbered the home fans that season either. Must have happened atleast five or six times. The main anger from that season was not only being at the same level as Telford United, but we faced them four times that year and failed to beat them once. Remember our idiots smashing up the away end when we lost to them in the league live on Sky. Dark, dark days which I don’t think will ever happen again (touch wood).

But yeah, that’s a small insight. I don’t think we’re being unreasonable to want Championship football, like I say, the foundations are in place. My Grandad still sees us as a top League 1/bottom half Championship club even to this day but granted that is a stretch imo. We’re where we should be in the tier but it would be nice to have a pop at the Championship again.

Be interesting to see our summer business as we have a solid base to build on and if Roland has an ounce of ambition, we could threaten the play off places minimum next year. Just depends how deep his pockets are with the budget.

Just for comparison purposes, we've had 41 seasons in the second tier, finishing in 8th place and missing out on the playoffs to the Premier League as recently as 97. But I still don't see us as anywhere near a Championship club and I'd say we're a slightly bigger club than Shrewsbury.

I see you as a league 1/2 club (similar to ourselves). There's definitely no shame in either club being ambitious but realistically we both get fairly low attendances (Shrewsbury were actually about 1000 down on us last season). Shrewsbury is a reasonable sized town but not massive and I imagine some of your potential support gets swallowed up by the West Midlands teams. Stoke is a very small city with 2 teams, so our pool of support is fairly small and we also have issues with people supporting the Manchester clubs and Liverpool oddly. So, the reality is that we're unlikely to be much bigger than we are now.

 

[Floreat Salopia]

Just for comparison purposes, we've had 41 seasons in the second tier, finishing in 8th place and missing out on the playoffs to the Premier League as recently as 97. But I still don't see us as anywhere near a Championship club and I'd say we're a slightly bigger club than Shrewsbury.

I see you as a league 1/2 club (similar to ourselves). There's definitely no shame in either club being ambitious but realistically we both get fairly low attendances (Shrewsbury were actually about 1000 down on us last season). Shrewsbury is a reasonable sized town but not massive and I imagine some of your potential support gets swallowed up by the West Midlands teams. Stoke is a very small city with 2 teams, so our pool of support is fairly small and we also have issues with people supporting the Manchester clubs and Liverpool oddly. So, the reality is that we're unlikely to be much bigger than we are now.

My uncle is a Vale season ticket holder and he sees us both as similar sized clubs. I’d say we’re both traditionally where we should be tbh. We’ve spent more years at this level than League Two level so I’d say we’re definitely where we should be.

Shrewsbury as a town is a frustrating one. It’s not really a footballing town as it‘s a middle class place and a lot of people around here that do like sports prefer cricket or rugby or falling that they do like football, they ‘support’ one of the Prem clubs. We do have an opportunity to gain support though what with Shropshire being the largest landlocked county in England. We also gain a fair amount of supporters from across the border around North Wales but lose some of them to Wrexham, especially right now with what’s happening down the road. I think whether you’re from Carlisle, Torquay, Stoke on Trent, Shrewsbury or wherever, there will always be United & Liverpool supporters. Just how it is unfortunately.

We’ve got a lot of new builds going up around where the stadium is currently. If the club had an ounce of common sense they would be posting leaflets through the letterboxes of these new homes with discount codes to get tickets for a Salop game or two to try and attract some new supporters. Doubt that’ll happen though as Roland is still stuck in the 90’s.

 

[BRFC_Gas]

Our stadium is looking even more like a park at the moment with the south and south-west stands tents gone...

 

[EricSabin]

I don’t know where you’ve heard it from, but there isn’t an online petition to get rid of our chairman. Granted we’re not best pleased at the minute as the treatment of Steve Cotterill is an utter disgrace as well as this, Roland Wycherley (chairman) has always been a bit of a twat when it comes to people skills but he’s really becoming a nasty piece of work in his old age.

League 1 is historically our natural level but we’ve spent 13 years at Championship level between 1980 and 1996. My old man remembers the days of Man City, Chelsea, West Ham, Wolves, etc coming to Gay Meadow infront of 15,000 fans and getting turned over. So not exactly beyond the realms of possibility for those days to come back around. Especially with the infrastructure we have at the club. Not only do we own our stadium and have zero debt, but I imagine we must own some of the most land in and around where our stadium is in the whole of the Football League. We have huge potential but we’re crying out for investment to just get us to that next step.

Next season will be our 9th consecutive season at this level. We’re the second longest serving club in this division with Fleetwood being the first with an extra year on us. The supporters are getting a bit tiresome now with playing the same teams and minus the 2017-18 season where we finished 3rd despite being top 2 almost all year behind Blackburn & Wigan, we’ve not had much to shout about. Wouldn’t you get a bit bored yourself?

The non league season you mention is a bit of a strange one as we were only down there for one season. We got relegated due to having a good FA Cup run and as most of you will be aware of when we were at Gay Meadow, it constantly flooded. At one point we had nine, yes nine, games in hand and were playing Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday to catch up and on top of that had the shittest manager to ever exist in Kevin Ratcliffe, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.

We bounced back to the Football League at the first attempt thankfully but that season strangely was one of my favourites. We were most clubs cup final that year and had decent crowds for the Gay Meadow days. Remember going to Northwich away on Boxing Day and they gave us three stands as we had 2400 fans compared to their 500. Wasn’t the first time we outnumbered the home fans that season either. Must have happened atleast five or six times. The main anger from that season was not only being at the same level as Telford United, but we faced them four times that year and failed to beat them once. Remember our idiots smashing up the away end when we lost to them in the league live on Sky. Dark, dark days which I don’t think will ever happen again (touch wood).

But yeah, that’s a small insight. I don’t think we’re being unreasonable to want Championship football, like I say, the foundations are in place. My Grandad still sees us as a top League 1/bottom half Championship club even to this day but granted that is a stretch imo. We’re where we should be in the tier but it would be nice to have a pop at the Championship again.

Be interesting to see our summer business as we have a solid base to build on and if Roland has an ounce of ambition, we could threaten the play off places minimum next year. Just depends how deep his pockets are with the budget.

Interesting as as a younger fan I see you as League 1 bottom half/top end League 2 (rightly or wrongly).

What was your budget roughly this year? As in top half etc not figures

 

[leedsvaliant]

Our stadium is looking even more like a park at the moment with the south and south-west stands tents gone...

View attachment 18589

Will a new stand be up before the start of next season?

 

[Floreat Salopia]

Interesting as as a younger fan I see you as League 1 bottom half/top end League 2 (rightly or wrongly).

What was your budget roughly this year? As in top half etc not figures

According to Steve Cotterill we had the 18th best budget last year. In some extent I can believe that as we only had 18 players (5 of them loans), then I struggle to believe when we have players like Marosi, Dunkley, Shipley and Bayliss on our books who must be on some decent money weekly. We also paid out transfer fees for a few players.

If we had just bulked up our squad in January then we’d have been in the play offs and I truly believe that. Never known a season like it where we suffered with so many injuries. These weren’t just injuries that kept players out for a couple of weeks either, but season ending injuries in August and September. In the end we were having to play with youth players and name benches with 3 outfield players on. It become soul destroying in the end.

 

[BRFC_Gas]

Will a new stand be up before the start of next season?

Yes it will be they are already selling ST's there

28.04.23 South Stand | Bristol Rovers FC

www.bristolrovers.co.uk

https://twitter.com/x/status/1659486971654287361

 

[The Terminator]

Our stadium is looking even more like a park at the moment with the south and south-west stands tents gone...

View attachment 18589

It looks so different.......! Away fans still on the side terrace then I take it?

 

[BRFC_Gas]

It looks so different.......! Away fans still on the side terrace then I take it?

Yes away fans still in the open terrace in the corner, although we do give away fans the left had side of that south stand behind the goal as well.
Obviously we want a new ground and have done for years, but while we are here we have to do what we can to maximise revenue.
Ironically, the West stand that you can just about see, looks as if it should be in the cricket ground you can spot in the distance

 

[Luke Imp]

EDIT - Reading.

 

[Bobbin']

I get the thinking but clubs that can and will sell more tickets will still be given some of the south stand so essentially it’s the likes of Fleetwood and Burton who take about 150 who will be shoved in the upper west corner, Reading won’t sell an extra 2k tickets for those games to create a better atmosphere so that’s a bit contradictory.

So from what they’re saying, the bigger games they will be giving teams bigger allocations anyway.

Doesn’t make a huge amount of sense other than to try and make more money out of the fans of clubs who will bring small followings to try and make up the shortfall.

 

[denzel ecfc]

I'm struggling to comprehend how seating in a corner of an upper tier is better seating than somewhere else.
Though we don't know the prices they are proposing anyway, will it be more than the £30 Rovers charge?

 

[kieran_vale]

Apparently that section at Reading is £30 a ticket based on this seasons prices. Whether they reduce them now they are relegated (probably unlikely) will see. I do get wanting to move away fans out the way etc but I’m assuming there will be home fans in the bottom tier there so that might not be too great for them if they end up having coins etc thrown at them from above. They may end up regretting this.

 

[Bobbin']

Apparently that section at Reading is £30 a ticket based on this seasons prices. Whether they reduce them now they are relegated (probably unlikely) will see. I do get wanting to move away fans out the way etc but I’m assuming there will be home fans in the bottom tier there so that might not be too great for them if they end up having coins etc thrown at them from above. They may end up regretting this.

I don’t think they will have home fans there (even if that’s the plan)

The article says that if demand is there for more away tickets, teams will have part of the south so it’ll only be available to home fans for the smaller games, I think Reading are very optimistic if they think they’re going to have 2k extra fans turn up to watch them play Fleetwood at home.

The whole atmosphere/advantage etc reasoning is a bit disingenuous imo if they’re still happy to give the south stand to clubs who have the demand (as long as they buy all the expensive tickets first!) and it’s just about maximising revenue from away fans.

If you know Fleetwood are only going to bring 150, why charge them £20 when you can charge them £27?

Sorry Fleetwood to keep using you as an example, nothing personal!

 

[codaplenty]

I don’t think they will have home fans there (even if that’s the plan)

The article says that if demand is there for more away tickets, teams will have part of the south so it’ll only be available to home fans for the smaller games, I think Reading are very optimistic if they think they’re going to have 2k extra fans turn up to watch them play Fleetwood at home.

The whole atmosphere/advantage etc reasoning is a bit disingenuous imo if they’re still happy to give the south stand to clubs who have the demand (as long as they buy all the expensive tickets first!) and it’s just about maximising revenue from away fans.

If you know Fleetwood are only going to bring 150, why charge them £20 when you can charge them £27?

Sorry Fleetwood to keep using you as an example, nothing personal!

None taken mate

 

[thewwfc]

Serial over spenders Wigan have had 4 points deducted for next season already for failing to pay wages on time for the five time in the last 10 months. They have now to adapt to living within their means.

Excited by this, unless we’re in the same division as Yeovil (which doesn’t seem like it’ll happen any time soon) we always have to suffer being bottom of the league for the entirety of any given close season.

Absolute nosebleed territory to start the season in the dizzy heights of 23rd.

 

[Chris FGR]

Takes a bit of pressure off your gaffer, fans would probably get a bit twitchy looking at the table for 2 months with you bottom.

 

[denzel ecfc]

Excited by this, unless we’re in the same division as Yeovil (which doesn’t seem like it’ll happen any time soon) we always have to suffer being bottom of the league for the entirety of any given close season.

Absolute nosebleed territory to start the season in the dizzy heights of 23rd.

York is more likely in the next few seasons

 

[Pompeyblueboy]

EDIT - Reading.

You mean you're gonna rob the teams that bring more support?

 

[Claret Forever]

Next season will be our 9th consecutive season at this level. We’re the second longest serving club in this division with Fleetwood being the first with an extra year on us. The supporters are getting a bit tiresome now with playing the same teams and minus the 2017-18 season where we finished 3rd despite being top 2 almost all year behind Blackburn & Wigan, we’ve not had much to shout about. Wouldn’t you get a bit bored yourself?

One of those things where the grass is always greener, it's been 56 years since we've been in any League other than League 1 or 2 now. 'Where my club deserves to be' is always such a subjective thing, when in reality and ultimately it's always 'based on how well the squad that represents you in performing', and Shrewsbury have always struck me as a well run and managed club... but that said, it's the 3rd smallest place in League One by population (excluding London teams, because working out what counts as who's catchment in a City with dozens of club's is just a pointless exercise)

Portsmouth** - 855,679 / 208,100
Sheffield* - 556,500
Bristol-* - 472,500
Reading** - 337,108 / 174,224
Derby - 261,400
Stoke* - 256,375
Northampton - 245,899
Bolton - 194,189
Peterborough - 179,349
Wycombe - 174,611
Cambridge - 145,674
Blackpool - 145,007
Exeter - 130,709
Cheltenham - 118,836
Wigan - 107,732
Lincoln - 103,813
Barnsley - 96,888
Shrewsbury - 76,782
Burton - 72,299
Fleetwood - 25,939

* Multiple-teams in the City
** Wiki lists a different city and urban areas population, and I'm not nuanced enough here to do a comparison what figures are fair like-for-likes

Now, it's not unreasonable for any team to desire Championship football, (ok, maybe except Fleetwood), teams don't win Leagues just based on how big the town they're based on is, but I would be sort of shocked if Shrewsbury fans were expecting it.

 

[91SPP]

On reflection, you would expect teams in Bristol to get much better attendances - roughly 26k between the two clubs. Although it does strike me as a city that you would find a lot of United, Arsenal and Liverpool fans.