pongo88

I liked the part of the Rovers’ statement that said: “Darrell will remain a friend of the club”. I’m sure he will remain a “friend” of the OTIB forum for all the entertainment and amusement he has provided over the years. His doom and gloom post-match interviews used to be the highlight of my Saturday afternoons. Now he’s gone I’ll have to watch re-runs of Last of the Summer Wine and Fawlty Towers to get my comedy fix

I loved the last goal. Rovers have a corner and Doncaster score!

Their ground is better than the Minimal Stadium as it has a tuck shop in the corner.

Who is the guy called Ropes? Stopping the roof blowing away seems to be a dangerous job so I hope he’s well paid

That arch Rovers fan @Miah Dennehy said he was coming to this match with a Stoke supporter in the Atyeo. I’m going to wave to him and might sing him a song. He promised to give an honest assessment of Ashton Gate after his visit, and I’m sure it will be a shock after the Minimal Stadium. Miah, Miah give us a wave

Bristol City has just beaten Weston Super Mare 2 - 1 on Danny Baker’s sausage sandwich game. Is this an omen?

In the Bristol Post today Darrell Clarke is quoted as saying his number one message to the playing squad is “Be a lot better”. Wow, he’s obviously done some in depth analysis of the recent performances to be able to come up with that conclusion. There can’t be many managers who would realise that after 4 league defeats and no goals scored the players have got to be a lot better.

Gone With The Bin, more likely

Aldershot’s a good shout. Alternative ex league clubs in the National League are Wrexham and Leyton Orient. Or go down a level to National League North and you could buy York. Even better, in National League South. you could buy Torquay and get Gary & Pete Johnson thrown in for free!

There are several problems with the rumour that someone from Jersey is going to buy Rovers and do a land swap with UWE to build a new stadium at Frenchay. First, the UWE land was given to the university by Hewlet Packard, with the proviso that it could not subsequently sold. A land swap could be construed as selling the UWE land for the same price as it pays for the Filton site. Any lawyers out there who can clarify the legal situation. The second problem, is how much would the buyer have to pay, and what would he / she get for the money? Assuming Wael and family what to recover their costs, it’s an initial payment of £10m - £12m. For that, it’s just a piece of land at Frenchay and the players (combined worth £100k?) Next comes the build cost of the new stadium. Rotherham’s 12k capacity ground, opened in 2012, cost £20m. Allow a bit for inflation and it would be £25m+ for a basic stadium, ok for league 1, but unsuitable for the Championship. Ashton Gate cost approx £50m to develop, so a completely new build Championship standard ground would be well in excess of that. So, it’s spend close £100m to buy the club and get the infrastructure right, before there’s any expenditure on players, and virtually no guarantee that there will be any profit. There are much cheaper ways of getting into football. There are better bargains available and you could buy a National League team for peanuts, and spend the money on players for promotion to league 2. The article below, from 2016, gives a good guide to club values: “An Average Team in league 1 or League 2 Unlike the championship, BPL money doesn’t flow down as much and these clubs have only seen a moderate rise in valuation. Again, if a club is based in a major city, owns it’s stadium or has a large fan base then prices can increase significantly. That being said, most League 1 teams can be acquired for £20m or less and League 2 teams can be taken over for £10m or less. In each scenario you would be taking on around 20–50% of the amount paid for the club in debt. Some League 2 clubs are under £1m e.g. Newport County.”

Miah, you have consistency in your belief of the unbelievable and I admire you for that, but I think you should change your forum name. Those who know anything about Saxon history (and who doesn’t?) will have heard of Æthelred the Unready. His name is a bit misleading as his epithet does not derive from the modern word "unready", but rather from the Old English unræd (meaning "poorly advised"). Perhaps you could change your name to “ Miah the unready”

They were and their financial director at the time gave that as the reason for not making any plans for a possible relegation

Don’t forget that great Spanish footballer, Lopez Ufarte

There are, of course, two teams in Barcelona. The one everyone knows and the other, RCD Espanyol. I can understand why Rovers want to associate themselves with RCD, as the club hold a record that no other La Liga team can claim. Espanyol has played more La Liga seasons without winning a league title than any other team.

Sorry major, you’ve highlighted a good point but missed the significance of hit. You fire one shot into the barrel to make a hole and let the water leak out. When it’s gone, you shoot the fish that are lying at the bottom of the empty barrel.

The only bit of road infrastructure in Bristol that ever worked.

Being pedantic (why change a habit of a lifetime?) but it was actually pre WW2. In 1958 the ground was owned by the greyhound company, so they built the stand.

Social media does not necessarily explain underlying hate patterns. It is just a method of communicating, no more, no less. In the past supporters of both clubs managed to communicate with each other without social media and also without the level of hatred shown today. Things have changed with football, as have with most things, but just looking at social media can’t explain a change in behaviour. It’s a bit like blaming health and safety regulations or Brexit or climate change or bankers or my cat ate my homework for everything

There is at least one honest sensible person on their forum, judging by this post: “If anyone truly believes these takeover by xxxx rumours,and is secure in their source, can they pm me with their details please? I have a friend in Nigeria, head of a petrochemicals company, that needs a bank account in the UK to deposit a massive amount of money in. Trust me. As a bonus, I also have some magic beans I'm willing to sell for the right price.”

With most clubs this would be a reasonable possibility, but nothing is simple with Rovers. If a planning application went in tomorrow it would be 3-4 years before they could move there. By then their financial loss for each year would have pushed the amount the Wael family have put into the club to somewhere in the region of £15m. Selling the Memorial Stadium would, at best, just enable Wael & co to recover their investment. If they shared a ground with Bath Rugby it would mean one of two options. First, share the build cost, which requires a few million pounds from somebody. The Wael family don’t seem keen to keep pumping money into a club, so another owner would have to come from somewhere. The second option would be to pay rent and go their as tenants, which isn’t any real improvement

They started out with nothing and still have most of it left

It’s me! (no it’s not)

Me thinks Rovers have already broken the covenant. A bunch of people clomping around on Saturdays can’t be described as sport or recreational. Purgatory would be a better description

Remember, tents are portable and can easily be moved, unlike the awful stands at Ashton Gate that are fixed in situ.

Please can the mods make a change so that we can give these sort of a posts triple ?