THE radio phone-ins were jammed on Saturday night in the wake of Blackburn Rovers' latest set-back.

Irate Rovers fans queued up to let off steam after watching their team crash to a feeble 4-3 defeat at the hands of Bolton Wanderers.

But the target for much of their anger was not Graeme Souness and the players but John Williams and his fellow directors.

The general view on the terraces is the board are being slow to back the manager financially in his greatest hour of need.

Given the state of the current injury list, Rovers are in desperate need of reinforcements - a fact the board are brutally aware of.

But it's one thing wanting new players and another being able to afford them in the current financial climate.

If ever there was a weekend for illustrating just how difficult the task is of keeping Rovers afloat then it has just gone.

On Saturday Rovers faced a massive game against their closest rivals in the Premiership and yet the gate was a desperately disappointing 23,538, nearly five thousand of which was made up of Bolton fans.

That means roughly 18,000 Rovers supporters turned up to watch their side, which is an admirable achievement given the size of the town, but still not enough to sustain a top half Premiership side.

To put those figures into perspective, Hull City recently attracted a 23,000-plus crowd for a Third Division fixture with Doncaster Rovers.

Before I get inundated with mail from people telling me Hull is one of the biggest cities in England, let me make it clear that I'm not having a pop at Rovers fans.

Given the size of the population, we should be proud of the fact that more than 20,000 regularly turn out at Ewood.

But in the overall scheme of things, Rovers are trying to run a top six Premiership club on a First Division gate and that's what's killing the club financially.

To put it into perspective, almost 80 per cent of the club's turn-over is being spent on wages when, ideally, that figure should be nearer 60 per cent.

And despite all the accusations about a lack of transfer funds, Graeme Souness has still spent close to £50 million in the transfer market during the last three year and a half years, although he's recouped £30 million of that through sales.

Outside of the big five, not many clubs in the Premiership can say they've backed their managers to the same extent.

Now the manager needs more money in order to patch up his injury-ravaged squad and rest assured that the club are doing everything in their power to generate it.

But they don't have access to a bottomless pit, particularly in the post-Jack Walker era.

Some fans have tried to argue that there's still £10 million outstanding from the £23 million which was raised following the sales of Damien Duff and David Dunn but I can assure you that's not the case.

Around £13 million of that was spent on new signings in the summer and the remainder was used to reduce the club's overdraft with the bank and pumped into wages.

With that in mind, it's time for everyone to pull together and give the board and Graeme their full backing.