BCFC fan coming in peace. What is actually going on at Blackburn right now? Seems like total meltdown. I wasn't paying much attention last year but everything was going quite well? What has changed?

Trav leaving is a real sucker punch. He is someone the supporters identify with and someone who brings pride to the team. Compared to Britain, JRC and even Dolan, he will be very very very hard to replace.

Can tavares and presumably baradji (or whoever) replace Travis's consistency and availability. Tavares doesn't have a history of playing a lot of games. Baradji is supposedly carrying an injury. Thats before we get into wether they can hack the pace of the league and gel in. Travis is a battle hardened championship centre mid. Who is available for 85-90% of most seasons.

Talking to a Brum fan the other day they are very confident about the game and expecting an easy afternoon ...... I hope they're wrong, but I doubt it

It was 50/50 for Alebiosu tbh. Thought he was good against WBA, along with McLoughlin our best player imo. Bit disappointed last night but think there's something there to work on definitely All in all, despite the understandable doom and gloom at the moment, the signings have been pretty good. Just hope whoever else arrives is up to it. Agree that the loss of Travis may well be felt more off the pitch than on it.

Personally I think it can be a mistake to play a lot of your previous starting XI in the first round of the cup, due to fitness levels not being maxed out yet and having played a game 3 days earlier. It's a fine balance though if the rest of your squad is weak. We saw how much the keeper swap hit us, perhaps the same happened to them. However you slice it, terrific outcome for Donny.

Im just going by watching the replays of two matched under VI from last season. VIs style doesn't suit Trav. I love Trav. I have him as my profile pic on X and as I said yesterday in here - he is Arte et Labore.

Jay stansfield will run our defenders ragged. Watching him at the euros he never gives defenders a minutes peace. I can see him scoring a hatrick. Rovers 0 brum 4

I've wanted Youan for a while since we were linked to him. I also wanted us to go back for Guebbels if we are poking around Swiss league.

Thank you…60 teams would have swapped with us. When we started I would have taken winning one round. 🙂 They went on to win it so we did lose to the cup winners…

Spot on. Of the players left (including Travis) you could probably say Brittain is the only top-end Championship player. The big issue is the impact on the dressing room. We had the same problem 2 seasons ago when we almost got relegated. The squad was young and experienced without any leaders. Last season Travis was back along the experienced heads of Bath, Weimann which has been highlighted in interviews by other players.

In my (financial services) career I never saw that level of detail in a contract. The detail was in the job description & the annual objectives. With Rovers though…who knows?

Couldn't think of his name, but yeah this wouldn't surprise me at all. Shout for the right winger, Elie Youan. 26, plays for Hibs, loosely linked in January, out of contract next summer. Pretty fast but doesn't seem to have much else going for him.

The irony is clearly the directive was to use the Carabou cup to blood youngsters/ new signings but we over egged it and lost an easy game so now dont have any more games to do it. Kind of shot ourselves in the foot....

Since joining Rovers on 25th February we have played 14 games under Ismael and Travis has started all of them save for last night's League Cup game. Of the 13 starts he's been captain in all of them and has played 90+ minutes in 10 of them, being subbed off after 88 minutes at Sheff Utd last season as we threw the kitchen sink at a winner, after 65 minutes against Millwall as we cantered to a win, and after 81 minutes last week as we tried to find an equaliser. Strange way of not favouring a player, but this sort of revisionism becomes common as a popular player heads out the exit door. He's been favoured and picked by all our last 4 managers save for JDT's second season and I remain convinced that saving on his salary and freeing up a wage was at least part of the thinking behind that loan to Ipswich

The warning signs of over promoting youth and the 30% of the squad pathway laid down by Broughton, obviously on instruction, nearly saw us relegated or certainly made a big contribution to that. They are going back down the same path but with a lesser squad and a load of cheap foreign imports who don't know each other. I mean what could possibly go wrong ? Did no one actually think about this or were they too busy trying to get rid of those who warned against it ( Eustace, Waggot, maybe Lowe and i bet certain players weren't shy of voicing their opinion either ).

I agree with all of this. Quality of the first 11 needs to be improved to save off the upcoming threat of relegation.

I'm not unduly concerned about replacing Travis as a player but his presence as a captain and leader will be sorely missed. Quite simply I can't see anyone (maybe over time Miller) from the current squad who will be able to replace him in that respect. It sounds like he wants to go and has made it public but this has been coming for some time now so it doesn't surprise me. It boils down to the awful management and poor handling of players new deals and our anger should be directed towards those people.

I'd personally put Alebiosu as a firm positive. Big, strong & quick. Managed to put in a cross from nowhere yesterday with 2 players around him, Hedges has never done that. I think he'll be a very useful player and has all the attributes to be more than that.

He is not only an experienced player at this level but you underplay how effective he is at this level and how hard it would be to replace him. It will be very difficult to replace him, especially seeing as we will be doing so for a small fee most likely from a random European league. Tavares had a decent game againsr Bradford, is thay enough for you to consider Travis to already be replaced adequately? Lunacy if so. Baradji seems to be flavour of the month based on a highlights reel. If he needs months off that should be off the table straight away. Beyond that, we also dont have a slot for him in terms of ESC. And beyond that, you are replacing a proven good Championship midfielder with someone who has had one good season seemingly at a relegated Swiss club.

That already started the other day along with the bots being busy 'we only get 13k if 25k turned up every game not just Burnley we'd be spending more' F#ckin deluded lunatics they are.

Their tails are up big time at the minute and we're a club with an extremely dark cloud hanging over it, which isn't going anywhere. Difficult to see anything but a humbling defeat here: Rovers 0 Big Club 2

It was the agent who sorted all that lot out i don't know whether he was intent on rubbing fans noses in it even further or just brown nosing them as much as possible. Probably a bit of both but it was more 'bad advice' for them.

I dont see how it is evident personally. If anything, surely us trying to be more athletic and get about the pitch, that suits the strengths of Travis. He is naturally a player to sub off when chasing a game because you tend to put more attacking players on. But I am not having that he is going even slightly because Ismael doesnt rate him. He seems annoyed that he is leaving. He is leaving because we took ages to offer him a new deal, and now he can get a wage far more suited to a proven Championship midfielder. I also suspect he can see a sinking ship around him.