Any professional footballer, including goalkeepers, should be capable of cleanly striking through the back pass Hyam provided. Pears was not expected to control the ball, take it around any approaching SW player and then produce a defence splitting ball which would create an opportunity for Rovers. All he had to do was launch the feckin ball to an area of safety. It was simply a huge error made even worse by his lamentable efforts to rectify it before the ball entered the net. As for the first goal, being so far out of his goal, he should quite simply have played safe and found touch as clearly Hyam would be under pressure. The bottom line is Pears is a very poor all round goalie with so many flaws in his game it's untrue. Many of us have been saying this since Mowbray brought, metaphorically speaking, one of his 'favourite sons' to the club. Pears has cost us both countless goals and points and should be jettisoned from our club as soon as possible. Sadly, he may have caused our club irretrievable damage.

I quite often come on here to get a crumb of comfort, reading what other fans have to say and knowing that we go though things as a collective, rather than wallowing in some of the crazy decisions being made at the club. The two posts on the previous page made by Vyeo and JH Rover are both absolutely brilliant and sum up an awful lot of what I also feel. Despite things looking very grim right now and our immediate future being perilous, having people on here sharing the pain and caring so much about the club, does still give me hope. As individual fans, we are pretty powerless, but I do firmly believe that eventually the incompetents in place (including the current manager) especially the owners and current CEO will be gone and we will all still be around to see the club ride again.

This post should also be framed and put in the boardroom. My thoughts exactly. If only anyone at the club with influence truly cared like the fans do. The board will be happy life has got easier because standards were being driven, often through the media by Tomasson - a man with intelligence, charm and charisma; traits you could say the club and certainly the CEO lacks. He wasn't perfect but we hadn't seen expectations like it at Rovers in over a decade and JDT brought them back for a season and a half... but with the people above him and the owners it was never going to last. I called it the moment he joined but it was "Brilliant" off the pitch, while it lasted.

Pretty much agree with the lot of it. What a post. JDT by no means perfect but he had valuable assets. Ambition, drive, personality, a vision. I think back to last season, particularly August to February, and the first half of this season, and this was a guy capable of dragging this club out of the stinking cesspit that it has been dragged and into a potentially bright future. Alas as we saw with the Allardyce fiasco, as we saw with the Bowyer/Lambert fiasco, these owners and their minions will always find a way to derail and destroy any positive momentum or progress and set the club back years. I should have known better but I admit I believed. I genuinely thought that with the Director of Football approach and JDT leading it and after the season we had, going so close in league and cup, that the ingredients were there to take the next step and crack the play-offs. More fool me. I can't describe the disappointment I feel about the way in which once again these people have destroyed something that should have been good and positive and that fell into our lap almost by accident after Mowbray finally left. Yes it was clear that JDT was burned by the O'Brien fiasco, yet he stuck at it and we still went close last season. It was clear he was unimpressed by the summer's shenanigans yet he stuck at it, moved his family over, accepted the constraints and we, somehow managed to get ourselves sat just outside the top 6 in December with this squad. Then a third transfer window of nonsense, culminating in Adam Wharton being sold, the McGuire disgrace (what sort of club treats other clubs and players in such a disgusting and humiliating fashion?) and no reinvestment was the straw that broke the camel's back. Totally understandable for anyone with any self-respect to draw a line at being undermined by your colleagues. Of course ownership and a board with any finger on the pulse would have sacked JDT once it became clear that the damage was irreparable and the direction things were going. I agree that he was essentially saying 'f... you' to them and going gung ho wanting to be fired. Yet they couldn't even manage his departure correctly. It came far too late, even in the week it happened they took days on end to announce it. They're just a disgrace. There's no coming back from this in my book. It's happened too many times and I won't fall for it again.

It's been so depressing over the last 4-5 months that I have not been able to muster the energy to post my thoughts about our farcical season. But after watching that s-show yesterday, I feel that I need to let it out. I'm in the Eustace = useless camp. I did not like his appointment from the start, because I thought his good spell at the start of the season was a purple patch and not indicative of his normal standards. But I did not want to pre-judge him and certainly hoped that he would come good. Given our constraints, we need our head coach to be able to get the team to produce at 110% of as a collective, and I just don't think he has the tactical and coaching nous that we need to be able to do so. Eustace's initial comments about togetherness sound like an empty soundbite recycled from JDT, who in contrast, meant it when he said it. In fact, Eustace lost me on day 2 with his dramatic entrance in the second-half of the Stoke game. I thought he saw that we had a safe win, and wanted to claim credit for it, though I'm sure one could argue that he genuinely wanted to shore the team up. For me though, it was more performative than substance given that he had not had any training session with the team before that. The fact is that the Stoke game was one of the few positive games that we've had in the last six months, and Eustace did not set the team up. Since then, I've not been impressed at all with Eustace's contribution. Sure, he shored the defence up somewhat, but the team as a whole looks disjointed. For all the players' complaints about JDT and our poor results this season, we could see a plan and a method to the madness - there were indications that the players knew what to do, what patterns to play, and were well-drilled. Whether they could do it or not is a different story, but on balance, I would argue that JDT extracted more from them than they otherwise would have been able to produce. In that sense, our current situation is just a reversion to their normal standards. Going back to statements and how he presents himself, Eustace has also proven useless. No clear communication, hides in generalities, and as yesterday's comments show, does not pursue accountability and certainly does not set the right standards. These are basic leadership traits which you would expect a good coach/manager to possess. I hoped he would prove me wrong; after all, who expected Gary O'Neil to turn out so well? Unfortunately, Eustace is more in the Ince/Coyle/Appleton class. On JDT, I lament what could have been everyday. I think he's the best we've had in the last decade, and could have done something special with us. It pains me but objectively, I definitely hold JDT responsible to some extent for this season's mess too. In this regard, I think his broken relationship with the board is the key factor. There was no trust after the Lewis O Brien incident last year and no alignment of vision, and I think JDT found it difficult to be motivated in such a demotivating environment. If Maggot had been more professional, if the board had been straight with JDT, if they had set more ambitious targets despite the financial difficulties - tell JDT we need to ride it out this season, that we still want to have a good go despite the limitations, find a way to do it - we might have had a better outcome. (Remember, JDT showed that he could deploy tactics to shut the shop and play the dark-arts when he first arrived - I remember this well during our win/loss sequence in the first half of last season, when we barely conceded when we won, and it looked like we were playing some form of 90s Italian tactics.) Instead, Maggot obfuscates and publicly says that mediocrity is ok, sets no targets except to develop players - well, my assessment is that JDT decided to work to rule and gave Maggot exactly what he asked for by playing an expansive game at all costs and giving kids like Adam Wharton and Harry Leonard (too) much game time, even when it might have been better to rest them at times. In the end, JDT's departure was inevitable. That said, if we got relegated, I would still have more trust in JDT to create something with a youth squad in L1 - in fact, I would be pretty confident of a reset and our chances of winning the league by a clear margin, given how we regularly spanked lower league sides with youth-heavy teams over JDT's reign. Now with all the above said, the root cause of our woes is still Maggot and Venky's, no doubt about that. I don't know how involved or uninvolved the Venky's are on a day-to-day basis, but if we had a competent CEO who can set the agenda correctly, aim high, and maximise what he can within his remit, we may have a fighting chance. Instead, we have a chancer, more than happy to settle for the mediocre, so we get what we get. Put it this way, if we sign Coventry rejects (both in the boardroom and on the pitch), we get Coventry-standards (the terrible version from a couple of years back, not the heroic one at Wembley yesterday). Finally, our prospects this season - we're certainly doing our best to snatch relegation from the jaws of safety. I've had a foreboding feeling all season. Too many similarities to our relegation in 2016/17 - massive cost-cutting, terrible signings (Telalovic - Stokes, Moran loan - Emnes loan, Greer - McFadzean etc), the same type of FA Cup draw (good effort and near upset against a big PL team - Man Utd then in the freezing cold and Newcastle this time), freakish results in the run-in (I remember thinking that we had done enough when we beat Villa(?) was it, and Brentford on the last day), but the other relegation candidates fought hard and chalked up enough points elsewhere. I'm praying for a miracle in our last two games, but am not optimistic. If we somehow survive this, I pray that we can somehow reset in the summer. But back to the start of this post and the theme of this thread, Eustace is not the man to get us there.

Yep another day of watching a rowdy DE full of big city day trippers on piss enjoying their big day out at Ewood ! From another club reborn from the doldrums whilst we trudge aimlessly on providing a gravy train and nest egg for a few useless disconnected individuals in head office. But hey why aren't there 20k in home sections cheering from the rooftops this team who've let us down for 3/4 of the season ?

Sadly, Ewood Park has never been renowned as having a hostile atmosphere which is often worth a goal start. Highbury was once nicknamed The Library' because it was so quiet. In the main, Rovers fans are a docile lot at Ewood Park, too little passion and too many happy clappers.

The fact he even got an ‘appreciation thread’ just for having a good game in as cup tie shows how small time we now are.

What a depressing thread

The Darwen End had home fans in it every game pretty much (unless moved for Liverpool/Man Utd) for twenty years from 95/96 until c2015.

Not sure why people seem to be struggling with this one. Generally, for another plodding mid table season, give Sunderland, Leeds and yes, Sheff Wed, the full end and take their cash, we can’t fill the seats ourselves, so it is what it is. However, in this very specific instance, how about not giving a relegation rival any kind of advantage at your own bloody ground for a huge six pointer with three games to go. Take every home advantage possible, don’t pocket a few extra grand but risk losing millions.

“We love it when the away team bring a big following. Like Preston and Wrexham. There is really only an atmosphere when the away end is full. We want to play in front of a full house.” - Aynsley Pears. In that infamous meeting at the start of February. Gallagher and Hyam were in agreement.

A really entertaining match tonight at Ewood as the under 21's came back from two goals to draw and for long periods in the second half looked like we were going to win. Sheron played three centre backs with in Whitehall, Gamble and Batty but it was the wing backs who really excelled. Cirino and Duru were great examples of how to play that position and the forward runs they consistently made were a real strong point for us tonight. I have said for a few months now that Duru has been excellent for six months and in my view he should at the very least be in the first team match day squad. These games are free for season ticket holders and in the past I have just scanned my season card and gone in as I would for a first team match. Tonight everyone had to go to the ticket office, show your season card and get given a paper ticket. In light of the reasons for the farcical Digital Day and the EFL Environmental Award how does that make any sense. Another day in the crazy world of Blackburn Rovers.

Pears has that one game in 10 where he looks like prime Buffon, but in the other 9 he ranges from a steady championship keeper to a Sunday League bench player. Unfortunately, the latter almost always comes up in key matches where we're expected to do well, like yesterday. Was barely qualified to be on the bench when we signed him and should never have been a number 1 at this level. Whoever made the decision to keep him in (JDT or otherwise) last season needs to give their head a wobble.

Can we leave out the generalisations? Many teams in this league have young, hungry squads, a few of those have ripped us apart. The problem with rovers isn't the age of the players, it's the quality.

Thank you! Still getting used to navigating that site. It confirms that Dolan and Gallagher didn't manage a single one between them. Markanday put himself about a bit in his cameo.

That's because it's always been a small town family club fanbase and a fairly big ground not often full, plenty other clubs have the same type of fanbase. It's the stadium itself that is the giant white elephant way too big and way too accommodating for visiting fans from much larger areas. PNE and Burnley, Blackpool and Bolton fans no different whatsoever....their stadiums are though. As someone who has travelled all over supporting Rovers through various periods of form etc i will die on the hill that most places are the same when their team is shite, their are problems at the club or there is nothing to play for. The exceptions are very rare but again most don't have a stadium way to big for their core fanbase and town. Coventry, Sheff Weds, Derby, Stoke, Boro, Sunderland, West Brom, Villa, Brum, to name a few iv'e visited regularly over last decade or so and all shite atmosphere and empty seats all over the gaff when things weren't going well. Yet again amongst our small minded fans it only ever happens at Ewood !!! Have some of you lot ever actually been anywhere else apart from when Rovers were on a good run ?

Hopefully after the deflating Wembley experience and another game on Wednesday night we will just be a game too far for them.

Repeated mistakes and poor in general is the real issue and it'll happen again that's why he remains in the spotlight. This isn't a Tim Flowers or Paul Robinson isolated incident in a top level god knows how many games difference. Calamity James and Joe Hart in between regular bloopers produced world class performances there is no comparison. Yes still early in his career and he's never getting to those levels but a team like us cannot afford TWO such poor keepers.

The one’s who have caused irretrievable damage to the club are not on the pitch sadly.

Hyam. He will be like the League One Beckenbauer. As long as we don’t boo him.

I’ve finally watched the highlights. Hyam could have played it a bit slower and a bit more in front of Pears. However I think Pears is trying to get it upfield. As it’s coming at a bad angle to him, he’d be better launching it into the Riverside and bollocking Hyam. Pears really needs to deal with it better. And I don’t want to dig him out too much, but when he heads it to Hyam for the first goal he stands there and admires it for a second or two. What is he waiting for? A one-two? The minute he heads it he should be retreating back to his goal at full speed.

Well my mind seems to have blanked that out 😂 It's still the away end for me though and if the away fans can fill it it, then give it all to them. The onus is on the home fans to shout them down from every other stand. I dont remember tim flowers, Friedel, Robinson ever complaining! If anything i vaguely remember ocasions when they enjoyed the banter with the away fans behind them. It should push the player to raise their game! Not bottle it like an amatures

I expect our younger players to make mistakes- youthful exuberance and all. but, I’d prefer U21’s over 5 or 6 of the lot that played vs Wednesday. Our fans deserve a better effort, and fewer mistakes, from players who are old enough to play better.

some light hearted humour to push away the blues... (should start a 'would you wear these' poll 😉)

I think Buffon is stretching it even for 1 game a season...

Maybe he said "nice one Pearsy, I'll see to it that you get half of my winnings"

But how much the lads confidence has taken a battering is anyone's guess.

This is an obscure forum with a few dozen regular posters, wider social media is a cesspit, but there’s nothing anybody can do about that. Come 3pm on Saturday at Ewood, he’ll be supported, like always, and that’s all that matters.

Kaminski was't a promising youngster though was he? He was the real deal. If he had been kept we wouldn't be fighting relegation now. That's how important that bit of business was. And since we spent "big money" on a replacement---what did we get? At best---one for the future. Well the future is now.

O'Riordan and Gilsenan, are my 2 bets. That's assuming the majority of the first team fuck off.

I'd put money on our u21s beating the first team

Markanday and especially Telalovic would struggle in league 1.

This thread hasn’t aged well

I'd say he came over to say "what the fuck is wrong with you?, you looked like a clown running across a minefield"

unless they reduce season tickets prices to £200 (highly unlikely!!)i won`t be at ewood again till the filth that preside over the club have gone,i`ll take in some away games and generally look in from the outside,iv`e seen enough of eustace to realise he is`nt up to the job,i think the players sense it as well,though there is no excuse for not putting the effort in like yesterday

Nice ! Didn't realise you had done that. I feel less pessimistic now then after reading that.

Seen a Facebook debate about this. Someone, claiming to be a qualified ref, is saying that it wouldn’t have been a foul if he had used his hands. The reason being is he made a genuine attempt to clear the ball, it then became a new phase of play and so he could legally have then used his hands. Said person is claiming this is why the ref came and spoke with him after. Ie telling him he could have used his hands because he made a genuine attempt to clear. It was a bit unusual for the ref to speak with him at that point. Appreciate you reffed at the highest level. Is there anything in what our FB ref is claiming or is he talking nonsense?

You've just got to keep it out of the net it's as simple as that and although maybe a free kick conceded you have actually covered your howler by saving it. Anything can happen with a free kick you have to give yourself that option.

Might just be the angle of that video but I still can't wrap my head around how he's caught up to the ball and attempted to do nothing to stop it going into the net. I know he can't pick it up but he does nothing.

Get him in nets on Saturday.

Dolan and Gallagher both had xGs of FA, Nada, Zero... At Ewood against bloody rubbish

I see Burnley won one. Welcome back.

Great article Rich, I think you have it nailed it. For me, despite the poor form from December, JDT was the answer. He and his ambition scared the hell out of Swag and the other idiots behind the scenes at Ewood. If they had backed him last year we would have at least made the play offs and if they had backed him in the summer with a reasonable transfer kitty and salary budget, he would have taken us close again. They tried to crush his ambition and infectious enthusiasm and it became untenable for him and with him leaving, I really do worry about the future of our once great club. Scandalous.

For me the two challenges are fouls but I don’t think the Forest player’s exaggerated fall for the first helped their cause. With the handball I’d day it falls into the ‘seen them given’ category but for me it’s one that should never be given.

As long as Pears isn't in the squad and Szmodics starts, the rest are all interchangeably poor. In fact, no, Markanday and Ayari both looked like they had a bit of fight in them, when they came on - start them.

Dreading it. We need a Brad Friedel inspired win at all costs performance...show the suffering fans you give a toss. What we could do with the above giant inbetween the sticks again eh!

We're at home. we need a result and a drastic improvement after today, they're just coming to terms with a heartbreaking and exhausting 130+ minutes at Wembley and also have a tough game against Hull on Wednesday, just over 48 hours before they come to Ewood. They've lost 3 of their last 4 in the league. They're 9 points off the top 6 with 12 points to play for so lose on Wednesday and their league season is over. If this manager and squad had anything about them they'd be relishing this one to prove people wrong after today. Sadly we don't operate like that and we will relinquish any advantage we may have. Waggott will be hoping they buy loads of tickets so we can give up home advantage again.

You must have forgotten the defeats at Birmingham, Bristol City, Swansea, the limp home games against Millwall and Plymouth, the hiding we took today....the total lack of any ambution beyond a 0-0 against most sides, amazing what 2 surprise away wins against the form book does to the brain eh??

I can’t get excited about any of the Premier League teams. To me it’s like the reply Eisenhower reputedly got when he asked his leading scientific adviser how the Russians had managed to launch a satellite before the USA. “ The thing is Mr President - their Germans are better than our Germans “. There’s not much local allegiance going on. It’s not like when we had four Blackburn born lads in the front five of the team in the old first division back in the day.