I know how he felt. However he, like several of our lot, has no right to be too critical bearing in mind how many times he has lost possession, missed tackles and wasted attacking positions, this season. Pears' errors were atrocious, but the lack of quality, focus and fight goes well beyond the goalkeeper in this team.

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 ?

Great post - but I just worry, and sorry to be so pessimistic and potentially piss on any optimism you may have, that I feel this is a step too far for most. It's all about hope, and lack of it. When we went down under Mowbray, there was a core of players you could get behind, and Mowbray seemed a steady hand and offered a glimmer of normality, both on and off the pitch. We signed Dack, and the team regained an identity. The League One season was fantastic for many people under 30 who missed the glory days in the 90s - and it did what most relegations do, the cliche of galvanising a club. There were still issues but it felt like a small reset and things could start to improve, especially the relationship between board and fans, not just the usual case of success sweeping issues under the carpet, but a real chance to rebuild. When we went down under Brian Kidd there was trust in the board and the owners that they'd guide us through it and make sensible footballing decisions, which they did. I actual miss the days, when for example, we were losing at home to Stockport in the league cup in 1996, stood in the BBE chanting "we want Harford out" that the board would go away and listen to the fans and do the right thing, that fans and board were on the same level. This is what is getting to supporters at the minute - that whatever they do, it doesn't matter, there's not that connection any more. The only way to move onwards, and to be honest a total pipe dream, is for the Venkys to leave, magically write the debt off, and we get new, sensible owners who are sympathetic to the area, and who can put a pro-active board in place, whatever division we are in. It pains me that the Wanderers are doing an amazing job, and getting 15,000 season tickets, it's madness. Of course I don't want administration, I don't want job losses, and the more we struggle the harder and harder it will get, but even in League Two with a small fanbase, with the right owners and some clear messaging and direction, you'd get that siege mentality that would make matchdays a passionate affair again. I get we need to reduce expenditure, and I get we need to become a selling club to survive in the current climate - but it seems whatever new model or scenario we set ourselves up for, there's issues, and it just wears away at us fans, wherever we turn we just can't seem to make anything work: - we try and be proactive, hire a DoF, sign an ambitious coach and start to develop a model (JDT, Lambert) - but the owners turn the taps off and there's a clear divide behind the scenes. Fans see an identity and a plan and get behind it, but there's that nagging feeling it'll be short-lived, so what's the point? - we, as supporters, get our heads round that our youth is our "identity", and except that the team might struggle but we'll be watching our "own" play week in and week out, and we can get behind that and support them, but we then sell them off before we have a chance to actually watch them grow in our side, the money goes into general admin, we don't see it reinvested. I get it - but it's still sad to see, it's something else you can't get excited about. - we hire a steady hand in Mowbray, but let a number of transfer windows come to nothing even when the team are riding high, and let a bad situation drag on and fester for too long causing the club to stagnate. - we go from a "solid" if old-fashioned recruitment setup under TM, a network of mates basically, but it worked, seemingly using his connections to sign great loans and gems from the lower leagues, giving the fans trust and excitement in any new signings, to now seemingly scraping the barrel of Europe. And if we do get the basics done, the i's dotted, and get the forms sent off in time, if we do actually sign players, they are literally the bottom of the list - whilst other teams seem to steadily strengthen and sign lads who can out-fight us and who are better at a rough and tumble scrap in the Championship. So now the fans immediately doubt any new signings. When was the last time we got excited about a sub coming on and changing the game? When was the last time you saw a new signing on the bench and couldn't wait to see him get a run out, that roar from the BBE when he comes on the pitch? I've totally forgotten that feeling. The way the ground fell silent and emptied after the Pears calamity on Sunday, that's the feeling I get - it's total apathy, because we just can't see a way out, or a way to turn. There was time in the game to lift the team and a "normal" scenario would see team and fans as one trying to claw back some respect, but because of this gradual dumbing down of the squad, you know what's coming - we don't have the players to perform under pressure. Couple with everything off the pitch, it's like we've been neutered as a fan base. We never come from behind, we never score late goals, this stuff is so telling, it really means something - there's a reason why Utd in the 90s kept scoring late goals, the whole "Fergie time" aspect, the whole place had belief. As someone else put it better than I could, we've got billionaire owners yet need to sell the crown jewels to keep the lights on. We're at a point of complete stagnation. So what's the model under Eustace, I presume treading water from one season to the next? Bringing on youth and selling for a profit I presume, while the mysterious 20m leaves each year. Normally I would give him the benefit of the doubt, based on a normal scenario of him being allowed to sign his own players, just to see if he can pick a player and build a team - but who knows what our transfer policy is now, it's all up in the air. Apologies for the long winded rant.

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 ?

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.

Or Pears...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Did he? FFs. He likes to point out excuses and then say “we won’t use it as an excuse”. If it’s not an excuse then don’t flippin mention it in the first place.

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.

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.

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.

We'll only fuck up the paperwork anyway.

No, they’ve been given the whole of the lower tier. Because he’s a twat.

Kaminski wouldn't have just been the difference this season, but I strongly felt that not bringing him back in when Pears' form dropped off last season was the difference that meant we missed out on the play offs.

I'm sure they do think that - the question is whether the opposition get an increase % performance higher than our players. It's impossible to answer but my eye test tells me that when we have a big game and a huge away followings we crumble. Games against Preston, Wrexham and Newcastle for me aren't comparable - PNE was a local derby in the first half of the season (which we lost), Wrexham we where favourite's and didn't crack but ultimately where playing a L2 team and all of the pressure was on the opposition for the Newcastle game. There's a reason playing at home is considered an advantage. The Sheff Weds players described it as a 'like a home game' and our Manager said 'a big away following has an impact but we won't use it as an excuse' (whatever that means). In my opinion there's absolutely no argument that in a potentially league-defining game giving the opposition 7K fans has a net-negative effect on our clearly poor-under-pressure players.

‘Typical Rovers fans’, ‘must be the worst set of fans anywhere’, ‘so negative here’ is the refrain on social media. Nope, it’s the same everywhere, indeed I’d say our match goers are pretty bloody positive considering the complete garbage we’ve had to sit through for a decade.

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

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.

He looks like he's just come straight from the picket line at Orgreave.

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

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.

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.

I’m not convinced he’d come to a championship Rovers either.

Bolton have sold an additional 1k extra tickets vs last season in the early bird phase. Priced at £249. We continue on the journey to a closed Riverside under Swag.

Buffalo Springfield - Broken Arrow

Iv'e said it many times since we aren't losing that pathetic last min goal to Coventry at Ewood with TK in the sticks. Main difference is though he was a keeper who earns points with vital saves at crucial points in games, Pears and his ilk still make good stops but 9/10 a half decent effort will beat him too easily. It''s those fine margins between real class and bang average.

They probably would have done , but thankfully we didn't play like Boro did we?

The main point being once Weds went two up down that end having so many fans having a carnival in one end became more of a help to them than it should have been. And it was avoidable so why give teams that opportunity in the first place in what was really a one off 6 pointer not a run of the mill game.

I remember being at Hillsborough in 2020 when we won 5-0. I was on the Eastbank with my Wednesday supporting mate. There was understandable huge grumbling at half time when they had seen us score 3 in front of them. A lot left and many didn't come back. Then we scored the fourth very early in the second half and I will swear about 3,000 just got up and walked out. For almost the whole of the second half there was a very sparse crowd on that end. No doubt many of those who walked out that day were at Ewood on Sunday proclaiming their undying allegiance to Wednesday.

They’re not the only ones who will be at it. Leeds winning last night has intensified the race at the top meaning Leicester will have it all to play for in the last game. I’m increasingly gloomy, I can’t see us getting another point.

It's not that complicated - the owners have simply turned off the taps. They did it to Lambert, they did it to Mowbray at the end of his tenure and they've done it to JDT. The squad cost two buttons and a piece of string to put together and it's showing.

Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him?

The Kinks - You Really Got Me

Just noticed this is £15 a ticket. If Coventry beat Hull and still have a chance of playoffs they will pack that full Darwen End and hospitality out. Waggot be like…

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Buffon one match, Buffoon the next.

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.

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.

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

Yesterday was summed up by the substitutions. We are 2 goals down heading into the last 10 minutes with another 10+ then added in injury time. So if we had anything about us we would have put them under immense pressure during that time and made them work their socks off to preserve their lead, they should have been hanging on for dear life. In the end it was predictable garbage and we barely laid a glove on them. Their keeper could have had a lie down in injury time. We bring on Chrisene, Ayari and Moran. Stood on the touchline coming on they looked like 3 little boys. Meanwhile the opposition bring on Callum Patterson and Michael Smith. Not exactly world beaters, far from it, but two big bruisers who have been there and done at in professional football. If I was their manager I'd have been delighted seeing us throwing them on for the last 10-15 and not a couple of nasty giants. Prior to that it was Buckley and Markanday coming off the bench. Another two who have no physical presence whatsoever and look like little young lads. Wednesday were packed full of size, stature, power. We all know where the reason for this comes from, saving cash and doing things on the cheap. 3 kids on loan coming off the bench to save our skins. How sad.

I see Burnley won one. Welcome back.

Yes the players aren't great, and the mistake from Pears is almost laughable - there's keepers in Sunday pub leagues who would be embarrassed by that - but I disagree that a different manager wouldn't make a difference. Wednesday's players aren't particularly good either, but the difference between them and us on Sunday was they were well drilled - they had a set way of playing and they each knew their jobs and did them to the best of their ability. In comparison, our lads look like they've been sent out on to the pitch with no instructions whatsoever - players are coming short and looking for the ball to feet and seeing the ball kicked over their heads and then, when they do make runs in behind, the defenders are looking to play into the midfield - we look disjointed, the players aren't in the right positions to help their teammates, because no one seems to know what they are supposed to be doing or where they are supposed to be. It's abject and dire, and it's on the manager who either hasn't given them a game-plan, or hasn't been able to get it over to them