I thought we had our best spell, and had most momentum, in the 10 or 15 minutes leading up to the Dack and Palmer substitution. After we made our change, we never had a sustained attack again until the final few minutes. Dack obviously didn't want to come off so I think Mowbray has been outmanoeuvred there. The ref was atrocious but his biggest mistake was not sending Travis off.

Do Everton need to take something, or are they already through?

I see the Preston Massive are travelling to Bolton today and its allowed to kick off at 3pm.

Bristol City are on a great run of form, but the only team they have beaten who are in the top 10 during that spell are Birmingham. That doesn't mean they haven't done exceptionally well, and they have draws against Derby and Norwich in there. Win today and no team will have picked up more points at home than Rovers this season (30). Should be a good game. I just hope one of Dack or Graham starts and Mulgrew is back. If we go with Rodwell plus a non-centre half at the back I fear for us.

But over the years the number of lapsed attendees must be huge. I'd imagine it's more than the number of walk ons, even if they are different people each games. The deal in itself may be ok for some, but it's still a big single outlay and doesn't try and bring in new fans, which has to be the long term fans. I imagine you'll hardly see an increase on the back of this deal.

Disagree. I think lapsed attendees over the last 10 years outweigh the current infrequent pay on the day customers.

A single special offer for a plum 3pm kick off game.

So the plan to try and encourage boycotters, lapsed fans and never-attendees to get themselves into the new Ewood experience is to get them to suddenly spend the best part of £100 on tickets. Hmmm. See the flaw in this?

Shocking wasn't it. The lack of basic effort and urgency was appalling.

It's plausible that someone actually could have spiked Steve Kean's drink.

People who criticise Breretons performances, myself included, get told that we are being unfair as we are judging him based on his ability needing to match the price tag. I disagree (see my original post). I judge Mowbray on the fee. I don't doubt that you have idiots who hurl abuse at our own players sat around you. However, as idiotic as they are, I think they are disappointed with Breretons lack of contribution in general rather than expect him to be amazing / the finished article. When you said that "Because of his large transfer fee, many are expecting the finished article already and forget he is only n n n n nineteen", I presumed you had come across people on here and other forms of social media actually saying this. I actually agreed with your post other than that line. I'd never seen anyone stating such things so asked who they were. Now it turns out it's a couple of idiots who shout stuff, and you don't know if they do or do not hold that opinion, you just think that they do.

Now you're just losing it. I didn't say any of that about my seat. All I said was that I don't think there's anybody that expected him to be the finished article at 19, regardless of the fee. You claim there are many people who are stating this. If some 'urchin' stands up and calls him rubbish and a wanker that's one thing, but I doubt your Ewood park neighbour is standing up shouting 'Your rubbish Ben and, as you cost £7million, I expected you to be the finished article.'

All mythical people that sit near to you I presume. I've never come across anyone who expects him to be at his peak already at 19.

Are they? Who? We expected someone who, having already made 50+ appearances at this level, might be able to make a decent contribution to the first team.

Just seen the highlights. Rodwell doesn't cover himself in glory for goals 1 and 4. His marking for the fourth is particularly poor. He's got the guy in front of him and 2 seconds later the guy is clean through without doing very much.

The two lads he's having a go at are complete pond life though. You only need to look at their tweets back to the rovers fans who've criticised them for being abusive to Bennet.

Based on a few comments like this during the game I decided to watch the stream from about 78 minutes onwards (i didn't realise there was a stream until it became obvious UK residents were watching it.) All I will say is he must ahve been bloody good before I turned it on !!

Rovers should have let him continue, created a supporters section for content on iFollow and posted them on there instead of YouTube. Problem solved.

Obviously. And nowhere did I say it did !

But there was money left in the budget after August, and more money was made available in January, so had we not signed BB we could have signed someone for a similar fee and paid them bigger wages. Buying Brereton emptied a large chunk of that budget, and we have seen no return on the pitch for blowing that budget yet. Whether the money was spent on fees or wages, it was still spent and stops us having that money to spend on other targets. You've hit the nail on the head that we've tried to buy capital, a future sellable assett, rather than instant impact to the team. However on what we've seen so far, that seems a failed gamble.

That doesn't mean he's on peanuts. Its basically saying we had a pot of money and can divide I think up how we see fit. Even if he's only on, say, four grand a week, that's four grand a week extra we could have added to the wage bill to bring someone like Austin in on loan. Whatever budget we had, a large portion of it has now gone on Brereton. There's no getting away from it. As for him not getting supported at Ewood, yes there are lots of individuals who say he's crap and a waste of money. Such is football. However he can't hear this and he's never received noticeable dissent or abuse from the Ewood crowd. You are coming across like we should be singing his name and in raptures every time he's on the pitch otherwise it's unfair on him and he'll never make it as a footballer.

That Cole transfer is a good example of what happens in January now. You have to remember the circumstances and timing of the move. (I remembered we were struggling so just looked it up) We were 3 points off the bottom 3, in a very poor run of form and had just lost consecutive home games to Sunderland and bottom of the league Derby over Christmas. Grabbi was struggling and Jansen hadnt settled yet in the Prem. As our main strikers, they had only scored only 2 league goals between them all season. The momentum was downward but fortunately the club invested big money in a gamble to fend off the possibility of relegation by bringing in Cole. We eventually survived a won a cup to boot. The overall stats may look now like it wasn't a great return from £8mill on Cole. However the job he did, and the lift he gave that team to survive that season and set the platform to become a stable premier league team, was worth well more that the £8mill we spent. Its a prime example of overpaying at this time of year but gambling to ensure the riches of the premier league continue.

I'm torn here. Your making a stern defence but as you have already pointed out, he hasn't shown enough behind the scenes or in games for him to make 2 consecutive starts yet regardless of the competition. That's because on what he has show so far he has looked very poor. Therefore, whilst I don't agree that the money has been definitely wasted as he surely must be better than he currently appears to be, on what we have seen so far it looks like it could have been wasted. If he's so good in training, he should be starting games. If not, he will fall down the pecking order (as has happened) and when we do eventually bring somebody in he's going to get pushed further back. We'll never know because the TM will not say anything remotely to back it up, but I'd be amazed if Mowbray isn't regretting what appeared a knee-jerk reaction. We have had two transfer windows to find backup for Danny Graham without success and yet, regardless of how much the actual deal costs us, we've spent more money on BB than we have on any player in the last 5 years and he's made no impact. As for your last sentence, the vast majority of the times we start a game without Graham with somebody else up top we look poor. Mowbray hasn't got a lot wrong but he's still firmly to blame with his tinkering and team selection for the Preston debacle when he tried one of his weird striking combo's.

It's meant to get warmer and wetter in the South East so it's more overnight frost than snow that would be a problem. Mixed reports on whether Griffin Park has undersoil heating.

Are Mowbrays comments in that article from the press conference yesterday?