Let me know if you fancy getting a pint before the game sometime. We could start a lonely fans club 🤣🤣

I’ve had a season ticket at Ewood ever since the early 90’s and have always gone to games with my dad and my son (who started coming with us in the mid 00’s) This season, however, my dad’s health has meant he has had to give up his season ticket and my son has gone off to uni so, at the age of 45, I’m suddenly finding myself in need of making some Rovers supporting friends to save the match-going experience becoming a frustrating/lonely one. Particularly, I wondered if there’s anyone on here from Rossendale (I live in Bacup) that would be interested in sharing lifts to and from Ewood?

The most interesting bit of that is that, seemingly, it was the player himself who vetoed the move - after a year on loan sampling what it was like to play for the club and, in particular, the manager, he'd rather stay as 3rd choice at Chelsea. Like I say, interesting...

Lots of blame on here for Pears for the third goal - and certainly he doesn’t cover himself in glory - but (just in the interest of balance) both Carter & Scott Wharton f*ck up their headers too and that goal is just as much on them as it is on the keeper

Was at the game yesterday, plus have seen the short highlights on the Sky sports app. My views, for what it’s worth - no complaints on the red card, it’s a mistake from Pickering (who got away with a similar one just a moment or so before) and then it is compounded by the foul. Obviously, with hindsight, it would have been better to have let the lad go on and have a shot, and if he scores we’re 1-0 down but still 11v11 - but in the heat of the moment it isn’t always possible to think quite so rationally. From that point on though I thought we were very good. We didn’t just retreat and sit back like Rotherham did against us last week, but we still looked to press and get forward when we could - that said, however, after we took the lead personally I would have liked to see us shut up shop - bring Garrett on for Ennis (I know that would have been cruel, but needs must), and go to a 4-5-0 formation almost, let the defence sit deeper and just try to keep everything in front of us - if they score a screamer from 30 yards so be it, but to allow space in behind like we did for their goals is just criminal really. I thought Hedges was our stand out performer - and unlucky not to be given MotM. Calm on the ball, always available for a pass and worked like a trojan all game. Gallagher was very good when he came on and took his goal very well - although then missed another chance - so perhaps just a typical Sam Gallagher type of game 🤷‍♂️ Equally, Ennis did ok, but should have done better with his chance (and it wasn’t a penalty in the aftermath, despite what my son who watched at home tried to tell me!) Pears was exceptional for 80 minutes - kept us in the game with a number of good saves, even at 11v11 (Wharton, JRC and Travis all have him to thank for sparing them from being the villain of the piece) - but then had a horror show for their second. The first goal, I don’t think you can blame him for, but the second… He just seems to lose where he is in relation to the goal, which I think is a consequence of having to back-pedal as he was playing almost as a sweeper. Incidentally, I remember Kaminski doing something similar in one his first matches for us (maybe at Watford) - and then after that he seemed to stay in his area more (perhaps under orders). Again, if we’d sat deeper at 1-0, and even at 1-1, then that goal, and that error, wouldn’t happen 🤷‍♂️ All in all, not the most enjoyable afternoon, but far better than I expected after 17 minutes, when the red card came out, and I came away feeling proud of the team. If we play with that kind of spirit and effort all season, I think we’ll win more than we lose

Has the manager made mistakes over the course of the season? Yes, as have all of the players at one time or another. But, in the last minute of each of the last 4 games before today, we have had some incredible bad luck - a handball goal against us, a freakish own goal, a stonewall penalty not given and hitting the underside of the bar. If just one of those things had gone the other way we’d be in the playoffs tonight. I’m cautiously optimistic for next season - I don’t think we’ll lose any players from the squad, other than BBD and Thomas, and hopefully we can make some astute signings and improve during the summer. My only real concern is losing JDT, but hopefully he will want to stay and see the ‘project’ through for at least another season.

Anyway, trying to keep positive - 3 or 4 points from our next two games (against teams who, whilst obviously very good, don’t really have anything to play for) should mean we go into the final game with the playoffs within our grasp

I’m struggling to shake off the disappointment tonight - I’m normally pretty relaxed about results, win, lose or draw, but that one feels like a really tough one - maybe it’s coming so soon after what happened on Wednesday, I don’t know, but I just feel sick at the moment. God knows how the players must be feeling

The question you’re asking is ‘are you willing to risk conceding a second goal in order to try and get an equaliser?’ and the fact that the keeper has gone forward means they’ve already answered yes. Don’t get me wrong, on most corners I agree with you - leaving a player, especially someone short and quick like Dolan, up front makes sense, but in that situation, in the last minute of a game where you’re leading, where we were already short-handed because they’ve brought everyone including the keeper up, it would be foolish in the extreme

In answer to the question in bold - Yes. It was the last seconds of the match and they were losing - sending your keeper up at any point is essentially conceding that getting a goal back is worth risking losing another one. No matter how many players we'd left on the halfway line it wouldn't have changed the decision to send him up for that corner. And, it was actually the ref stopping play for pushing etc before the corner that allowed their keeper time to get forward. He came into the box fairly late whilst the ref was talking to players and sorting out the melee, and no one seemed to notice him at first. Szmodics does eventually, but he's already marking a player - you could see him mentally weighing up whether to leave his man and get the keeper or not, and ultimately he stayed with his original man, which is why the keeper has such a free run into the 6-yard box. With hindsight Szmodics should have tried to block his run off, but if he had done that and then his original man had come through and powered in a header then we'd all be asking why that man wasn't marked! I'm sure you know this, as I'm seen it mentioned more than once on here already, but all the changes last night were forced on the manager by players needing to come off. Who on our bench would you have brought on different to JDT last night? The options left on the bench were Kaminski, Phillips, and Dack.

Did anyone see this? Pearson eventually got a second yellow card for mouthing off to the referee, but John Buckley must be wondering how he managed to avoid getting two straight reds!

I remember thinking the same - that he would take on Shearer’s mantle with England once Big Al had retired - but I don’t think he ever had the same kind of drive and determination that Shearer had. I’d love to have seen what he’d have become with Kenny as his manager though. Incidentally, I heard a former Leicester player talking on the radio a while back (not sure who though) and he described Heskey as one of the best centre backs he’d ever played with - apparently during knock-about games in training Emile would always drop back and play centre back and this guy on the radio said he was brilliant there - in fact he was convinced that, had he played regularly in that position, he would have gone on to be one of the all-time greats. He also said that he had thought Heskey would eventually end up playing there towards the end of his career, a la Dion Dublin, and was surprised that it had never happened

He was behind the ball

Really don’t get all the criticism of Morton. He’s not been outstanding, but he’s certainly not as bad as you would believe if all you read was this site. I do think some of it comes down to the fact that he’s on loan and so therefore not really our player. Every other player in the team makes mistakes and gives the ball away, probably to a similar degree to Morton, but he seems to get criticised far more than most. An example of if from last night - at one point he misplaced a pass and a guy behind me started shouting, saying ’F’ing Morton, he’s always giving it away’, ‘Take him off’ etc. Fast forward a few minutes and Travis misplaces a simple 5-yard square ball intended for Morton and instead plays it straight to the defender - cue the same guy behind me ‘F**king Morton again - why’s he not getting that?’

We long ago allowed football tribalism to go too far and get too out of hand, and it seems almost impossible that incidents like this will ever stop following our beautiful game. I saw someone post on this forum the other day that he and his mates 'hate' Burnley - and I realise that there's probably a bit of hyperbole in that statement, and I'm all for a bit of friendly rivalry, but it just seems like an odd thing for a grown man to 'hate' someone just because they support a different club (maybe that's just me) It's not just at professional level either though - there's something about football that just seems to bring out the worst in people. I spent a long time watching my son play junior football, and coaching his teams for a bit too, and quite regularly you'd see parents getting angry with each other, with the kids, with the ref etc - and generally just displaying poor behaviour that wouldn't really be acceptable anywhere else. My son has now grown up and these days I spend my Saturday mornings watching my daughter dance in ballet competitions instead - and it struck me the other day how inappropriate it would be if I acted there the way parents acted at their kids football matches - if I shouted disparaging remarks about the other girls whilst they danced, or screamed and shouted to put them off during their routines, or called the adjudicator every name under the sun for not awarding my daughter first place, people would rightly think I was off my rocker and in need of some serious mental help, but yet every week at football pitches up and down the ground, at each and every level, we just shrug our shoulders and tolerate it - in fact, we don't just tolerate it, we actively encourage it in the misguided pretence that we're 'supporting' our team - and then we wonder why some idiots, fuelled by beer and drugs and not too much between the ears, take it too far

Lots of other teams have done it, we just don’t normally hear about them. But just this year, there was one involving a Chelsea player going out, plus another involving a Forest defender going to Belgium There are other examples on arbitration decisions on the EFL site - including one involving Forest being late with paperwork when they tried to sign Kamil Grosicki from WBA

O’Brien’s career is on hold for 6 months because Forest chose not to include him in their 25-man squad - not because Rovers f*cked up the transfer. We could have changed our mind and pulled out of the transfer at the last minute, or LOB could have done, and the outcome would have been exactly the same. Transfers break down all the time for all kinds of reasons - yes we don’t come out of this smelling like roses, but any claim for compensation from either Forest or LOB would be laughed out of court. If not presumably we can claim compensation from Nice for cancelling the loan of that striker at the last minute, or from Denis Undav for changing his mind and deciding to stay with Brighton

Like I said, I’m not excusing the failings that Rovers have obviously made here - and I agree that rules have to be the same for everyone But, I still think that the application of the rules is overly pedantic. If the 7 seconds late quoted above is correct (and I have no idea if it is or not, but the case file on the EFL website of arbitration between themselves and WBA is a similar case where the deadline was missed by 15 seconds) then logic dictates that the agreement must have been signed before the deadline, and probably even sent before the deadline, just received seconds too late, and I’m just not sure what the EFL gains by being so hard & fast on the deadline - or to put it another way, what real advantage has the club in question (Rovers in this case, but WBA previously and who knows how many others) gained from those few seconds? Imo, a better way would be that all documents, agreements etc have to be signed prior to the 11pm deadline (with proof being a time-stamped photo or something similar) and then submitted within 24 hours - I’m fairly certain that the staff at the EFL and Premier League etc, who have to ratify these deals would much prefer a more calm & leisurely submission process too

Not excusing the incompetence from those responsible at Rovers, but no one will ever convince me that such a hard & fast deadline, with seemingly no grace for either human error nor technical issues, is the best system that those running football could have come up with for these things. Rovers have lost out on 2 players, Rochdale (and to a lesser extent Forest) have lost out on vital income, O’Brien is going to lose 6 months of his career and the young lad from Rochdale is losing out on his big move - all for the sake of a few seconds?? Again, I’m not seeking to excuse the mess that Rovers have made of this - but there just doesn’t seem to be any common sense applied at all (and there are other clubs and other players in a similar situation too) Surely all that should matter is was the deal agreed between the 3 parties before the deadline? If it was, and a player posing for a photo with the shirt of his new club would suggest that it was, then the paperwork being a few seconds, or even a few minutes, late, shouldn’t cause the deal to be quashed. It just seems overly pedantic to me 🤷‍♂️

The ones that annoy me are the pathetic ones goading the home fans - “your support is f**king shit” or “_________’s a shithole, I want to go home” They’re just pointless imo - every team’s fans sing them at every ground so they’ve lost all meaning. I’d much rather sing in support of my team and the individual players - I’m just not sure that singing for 90 minutes that the place you’re in is a shithole does much to inspire or fire up the players

I’m a governor at a primary school. We’ve just had to make the decision to stop trips out for the children as the cost of hiring coaches has more than doubled from 3 years ago - taking a class of kids anywhere now has a starting cost of over £20 a head, and that’s before you factor in the entry price of where you’re going

Did they? I don’t remember any clear cut chances for them, nor any saves that Kaminski had to make Which of Hirst or Vale would you replace him with? He plays because what we have behind him is worse. Hopefully that will be rectified this month and Gally can become the backup to someone better. On the game, I thought we played reasonably well, dominated the game, should have won more comfortably and never really looked threatened. All in all a good day’s work I’ve seen a few comments on here about us being ’boring’ (and the guy who sits behind me was apoplectic on this point most of the afternoon), but I’m not really sure what people want. We dominated the game, created a number of decent chances and, with better finishing, should really have won 3 or 4 nil. I realise that it’s not exactly Bielsa-ball, 100 miles an hour, but very few teams are 🤷‍♂️ And, finally, given what happened on Thursday with Buckley (which many on here seemed to accept as the right decision), I think Cardiff can think themselves very lucky to have ended the game with 11 men (incidentally I particularly enjoyed Hedges reaction to having the ball flicked - I mean violently thrown - at him by one of their players in front of the Riverside 🤣)

The standard of refereeing generally in the Championship is poor - perhaps not always massive game changing decisions, but just general inconsistencies, like last night - in the first half two or three times he allowed a quick free-kick from not the exact spot of the foul, but then suddenly just before halftime decided that a free-kick had to be moved 5 yards to the side so that it was taken in the ‘correct’ place - why? - and picking and choosing which rules to enforce and which to ignore (how often are players allowed to dive, time-waste etc without consequence) Imo, far too often the referee makes himself the centre of attention instead of realising that people aren’t there to watch him. And the frustrating thing, like I said, is that there is seemingly no consequences for turning in a shocker. And, all other decisions aside, a red card ruins the game and were only ever intended to be given in extreme circumstances - it feels now like they are given out far too easily for the slightest thing. I’d much prefer refs to err on the side of caution and to come away from a game moaning that someone didn’t get sent off than feel like I’ve been short-changed by the game being spoilt as a contest. Again imo, it should be the intention of the ref to keep 22 players on the pitch unless he really (and I mean really) has no other option, and is 100% convinced about what he has seen - I reffed for about 20 years (not to your level - just teenagers and the odd bit of Sunday league) and I never once sent a player off

The difference being that if a player routinely misses sitters or gives goals away they generally find themselves out of the team, whereas the same refs make horrendous errors game after game and yet the next weekend they’re sent out again to ruin someone else’s afternoon Maybe if they lost a percentage of their match fee for an overturned red card then they’d think twice about dishing them out, and only do so if they were absolutely 100% certain about it (which really ought to be the minimum requirement anyway)

I think a few different things can all be true here: Was it a stupid thing for Buckley to do? Yes Should he have done it? No Was it worthy of a red card? No Did the referee have to send him off? No Personally, I tend to go off the reaction of players, managers etc. The fact that, even when it happened, not one of their players complained to the ref about it tells me that it was a nothing incident and, when the red card was produced, their players were just as shocked as ours were. But, as others have said, I don’t think that incident on its own cost us the game. We were far too slow to react to losing a man and had no shape and were chasing shadows. As soon as the red card came out we needed to shut up shop and try and hold the point. Personally I would have brought Travis and S. Wharton on for Dack & Gallagher, gone 5-3-1 and tried to frustrate them, which might just have meant they left space for us to hit on the break. Instead, we kept 4 attacking players on the pitch, got overrun in the midfield and conceded a second too easily, which then meant we had an uphill battle to get back into the game - how many times does a team with 10 come from behind? I’d wager it is not very often.