Frustratingly, I don’t think our club currently values the January window as much as some of our competition. We don’t need an overhaul but I’m sure teams around us will go out and actively improve their starting 11 in a position or two, allowing them to likely better their league position as well as building an improved platform for starting next season. This makes the ‘let’s save any decent signings til summer as they won’t hit the ground running’ tagline very frustrating as we could be bettering ourselves in the here and now promoting a stronger base window by window. Deals for players currently starting in the Championship might be too difficult however there will be very good opportunities in both cherry picking the better players from the leagues below (see Preston yesterday) or going for players not getting a look in in the Prem. As an example from the top of my head look at Joe Lolley last January - he was making the bench at best for Huddersfield in the Prem, Forest needed a winger and took him for a low fee. He was a starter from then onwards and made a solid impact. This season he's been on fire and is regarded as one of the best players in the league, a great January investment for around 500k. I understand the heavy competition for players and the fact that example isn’t one that you can pluck out every day with ease however it would be nice to see the ambition of signing players within our budget that truly improve the side. I don't think it's unrealistic or simplistic to ask - If we’ve insinuated money is available, why not attempt to spend it now on the players we need in order to not lose momentum and keep on moving forward?

We gave a much better account of ourselves defensively today particularly under pressure towards the end. Still a little shaky in parts but much better. Credit to Mowbray for going 4-4-2 to get us up the pitch at 2-1 also. Again Bell got skinned too many times and lost his man way too many times particularly in the first half, crying out for a left back before any other position this month. Stand out today was Travis. Never stopped and barely put a foot wrong. That was a proper Rovers centre mid peformance. Forget any loan, he should be one of the first names on the team sheet.

Good point well made, but nonetheless we have a lot young players in our Raya's/Nyambe's/Arma's and players such as Bell that are starters in key areas that haven't played at this level before. Not sure half of the players you list there add much in terms of leadership either although they do have games under their belt. Probably better explained as we've made progress in our first season back at this level in which we've made improvements despite not really going through the model last window of signing players who have been there/done that in this league (which I think we should've done given the budget of 10m ish)

It's important to remember we're an inexperienced side with probably 2 players good enough to make a real impact in a promotion quality first 11 (Reed, Dack) so on paper our league position is okay. We're half a season out of league one, and we can probably class ourselves as a mid to lower table championship side not overly worried about relegation which is decent progress. However we have some glaring issues that need improving if Blackburn Rovers are to be anything more than a mid to lower table championship side. Fully agree with other posters - these clearly aren't short term problems & aren’t being picked out from knee jerk reactions. Agree that we absolutely need to form some sort of playing identity to ensure that we have an efficient team approach to every game in which every man knows his role and responsibility. I’m concerned about Rovers defensively more than anything. We're very soft & despite all having some qualities, I don't think any of our back 4 are good enough for this level (Mulgrew is up for debate, Nyambe and Lenihan might be good enough in the future/is Lenihan even a defender?). Key point, we can’t defend to the required levels in this league. We are inept at preventing opposition teams attacking us down the wing to get in to good positions (Nyambe and Bell/Williams are dreadful fullbacks one on one, not helped by the lack of natural wingers who can help them out by instinct) & we're utterly awful at defending the resulting crosses in to the box. We get the basics of defending wrong week in week out which obviously isn’t good enough. I personally think the biggest contributor to this is the inherited squad coupled with recruitment. Simply put if we had the same back 4 as a Middlesbrough type team in the league, man for man, I think we'd be a good 10 points better off, at least. Having a back 4 of that quality would probably be unrealistic this soon back in to our long-term plan but we spent 7 million pound sterling on a 19 year old striker this summer who HASN'T STARTED A SINGLE GAME, the exact opposite of the type of striker that we needed, that striker being probably 5th on the 'Rovers need' list behind defensive players!! With 7 million real quid we could've and should’ve drastically improved that backline to a more than competent level – at least two solid championship fullbacks and the mystery lesser-spotted big nasty centre half. So unless we spend 7 million or more (not a chance) on defenders next month I'll be livid with Mowbray's 18/19 recruitment, at a time when it should've been the best it's been in years given the money we had/have available. Game management is an obvious issue, and we do need to put a lot of work in to improving it with the current crop, but along with improvement in other areas on the pitch, I think this is best remedied by experienced/better players that we don’t yet have. I think Mowbray’s done a good enough job as Rovers manager and I think we’re still on the right path as a club. We need time to build a better squad and I think he deserves the next two windows – although these windows need to be the best yet under him. Defenders that can defend & Wingers that can wing please Tony.

Wrong thread

Deepdale too... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSQf-0S3G1w

Cheers everyone. He didn't like any sort of fuss but he'd be moved by all of this. RIP Dad.

COYB.