Would you be able to direct me towards any quotes from any member of staff at Rovers who said the pitch was 'totally playable' on Saturday? From what I can see no member of the Rovers groundstaff has publicly commented and Mowbray has had a moan and talked about wanting to play but I note he doesn't actually say the ground was fit to play. The only person who i can see has said the pitch was fit to be used was the Millwall CEO. There's a reason games aren't held or cancelled on the views of CEOs who unless I'm mistaken aren't qualified in pitch management and aren't paid to make difficult decisions based on player safety like a referee is.

I've got a bad feeling about this one. It seems to have all the ingredients for a disappointing night: - A while since we last played - Away from home midweek - Live on Sky - Sheff U are in decent form and strong at home - We've had goalscoring woes and Brereton is out We really need a result and a win if we are to keep the pressure up on the top 2 but just can't see it. We just always seem to struggle in these sort of fixtures.

Does the referee set the budget for the stadium and pitch, authorise annual repair/replacement works, monitor the drainage at Ewood? Its quite obvious the managers and players wanted the game on, along with the supporters. It is quite obvious the decision to postpone the game belongs to the referee. Once again you are focusing on the smaller picture - the events of yesterday lunchtime/afternoon and the decision making that led to the call off - and not the bigger picture which is why we are the only club in the top 2 divisions unable to get the game on.

Games off due to snow/rain were ourselves, Salford, Fleetwood and Harrogate in the EFL. 3 clubs recently out of non-league.

Come off it. The pitch is Rovers' responsibility. As is Ewood Park. If there is an issue with either of those then the blame for it lies at Rovers. Correct - the referee has to assess the surface and determine whether it is fit to play on. It seems he did that and decided it wasn't in a good enough state to start the match. I would say that photographs and cameras and the view of things from the stands might be very different to the actual condition of the pitch when walking/running on it. Maybe the referee has got it completely wrong here. Maybe he has made an absolutely ludicrous decision when the pitch was absolutely fine, in which case he should be dismissed. But isn't it strange how every other club in the land managed to avoid getting such a referee and he happened to turn up at Ewood, a ground we know from experience has been deprived of investment over the last 10 years. Anyone who has been to or watched games at Ewood in the last 4-5 years will have noticed a clear deterioration in the surface and its ability to withstand heavy rain/snow. These call offs are becoming more frequent. Up until 2010 I can't remember games being called off due to the weather, or perhaps on very rare occasions, yet now it is becoming at least a once a year event. It won't get better - only worse. Waggott knows investment is needed - he has admitted as much yet failed to deliver it. If Waggott admits money needs spending on something you know it is in urgent need.

By the time we kick off at Sheffield we will have played 1 game in a fortnight since losing to Forest. In the same period Sheff Utd have had 3 games in the last 7 days. So as tough as it will be I would hope that one advantage to our recent lull in fixtures and them having to catch up games is that we will be fresh and ready for a 90 minute effort. I will be concerned if they appear more energetic or fresh.

Maybe they need the money to sort their pitch out then they can play home games after a snow shower.

Last time I checked referees don't call games off at 2:15pm unless they have to e.g. there is a serious issue with the playing surface. I agree it is baffling how the referee could be apparently happy with the surface at 12:30 and then 90 minutes later it is so poor the game cannot start especially given the lack of rain/snow after 12:30 but that is by the by. We have joined esteemed company today along with the likes of Salford, Harrogate and Fleetwood as the only FL sides to fail to start due to the snow. It seems some people want to make this into some elaborate conspiracy about the referee. I do my fair share of criticising the officials and make no apology for that but even I am struggling to see a good reason why the referee would call the game off without good reason. Assuming he didn't, and assuming the pitch was actually in a dire condition at 2:15 then we have to turn our attentions to the other issue here which is how/why Blackburn Rovers' once standard setting pitch is now struggling to cope with a few hours of snow and resulting in games getting called off. Lets remember it is a little over 12 months since heavy rain put paid to our home game v Swansea and we got the BS from Waggott about a new surface coming in the summer. This is a long running issue IMO. Caused by neglect and limited investment over many years. The focus should be on those running the club - owners and executives - whose decisions have let to this embarrassing situation. Some of us have been warning about this over many years. Now the outcome is there for all to see. Venkys Out. Waggott Out.

Can't agree. If we have ambition we don't rule anyone in or out of the race. Still need to be getting 2 points a game from now until May which we are well off at present so doesn't really matter either way.

We are the club that complains about FFP and falling attendances. I've just suggested one simple, easy, obvious option to try and increase sales - put them on sale a lot earlier than June I've got evidence that a League One club in a similar sized town in a similar part of the world can and do manage that and it is clearly working - they have shifted over 4,000 by mid-February and sold substantially more than we did last year despite just getting out of League Two. Instead you want to make it into some sort of point about a 'desperate need' for 'immediate cash' Maybe they just have more idea than Waggott and Venkys? Sales numbers would suggest so.

Head in sand

Speaking of which Bolton (mid table League One) have just announced they have passed 4000 season ticket sales for next year. Adult prices start at £219 under their early bird scheme. Generally speaking in life the larger the sales window the more people are likely to buy. Limit to a short window and people might not be able or willing to find the cash. I'm sure people will be along to tell me Waggott is right for leaving season tickets until June when everyone is off on holiday spending their money elsewhere but Bolton prove there is merit in getting them on sale now. Why wait until we've potentially missed promotion and have another underwhelming summer? Is it not better to get peoples cash now whilst they are enjoying it? Today there may be 5000 home non season ticket holders in attendance. I'd like those people to get season tickets.

Yep, draws all the way for me, as many sides as possible drop points. Fulham v Huddersfield I would also like a draw, but if Fulham win at least it sets Huddersfield back further, assuming we win.

It would have been better at Xmas to have simply put tickets on sale in the 3 home stands for all remaining games right through to Bournemouth at the end of the season all at £20 a head. Then push, promote, advertise the hell out of it. I've never understood this obsession with leaving it until 3 weeks before a game before announcing prices and starting sales. I get it for the away club in terms of setting their allocation and sending them their tickets and them having a sales period but at home at Ewood we know we can work on the Riverside, JW and BBE and try and get them filled.

Little acorns don't work if the club swiftly gives up on the lower DE as a home stand and reverts back to putting away fans only in there. Nor does it work if all those in the DE would have gone anyway but instead are moving away from the almost full BBE lower and instead sitting alone in the vast DE lower. It requires a hell of a lot more time, effort and initiative to rebuild this mess yet Maggott seems to think it is so easy that a good first half to the season and a bundle offer and thousands will be in queues to take advantage. He's either stupid or being deliberately incompetent about this after 4.5 years at the club. If they are serious about it then they would release season tickets in there. Unreserved seating. Promote it as a young adult/youth area or for those who want to stand and shout all day. We won't go for safe standing because Venkys won't pay for it but they could go for it being the unofficial standing area. Basically just do what Williams did when he opened that area to home fans but promote, promote, promote, target local clubs, organisations. But we know it won't happen. Only last week Waggott was wittering on about hoping to have season tickets released earlier this year. Yet numerous clubs are already announced and on with sales and we will be among the last. Everything is done last minute and off the hoof, poorly organised and planned. I'd like nothing more than to get back to the days of having home fans on all 4 sides and a better atmosphere at Ewood. Of course we had precisely that not long ago when there were established season ticket holders in that stand. Not a lot but the numbers dwindled each year, but still a presence and atmosphere at that end of the ground. Then the Club decided to shut it at short notice with no consultation and dispersed those fans elsewhere around the ground (or put them off going altogether). These sort of short term decisions cost support so it seems strange that they now want home fans in that end after getting rid of them.

To be honest that's one of the reasons I don't look forward to the play-offs. With a near 40,000 allocation I dread to think what we would sell at Wembley prices. Think people would be surprised and not in a good way.

No it isn't. Employing dodgy accountancy practices with the aim of cheating the system is significantly worse than breaking spending limits but being honest and transparent about it. It is a different offence. One might be accidental, inadvertent or be a few quid over the limit, the other is a brazen attempt to manipulate the system using false information. The only reason those sanctions were imposed was because of those practices. No points deduction was imposed for the offence of spending too much on players. If it was the 'same thing' then why didn't those clubs then get separate points deductions for overspending? The argument on here since day 1 has been that we cannot spend beyond a certain amount on players because if we do we will get a serious sanction, probably points deduction. My point has been that sanctions for such spending are rare and highly unlikely. Though it is convenient to Waggott and co. because most people don't know what is going on and just see the words FFP and points deduction for Derby and Sheff Wed and immediately assume we would go exactly the same way if we spent anything on players.

I can not include Derby and Sheff Wed because their sanctions were for breaking different rules! You can't spend ages warning against the pitfalls of spending money on players and then use two clubs who were sanctioned for fiddling their accounts and just lump every club that recieves a sanction into the same category. Compare us to Birmingham fine as that is the benchmark. We will only emulate the other two if we do something underhand with our Brockhall sale - like backdate it or grossly inflate its value. Their sanctions were for using prohibited accountancy tactics to try and assist them in dodging the rules. I know it is real - my point is that only in very rare cases do overspending clubs actually get sanctioned for doing it and usually those are the clubs run by buffoons. Those clubs guilty of overspending - and it is obvious to everyone that Stoke, Bristol City and Middlesbrough are - have not been punished and I will eat my hat if any of them actually have any points deducted. Reasons being their owners are too astute to allow it and the EFL know this. If they were going to sanction them they would have been able to do so long before now. Because lets remember that the FFP rules haven't come in during the last year or two - they've been here for 8 years and were in the pipeline long before that. Which makes Rovers inability to cope with them even more bizarre given we were in this division when they were brought in and suffered at the hands of them back in 2015 yet are still unable to get our house in order to comply with them. Meanwhile titans of the game like Bristol City and Boro have managed to avoid any issues despite spending considerably more than we have over the years. I'll be amazed if that happens.

We hear this sort of thing around this sort of time every year. Very rarely happens. Only 2 clubs have been docked points due to FFP breaches - Birmingham and Reading. Derby were docked points for administration and like with Sheff Wed also for employing dodgy accounting tactics to try and avoid FFP trouble, not for actually breaching FFP. People like Coates at Stoke and Gibson at Boro are the darlings of English football. Almost universally liked/respected and just about as reliable and ideal owners as any club could want - local and loaded and in it for the long term. I'd say there's zero prospect of the League wanting or trying to sanction them and even if they tried Gibson has shown he's up for a battle and will take them on. Bristol City have just lost over £30 million in the last year alone. It is as clear as night follows day that they will be over the 3 year limit that people often refer to. Lets see if they actually get a sanction because I don't think they will. Lansdown is another one like Gibson and Coates - the sort they don't want to upset or antagonise and the sort with the ability to take them on if they try.

I think as much of a problem as the bundle is the lack of time and effort the club has put into promoting it. I'm sure they think flasing it across the scoreboard v Forest and putting it on Twitter and the website counts as marketing and promoting the offer but I'm afraid there's a lot more to it than that. No prices or offers were announced until shortly before kick off v Forest a little over a week ago. The first game of the bundle is in 48 hours. That left 9 clear days between announcing the offer and the first game taking place. I don't know nor care the reasons why it was left so late but surely even Waggott must accept that putting tickets on sale for an event 9 days before the event take place might be cutting it fine and limit the number of people buying? I compare to a similar situation at Preston. Their derby game v Blackpool is on 5th April, yet back on 19th January they began selling tickets a whole 10 weeks before the match.

Not very many at all going off availability on the ticket planner last night. Looks like the half nearest the JW stand is open, the front 10+ rows are closed and there are a handful of sold tickets towards the middle. I'd guess a couple of hundred at most.

75 points is the usual requirement for a top 6 position. We need 21 to get there. After the Middlesbrough win on 24th January we had 52 points and needed 23 from 18 games. That is roughly 1.25 points per game over more than a third of a season to get there. Apply that across a full season and that level of form would result in around 57 points, so enough to survive but not much more than that. Go below that 1.25, which we would need to do to fall short, and get towards 1 point a game and it is relegation level form over more than a third of the season. Put simply a failure to finish at least 6th would be a collapse of epic proportions and it matters not what people would have took back in August. 7th or below should result in the sack. 6th or above and there is a lottery ticket which even Mowbray might land a win on. But if not we are back to square one in the summer with the annual Venky rebuild with kids and loans.

In isolation not a bad result, arguably a decent one, and I felt we looked the more likely of the two to go on and win it in the second half. I had big concerns that we were going to be the usual new manager at home lambs to the slaughter with a night of frustration a la Hull and Swansea so it was at least good to avoid that. BUT I'm not sure how good a result a draw against WBA is these days. Despite the new manager Bruce hasn't had much chance or time to get them drilled yet and tonight was probably an opportunity to strike at them. They are a weary side and I think were there for the taking. A side almost at full strength against them pushing for promotion should be, in my opinion, sniffing blood and getting the win. Even if we say it is a good result in isolation, when we take it as a group along with Forest, Swansea, Hull, Luton and Mboro it is 1 win in 6 now with 1 goal scored. In any language, in any division that simply isn't good enough and has to change. You can come with the excuses about injuries, players missing, Chile national duty, bad referees but plain and simply the responsibility lies in house. There are a lot of people who I saw before and after the game saying how happy they would be with a draw at West Brom. The same people will almost certainly be saying the same before QPR, Sheff Utd and Fulham soon, so if they are happy to get draws there, even if we beat a stubborn Millwall with our scoring problems, that will be 2 wins in 10. I'm not sure if these people are aware of that or not. Sooner or later we are going to have to win one or two of these 'lets be happy with a point' games otherwise the play-offs will soon slip out of reach. I'm also amazed at the speed with which we have gone from 2 weeks ago being sat in the top 2 and effectively with that destiny in our own hands to now so many people happy to accept 6th as a great outcome from here. It seems the manager himself has settled for that with his comments recently about being 'confident' of us finishing in the top 6 despite us being 2nd. I often get accused of being negative yet I'm not the one settling for a place 3-4 places below where we currently occupy with a third of the season left to play. And once again that doesn't mean I think we will get top 2 - because with this sort of form that will quickly disappear - but I certainly wouldn't be giving up on it in February because 6th would have been good if offered in the summer. That is a bonkers way of operating. Time will tell but I am really concerned about the fitness regime at this club. The injuries to Ayala and Brereton tonight, just as we need them and just as we are getting reasonable options back available almost getting into laughable territory.

Expensive tickets but then again at least they have an excuse for it - limited capacity, high demand, top of the league We've been guilty of charging similar at Ewood in the last few years. It won't stop until an independent body introduces a cap on it. Clubs/EFL won't bother so time to take the power out of their hands.

A lot of people saying they would be happy with a draw here. Normally I would completely agree but unfortunately with the results at Hull, Luton and Swansea we need to make ground up here. Fail to win and that is 2 wins in 9 including FA Cup and with tough games against QPR, Sheff Utd and Fulham coming up where no doubt people would be happy with draws in those we could easily be looking at 3 wins in 13 even if we beat Millwall and get draws in them. Not good enough.