Did anyone else pick up on the big news let slip by the commentator on Sky Sports yesterday? They mentioned that we had been having problems with our pitch this season but that this summer we would be ripping it up and replacing it at a cost of £2 million. Impressive that they've identified the issue and agreed on such a significant outlay in the space of 4 days. Or maybe it is just more bull to try and keep people quiet for a few months. I'll believe it when I see it.

I think Kappa have all but disappeared from English football at present. I know they did Leeds a couple of years ago and Portsmouth and they were nice kits, think Villa have them now but that's about it. Hummel have significantly increased their club and operation over the last 3-4 years and now do quite a few clubs - Everton, Middlesbrough, Coventry, Bristol City, Cambridge, Southend - I think they've really pushed the boat out on effort in their designs - Coventry have had some really nice ones especially. Macron do Forest, Bolton, Bristol Rovers, Reading - quite nice - the Italian manufacturers tend to be good. Always liked the Southampton Under Armour ones but they don't seem to have much of a foothold in England at the moment.

Sounds like we are back to the good old days then. Distant owners not communicating. Representative making decisions apart from the manager. CEO and manager being bypassed. The Mowbray side with him, Venus and Waggott then the other side with Pasha, Silvester and presumably Lowe. Wouldn't surprise me but if true I would expect Mowbray to resign in the near future.

Warnock reckons it 'endangered the life of the player' and after that the result was irrelevant. He's good at it, I'll give him that.

First half dreadful, and relieved to get to half time at 0-0. I thought second half we improved as it wore on and after scoring we were the better side and started to threaten more on the counter. Once we got 1-0 up they seemed to have no answer to get back into it other than to launch balls into our box and we dealt with it pretty well. A good win and I'm always delighted with the 0-1 narrow wins. Middlesbrough are rubbish but well organised and managed which is why they are above us in the table. Sky, due to having nothing else to talk about, massively exaggerate the penalty 'incident' reading rules out and analyzing it in minute detail to make it more controversial and to justify Rosenior and Monk's punditry fees. Warnock the master of diverting attention away from his team and defeat and putting the spotlight either onto the opposition or the referee. He's managed it again and the media all fall for it. Mowbray's going nowhere so we'll just have to get on with it. I don't think anything has really changed but a win against one of the top 7 is a welcome boost. Very satisfying to be the subject of opposition and media ire and anger rather than pats on the back for turning up and playing nice stuff but getting beat.

I won't be happy with mid table in the Championship no. I won't be happy with wasting years making the same old mistakes rather than learning from them and making efforts to get promoted. We might not get promotion because it is tough but that doesn't mean I should be happy to be here or accept the attempts to diminish expectations and make out like we are lucky to be in the same league as Middlesbrough and Stoke. Does that make me entitled or never happy? I dont think so. I just expect better and want better and won't accept excuses from a failing manager. This club is capable of better and unless we demand better we won't achieve it. The day we accept mid table as good or 'our level' then promotion can be forgotten about.

Mowbray attempting to further ingratiate himself with the owners by publicly thanking them for their help and support in agreeing to sanction a move for Branthwaite, despite all the budget being spent for the season. How ridiculous. Any guesses for what we are paying a week to help develop Everton's player? If the Tom Trybull figures from Rich Sharpe are correct then I expect a few grand a week at the most. We've probably saved more by sending Harry Chapman to Shrewsbury than it has cost us to bring Branthwaite in. It's a six month loan. No transfer fee, no contract, no substantial commitment yet he's going out of his way to hail our great owners for their backing. I hope/suspect he's feeling real pressure here having got us into this mess by wasting his resources and ending up with yet again a patched up injury riddled defence and knowing he has had to get a big favour from India to allow this. If the club is really so hard up that we are struggling even to bring in a short term loan of a teenager without having to hail Venkys for their help we are in a worse mess than I thought. As predicted though Mowbray dangling the prospect of another defensive addition off the back of the Branthwaite deal has now gone silent. Amazing how this keeps happening.

I very much doubt there will be any serious forward planning or succession plan in place even if Waggott is leaving the club in the summer. As far as I'm concerned him and Mowbray should be sacked at the same time and replaced with much better as I don't think Waggott has done a good job in any sense of the word in his 3 years + at the club. Do you think he has done a good job and if so in what way? As for succession as it was Mowbray who got the owners to bring Waggott in who he knew from Coventry I very much doubt Venkys are poring through CVs as we speak identifying a suitable replacement. They'll just sit and wait for applications to come in then either promote from within or just abolish the job (we had no CEO from 2011-17).

I think McCarthy would fit Cardiff like a glove. Last two managers Warnock and Harris both of which use similar styles to McCarthy. They aren't a side or squad used to playing pretty passing football. A very shrewd appointment. He's in the bracket with Warnock, Hughton and Bruce where everywhere he goes in the Championship he will quickly organise and improve teams even on a tight budget. Sort the defence out and go from there. What he could do with our squad plus a couple of reliable defenders. Would be ideal for us but sadly we think we're a mini Barcelona with a manager incapable of getting it to work. So instead we go around in circles asking 'who would we replace him with?' Well there's one name going elsewhere.

Definitely release Mulgrew, Downing, Bell and Bennett. I would prioritise new deals for Nyambe, Rothwell and Rankin Costello The middle bracket consists of Holtby, Johnson and Evans. I'm not sold on any of them and don't think it would be disastrous to lose them for nothing as it would Nyambe or JRC. Holtby and Evans obviously have fitness issues which prevent getting close to a full season out of either BUT I do think that when fit and playing both have something to offer. I would keep both under review. Holtby I think will be wanting out - seems he divides his time between here and Germany and has a wife and child out there so can't see this being a long term arrangement. Evans I still come back to his partnership with Travis in the first half of last season. It really worked for us. I also sympathise with his horror head injury last season. But the reality is since then he just hasn't been able to get a run of games going and he needs to quickly to earn a stay here. If he does I think he's worth keeping. Strangely all very quiet with his injury after 2 months out. I half wonder has he had word from Mowbray or decided he's moving on and as such is just coasting through the final year. Williams has clearly had a fall out of sorts with Mowbray presumably after our failed attempts to sell him last summer. He won't be staying unless a new manager comes in and asks him to stay. Probably end up somewhere like Cardiff under McCarthy who can get more out of him.

Waggott must have had well over £1 million out of the club over the last 3 years. Can anyone identify what improvements he has delivered to the club? It seems he has little to no input in the football operations, which are managed by Mowbray and budgeted for from India. He may be a good administrator, but that salary seems excessive for that alone. Has he improved attendances, ticket sales, commercial performance, facilities? I suspect whatever improvements there have been probably amount to less than his salary. As for ticketing and commercial policies those leave a lot to be desired. He's reduced our already diminished fanbase. As I've said before we need better - someone who actually has a track record of delivering growth and development in professional sports. Cast the net wide. At £300,000 a year we should be able to scour America and Europe for top drawer executives with ambition and know how of how to grow clubs and numbers. Instead we've got Mowbray's mate counting down the days to retirement and experienced at basket case lower division clubs Charlton and Coventry. All very strange but this club could and should be doing much better. Hopefully the two come as a package and we get a much needed upgrade in both departments. I see Mick McCarthy favourite for Cardiff. There's another obvious and sensible manager who is a better manager than Mowbray will ever be. Results will prove it so. "But who would we get to replace him"?

Brace yourselves for the pre-match drivel about what a massive, great, titanic club Middlesbrough are and how Warnock has had loads of money to spend there to get them into top 6 chasers (all B.S.) They had a setback recently at home v Birmingham who are garbage but had a couple of decent away results. I expect it will be a narrow and low scoring game one way or the other. I honestly wouldn't be surprised with a 0-0 or 1-1. If they take the lead we'll struggle to get anything.

Deary me. Where to begin. I may have got it wrong on the undersoil heating. But I'd still like to know why if we had the undersoil heating on for as long as has been claimed did we need frost covers at Ewood too? Do you seriously expect the CEO, club or head groundsman to go on the website and say that the reason the game was off was because we haven't looked after the pitch properly over the last few years? That would probably be curtains for Waggott. This is about as diplomatic as they can put it without saying the game was called off due to our poor pitch. They haven't said what they intend to do about it in the short or long term. They've said it will be 'renovated' in the summer which could mean anything from a complete rip up and relay through to a reseed and some nice weather for a few weeks. The reason I said "we can be absolutely certain" in relation to Waggott's claims of an upcoming renovation is because the club has done the bare minimum renovation work on a relatively miniscule budget now for many years. That's the main reason we are in this mess. It's been a ticking time bomb that was always going to come back and bite us eventually. There's a reason clubs spend hundreds of thousands or even millions on their pitches and it isn't because they want to chuck money away, it's because it is needed in times like these. Given the way Waggott has run the club since his arrival anyone seriously expecting a six or seven figure sum to be spent on ripping up the Ewood pitch and relaying it is going to be very disappointed. It would cost seven figures to install a Desso pitch which would solve the issue, which is what Sheffield Wednesday installed to overcome Hillsborough flooding and what Tranmere have had at Prenton Park enabling them to overcome poor weather. Trev isn't my mate. I've spoken to him on a handful of occasions in my life whilst I've been at Ewood. I know that after nearly 40 years at the club he's good at his job and does his best, and somehow or other has managed to maintain a very good standard pitch for the vast majority of those years until recently? Very little of the reasons provided by the club actually stand up to much strutiny: 1) Wet and wintry conditions over Xmas and the New Year - yet those haven't destroyed the pitches at Morecambe, Tranmere, Accrington, Bolton etc. 2) Just a 4 week turnaround between the end of last season and the start of this - correct - but what about the other 23 Championship clubs who had the same time constraints? None of them have had to call games off due to their pitch. Also - why didn't they bring forward works to April and get cracking through May and June when we had no games and fantastic weather? Plenty of time then. As an extreme example Man City relaid their pitch once the season was suspended in March and got it sorted quickly. 3) The drainage into the River Darwen - again as above if we had installed a Desso pitch, for example, the drainage would be much better - as done at Charlton and Sheff Wed where realisation hit home they needed to take drastic and expensive action to remedy it.

Amazing how Mowbray somehow manages to make basic elements of football and management out to be special unique qualities and virtues that only he is able to deliver. - Trying to improve and get higher in the league - Bringing better players in than those who depart - Trying to tie good players down to long term contracts Does he think these are unique concepts that he has come up with? I think every manager in the world would aim to do the same. "Every team is super organised and fit". I don't think we are. That's a big part of the issue. I agree that Mowbray probably feels under pressure of some sorts and so he should. He's been well backed, had plenty of time and there is little evidence of any progress. There's something wrong if he isn't feeling some heat or scrutiny. Sadly that will almost entirely be local from fans and to a lesser degree local media rather than in the club hierarchy. I suspect his predecessors have also felt pressure at times when they've been struggling, not knowing what the loons in Pune are going to do. Unfortunately the setup here is a long way from conventional and he's probably bomb proof, the only spanner in the works might be mysterious Pasha but by all accounts he's nowhere to be seen and hasn't since early last year. Probably too late for that now as Mowbray has his feet under the table in India. If it's in the hands of 'Madame' then he probably doesn't realise how safe he really is. I've no problem with him reminding people that we are Blackburn Rovers and with our history we should be looking to get back to the Premier League. That doesn't translate into arrogance or expecting a god given right to be there, but we've just as much right as anyone else and we are not a little club punching above our weight here.

There's also the outdoor 3g pitch at Brockhall that surely could be used as an emergency alternative?

More a case of Mowbray making it known that he is aware of the contract situation and doing his best but it is out of his hands.

We can be absolutely certain that if Waggott is behind the 'renovation' it will be a cheap and cheerful patch up job like every other summer and he'll be relying on nice weather and 2 months of no football more than anything else to sort it. Sharpe could really set the cat among the pigeons by ringing up Andy Holt and asking him how much Stanley have spent on their pitch the last 4 years. That would hammer things home I'm sure when compared to Rovers. Sharpe could also wind it up by asking Waggott whether the new pitch or new Riverside stand will get priority. Neither likely to happen for a very long time. The only way any serious work will be done is if the owners are shamed into action or Mowbray brings it up as a big problem. I hope Mowbray won't even be here by then but if he is i hope he will have bigger things on his plate than the state of the pitch and will be clinging to his job. He's not going to start making additional demands stretching into 7 figure investments. I've spoken to Trevor Wilkin a few times and I've no doubt he works his socks off and has always done his best. Approaching 40 years at the club is some effort. Same goes for many others who work hard but unfortunately when you have owners who couldn't give a stuff and bullshitters in the boardroom there's only one way things end up.

I agree that the reason names like Hughes and Ainsworth are on the tips of tongues is because of their past connections to Blackburn, and without those I very much doubt that either would be high on suggested names. Hughes might be a busted flush, as his record now over 3-4 years suggests he is, or he might have just been unfortunate and bringing him back into management might be a masterstroke for someone. Either way if the criteria is PL experience and a couple of sackings in the last 3 years then there's plenty more on that list. Alan Pardew fits that bill just the same but I expect would be rubbished as an option. I don't think we need to bring emotion into the equation and I don't think we need a unifying force in the dugout. Infact I'd say the fanbase is pretty united right now, going off what I read the substantial majority either want Mowbray gone or are just short of that in realising he's out of ideas and we probably need a change. Even those who publicly still back Mowbray would be quickly won over if the club made a swift and logical change, as they still live in fear of the 'who else would they appoint' line which would go out the window if a Lambert-esque fast appointment of a decent CV happened. Appoint someone sensible and show some ambition, whether that be a Blackburn lad or someone from a far away land who has hardly even heard of us before matters not to me - what matters is that a proper process takes place and a sensible, calculated decision is made. Making your decision based on someone being born in the town, or wanting to give a chance to Jonno or try to recreate the Hughes days of old is more likely to result in a slippery slope. I'd like to think a multi-million pound professional organisation would put more thought into it's most important appointment than "he's from Blackburn and a nice bloke so we'll give it him". I'd expect a more thorough thought process from amateur outfits.

I think this is as much accident or law of averages rather than some grand design on the manager's part. I just think that having been in place now for 4 years and had 8 transfer windows at it, working our way through loads of defenders and midfielders sooner or later there will be a downturn in numbers conceded. It is quite clear that Mowbray doesn't take defending seriously or if he does is incapable of organizing a defence. Persist with things long enough or shuffle personnel countless times and eventually there will be stats that suggest improvement is being delivered. In the end our league position, points total and number of wins all show progress isn't being made, and even if we end up ever so slightly higher or with a few more points than last year I don't feel that represents sufficient progress given the time he has had and fair wind behind him. Other managers have done far, far better in far less time with more difficult conditions.

Despite being yards away from the Trent and concerns about the game tonight Forest managed to overcome the conditions to play Middlesbrough and their pitch didn't look bad. Amazing how these other clubs can overcome geography and the weather in ways Rovers can't.

For me we should be looking for a minimum of £22 million for Armstrong in today's market. Young, fast, English, goals, good injury record - very, very valuable. The problem we have is the ticking time bomb of his contract meaning realistically we only have until the summer to sell or get him tied down. Beyond the summer it becomes a rapidly diminishing valuation for someone in the last year of his contract. Personally I think players such as him and Dack are essential if we have promotion aspirations and should be central to our plans. I wouldn't want to lose him and certainly wouldn't have any confidence in Venkys allowing proceeds back into the club or squad or indeed Mowbray doing much of use with the money. Of course there also has to be an acceptance that we aren't going anywhere fast under this setup and young quality players like Armstrong aren't going to waste away their careers flailing around in the middle of the division at clubs that can't even keep their pitch up to scratch. On that basis if a Premier League club offered big money his departure would be justified, especially now as we head to another finish of 10th-15th despite his incredible scoring run. What wouldn't be justified is a low price sale to a Championship rival like we've had with most recent departures from here - Raya, Cairney, Duffy, Hanley, Olsson etc. IF we were to get a good chunk of money the priority is to fire the existing coaching staff and spend big on a top management team with a big bonus to get us up in the next 2 years along with half of the money to strengthen the squad come the summer. On the contrary Venkys are likely to see Mowbray as a genius if they land a windfall from Armstrong and give him another contract and a few scraps to spend on a replacement. Any news on the CB that Mowbray reckoned was coming? Course not its just more BS to keep the fans quiet.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the horror show at Preston in October 2019. Our inept management of that game and complete collapse told me all I needed to know about this manager and his team. We had something of a recovery after that so the hysteria died down a bit but also numerous other calamitous performances and results including somehow losing to 10 men Birmingham in the Cup in January. Then Covid came along and I was content to just leave things stable for the time being, the view being that ensuring survival was the most crucial thing. We had our usual giddy spell after beating Bristol City after the restart to get people looking at the top 6 followed by the usual collapse back into mid table. in the end as more time has passed it has become clear that whilst Mowbray has done good at this club and in many ways is ideal to keep things steady and ticking along he simply doesn't have what it takes to get us out of this league. You could probably apply that to every element of the football club - not being to the level required to lead us back to the top flight - but management and coaching staff are the central issue and need upgrading for there to be any chance of promotion. If you are happy to just bobble along and not do anything but watch as the same old mistakes are made every year then we won't ever get promoted. I want promotion and I think the club needs it.

So we sit alongside illustrious peers Blackpool, Crawley, Carlisle and Lincoln as the only League games to be postponed due to the bad weather. The only one in the Championship and I'll hazard a guess we will be the only one this season. Despite horrible weather and storms affecting a large part of Northern England they've managed to overcome it at Derby, Rotherham, Doncaster, Crewe, Tranmere and Morecambe to name a few. To be honest I'm absolutely disgusted and fuming about it. Not surprised because I've been expecting something like this to happen for a while given the running of the club. You're hitting a low ebb when people involved with the likes of Preston and Accy Stanley are calling us tinpot for not being able to get the game on. I'd never admit it to rivals but between fellow Rovers fans I think that is what we have become. Tinpot. All thanks to our negligent owners and their regime.

My message to Waggott - if we can't afford to sort the pitch out can you take a wage cut to fund it instead?

Cast your minds back to last summer when Mowbray decided to hand out contract extensions like confetti to squad players for no reason other than they were nice lads. A quick, extremely conservative estimate on those costs based on 4 weeks of extensions: Sam Hart - £2000 a week = £8000 total Jayson Leutwiler- £2000 a week = £8000 total Richie Smallwood = £5000 a week = £20,000 total Dominic Samuel = £4000 a week = £16,000 total Danny Graham = £10,000 a week = £40,000 total Six months contract for Ben Gladwin to use Brockhall @ £2k per week = £26,000 Private jet to Cardiff for a dead rubber match = £30,000. Fag packet calculations = £150,000 for nothing. Probably a lot more in reality. Maybe that money should have gone to the ground staff and maintenance staff to sort Ewood out. Shambles. At least we did the right thing by the players though.