JHRover

Did you miss Cardiff, Hull, Brighton, Palace, Bournemouth, Leicester, Brentford, Sheff Wed, Sheff Utd, Ipswich, Huddersfield, Wolves, Leeds and now Barnsley and Reading who have all finished in the top 6/got promoted in the last 10 years not one of whom was in receipt of parachute income? We have owners with financial resources greater than Norwich, Watford, Brentford and Swansea's owners combined. Shouldn't that count for something?

Good performance, disappointing we couldn't take the 3 points but this is a familiar feeling. We can play and we can cause the better teams problems but making the dominance count and having the discipline to keep it out at the other end are constant issues. Chuck in a familiar hard luck blame the ref story. End of the day these are the games promotion chasing sides need to win and mid table sides don't Cringeworthy levels of pro-Swansea talk doing the rounds. There's no reason we can't be them other than management. They're a crafty side that's for sure. 5-10 yards on every throw and free kick, know when and where to foul and go down.

Forgive me if I've missed it but has there been a suggestion that the swimming pool won't be built in the new facility? I appreciate what Waggott is saying about one site being intrinsically linked to the other. Sadly i think that once the path is clear on the housing front everything else will become secondary Having a site ripe for development that has cleared all the planning hurdles will not be left to gather dust just because we have difficulties on the bottom site. It will either be goodbye to Cat A academy and condense what we can onto the bottom site or find somewhere cheaper like Whitebirk and sell the lot at Brockhall

Tonight's 'Virtual Match Sponsor' is 'Rovers Select' - our in house competition. Last week it was the Community Trust. Anyone worrying about revenues and book balancing would be better getting some sponsors on board rather than simply promoting the clubs own brands. No external cash coming in. My local amateur cricket club manages to find 20 odd match sponsors a season to raise funds. Why can't Rovers?

We're a Championship club and have billionaire owners. So we don't have to do anything. Why haven't any other clubs built housing estates on their training grounds or downsized? Our requirements now are just as great if not greater than they were in the 90s. Yes we are currently in a lower division but we still have a squad of players and an academy that have requirements. They don't drop off or increase with Championship/PL status. Billy Barr and his excelling squad will be out of jobs if this plan gets off the ground. It's goodbye Category A academy. I suppose it comes down to whether you trust a bloke like Waggott. I wouldn't give him a tenner to go and buy me fish and chips and be confident of getting either back. I keep on coming back to the first point I made. If the academy and senior training centre can so easily be accommodated on one site when why did Jack Walker bother with the expense and hassle of two sites? If we need to cut costs how about sacking off Steve Waggott and saving £300,000 per year?

Me too. They've got away with it too many times, they're due to drop.

Does she work for the club? Thought it was admission only to essential staff?

Anyone else notice Mowbray at full time yesterday, turning to the directors box upstairs and saluting someone up there?

Because for a player like Armstrong it will be all about getting to the Prem asap. He doesn't have the time in his career to plod around in circles for 4-5 years. The next best thing to a move to the Premier League is to be at a club with genuine aspirations of getting there and the staff and structure in place to do it. Whilst Armstrong has performed well in Mowbray's teams anyone paying any attention to our results and performances under Mowbray's management in the last 2-3 years will see we aren't close to the requirements. Barnsley have gone closer in the last 10 days than we have in 3 years. So the only way of keeping someone like Armstrong is to convince them that we aren't happy with our lot in life and that we are going to do what is necessary to get promoted. There's no indication that has happened As for my doubts on contracts reading Mowbray's public comments he is reminding the owners of the perils of allowing contracts to run down. Not the sort of comments i would expect if we were busy trying to sort. And little has happened in terms of progress since last year. I dont get any impression Venkys or the club are locked in talks thrashing out a deal. Confusion and inertia are the way of things here

I'd say Armstrong was more likely to sign a new deal if we got rid of Mowbray and brought in a manager that made people sit up and think we mean business. As it stands with Mowbray here in the summer no player worth his salt will want to stick here long term. He's also more likely to sign a new deal if the club actually offers him one. By the sounds of things we haven't even reached that stage yet.

Mowbray will be going nowhere unless he decides to in which case it will be confusion and then take the easiest and cheapest option which will mean either promotion from within or a desperado looking for a job. As much as I'd like to believe there's concern and review taking place in India I just don't. The Barnsley manager is flavour of the month at the moment so no surprises Nixon is pushing him as the model we'd want to replicate. Might need a board before then as the people running Barnsley know what they are doing.

Why does he have a now almost weekly column speculating on potential bids and destinations for Armstrong just like he did for over a year before Jordan Rhodes eventually departed? Why doesn't he run such 'stories' on other players? Does he have an unhealthy obsession with linking our goalscorers with moves or is he acting on someone else's behalf to try and drum up interest in a move?

Ah yes, Nixon with his weekly Armstrong 'update'. What is it with him and touting free scoring Rovers strikers around? Does he just have a weird obsession with our top scorers or is there something more sinister going on here?

I see we've shifted from the talk over September, October, November, December and January of prioritising new deals and being confident of getting them done and protecting our assets to now let's sign another bucketload and see if we can sign up any of those out of contract. Quite clear there's no work at all been done on keeping these players and they've been having us on for months. Sadly the talk about recruiting yet another defence will have the Facebook goons wrapped around Mowbray's finger and they'll all be salivating at the prospect of what good players we are going to recruit and sort out our defensive issues once and for all. Those with any sense know its not going to happen. We will plod through the summer talking the talk and then sign a crock or loan at the back end to fill in or not play. But until then its all about giving Mowbray time, he's sorting the squad out, he needs the new season to rebuild and get people settled in. This is all familiar territory going back to the start of this horror story. For some reason the owners would rather keep 'their man' at the helm and instead allow him to spend and waste fortunes failing to address issues than just make a managerial change which would be so much quicker, cheaper and likely to result in success. Can only surmise that high turnover in players is something they enjoy because we sure as hell aren't building anything

Anyone can beat anyone in the Championship is the usual excuse for inconsistency. That isn't applying to dinosaur Mick's Cardiff. Now unbeaten in 11 since taking over.

Mowbray's comment that we can soon embark on a 4 or 5 game winning streak is Kean-esque in delusion. Purely designed to try to protect his position and aimed at India. At no other club would such a comment be made by an incumbent manager and him get away with it.

I'll say it again. If Johnson deserves a crack managing Blackburn Rovers based upon his impressive time with the u23s then why isn't Billy Barr in the running?

Those from the club will be disappointed they can't spend time talking about what flavour crisps they have had on the concourse this season.

Yes. It will be like taking candy from a baby for Waggott. The tough part will be getting the top site approved for 170 houses. Lots of hurdles to overcome and lots of potential issues and objections to deal with. This will be what is concerning him and occupying his time and energy (in return for his £300,000 i might add). Assuming that first obstacle is overcome, and there's acres of land in the Ribble Valley set up for housing then 99% of the job is done. What then for 'phase 2' of the plan - how to deal with the reality of maintaining a Category A academy on an inadequate side? That's the easy part - just come out with a range of sob stories and excuses. It will all quieten down after a few weeks. Most supporters couldn't really care less about academy status, or if they could will believe whatever nonsense they get fed. Many are on the look out for downsizing and downscaling. Hey it will help the club because it will cost less to run a Category B academy - we could even put the difference into the first team!!! And then even if Waggott gets loads of grief for it (he won't) then he'll be pushing 70 by then and ready to jet off into retirement having had 5-6 years on the payroll here. Never to be seen or visit Blackburn again. He's had his good salary and got the job done. No skin off his nose. Meanwhile we've lost a great deal and will have to deal with that for decades to come.

The people running the club simply don't have the capability to deliver a project as suggested. They struggle to maintain what we've already got. The name of this game is getting grubby hands on valuable land ripe for development. That's the easy part. Follow the process in a very lucrative part of the world and watch the property developers clamour to buy it. The rest is hot air to quieten opposition and get it through smoothly. Sadly many people are just too easy to con.

This and Brentford are the only games I've any confidence we will get anything out of this month. First goal will as usual be crucial. Concede it and we're out of it. Millwall the draw specialists. Had a poor run following their late defeat at Ewood but have bounced back since Xmas and I think have lost 1 in 11 or something. Shame they are further along their journey than we are but such is life amongst the big boys.

Prevailing attitude at the club over the last 5 years+ has been why bother bringing an external candidate in when an existing one can step up. Not so simple in football. And we wonder why we are in the state we are.

Think he's just a replacement for the outgoing Chris Rush.

I'm not sure I'd credit either as being 'football people'. Both are experienced by virtue of the shambles that is Blackburn Rovers under this ownership, not because they are exceptional at what they do. The club allowed Dave Biggar, Alan Myers and Derek Shaw to depart and failed to replace any of them, leaving Cheston and Silvester as the last remaining 'board' members on the ground at Ewood. They allowed that status quo to continue for well over a year until Mowbray told them to put Waggott in. During that time the club drifted along in a zombie like state, existing but doing little more than that. Bizarrely Cheston seems to have ended up with the job of identifying Lambert's replacement and supposedly interviewed luminaries such as Russell Slade, Neil Redfearn and Warren Joyce along the way. To be expected when it's an accountant leading the search. So yes the club could probably continue to function on a day to day basis administratively without Waggott but it really is unacceptable for a club of this size. They want their 'manager' to do it all and not have suits in the boardroom who know anything rocking the boat.

Nigel Adkins needs adding He was linked before Mowbray, and is available. Presumably well connected on Merseyside which will be another Brockhall bonus.