Steve Bruce wasted no time in sorting Sheffield Wednesday out. 4 clean sheets on the bounce for them having been a defensive shambles not long ago. Another manager who understands that to get anywhere in this league you need to sort out the defence first and build from that. Criticism from those who think that constitutes negative football yet it will get them up the table whilst 'exciting' Villa ship goals galore.

Yeah, but they axed Warburton after he got them to the Championship play-offs. Most thought that to be an insane decision yet they managed, then they appointed that Dutch bloke who was a disaster but quickly got shut as it wasn't working and put Carsley in charge, Brentford are very good at coping with departures and change. They've been picked off for their best players for years, had to make managerial changes and yet have still punched above their weight through shrewd management behind the scenes, not because all their managerial appointments have been good.

I suspect a tight game, probably determined by a single goal (if there is a winner). 0-0 was my tip last week although to be honest it could go either way. They've tightened up defensively under the Portuguese bloke, though he comes with a reputation for being defensive and their goals have dried up. Obviously a win is essential for us if we've any hope of getting back into the top 6 picture, but I've resigned myself to that not happening, so I'd be content with a point to edge closer to the magic 50 which 'should' see us safe.

I'd argue that Derby, Brentford and Chelsea have done quite well out of managerial instability. Not necessarily that they set out to do it, but that in doing so it hasn't prevented them progressing and developing as clubs. Brentford even now are massively overachieving for the size of their club and financial power, despite making some eyebrow-raising managerial decisions. Southampton have managed to stay in the Premier League for years despite going through more than a manager a year on average. Huddersfield are another lot who made a bold decision to fire off Powell when they were floating towards the bottom of the Championship, brought in an unknown coach and within 18 months were in the Premier League. They didn't stick with Powell out of loyalty or stability, they had a vision and got their man to deliver on it. Wolves - could have stuck with Jackett or Lambert but wanted to go to the next level so fired them both off despite decent results to appoint Zenga (failure) and Santo (big success). Wolves could have done what Villa and Forest have which is spend obscene money and drift into mid-table but they made a positive change rather than stand still. I'm not saying I'm a fan of hiring and firing but some clubs have structures in place to cope with it without it de-railing the club. I'm not convinced we do, as I think the manager at this club, ever since Kean rocked up, has had too much power over the operation. It's ok as long as a positive trajectory is maintained, but when things go sour then it becomes a problem as the changing of manager affects more areas here than it would at e.g. Brentford.

3 Bs Brewery a mile up the road. I'm sure someone at Rovers could drive up every other Thursday, buy a few barrels for Blues Bar and the Fan Zone and put them on. If you wanted to make a bit more effort get them to produce a 'Rovers Ale' like Bowland do with Stanley and Burnley. All comes down to effort, which is sadly in short supply at Ewood, and is the main reason I have no sympathy when Waggott and the rest plead poverty and bemoan income streams. Show me some imagination and I'll appreciate it.

If Rovers want more people to drink at the ground pre and post match then they have to make the product better. Plastic cups, awful beer and expensive prices or walk across the road and get proper beer in a glass for less money? If they're happy to carry on charging those prices that's up to them but I won't be buying anything, and I'm sure the same applies to a lot of others. If they put decent ale on, let me drink from a glass and charge me a reasonable price then I'd be there before every home game. Not having the mick taken out of me though. When I've been to Brighton they try to get away fans to drink in the ground rather than elsewhere and to try and do that they bring in a barrel of local ale from whichever club they are playing. In our case it was Wainwrights from Thwaites. There's irony for you - I could get a pint of Thwaites cask beer in the ground at Brighton but can't do at Ewood. Any reason for that other than one club makes an effort and the other doesn't?

You CAN chop and change managers regularly if you have a structure that allows it. If you have a stable board, expertise at the club, a recruitment structure that the head coach fits into - then you can seamlessly change head coach whenever you feel like it - Watford are the experts at it but others like Chelsea and Brentford have it down to a fine art, and also Southampton, previously Swansea, probably now Wolves and Derby - high turnover in manager yet the clubs continue on a positive trajectory regardless - because they have the backroom structure to handle it regardless of which man is in the dugout on matchday. When you are dominated by a manager who controls most aspects of the club it is lovely whilst that manager is doing well and can hold it all together - Wenger at Arsenal, Fergie at United - but when that manager moves on or has to be sacked after a poor run then you hit problems as there is more pressure on getting the replacement right - Stoke in this category - dominated by Pulis then Hughes during the good times and then when things turn sour they don't know which way to turn - hence Lambert, Rowett and Jones who can't hack it. Villa another lot in that boat.

Again I think it depends on which way you look at it. How much ability did Lambert have issue new contracts? How much freedom did he have in January to sign new players and not loans? Did he get rid of Rhodes because he really wanted to or because he was led to believe by someone that if he did he would get the cash to reinvest? As far as I can recall the only contract issue around that time was Ben Marshall, and he still had 12 months to go after Lambert departed so plenty of time to get that sorted. His departure was followed by those of Duffy and Hanley to rivals - that suggests to me one of two things - either those players wanted out after Lambert's departure and the path the club was taking became clear or alternatively the plan from above had been to sell them and that was why Lambert packed his bags. I think his record with signings with no money was better than Mowbray's has been. He only had a January window yet delivered us Graham, Bennett with a 10 million profit. The rest were mainly loans that left the following summer. Meanwhile Mowbray tells us it isn't possible to strengthen the squad in January as it is too expensive despite the owners making money available. Didn't pull up any trees but realistically what position would have been? Promotion or play offs? Never going to happen with that squad given our start to the season. His record was better than Jokanovic at Fulham who took over at a similar time yet with backing and a proper structure did ok.

I think some people want to re-write history with Lambert or pin all the blame for what happened on his shoulders rather than the owners. The very same owners who responded to his departure by bringing in Coyle. If ever you needed evidence that the people running this club weren't fit for purpose that was it. Let's blame it all on Lambert. Nothing at all to do with the owners who sold all our decent players and put us into the 3rd division through a lack of investment, neglect and appalling decisions. Quite clear he was brought in on the basis of doing a certain job and at some stage or other the goalposts moved. Is Lambert a saint? No, he's an odd bloke whose career is in danger of falling by the wayside after taking poor jobs and not sticking around, but Venkys take the blame in my book. They appointed him, God knows what they promised him, or what they expected of him, but quite clear that the budget wasn't and still isn't good enough to demand promotion and yet they appear to still seek it or claim to do. Lambert didn't spend anything on players and only brought in frees and loans. We are back at square one though - supposedly the owners are ambitious and want promotion, supposedly they have made a good budget available for players to achieve that, yet lo and behold money doesn't actually get spent. Where have we heard that one before?

The U23s were invited into that competition the season before last when they started with this ridiculous scheme of bringing academy sides into it, because many of the Premier League clubs declined the opportunity. Then when we were relegated to League One we had to enter our 'senior' team and swiftly exited the competition at the group stage. This season we could have been invited into it as an academy again but it seems we were either overlooked or declined the opportunity. I'm not sure what merit there would be in declining to take part as most of the biggest clubs are now participating, so it seems we were overlooked whilst inferior academy sides like Stoke and West Brom (also Championship clubs) were invited in ahead of us.

It appears we were legged over in the summer, quite heavily, on a player Mowbray either doesn't trust or doesn't think is good enough. Lets look at it the other way - if we'd have gone out and signed 2 quality players at over-inflated fees some eyebrows would have been raised, but if those players came in and did the business we might have made the play-offs and got promoted. Unlikely, but possible. I'm sure nobody would complain about paying over the odds on a couple of players if those players gave us sufficient depth to kick on and win promotion. We'll never know the answer though, because we signed nobody and have subsequently fallen away from the pack again, but at least we can console ourselves that we 'didn't pay over the odds' whilst we stay mid table. Personally I don't think money was available, or certainly not at the level required to make worthwhile additions to the team.

Yeah, last season there was us and Wigan, by far the best equipped of clubs in that league with by far the biggest budgets, then the Shrewsbury anomaly, and other than that the rest were way behind us. Looking at it this season the top 6 or 7 seem to be further away than the rest but more closely bunched together, any only really Luton are unexpectedly there. I think Barnsley, Sunderland, Portsmouth and Charlton would have been strongly tipped to get a top 6 slot. I wouldn't have fancied our chances looking at that pack. I don't like Luton but I kind of hope they do it and get promoted, just because I would see Sunderland, Portsmouth or Charlton as a bigger threat next season, whereas Luton might struggle more. It would also be funny to see Sunderland fail to go up.

Lets be honest, for many PNE fans Rovers away is probably THE game of this season. Probably the easiest to get to, best day out, in similar fashion to our game at their place being THE game for many Rovers fans when the fixtures come out. Certainly more so than a trip to Wigan or Horwich shopping park. As such many Preston fans will pay the price of Category A tickets and an early kick off to go to the game. It isn't quite the same mentality for Rovers supporters going to Ewood. It isn't THE game, it isn't a day out on the ale or a family trip like it will be for PNE supporters. It is a strange phenomenon. When we went to Deepdale with a full away end there were only about 12000 home fans on, not much more than usual, yet previously they've brought 6000+ to Ewood. This time round I'd be surprised if it was that high as the novelty wears off a bit but I'd still expect them to bring 4,500-5,000 which is 50% of their usual home crowd. That's the issue - for the away team in these games fans will generally put up with the inconvenience as it is the big day out for them, friends and family. One game in the calendar they were always going to go to. Like us at Rochdale and Bury last season - highly anticipated away days where you go and every Tom, Dick and Harry is there for the day out. Move it to noon and the away crowd may diminish slightly, keep it at 3pm and it will still be several thousand. Keep it at 3pm and the home crowd (actual numbers of bums on seats and not the official figure) will be a lot higher than at noon. People just have a different attitude to home games than big away days.

At the moment it seems as though the intention is for Lambert to stay on post relegation. Hence we see the PR coming from Ipswich about 'our gaffer' Paul Lambert and the usual stuff from him about what a brilliant club it is, how he is going to to do x, y, z, how great the fans are etc. I suppose after the way things went with McCarthy and the outright hostility between him and some supporters they'll love having a manager telling them what they want to hear. Lambert's now in a tricky position, he probably knows he won't get a better club than Ipswich if he leaves as his spells with Stoke and Ipswich have been very poor results wise, yet his ego may struggle to take ending up as a League One manager. If he walks out he'll struggle to get back into the Championship, so he really needs to stay and get them back up, but that will be easier said than done, I don't think their squad is as strong as ours/Wigan's was last season and I think they'd struggle this season up against Sunderland, Barnsley, Portsmouth etc.

I suppose we can't really blame the club for games like Middlesbrough being on TV, but I can and do blame the club for allowing fixtures such as Leeds and Preston, which would be two of the most popular all season for home fans, to be played at noon and as a direct result of that shift enable Sky to broadcast it via the red button and deplete the number of home fans turning up. I'm still waiting, after several years, to see a proper explanation as to why Leeds and Preston have to kick off at noon when Man Utd and Liverpool can be at 7:45pm midweek and I'm still to see anyone from Rovers acknowledge that moving kick off to that time might just have some sort of negative effect on the numbers turning up to watch.

Sooner or later Mowbray is going to have to put his neck on the line with Brereton and throw him in. I agree that Ben has done little to justify a place in the team but ultimately he has cost a lot of money and the only chance we or he has of getting something out of this is for him to have more minutes to force the issue. Hiding him away on the bench every week or giving him more time to stew is only going to increase the amount of criticism towards Mowbray, especially if we're petering out to a mid table finish.

Boro, PNE, Wigan, Derby and Swansea are all going to be on Sky Sports and are all at unpopular times when crowds are always smaller than 3pm Saturday. That's 5 of 7 remaining home games on TV. Of course it won't be announced until the day or two before in some attempt to hide the news from potential buyers.

I'd like us to try something like Forest did last summer in encouraging the younger element of support. I've no complaints with my ticket price for the season but won't be impressed if it goes up again. At Forest - 4 to 11 year olds could get a season ticket for £10, 12-17 year olds would be £50, 18-23 year olds £100. Fantastic pricing and adults in most areas there are £330 so very similar to ours. Take out all the conditions, strings, hurdles, just make it cheap for those who are hopefully just getting into the habit of going every week Note that Forest got theirs on sale in February last year, and the take up was significant. We'll sit back and do nowt until months of potential sales have been lost.

We probably won't find out until June. We tend to leave it as late as possible to get the season tickets on sale whilst our rivals are getting them on sale in February. Might not make much difference to the die hards but for the floaters and drifters I'd have thought logic would suggest the longer the sales period the more are likely to be sold. We can't fall back on the old excuse 'we don't want to release season ticket info until we know what league we are going to be in'

Reading have become harder to beat recently under their new manager with a couple of decent draws but they're a poor side and struggle to get wins. I still think they'll crawl out of danger and be replaced by Rotherham before the end of the season. Only won 5 of 31 games this season but they'll be looking at this one as a must win. I'd guess at a 0-0 draw but would never be confident in us keeping a clean sheet no matter how poor the opposition. A win here would more or less secure survival in good time for a newly promoted team.

This is the problem though. Mowbray speaks about longer term development and yet Reed isn't our player, and will likely not be here beyond the summer, Rodwell is also out of contract and may not want to stick around, we simply aren't in a position to make a 'project signing'. How many of Bristol City's signings have been 'project buys'? Rothwell has barely featured because the manager hasn't played him. He's been fit and ready all season as far as I'm aware. Davenport - who is he going to ever play ahead of in this squad? Chapman is another project by the looks of things.

So what happens if we don't get the 4-5 quality signings? Either because we can't afford them, the manager can't find them or we have a repeat of Brereton and they never get in the team? What happens if we lose Dack? Does the play-off push plan get thrown out of the window? I agree Mowbray has done a good job here. As for going nowhere any time soon I find that to be concerning. Of course we all HOPE he continues to do well and by virtue of that is here long term but that SHOULD depend entirely on results and league position. We had an awful Xmas, an excellent January and now we've had two very poor results in February. I'm afraid regardless of contract situation and 'visions' for the club the manager is judged on results and if those aren't good enough then he SHOULD be under pressure from above. You seem to be suggesting that he should be safe in his job irrespective of results just because the owners like him and gave him a contract extension.

Yeah Adidas would be smart. Looking forward to a more traditional Rovers shirt next season. Not against Sky blue in principle as a one off but I do miss the proper blue. Fed up with us wearing the away shirt when it isn't necessary.

Probably realised that nobody will employ him in a managerial capacity after being on the scrapheap for well over a year. Time to do some digging into his latest club, I'm sure somewhere there'll be a 'connection'.

1000 less than we took to Preston, also a 3pm kick off. Only at Rovers do we agree to restrict our crowd potential and income to satisfy some strange policy.