Hopefully Mowbray will have seen Villa get dismantled at Sheffield United the other week by an aggressive attacking side and also lose at struggling Burton in the cup before that and go into this one with ambitions of putting them to the sword. All isn't well there at the moment and Bruce is under pressure to get them going again. 6 without a win. No doubt we'll get a week of stories and interviews about what a brilliant side they are and how tough it will be, but we're at home so we need to be at them from the off and if we do that I fancy our chances.

Not really that much different to an owner arranging lucrative sponsorship deals with his club to assist with FFP compliance (Birmingham, Sheff Wed, QPR) or Wolves having a massive advantage in recruiting quality players on convenient loans and reduced prices through a business arrangement with a highly influential agent. With the money on offer from promotion FFP rules were always likely to result in new and unusual ways to circumvent the rules to reach the promised land. The fools that invented the rules presumably thought all the clubs were going to fall into line and live happily ever after. All it seems to have done is resulted in more skulduggery and suspicious activity as owners continue to spend more but try to work round the rules.

Does anyone, anywhere, seriously expect to see Birmingham docked 12 points this season? We know how this works. There will be a series of articles and rumours about what 'could' happen, all will go quiet, and then at some point down the line there will be an announcement on the 'EFL' website that they have reached a settlement with Birmingham and they are free to continue. Of course this settlement will probably be a multi-million pound fine but I'd be amazed if they deducted any points. A 12 point deduction might be do-able as far as the rules are concerned, but since when do this lot follow their own rules? 12 points to a mediocre side like Birmingham would effectively be demotion, and would open a massive can of worms with their owners who would likely drag it through every appeal possible to stop it happening just like QPR did for several years before eventually accepting a fine of less than 50% what it should have been, along with a convenient payment plan to help them pay it off without causing major problems. (Remember, QPR were not fined £42 million as the media and league want people to believe, they were fined £17 million, with the rest being £3 million legal costs and converting £20 million+ of their existing debts into shares - no money changing hands)

The land was never properly treated or surfaced, just levelled out and used as a primitive car park when required at the outrageous price of £10 a car last time i checked. That land should have been properly surfaced and fenced off and incorporated as an extra car park similar to those at the BBE and DE. As it is it looks very run down and scruffy as the first thing people see when arriving from the motorway.

I note on the Aston Villa website that their 'initial allocation' for the game at Ewood is 5,000. Few problems. Firstly that suggests more are available if Villa sell those. That would see them open the upper tier to go up beyond 5,000. That isn't allowed, as the police refuse to allow kick offs at any time other than mid-day if Rovers open the entire Darwen End to away fans (e.g. Leeds). Secondly if they have 5,000 that suggests the entirety of the bottom tier of the Darwen End, with no seats to spare if they sell them all. If that's the case then are they going to have any segregation between home and away fans? This season they've had netting over parts of the corner of the Darwen End which will have to be removed if Villa sell 5,000 in the lower tier.

I'm sure he could find 4 hours a day to spare in his busy schedule that he could set aside to get this work done, except of course on Rovers match days. He'll have 5 or 6 days where Rovers aren't playing, training usually only takes half a day. He could have the remaining 99 hours done and dusted within 3 or 4 weeks if he knuckled down and concentrated on doing as much as possible each day. Seems he's got other things to do with his spare time.

Following the Hull game Mowbray said he was hopeful that Dack would be fit to face Reading. That was on 20th August since which we've played 4 games across more than 2 weeks where he hasn't even made it to the bench. Then all of a sudden word gets out that he's been in legal trouble and was in Blackburn magistrates yesterday facing the real risk of a custodial sentence. 'It was just a kick that had swollen up a little bit, so long as it doesn't affect his movement he will be fine' - 20th August Maybe his injury has been more serious than first thought or it was one that was worth keeping him out of the squad on to avoid any risk. Alternatively he was being kept out of the way until all this had died down.

Norwich at home in the League was more recent than that and more of a tonking. Huddersfield could easily have been too such was the gulf that day.

Don't know whether anyone has noticed but our old assistant manager has been appointed caretaker manager of the Denmark national team. Wonder if his old Arsenal connections have come in useful this time round. https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/7175355/john-jensen-denmark-manager-arsenal/?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1536151793

Very impressive. I do hope we're not facing a situation where he impresses this season and then gets picked up by a rival on a free transfer in the summer.

In theory yes, but then again in theory we would be bigger than most in the Championship if Premier League performance and seasons was the main thing. Not many in this league who have not only won it but also been in it for nearly 20 years and been in the Champions League during that period. Sadly we're well down the list of 'preferred' clubs on Sky. Always makes me smile to myself when we hear the relentless 'my club is massive, bigger than your club, we get x thousand a week turning up'. Usually we can associate that with clubs like Leeds, Forest, Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham who despite being based in big cities have had nothing to shout about for 20-30 years so revert to banging on about their fanbases and 'size'. The funny part being that despite that theoretical/potential 'size' it has got them nowhere, infact we're moving further away from all the city clubs being in the top division as attendances and crowds become less relevant an in era of tv money and rich owners who offset gate receipts. Real big clubs - Liverpool, United, Arsenal - don't need to tell people they are, Once big or potentially big but not at the moment, languishing for decades outside the top division whilst clubs like Bournemouth and Watford do well in the Premier League, need to cling to that 'status' to feel better about themselves.

I don't think it is as simple as that. The likes of Norwich and Derby are well supported and regularly push 30,000 a week yet don't seem to get a fraction of the publicity. I think Forest have more global profile with the Clough thing which Sky try to push to their audiences. Villa were a household Premier League name so there's probably still some residual interest in them outside the UK for the time being. Can't quite get the Leeds one but then again Sky did own a large chunk of Leeds not long since so perhaps it's something to do with that.

Doesn't help when Rovers fans are of the same mindset. Too much respect towards the opposition. We're already hearing talk about the formidable run of fixtures coming up getting excuses in early. Villa look to be in some disarray after Saturday's thrashing and haven't won in 6 now having played the likes of Sheffield Utd, Reading, Burton and Ipswich in that time. They'll be desperate to bounce back but we should see them at home as a glorious opportunity to get back to winning ways at home. Sounds like Sheffield United blew them away early doors - took their chances when they came and there was no coming back from that. Then we've Stoke who have had an abysmal start to the season. Lots of people going off names and reputations rather than results and performances which by the sounds of things have been absolute garbage so far. We showed early on yesterday that we can play and cause problems for teams. Unfortunately I still think we're making it too easy to score against us and we don't capitalise when on top. Ipswich was another - should have had that game buried when Palmer had almost a chance from 2 yards out - missed it and then end up bemoaning luck at the other end as we only get a point.

With Sky losing La Liga and Champions League their focus on the 'EFL' is only going to increase. Their coverage is dreadful with sub-standard commentary and punditry geared more towards lavishing unnecessary praise on certain clubs who they love because they are poster boys for the competition - Leeds, Villa, Forest.

To be fair virtually every game I've watched since the start of last season we've had a half or 30 minutes where we have made the opposition look ordinary. Yesterday was no real exception. The difference yesterday was that having managed to get that lead we continued to get at them and create good chances, whereas often we will sit back and allow the opposition to play as soon as we have the lead. The problem is the other 45-60 minutes where we cannot sustain our approach and it is alarming as to the ease with which we are conceding goals. Against Ipswich, Reading and Bristol we have conceded 8 goals and really none of them were the results of periods of pressure or massive dominance from the opposition, many are just long balls forward or lapses in focus at crucial times. All in all I think we need to be more ruthless with our chances and more dogged in defence. Actually Brentford at home the other week was different to the norm, as we didn't really have our customary dominant spell where we created lots, rather we adopted a different more defensive approach on that occasion and it worked perfectly. I also think there is far too much respect being shown to the opposition by some. Bristol City are a mid-table/top half side that might push for the play-offs. They've got to that stage through some shrewd recruitment rather than going out spending fortunes. A club with a plan that has followed it over a number of years. Nothing special as we saw in the first half but in the second we made it way too easy for them and had no answer to it. We're already hearing people gearing up for poor results in our next few games v Villa, Derby and Stoke and yet Stoke have been woeful this season and Villa have just been hammered in their last away game.

Something like this had been waiting to happen. I felt it was a 'typical' Rovers performance - started the game well, managed to get our noses in front, we had our customary purple patch period of 20-30 minutes we had by far the better of it and the opposition couldn't deal with us and should have capitalised on that to increase our lead, then we conspire to concede from minimal pressure (fair enough this time through an appalling free kick decision), then the game completely changes and we have no answer to it. As the game wore on we quickly ran out of ideas and ended up something of a shambles towards the end with Bristol almost walking the ball into our net in the last 10 minutes. Not much evidence of a Plan B in the offing from Rovers really. For all the singing and dancing going on about our brilliant summer window we're still throwing Joe Nuttall onto the pitch to try and salvage a result away from home in the Championship. I'm sorry but that situation simply isn't good enough and we've had plenty of time to address that particular issue. Goals we've conceded this season against Ipswich, Reading and today way too easy. A wake up call for one or two. A reasonable start to the season, but we've issues to address.

Nixon has been pushing the Dack one all day and it was he who came up with the £15 million story and suggesting Dack would be open to the move. Just about every transfer window (except whilst in league one) Nixon has been pushing 'interest' in our best players. His obsession with Rhodes to X,Y,Z was almost unhealthy.

Exceeded expectations would be my description. An excellent window would have seen us have an array of quality proven options in every position.

I'm actually quite interested to understand Nixon's mindset. His unrelenting obsession with linking Rovers players with deadline day moves away to rivals never ends. How much does he get paid for this sort of stuff? I think I could do his job. If we were seriously after Chapman we could have got it done this summer. I don't buy all this stuff about needing to wait for Middlesbrough to get people in first. Pulis clearly isn't a massive fan and he hasn't got a new contract there, if we'd have gone in strong early doors they'd have sold him to us. We've left it late and hoped to get it done at the 11th hour and it hasn't happened.

Shame Tottenham aren't in the 'EFL'. They get extra time because of fax machines being 'broken'.

Ultimately it comes down to how you deal with other clubs. Fulham were clearly very serious about keeping the likes of Sessegnon and Cairney and managed to do it despite apparent interest from various Premier League clubs. They probably wouldn't have got away with that indefinitely but they managed to persuade those players to hang about for a couple of seasons to see whether they could get promoted and reach their ambitions with Fulham. Ultimately when you start entertaining interest then it becomes a snowball effect as word gets round that we are there to negotiate and a deal can be done with some persistency. Then the player begins to wonder if he's really so important if we're prepared to discuss a transfer to a league rival. That's what happened in the dark days of 2015-16 - it began with Cairney and continued with Rhodes, Hanley, Duffy, Marshall - good players who were obviously happy at the club however when the club started selling key players off the remaining ones no longer wanted to be part of it. Word quickly spreads as to those clubs open for business and those who are determined to resist.

Decent signings. As are Hemed and Wells to QPR. Clubs starting to panic after poor starts to the season.

Yes, so we reject ANY bid from Championship clubs on the basis they are not Premier League, and we sit tight. IF a Premier League club comes sniffing in January that is up to them and we cross that bridge when we get to it. If the player wants to progress by transferring to a club in a higher league fair enough. Moving to WBA is not progression, or at least it shouldn't be. If they were still in the top flight fair enough, but they've lost that status now. Depends where we want to be as a club. Do we want to challenge in this league and be a big player in it or do we want to revert to being a club that is happy to exist and float about aimlessly whilst selling a few big players from time to time. We'll never make serious progress if we cash in on our best players to non-Premier League clubs every couple of years.

Rather than talking figures the best way to approach it is this: Simply not for sale to a non-Premier League club or Burnley. No amount of money or persistency will overcome that. If one of the other 19 Premier League clubs wants him then we speak to him, and if he's keen to explore it then we start at £15 million. Golden rule - you don't sell your best players to clubs in the same league you want to finish above. Keep hold of your best players with interest from rivals and you'll improve and become a big player. Roll over and take the money every time a decent player comes through and you become an also-ran who just exists to make up the numbers and coin it in every few years. We did it with Cairney to Fulham and look how that worked out.

Impressive following that for a Sunday lunchtime.