5 pages at half time on a match thread. Says it all.

Rinse and repeat - lots of possession, zero nous in front of goal, woeful defending.

Round and round we go

Rooney’s Derby are absolutely woeful.

Just total apathy from me now.

Good job the cricket season has started.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Castore

Heartbreaking for Dack - really feel for him. Trying to apportion any blame is crass.
 

I don’t think Mowbray is a good manager and likely will never get us promoted - that’s a conversation for another day. What I do see though is a good bloke who cares deeply about the club and the players.

Another season we can write off. Let’s see what happens in the summer. Personally, I’d like to see a change, I think it would be best for all parties. Let’s see what happens.

Brentford are much much better than us for what it’s worth.

Harwood-Bellis > Branthwaite 

1 hour ago, Roverall said:

I was thinking about all this last night.

If Venky's truly are as rich as purported, then the money they are putting into the club is the equivalent of an average Joe having a week in Marbella once a year.

By their rationale, keeping the club solvent and staying as owners is likely deemed enough to 'save face' in India. Beyond that - and as all the evidence points to - they simply can't be bothered, and may even take some spiteful pleasure in explicitly NOT doing what the more vocal supporters are demanding. These aren't the type of people who will ever have been dictated to by anyone in their cosseted lives before, much less by a bunch of football supporters - many of whom waved banners decrying them and - lest we forget - threw snowballs at them. We haven't had sight or sound of any them for years at this stage, and I sincerely doubt they'll show up any time in the near future.

Perhaps this awful purgatory is their form of revenge?

I met Mr Venky in Trinidad (they have a share of the Trinbago Knight Riders cricket team).

He barely knew what Blackburn Rovers is. That leads me to believe we read too much into Venky’s motives and their feelings towards the fans. They simply don’t really care - we are a grain of sand in their massive empire, one bought by/for Balaji.

Quite simply - The club won’t matter until it affects them or their business. 

1 minute ago, Commondore said:

We're crying out for Dack here, Reading hasn't shown anything to warrant two deep-sitting midfielders. And how many times have we passed the ball in or through their penalty area? Ridiculous, go for goal! 

The old Dack maybe. The current Dack is a liability.

He’s going absolutely nowhere.

Tough watch again today - we’re awful. Hard not to become totally apathetic with it all. Another opportunity missed and I’m talking about the season - not this game.

6 minutes ago, J*B said:

First things first, Tony, this is the second biggest club you’ve ever been involved with. 

Exactly.

6 minutes ago, Wood26 said:

Shadow of player is harsh he started 2 games in a year. Come on.

Also, the contract is as much for us as him, as it means we can sell him for more money instead of him going for free next year.

There is no conspiracy here.

That’s fair. But I’d argue he need us just as much as we need him. Where’s his incentive to earn the contract?

8 minutes ago, north_ender said:

I thought we played well in the first half and probably on balance deserved the win, but was relieved that you didn't attack the way you did at Deepdale, especially as we've lost our 3 best defenders since then. We are currently very vulnerable at the back, yet Harvey Elliott was left on the bench and I'm not sure where Armstrong was playing?

Armstrong was devastating at Deepdale through the middle as a striker. I was relieved that he seemed to be shunted into a different role tonight. Even when he was central, the ball was hoofed up to him against a 6ft 3 centre half.

Thought Branthwaite struggled a bit for you at the back, although Evans did have a very good game again.

Most PNE fans have looked on at your transfer business and 20 goal striker in envy this season yet under Mowbray your limit seems to be mid-table, despite how heavily he has been able to invest.

With an ambitious and more tactically adept manager I'm pretty sure you'd be seriously in the top 6 race every season with that squad.

Cc Venkys

A pretty big elephant in the room is Dack. He’s a shadow of the player he was and we’ve just leveraged OUR club again by offering him a big contract. Symptomatic of how the club is run and a pretty clear example of the decision making.

1 hour ago, garnersfags said:

We will not play fluent football until Holtby plays. 

We have not repeated our Deepdale performance once, which backs up my thought that TM stumbles on a fluid, effective line-up accidentally 3 or 4 times a season. 

We really do not have the quality individually or collectively that we thought we would be oozing by now. 

Most of us thought that we would be gelling as a squad by now, but we genuinely look like a bunch of strangers.

We win the odd game when one of two of our players individually snap out of the tactic-free zone and/or show the quality that TM's lack of genuine footballing awareness usually totally stifles. 

The right back fiasco tonight shows real desperation, not a considered plan. We just cannot keep going through games playing Dack, Elliott and Armstrong and only trouble the keeper once or twice.

Preston really didn't need to be anything more than hard-working to beat us, ditto QPR. 

I think we have a decent squad that Mowbray is not utilising effectively. 

I really don't think Davenport is the answer any more than I thought Williams was the answer. Tony takes a bit longer to work things out. I would play Downing every game until our midfield re-appears.

F**king pointless signing decent young loan players unless there is a decent system for them to fit into.

We were, and usually are, clueless. 

Another hard-working, quality-free Championship where we can't seriously threaten the top 7. 

'If' we play at our best for the rest of the season, we'll be seventh, but we won't. 

TM under pressure now, as I don't think much has been made of the wages we are paying our loan-players, and Mowbray must have made some guarantees about where he hoped we would end up if we secured them. January saved him, but now WE WILL NOT REACH THE PLAY-OFFS so he will know his chance of glory has passd him, and us, by. 

I'm truly sick of it. Bowyer mark 2, but more disappointing. 

Brilliant post. 

Dack chasing shadows unfortunately. 

We fit the perfect criteria for Castore.

They go after teams/athletes with a strong heritage that are currently not 'top tier' for the big commercial brands. West Indies Cricket, Rangers, Murray etc

They also make nice stuff.

23 hours ago, JHRover said:

With Mark Hughes it boils down to how eager he is to return to management and repair his damaged reputation or if he is happy to relax and wait for something to come along that genuinely excites him.

He's been out now for over 2 years and his last two jobs have ended in failure and the sack so the longer his absence from the game continues the more difficult it is going to be for him to get a decent job and the more likely it will become that he will be a forgotten man in management like Alan Curbishley, Alan Pardew and others. It is rare that managers come back from years out of the game and succeed.

Hughes clearly has an ego which no doubt comes from his playing days and has probably served him well. It was that ego that saw him walk away from us last time around and no doubt he would have gone sooner had an offer been made. I always had the impression he thought he was destined for much bigger and better than Rovers and yet that hasn't been the case for him.

He's going to have to accept that waiting for a Premier League job will likely see him never return to management. He might be fine with that, but if he's keen to get back into it then the Championship is going to be as good as it gets unless some foreign club take a punt (increasingly unlikely as time passes).

I think he's deluded if he thinks he's too good for a job like Rovers. A mid-table underachieving Championship club is probably the best he's going to get.

Too many folk are too negative about the offerings of Blackburn Rovers. Yes we've disinterested and clueless owners, and yes we've a bizarre structure with seemingly no investment or interest taken in the Club with any investment made just for the first team.

But there are perks to this job as Mowbray is proving by still being in it despite stagnation over more than a year.

Hughes would be worth a phone call but I wouldn't be getting on my hands and knees to beg him to return. It would simply be to ask him if he would like to be considered and to see if he fancied a crack at it and what his terms would be. If he wasn't keen I'd move on as the last thing we need is another Lambert scenario of someone here just to get their name back in the news before moving on after 6 months to supposedly better things. 

Plenty more fish in the sea.

Johnson should be a no. This club needs know-how and experience and handing it to a rookie just sets us off on another 2-3 year cycle of development and learning on the job. We are underachieving with this squad and are running out of time with it. We need someone who can come in and sort it out quickly with fresh ideas, outside eyes and a new voice for the players. That also applies to the coaching staff so Venus, Lowe and co. probably need to go as well. 

If we wanted to go down the tried and tested route then for me it would have to be a toss up between Mick McCarthy and Nigel Pearson. Those would at the very least have us in a similar position but with potential to hit the top 6. They certainly wouldn't have us any lower than we are at present.

Personally I'd rather we went on a bit more of a bold yet educated route and went for someone still up and coming but also experienced. Not a rookie but someone on an upward trajectory in the game looking for a chance to progress their careers here. Danny Cowley would fit that remit - comprehensive experience and knowledge of all leagues up to the Championship, available, done well in all his jobs and looking for that opportunity Huddersfield wouldn't give him. 

Failing that there are many other options out there worth looking into.

For those who seem to think that a managerial change is some massive gamble that we should look to avoid the answer is simple - if it doesn't work then make another change. We don't have to stick with the next manager for 4 years regardless of results. You bring someone in, give them a target and review.

The other way of doing things is that if we sell Armstrong say for £15 million then we use the bulk of those funds not to sign players or cover losses but to bring in a top, top drawer management team like Leeds did. I'm not saying someone like Bielsa would be obtainable for us but a game changing top level manager who could be lured with a massive salary and bonus and given 2 years to get us up.

Good post.

I dont agree there is only investment for the 1st team though - they spend £3m a year to keep the academy as category 1.

5 hours ago, Fraserkirky said:

Just away to post that. Would imagine he will be a Rover by the end of the week, and a much needed signing.

Would Big Sam want to help rovers out though.......

I also think he would be our best option at left back, played there well a few times last year. Douglas has been a big disappointment.

You almost need to laugh. 
 

Worst performance of the season tonight unfortunately. 

Just now, K-Hod said:

Commentators made me laugh then ‘Lenihan just didn’t know where Kaminski was’. He was bloody looking right at him!

I’ve started turning the audio off on iFollow. Warren Lucy is laughably bad.

Rinse and repeat. ‘Played well, unlucky’

Bottom line is we can’t get results against teams above us. Going forward we were decent but the subs killed the game, very odd.

Lenihan and Douglas are not up to it. I would play Downing at LB, pray we get Grant Hanley back or go back in for Kipre. Ayala can’t be arsed.

It’s available on iFollow outside of the UK.

UK - Sky only.

2 minutes ago, Paul Mellelieu said:

Racism is never too far away on a Millwall forum is it?

Hard to read that crap. Horrible horrible lot.

Kaminski. Wow. 
 

He’s really really really good.