Good start to a bad season, 2-0 Rovers.

I think you're basically right, only thing I take issue with is that I think our 'floor' is a bit higher than that. Certainly agree that it's a season that's difficult to predict the league (when is the Championship not, I suppose?) and Rovers more so than most other teams. My view is that even if most of the question-marks all over our squad (which I agree with) don't come back with the answers we like, so to speak, I'd still be surprised if we aren't some way ahead of at least three clubs. It seems as though most of the Championship has gone backwards since last year, probably not the worst season to be relegated from the Prem in terms of those clubs' chances of bouncing back.

Not basing on this on last night, but I agree in that I'm confident that we won't be overly worried when it comes to going down (caveated on not having a total disaster of the rest of the transfer window). Equally, I can't see us being anywhere near the top 6 equation either, which is obviously where we all want to be. I think generally we are all (as will fans of other clubs) be slightly guilty of not really appreciating the state of plenty of other clubs at this moment in time. We're struggling, and we can only put a certain amount of that down to covid, but some other clubs are absolutely in the mire. I expect bottom half, but I doubt that there'll be much between a big clump of teams in the middle this season. I expect us to be in that conversation rather than scrapping to stay in the division.

I haven't gone back and read everyone's comments, so I could be wrong, but I haven't seen much which I'd describe as final. I wasn't able to go yesterday, so I can't judge either way, but I agree broadly that early games can be great or dreadful and don't necessarily mean much in the long run. Remember Andre Ooijer having an absolute horror show of a debut against Chelsea, and he turned out to be a really excellent player for us. Everything we've read/heard about Pickering so far means that we should stay optimistic for a good while longer I think.

He wasn't an £11 million better player. Scored fewer goals in a much better team at this level. Take your point about the contract situation though. Agree that keeping him into the last 12 months of his contract (assuming he won't re-sign) is a massive call which could backfire, but there's still plenty of time to go until the end of the window. There seem to be a healthy number of clubs sniffing round too, so I think playing a bit more hardball to get a few more million quid (or 60% of a few more million quid!) isn't overly risky at this point.

One of the very few improvements in how we conduct our business these days (to the extent that we actually conduct business at all!) is that we seem to be a lot better at keeping things under wraps than was the case a few years ago. No mean feat in this day and age.

I always live in hope for yellow & black halves, but I think this is in with a shout of being our best ever away kit. Lovely stuff.

Genuinely took me the best part of a minute to work out who you were talking about. I'm blaming the weather!

It wasn't at all blatantly obvious. There was a run in February and March that was very poor, no question, but that run was sandwiched by two four game wining streaks. Coupled with a strong first half of the season, what reason did we have at that point to think it was the bad run which was a sign of things to come, and not the other parts of the season which went well? Clearly in retrospect we would have been better off replacing him with someone better before now, but there's no point pretending that this was obvious in 2019 when it simply wasn't.

Fair enough, and sadly I think you're completely right about mid-table Championship being his ceiling (at least with a realistic squad for us to assemble given where we're at). It might've been a bit unfair of me to target that post specifically, but there are a few posts on here which I think are far too broad brush in their criticism. I guess my position is that Mowbray is in some ways a pretty competent manager at this level, but at the same time has some significant flaws which over time have become more and more apparent (last year especially). He has without doubt outstayed his usefulness and should have been replaced before now. At the same time I find it a bit frustrating that balanced assessments of his time here are far outweighed by posts making him out to be a manager without any redeeming qualities - all the more so considering we have a recent history of having managers who fit that description perfectly.

I agree that last season was unacceptably poor, and I too worry about next season, but I'm not having what you've said in the highlighted section. The idea that getting rid of a manager who had just got us promoted with 90 odd points would have been the actions of an 'ambitious club' is complete madness in my view. I think generally we're all in danger of rewriting history a little bit with his first 2 years or so. We're falling over examples which show that being a big club with a decent budget is no guarantee of promotion in that league, and our first season back had some genuinely promising spells in it. Mowbray earned his popularity at that point, as much as he has earned is unpopularity since.

I'm not sure about vast majority. I agree that the season before last marked the point when the rumblings of discontent really started, but I didn't get a sense of the average fan being against the manager until the awful run last year.

From Sharpe on twitter:

We've been given an allocation of 1,500 for the Bolton game, apparently.

Not sure if this has been commented upon already, but Ryan Gauld isn't coming to Ewood, or Britain for that matter. Accepting a deal from Vancouver which depending on who you listen to is between £20,000-£40,000. Never going to happen at that cost. https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/7415133/ryan-gauld-mls-deal-vancouver-whitecaps/