I'm 30, which makes this thread a bit tricky. Too young to remember the title win. Too spoiled to realise that the Souness/Hughes years weren't going to carry on forever, although they still contain amazing memories. As a recent 'high' of sorts, I was genuinely quite emotional at the Oxford game in L1. Glorious sunshine and full stands of blue and white in every direction. An important reminder of what this club can be.

To clarify Joe, I wasn't really making a moral point. It was more how you can look at these two recent cases of clubs choosing to get rid of key personnel, and see that the differences between them reveal differences in how professionally they conduct themselves. I accept the circumstances are wildly different, but in one instance there's a club that have provided all the professional and support they could to an employee, before a line was crossed and they got rid straight away, and in such a way where they still made very classy and magnanimous public statements about the player. I think this shows a level of professionalism, decisiveness and shared strategy amongst the club's hierarchy that shows Rovers up in how they've dealt with Mowbray as far as we can tell. I think the lack of professional curtesy is an issue too to be fair, so I guess I'm making a bit of a moral point in that sense, but I mainly worry about what it suggests about how the club is run.

Horror session for Lancs this morning. 105-7 at one point. Bit of a recovery from Salt and Bailey now, but still 90 odd runs behind Hampshire's total.

Quite right, it was a mistake to sign him in the first place in my view. Still impressed with the way they dealt with his departure though. I suppose that's the point I was trying to make when comparing them to Rovers. They've sacked a player for ill-discipline, but were still very classy about how they dealt with the situation in public and have obviously got the balance right between a duty of care to an employee who has clearly needed support, and making a difficult hard-headed decision in the best interest of the club. Suggests that the decision makers are proactive, treat their employees fairly and are capable of taking difficult decisions. Contrast that with Rovers and Mowbray - it seems to be the polar opposite, at least as far as we can tell.

I'm concerned about how employees are treated by the club, even if it's an employee who ultimately should be replaced. The lack of professionalism is more concerning though. Fans of championship clubs often looked at the Brentford model in terms of how to have sustainable success at this level. Usually this is more about player trading and spotting value in transfers, but more fundamentally it's about looking at all aspects of how the football club is run and looking for where you can make improvements, large or small. That sort of care of detail and making sure the club is operating at its' maximum is completely at odds with how Rovers are run, outside of possibly the Academy, and the way that Mowbray's future has been handled appears to be the latest example of that. For those who don't follow Rugby League, Wigan have just sacked a player for repeatedly failing to meet their professional standards, and they're taking a hit on losing a quality player in order to preserve the culture of success that they're trying to build, shared by players, staff and directors. Wouldn't it be nice to think a similar level of thought has gone into the setup at Rovers.

It's the hope that kills you!

It was. Can't say I'm overly enthusiastic about that one, true or not.

I really like Ainsworth, and I wouldn't be dead against his appointment. Wycombe are a small club even by L1 standards (weren't they at the bottom of L2 when he was first appointed?) so he's obviously worked miracles there to get them and almost keep them in the Championship. All that said, going from a club like that straight to Rovers is an enormous leap in terms of expectations, the sorts of players that you deal with, budgets and generally what the job entails day-to-day. I'd feel much better about someone with a track record at a club more similar to Rovers, either here or abroad if we've actually done our research.

Very close to it, although I think considering we set up as a standard 442 we were badly lacking in quality midfielders. Cairney was there when we played him in his proper position, but if Jason Lowe was the best option to play alongside him then that in itself shows how badly lacking we were in that dept. Other than that, I agree though. Two strikers scoring over 20, plus Cairney, Josh King, Hanley, Duffy, Marshall when he had his head screwed on. Not to mention how under used Dunn was, and Alan Judge and Jack O'Connell just before then. Ridiculous that we only ever flirted with the play offs.m

We'll probably end up finishing very close to where we did under Bowyer in the season where Rhodes & Gestede both scored over 20 goals. Although I seem to remember that this was very much a late charge that we made in the Spring onwards and before then we were some way away, so I'm not sure that I'd class that as really in contention. To be honest given the players we had, I'd say we underperformed more in that season than we ever have under Mowbray.

Some very fair comments here, especially on the quality of the academy (god knows where we'd be without it). One thing I'd say in his favour (at least when it comes to transfers) is that the squad he inherited was almost completely without assets. Possibly we could've fetched a couple of million for Lenihan at a push. No other player would've fetched anything beyond a derisory transfer fee, and so something to consider when looking at budgets etc. is that we could well be comparing Rovers with squads which already have had quite a lot spent on them over time. He can't plead poverty for the reasons that you mention, but once you take the Armstrong & Raya fees into account, his spend over five years is very small beer. He's generally done well in growing assets for the club too, it just so happens that the club has been pretty poor at protecting these assets with securing them to longer contracts! I think generally he's managed the squad well with the budget available to him. Sadly he's not been able to get the most out of it consistently enough.

Me too. I suppose I'm feeling a lot of trepidation of who might come next, and I'm suddenly much more conscious than you can be looking downwards as well as upwards. Treading water in the Championship isn't good enough for Blackburn Rovers, but we were probably saying the same under Bowyer until a lot worse came round the corner!

No, but then again if you'd have said in the Autumn of the L1 season that in four years we'd be furious by just missing out on the play offs, we might have taken that. Or at least realised that it could be plenty worse. He's not a great manager, and there have been at least one too many post-Christmas slumps to want to keep him. But taken in the round, I reckon he can look back with a fair amount of pride at the job that he's done.

Has similar strengths and weaknesses to Mowbray too. I think we could do worse to be honest, but not an inspiring option.

I don't think most do to be fair. I know he comes in for plenty of stick on here, but I think personal dislike of him is still a pretty niche position amongst the wider fanbase.

Pretty close to my own thoughts. I think we really can't be ignoring the seriousness of the drops in form that we've suffered, especially this season, but big picture wise I think your summary is a good one. I think he needs to be replaced, but i) it should've been handled more professionally and that's a real worry in itself, and ii) I'm pessimistic that we'll get someone better. Although we'll soon find out.

Undoubtedly a shoddy way of doing business. I hope - but certainly don't expect - this to be a case of the Rovers hierarchy waiting and seeing how the season will develop whilst taking the opportunity to do the proper groundwork for identifying the best man to take us forward next year. Sadly, it seems far more likely that we've sleepwalked ourselves into this position, which if so is very worrying.

As long as Root continues his form with the bat, I'd have preferred him to stay on. That's not to say I think he was doing even a semi-decent job as captain, but at the very least you could say it wasn't affecting his form as a player, and that's what I worry about with Stokes. The lack of a single other sensible candidate means I understand this decision, but to say it's not ideal is a massive understatement.

Left field one, certainly. Can't pretend that I wouldn't want someone with more a proven managerial record, be it in Britain or elsewhere.

Looks like tomorrow will be his last game at Ewood then (bar us sneaking in the play offs)

Agree - although I would once again take this opportunity to remind everyone that Trav started that game at Bramall Lane alongside Smallwood!

The only appointment! And one which itself brings with it loads of risk. How we've ended up in the position where we have so few even passable candidates for the captaincy is beyond me.

Hard to speculate too much when we don't know who the manager will be, but if Mowbray was to stay on I can see it being a loan replacement for Nyambe, with whatever money we have for permanent deals being spent elsewhere. I get the sense that he'd like to move JRC to a less physically demanding position than wing back if possible, but equally I doubt that he'd want to use our budget to bring in two right backs if he can help it, so he might be forced to carry on with him there.

He might be unlucky with the timing of his injuries, but it's a massive red flag that he's missed so much football already. Perhaps he's still a v. decent player at this level, but we'd be mad to risk millions of pounds on finding out.

I can't see us paying that for anyone who isn't a striker to be honest, and even then only if Brereton goes. Having said that it begs the question as to why we would agree in principle to that price if we never had any intention of paying it. Maybe we only saw him as a short term loan and the prospect of buying him for a few quid smoothed out the move in January?