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?

I've been slower than most on here to get to the Mowbray out camp, and I agree that some of the stick that's aimed his way isn't warranted. I think he's shown at different times that he has quite a lot of what is needed to be pretty successful at this level, but sadly none of that really matters because of these horrible spells of form that his teams always seem to go through every new year. I'd be more inclined to share the blame around a bit more for this season if it wasn't such a consistent trend that's followed him his entire career.

We'll certainly see what they're made of now! I think they'd have been well up for the game on Saturday anyway, so I'm happy at least they'll be under more pressure (assuming they don't come back to win of course).

He was very good, and put a cross onto Brereton's head which was better than any that Nyambe has done for me. Horses for courses though, Bournemouth will be a very different game and (assuming he's fit) I'd have the specialist right back who remains an excellent 1-on-1 defender. What that means for the rest of the back 4 (or 5?) god only knows.

Agree, I look at that one and the Coventry result as being the biggest kicks in the teeth. Sheffield United looks like being the worst seeing as it's them who we're competing against and we didn't even get a point in the end, but with Coventry being the first game back from the international break (and the first with Brereton back), I think having the wind taken out of our sails there has proven to be a disaster.

Is there any prospect of getting an increased allocation for this? I imagine there's a big group who will be waiting until the weekend's results before making the call about whether to go.

We might well have still tailed off, but I think you have to say yes. Those two missed penalties alone look like being decisive.