I'm from Wigan so I'm very happy with this. Hopefully the pricing is sensible and we'll take a bumper following.

There's Webster there too, who they paid decent money for and is only mid 20s. I think they're well stocked for the next couple of seasons anyway. You could well be right, but it's not obvious to me that Van Hecke is being earmarked as a likely starter for them in the near(ish) future. They'll probably still want to keep him to see how he develops all the same, but at least it seems feasible that they'd let him go in a way that was never on the cards with a Tosin or Harwood-Bellis.

Not so sure. I'm not confident that he'll be available but they already have four senior centre backs at a good age. Apparently Ostigard at Stoke is actually their player too, so he's got a fight on his hands if he wants to play there in the next couple of years. This doesn't mean that we'll be able to get him on the cheap, obviously, but I think both him & Khadra might end up being realistic signings in a way that other loans we've had in the last couple of years haven't been.

I hadn't thought about Phillips to be honest with you. The boy's only 16 though, so even if he is exceptional (fingers crossed!) it doesn't seem likely that he'll be considered to be regular for the first XI for a couple of years at least. By which time Carter will be 23 & I'd guess too that Ayala will probably have been phased out by then. I think he'll get a window to show that he's ready, even if we sign Van Hecke permanently. I think he just needs to play as much as he can before then and not stagnate.

Both of those made all the more impressive given we did it without Ayala, who (probably fairly) was getting most of the plaudits for our 'proper defending' earlier in the season.

They're certainly still the better side on paper, no question. I think there's an element of us getting slightly giddy at our recent form, but at the same time it would be a great time to play them when they're absolutely in the relegation mire and their already pretty small squad has just gone through the Christmas period. Dyche has never really treated the cups seriously at the best of times, so the prospect of losing to the big rivals when they're in the division below puts them in a sticky position in terms of how seriously they should take the game. I'm still not sure if I actually want to play them, but this is the first season where I'd not necessarily expect a hiding.

I'm not overly concerned about Carter in the long term, but there's no doubt that he needs to play. I can understand why we kept him involved in the first team given where we were at the start of the season, but he's well and truly 5th choice now (arguably 6th if Johnson is considered there when we play 3 at the back). He has all the raw materials of being a good player for us in the future, and we have the perfect example in Wharton of what a couple of good loan moves can do for development. He should have several L1 teams who will be happy to take him for 6 months after how well he did at Burton last year, so that's a no brainer for us in January. Sadly I think you're right about Magloire. I think he'll have a perfectly decent professional career if he wants it enough, but he's 23 in a few weeks and he's not really ever looked like taking his chance when he got near the first team.

Remember thinking that Southampton were unbelievably harsh when they sacked Adkins to bring in Pochettino. What a decision it turned out to be though, arguably still paying dividends to this day and you can make the case for it making the club hundreds of millions in revenue. Promoted teams usually suffer through making too many changes rather than not enough in my view, so in the still highly unlikely event that we go up I'd still be ultra cautious about doing anything beyond adding a fairly small number of players to the squad. Not exactly going full Norwich City, but using an unexpected promotion to get the club as a whole in a healthier state. For me that would need to include giving the manager (who, in this still very hypothetical scenario, would have worked wonders) a fair crack of the whip, but I accept this could be seen as being too squeamish to pull the trigger if we have someone lined up who could take us to the next level.

Genuinely love this. Just hope they're in the away end! Not sure if either him or Khadra are going to get their chance in the Prem with Brighton, but both look like very decent prospects. If either are made available, I hope they'll be in the sort of price range where we could realistically be in for them.

We were - not sure how many games in that was though. I always bear that run in mind when it comes to playing teams who have just come down early in the season. You can give them far too much respect, but at the same time they'll sometimes have the quality to take their chances tight games. Rhodes, N. Gomes and Pedersen in particular repeatedly came to our rescue in those opening weeks in games we didn't really deserve much from. Hull, Leicester and Leeds away spring to mind as games where we got out of jail, but there are probably others. Suffice to say the rest of the league quickly cottoned on that there was nothing to fear from us under Kean and we quickly dropped towards the relegation spots.

I was thinking to myself yesterday that I couldn't remember him ever being on the losing side. I assumed that he probably would've lost a game or two under Coyle when he first got the odd game, but our results when he's played in the last couple of years have been excellent. I just hope his bad injury was just a freak one-off & his fitness generally won't be an issue in the future, because he's already looks top class at this level.

I'm one of those that still gets excited about cup runs - some of the best moments following Rovers in the last 10 years have been in the FA cup (although that probably says more about our league performance). But I agree that this year when a small squad is really outperforming expectations, it's probably one year where we need to be more conscious about not stretching our resources too thinly. A game like Spurs away would tick a lot of boxes. New ground, decent scalp if we win but no shame if we get knocked out. Just as importantly, 50% of the >£1,000,000 gate receipts, half a chance of getting picked for TV too. Instead we'll probably get QPR or Millwall!

Probably, but I think that's why the fixtures between now & the New Year are so important. If we really cash in on these winnable games, all of a sudden it will give us a decent cushion over most teams in the pack. I worry about Sheffield United if they get on a run, but aside from them there are plenty of average teams in that bunch.

My first thought was Harrogate would be nice for a new, local-ish away, but just seen that their ground only holds 5,000. Would be a mad scramble for tickets even for ST holders. Would ideally like one of the bigger prem teams either home or away, or any NW team away. This year is first in a while where I'm not dreading drawing Burnley either.

Interesting that you've gone for Van Hecke over Ayala, Chaddy. I think there's a decent player in Van Hecke, but I look at the physicality of Riis and Evans & I'd much rather have Ayala in there to deal with them. Other than that I'd go with the same team.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19758092.blackburn-rovers-team-news-thomas-kaminski-injury-latest/ Kaminski update - personally think this sounds like he'll play but Mowbray's keeping his cards close to his chest.

Agree completely with this - he turns 24 on the day of the PNE game, so you can't really put him in the young player category anymore. The most frustrating part is that he actually travels with the ball very well at times, and get into loads of decent attacking positions. If his final ball was was even semi-decent, it would make a big difference to us. All that said, I'd still be very happy if he signed a new deal.

Preston don't impress me, but if your team has a soft underbelly they have players to hurt you. Kaminski & Ayala being fit will be massive for us. Got a feeling this will end in a draw, but I'm going for Rovers to edge a tight game 2-1

There probably is a way of replacing Nyambe for roughly that sort of money, but only in the same way we could get a player like Samba for a similar fee. I.e. by spotting a bargain that others don't. I'd be very surprised if there's some right-footed Pickering in L1 waiting for us to pick him up for a knock-down fee.

Fabio Cannavaro was 5ft 8!

Most of my life as a Rovers fan has been spent without really giving them a seconds thought, so I find it hard to get too wound up about them now. But I find it completely amazing how often you get one of their fans piping up with the 'if we were in the Prem we would have had massive crowds' line. Completely oblivious to how not managing a single season in the top flight (and hardly ever getting that close to having one) for more than 60 years is a pretty good indicator of where you sit in football's pecking order!

If he could stay fit I think that Souttar could do a very good job in the Championship, but I agree his injury record is a massive red flag.

Game of opinions, and I'm not under any illusions about Mowbray as a manager, but to be honest I find statements like he's an 'extremely poor manager' hard to take seriously. Somewhere near 50% of managers will never get another post after they lose their first job. Mowbray has managed a career over 15 years, mostly at a good level, and over 700 games. You don't get that sort of longevity without having something to offer, or without at least a half-decent body of work to fall back on. That's also a very one sided view of the rest of his career. Just like at Rovers, his career elsewhere has been mixed, with very decent achievements alongside some very disappointing spells. He won manager of the year with Hibs, where he never finished lower than fourth. The promotion season at West Brom (a season after reaching the play off final) was well funded to a point, but only because they were forced into a fire sale of most of their top earners from the previous year. He rebuilt a squad in 12 months and finished top, which was a long way from being a foregone conclusion. He failed badly at Celtic, and only had a bright start before the wheels fell off at Cov, but had two impressive years at Boro before hitting a bad run, and finished with a strong win %.

That story (obviously assuming it's true) paints him in worse light than anything he's done at Rovers in my view.

There are plenty on here who don't even consider David Dunn (or any post-95 player other than Tugay) to be in the legend category, so putting Mowbray in that group is clearly a bit silly. That said, for his faults, he's never been remotely as bad as some have made out. There are obviously better managers out there, but I look around at the other clubs in the league and think how many of their managers are obvious upgrades on Mowbray? Perhaps a handful at most in my view, arguably fewer. Ironically there would've been a few more a month or so ago, but this seems like the season where the managers with the most impressive Championship CVs all want to blot their copy book at the same time. I think this mainly goes to show that there is no guarantee for success at this level, and so much of it is about getting the right man at the right time. I thought at the back end of last season that Mowbray's time was up, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see how he's building up some more credit in the bank this time out. Still very premature to discuss him staying on after this year, but if he were to leave with us finishing just outside the play offs, I think eventually both Mowbray & his time here would be remembered pretty fondly.