And that's quite a statement given the last few years!

They're difficult calls with keepers. Staying with Pears over Kaminski a couple of years ago seemed fair enough at the time - Pears was having one of his less accident-prone spells so keeping him in seemed sensible. But the leopard didn't change his spots. And by the end of the season, having Kaminski straight back in could've been the difference between us finishing in the top 6, and him commanding a higher fee when Luton come in for him later in the summer. Which isn't to say we should necessarily through Toth in straight away. If for whatever reason they think he needs some acclimatising, then fine. But I think Pears' record speaks for itself now, so I don't think we'd be changing him for the sake of it. Instead it would be taking him out before the inevitable next howler costs us points.

He also doesn't have a promotion on his CV, which probably rules him out from getting poached by a parachute payments club. There's always the possibility that he makes a sideways move if he does well and gets sufficiently fed up with the Rovers circus, but that seems very unlikely from where we are now.

We'll see where their goals come from. His other promoted teams had Mitrovic and Solanke, who were vital. Foster's goal was good yesterday, but his record isn't great generally. If can step up then I'd have them as likely to go up. Otherwise I struggle to see who else would be able to do that. It definitely seems beyond Rodriguez these days.

Disagree. Although maybe his approach to some calls are becoming more standard in the prem, which is regrettable. I honestly couldn't believe some of the yellows given yesterday, for both sides. There were plenty of physical challenges - and thank God after our last trip to your place! - but I don't remember much in the way of leniency with 50/50 calls. Quite the opposite in fact.

The one, single, only benefit of that horrible decision is that I can legitimately say that I'm not a hypocrite over VAR. Huge decision goes against us in a game against our biggest rivals and I still want it scrapped!

I didn't say at the time because it felt a bit OTT, but I thought the home games (especially the Derby game) felt similar to the Hughes era. Play decent football at times, go more direct at times, but great effort and desire and you felt like we would be more likely to score as the game goes on. Same as you I'm not really celebrating that result - that was a game that was there for the taking I think. Gueye (who was otherwise excellent) and the officials made unrealistic in the end, and the players all deserve a massive pat on the back for getting a deserved point when so much went against them. But with a fair wind we would have won that game, irrespective of how much possession they had.

He was. There's recency bias with how we remember him. He started out looking impressive, but he simply wasn't at it in last few months when we were falling away. He'll be better for the experience though, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he has a decent prem career at some point in a few years. On Baker, he didn't get much of a chance to do anything with the ball. A couple of unimpressive touches in my view, but nothing like enough to judge him one way or the other.

In part this was how we set up, but had good depth in certain positions. Josh King couldn't get a start for instance (absolutely ridiculous in retrospect). We let Alan Judge go because he couldn't get a game either. Good players like Kilgallon on the bench too. It's fair to say we didn't have too much quality in centre midfield in that squad - Cairney aside - but part of that was that Bowyer just wanted to play water carriers there.

Have to say I'm pretty happy with the window from where we're sitting. There's still so much uncertainty though, I can't quite fathom how anyone can be scoring it. It only takes the new keeper to be below par or Cantwell to stink the place out to put a totally different complexion on our business.

Norwich

That's my thinking as things stand too. I'm far from Hedges biggest fan but if we're starting Gueye, then having a left footed left winger is helpful.

I'm not an advocate of Dolan as a centre forward, but his pressing and energy make him a better option than Siggy I think. I'm all for moving him centrally though and I totally agree that his touch and finishing being his best attributes. I just can't see having him as the focal point working. Much better playing behind a striker.

Amazing

Didn't Sky Sports News end up reporting that he could run the 100 meters in under 10 seconds just because someone on here made it up?

I think there's loads of uncertainty in this fixture. I have no idea who is going to be playing for them. Neither did Scott Parker until this morning, I'd bet. Maybe he still doesn't. Despite the chaos happening at their end, their XI will still have cost far, far more than ours, and will be in a better state than they were in last week when they were beaten by Sunderland. But we're in a much better situation than we were for either of the fixtures two years ago I think.

First part is right. I'm under no illusions about how badly we need an upgrade on Pears, but it says a lot that Leo was noticeably worse in his spell in the side. Second bit is academic, it's totally plausible he could end up being decent, but he has to make mistakes on another club's time.

Beck is the only possible with Pickering apparently struggling. I think having a more settled side is something that should be to our advantage tomorrow.

Without wanting to reopen old wounds, isn't Devine more of a 10 than an 8?

Definitely. I know they didn't always show their best at Ewood for a variety of reasons, but Hanley, Duffy (spit), Cairney, Marshall and King all walk into our starting XI at a bare minimum. And that's before you get into our two 20+ goal strikers, and plenty of others like Conway who would probably be starting too.

Pleased that we didn't pay over the odds for Aasgaard. Would have taken a punt on him but he he doesn't strike me as what we need, especially if we can get Cantwell for a similar overall package. Personally, I think miles away. But that's more to do with how good our squad was under Bowyer in retrospect. An absolute sin that we didn't get in the play offs at least with that squad. I think if today goes well, we're looking at a comfortable midtable side on paper who with a fair wind could make a play off push. Which you have to say is a success vs where we were.

We'll wait and see if he turns out to be a success or not, but he's a canny media operator is Eustace. All sweetness and light in front of a camera without saying anything of substance or giving anything away, but you can tell he'll be completely different behind closed doors.

I think you can claim a moral victory for the first one

Slight tangent, but years before watching Ted Lasso came up with that I thought that Baby Shark had bags of potential for football songs. There's a parallel universe where 'Bradley Dack, do do, do do do' was a staple on the Blackburn end.

Agree - Pears' problem is that he produces howlers far too regularly to be trusted anymore, but it's not as though he's got any glaring 'technical' weaknesses. Flip side of that is that you wouldn't really say that he excels at anything either, like you could with Raya even when he was making errors.