Admiral Nelsen

One win in six. Not many teams go through a Championship season without a sticky patch but they can't afford to carry on like this for too much longer.

For all this talk of Fulham & Bournemouth being streets ahead of everyone else - of what I've seen I wouldn't put them both in the same category. It wouldn't shock me at all if Bournemouth drop out of the top 2 at one point during the season. That said, I think we'll lose this one. With Big Club, Hull, Barnsley & Huddersfield coming up, a draw would be more than acceptable.

Thanks for this - a lot of detail there that I'd completely forgotten. I think taking everything together you'd probably say i) the club was in a state post-Kenny and the title win where plenty of players wanted out for football reasons, Le Saux included, and ii) he still had a fairly legitimate gripe with the club over a serious injury which could have been handled more professionally. Probably still an overreaction from him in my view, but an injury like that must've been very difficult to deal with. You'd like to think it would be chalk and cheese with how we've handled Dack's injuries. Interesting that Robert Coar rubbed the players up the wrong way. I was at an event a couple of years ago where David May was the surprise guest, who when asked about his contract situation when leaving Rovers said something along the lines of "Who told you that? Robert Coar? The F*****g W****r" to the whole room.

Very fuzzy memory about what he said exactly (reading over Christmas probably didn't help!) but I vaguely recollect that he took the hump about not being visited when he was in hospital, basically implying that Rovers didn't want to know once he was out of the picture. I remember thinking that it sounded like a pretty manufactured grievance anyway, whether that's fair or not. Easy to forget how much of an extraordinary fee that was at the time. Had Jaap Stam not just signed for Man United, he would've been Britain's most expensive defender I think. I'm pretty sure he wasn't even getting that close to the Scottish XI at that time either. And to think it was the same window as Kevin Davies and Ashley Ward! People talk about us supposedly buying the title with Jack's money, but the real profligacy came with our slightly-too-late attempts to stay at the top. Some absolutely baffling signings.

I was given his book for Christmas when it first came out a while ago. Seem to remember that he wrote about feeling hard done to by how he was treated when injured, basically feeling underappreciated. I think there was something about Rovers demanding too much money after how much we paid for him too, but I've not read it in ages so I might be mistaken on that. I like Le Saux too and it's good that he speaks fondly of his time here now, but I really don't think he comes across well at all in his book. You can't really begrudge him for complaining about how he was treated as a youngster at Chelsea and especially the notorious Fowler incident, but the overriding memory I have is that he paints himself as a bit of a victim throughout. Real contrast to how he seems whenever he's on the media these days.

I'd still give you a very decent chance of staying up in a scrap if there's not much in it with a couple of months left to go. It does look possible that you could get cut adrift if you're not careful though, that Watford game in particular looks absolutely massive now.

Must admit I'd forgotten how bad the scheduling for this was last year. I've just looked back and about 40% of the games were played on the Sunday. Assuming that's because of demand from broadcasters, that's an absolute disgrace.

Really hope they don't. Beyond the obvious reasons, they've had some absolutely woeful FA cup gates over the years (they're not alone I suppose) so it won't do much for the 'magic of the cup' if a 20% full stadium is plastered on the TV screens. Not a classic draw by any means, so maybe a supposed derby has a chance of getting picked, but fingers crossed they'll be sensible and look elsewhere. Interesting view about Richardson. I don't really follow their results closely enough to really know one way or another, but having spoken to a couple of their fans there's a perception that he might've been the brains behind Cook's success. Obviously easy to make 5 from 2+2 when Cook was doing badly at Ipswich, but that perception is definitely there. Their squad looks like your standard 'good for league 1, not good enough for the Championship' outfit with the likes of Max Power, Will Keane et al. Will have to wait to see what sort of team we put out, but I expect us to win.

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.