Agree with that to a point, whilst we can look at the last two games and feel a bit lucky to have picked up 6 points, we weren't outplayed by any of the top sides we've come up against this season with the exception of Reading. Even so if we were taking a Hughes-like approach of targeting a certain number of points from the next few games, a return of 5-6 points would be very decent in keeping the optimism going. Norwich will be weakened with injuries, so three points there and 1 win/2 draws from the other games keeps us well in touch with the top.

For a boy of 12, Harvey Elliott is very good at football

With the possible exception of Armstrong, I think Mowbray will be looking to rotate our entire midfield and attack before the new year. Think having Rothwell on the bench for this one if anything recognises how much of a key player he's been for us this year, given our tough week coming up.

No Cooper for them - big loss

Last minute equaliser for Cov against Wayne Rooney's Derby.

Game is tailor made for Johnson and Ayala, although I wouldn't advocate dropping Wharton if he's made a complete recovery. Mowbray seems to be hinting that Douglas will probably be fit, but I'd be very comfortable playing Bell for this game. With the schedule coming up and a couple of little question marks over Douglas' ability to play so many games back to back, Bell's going to get into the team at some points during the season. Might as well play him now and give Douglas a few more days to recover.

Strangely - given how relentless our December is, there's a full week before and after the third round - two weeks between league fixtures like an international break. Obviously it's risky to make wholesale changes - but we should be able to give some of our over-flogged players a decent rest.

Boring draw, but a good one.

Apparently Jake Cooper played 15 minutes with a dislocated shoulder too. Would have thought he would miss out on Wednesday.

Think that's completely fair. I think he would have struggled to avoid criticism will be online. It might well be a minority and a bit echo-chambery, but the torrent of abuse and derision underperforming footballers get online is absolutely unreal. Doesn't make Rovers fans any different to any other club of our size, but I'd be surprised if it didn't affect him at times. Agree that on the whole, fans at Ewood have been very patient with him, and now that patience seems to be paying off.

Let's see what the future holds, but I'm hopeful for the back end of the season. Sufficient proportion of the population will be vaccinated by April that football may return to something like normal. At the very least I hope they'll let us in to Wembley in May.

I'd argue that missing both our starting number 8s for the Forest game was quite bad, but that's splitting hairs a bit I guess. We should've played better in those games, even if a points return of 1 point was a little less than we deserved. Even so, we're not in December yet & we've played multiple games with a third-choice out of position left back, our back up keeper, our fourth choice centre half and without arguably our four first choice centre midfielders in Dack/Travis/Holtby & Rothwell. We'll all have it bad at some point this season, but so far I'd say we've had it a bit worse than most & hopefully it'll have evened out by the end of the season. Anyway, all in all I think we're slightly unfortunate not to have a few more points than we do, and I think we've definitely played well enough to not be scared of anyone in this league. In previous years we might be looking at a Brentford/Bristol City/Norwich week as damage limitation. This season I hope we're looking at it as a chance to make a statement.

We're still looking at a small-ish sample of results. At this point last season Brentford were only just getting going, but their quality showed as the season went on. All teams have been influenced by injuries and covid, but I'm not sure how many teams have had as many first teamers out for individual games as we had before the international break. Even yesterday we finished the game with a fifth choice centre back, and we're in miles better health than we were a few weeks ago. I'm not saying that we do have a better squad than those teams by the way! But if we're judging our league position, selection issues alongside some reasonably unfortunate results earlier in the season could easily have us a bit higher up.

Agree, I was impressed with his debut but the way we play doesn't offer too much in the way of protection for the centre halves. Not fair to ask him to play too much before he's ready to do so consistently. He's got the perfect example to follow in Scott Wharton. The years he's spent getting nearly 100 appearances in men's football has obviously done them the world of good.

Only following it on twitter, but as far as I can tell they're both still on the bench.

Chorley had a penalty saved which would have made it 3-1! Really hope they hang on.

Width of a post away from losing at the death to Wycome today. Start of the season they had plenty of injuries up front, but they've had close to a full team for weeks now. Inexplicable.

Three points is the main thing, but he deserved the clean sheet today. Actually I thought Lenihan and Wharton did too for their defending, even if it wasn't ideal that they saw so much of the ball. Compared to what we've had, Kaminski is different gravy.

Not difficult to see how Barnsley are beating plenty of teams this year. Very well drilled team who are making their talent go a long way. All credit to them. We were way off our best today, but we won. Winning tight games is the thing we needed to improve on, so I'm not going to bag our performance now that we've gone and won one. Big credit to the keeper and both centre backs, who were under a lot of pressure. Today shows how important Nyambe is to our season too.

Elliott in for Gally. Otherwise same team

Was thinking the same earlier, genuinely don't know what we do if Nyambe gets injured whilst JRC/Bennett are out. Pike from the Ressies? On Arma, suspect that there might be 2 + 2 = 5 going on after they've looked in the Championship recently for Bowen and Benrahma. Having said that, if we take those two as a yardstick, we have to be looking at £20million plus to even start he conversation, and even then only if he's desperate to go and won't sign a new deal.

Two games against Wycombe and Cov coming up for them next. Far too early to be saying that they'll decide their season, but lose them both and they'll be in panic stations.

Sure it has already been mentioned on here, but having Douglas at left back should really help get the most out of him in that role. In fact our change in approach generally has made the team a bit more 'Gallagher friendly' this year, even if he hasn't played enough to really show it. Think we need to be reconciled to him never fixing his heavy first touch, but a fit and confident Gallagher can be a real asset if we use him properly.

Think that's right - I'd expect him to play some point tomorrow but probably from the bench. On Gallagher, there's a very good chance that we'll never see value for money for him, but if we are then we have to be playing him when he's on form. He's played a very big part in the points we've picked up over the last week, so keeping him there makes perfect sense for now.

The one change I'd be tempted to make would be Johnson for Trybull, just because of his influence in the earlier games of the season. On the fence with that one, but Gally, Wharton should keep their places. Going off Barsnley's most recent games, looking like we'll have most of the ball once again. Whether it will turn out to be another dominant display or a stodgy draw/ loss by the odd goal remains to be seen.