Admiral Nelsen

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.

Appreciate that a lot (to put it mildly) of players are out of the door. Plenty needed to given the size of your squad, but that's a slightly different point. But it seemed as though a few days ago Brownhill, Benson, Koloeosho, Foster, Trafford and maybe others seemed to be going out of the door alongside the others that have already gone. It seems as though some of these might be more likely to be staying now? I could be wrong of course.

Whilst I'm sure this isn't the week that Burnley will have been hoping for, is it fair to say that (as things stand) you look like keeping more of your first teamers than some of the stories from a few days ago would have suggested?

I think half of our team probably could play that sort of way now. Trav would relish it. Szmodics would've thrived too. A lot of it is about mindset as much as how you set up. Similarly to how that Mark Hughes team was such a nightmare to play against.

More than one way of skinning a cat, but there's a great logic to playing in a way that goes against how almost everyone else thinks the game should be played. They've out performed the quality of their squad for years, and good luck to them. Obviously you need the right players to do it, but I'd love to see a Rovers team do well in the exact same way.

We should remember this the next time we reach the "300 pages without a signing" stage of a transfer window. For some reason I've always had Bergkamp in my head when talking about a number ten. Basically a centre forward but one that can create and doesn't run in behind very much. I think people tend to think of it more as an ultra attacking midfielder who doesn't have any proper defensive responsibilities now though. Whereas an 8 is just a normal midfield player who gets forward

I think (not certain) that Baker plays deeper than Cantwell. Cantwell will be playing behind Gueye I suspect, whereas Baker I think will be competing with Trav and Trondstad.

Quick look on their MB suggests that they're not bothered about him going, but they don't think he's awful. By the sounds of it he knows where the goal is, takes a good free kick, seems technically pretty good but not especially energetic. Laurent on the other hand, who appears to be on his way to our six-fingered friends down the road, doesn't have anyone saying a good thing about him.

Harper. Absolute unit who couldn't play football.

Indeed. Although sometimes players just don't have it in them to add certain strings to their bow. For whatever reason, he definitely didn't get any more threatening, even in Mowbray's last season when he was ostensibly a wing back.

He's not terrible, he's just a victim of how the game has changed. He's not too dissimilar to Jordan Rhodes in that respect. Rhodes was unbelievable at putting the ball in the net, and a total liability in other aspects of the game. Fine if you play 442 with wingers and a hard working strike partner. Unacceptable if you play differently. Same with Nyambe. He plays in the 90s or earlier where his first, second and third priority is defending against your winger then there's no way that he'd be slumming it in Derby reserves. But he can't attack, so he is. It doesn't make him terrible though, or even bad. Just more one dimensional than he can get away with.

That's how I saw it. Decent dribblers but bad ball carriers: Hoilett, Dolan Decent ball carriers but bad dribblers: Rothwell, Nyambe

If he's a previously undiscovered average Championship standard player who doesn't throw one in every five or six games, then he'll play for us before long.

Definitely was a weakness of his, although my increasingly unreliable memory was that he was getting better at it as time went on. My thinking was that you could get away with having one of the three who wasn't dominant aerially if the other two were strong in that respect. And he's that quick that it allows the team to set higher line. Maybe you're right though. He's just too one dimensional to be a success at this level.

In the modern game, he'd be very handy playing on the right of a back three. Just not threatening enough with the ball. Brittain has already contributed more in three league games this season than Nyambe did in almost 200 appearances, which tells its own story.

I'm probably more on your side on this, but he was a long long way away from stealing a wage! He was probably paid a pittance to begin with and was a decent defender. He just got a nosebleed in the opposition's half.

JRC had an unbelievably poor 20/30 mins against Blackpool. But he's played there before and been pretty good. Really good in spells actually. I like him as a player but I'm not convinced playing him wide on the right in our system really suits him. Having him as an option in CM might be the best way we get a tune out of him, as bad as he was the other night.

Moran last year showed how hard this league can be for players with zero senior experience. Which isn't to say that I'm not in favour of him signing - pace is exactly what we need.