This may be a naïve question, and is only peripheral to today's game; but can anyone closer to being in the know than me - not difficult! - tell me the answer to the following question. (And apologies to anyone who thinks I'm too cynical!) When we borrow a Premier League club's youngster for a season, do we have to take whichever player they're prepared to lend; or do we know enough about their youngsters to ask about borrowing a specific player? I ask because, with the exception of the first Liverpool player we borrowed, it's felt like we've had to take whichever player they feel they can manage without for a season. And that, for me, is a danger sign. If they feel they can manage without him, what are the chances that, more often than not, we could as well?

And, if you'll excuse me being vulgar, "If me aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle." We don't have decent owners; and we won't have while we're owned by chicken-sellers from Pune. If we didn't know that before they sacked the Manager who would have kept us in the Premier League for ever and a day - and I know all the arguments about the way we played under his management - we surely do now.

And, fwiw, when the pundits are Danny Murphy and Paul Ince, then it's time to go into the kitchen and do the washing-up!!😉

Well, you've certainly struck a chord there @SuperBrfc! Your final paragraph is simply magnificent. My equivalent of the games you refer to from the "good old days" is the game we played at home to Plymouth Argyle on 15th February 1975. A Division 3 game - a bit like Ipswich Town v. Plymouth Argyle last weekend. Only ours was 2nd (us) v. 1st (Plymouth) and with only a quarter of the game gone, we were 0-2 down. But we ended up 5-2 winners and, to quote Max Boyce, "I know; I was there!!" And that game will be etched in my memory till the day I die. Although the Match of the Day contract of that era committed the BBC to showing a very limited number of Division 3 and 4 games a season, that game wasn't shown because it clashed with the 5th Round of the Cup. Compare and contrast: can anyone imagine the present day Rovers management/squad being able to effect a turnaround like that?! I don't have Sky, so was listening to the Manchester Derby on Radio 5 last Saturday when they suddenly went over to their reporter at Ewood for a "shock scoreline" 32 seconds into the game! None of you on here will be surprised to know I'd worked out "the shock" before their reporter confirmed it for me. Oh; and my stand on Match of the Day is that I won't watch if Danny Murphy's one of the ex-players (he might as well have been one of them when we used to pay him!) pontificating!

No; @TheRoversReturn, it certainly doesn't feel as great as it ought to feel having spent as much of this season as consistently high in the table as we have. Part of that's probably down to how well our 6-fingered neighbours are doing and the way they had us sussed in the last game before the World Cup break, though. As regards your final paragraph, I can't help wondering how much "due diligence" the Walker Trust did before selling us? So much water's flowed under the bridge since the I can't recall if it was ever revealed to us - the poor bloody footsoldiers who turn up week after week - whether Venky's were the only bidders for us; or whether theirs was the largest bid.

And Waggott, for all the good it'll do. It's taken a lot shorter time for the scales to drop from my eyes regarding JDT than it did regarding Mogadon Man. After yesterday, I now see JDT's talk of a "Project" as bullshit, designed to get him - and by extension, his mate, Gregg - a minimum of 2 - 3 years' undemanding, presumably well-paid, employment from Owners who blatantly don't give a toss about the once-proud club they own. Masochist that I am, I'll keep my season ticket for the rest of this season but it will take a miracle for me to renew it. I'll be like one of Al Reid's characters - for all but a few on here, he was a northern comedian "on the wireless" in the 1950s & early '60s - one of whose routines featured an irate football fan who, when asked if he was going to the match at the weekend, replied, "No. Why should I? They never came to see me when I were bad!!" Uncle Jack must be turning in his grave at the way his legacy's been trashed.

☝️😉😂 That'll be my opening line, AllRoverAsia; thanks very much!

... they wouldn't make any out of people whose expertise is in rearing chickens.

You haven't got a Burnleh-supporting friend in New Zealand who's already let me know what is top of the agenda for our regular Sunday morning (here; evening there) WhatsApp chat!!

I think that, too. And for evidence, I'd offer Bradley Dack, who, despite being regularly omitted from the first eleven names on teamsheets (despite many of us on here wondering why) before the World Cup break, has been much more in favour since the resumption of League football. Perhaps JDT feels that Dack's - at last? - "got the message"??

For me, it's a History thing. My parents were Blackburners who moved to live in Blackpool after World War 2. Dad inculcated a love of the Rovers into his son - the only pupil at his Primary School in 1953 who knew for a fact that Rovers (half-way up the old Division 2) were better than the Blackpool team which won the "Matthews Cup Final" in 1953. I knew that because my Dad told me so. Goodness knows how he'd have reacted to a walloping like the one it sounds Rotherham have given us today.

I'm listening to Radio 5 and they interrupted chatting about the Manchester Derby to go over to Rotherham "where there's a surprise." "Not to Rovers' fans.", I thought before hearing the grimly predictable score.

Will it help us that there are 2 other teams in the play-off zone (Middlesbrough & Millwall); and 2 just below the play-off zone (Luton & WBA) playing 6-pointer games later today? It's crucial that we go for smashing Rotherham today and the teams to come in future weeks so that other teams' results are irrelevant.

Slight amendment for you to consider, @jim mk2. It'd be sweet, imo, if we re-joined the Premier League the way we became founder members of the Premiership. If I remember correctly, we finished 6th in the last season before the inaugural Premiership season.

That sounds like a winnable tie. Prefer F.G.R., obvs.

'Marsching' on together; out of the Cup?!

Steady on, @Mercer!! 😉

I don't want to use up my quota of ☝️ 'likes' 😉, but I totally agree with this first paragraph. Additionally, there was what seemed to be a fairly close precedent from a Cardiff game earlier this season which the FA would doubtless have taken into account. Ideally, @Cherry Blueyour second comment is something that clubs should be able to expect from mature adults, imo. And if I'm being over-optimistic about the maturity of footballers, you'd hope - I would, anyway - that it's something that would be addressed by the Under-18s coaches into their charges. And finally, now that the club’s appeal has been rejected, I hope Buckley's been hit with a club fine, as a way of making him see what is and what isn't acceptable behaviour.

... and owners who accept that, with the privilege of owning Lancashire's Most Historic Football Club - and God knows what it must have cost them - surely goes the responsibility of providing the funds to get us back to where we were when they bought us. Otherwise, why did they buy us? Apologies if others have already made the following points, but I'm doing my usual post-match trawl through a thread from start to finish. The last 24 hours have been really strange for me. I'm a 76-year-old season ticket-holder who's been a diehard Rovers' fan since the first match I can remember my Dad bringing me to in November 1953. So I've seen: the good, our times in Division 1/Premier League; the bad, a couple of relegation to Division 3/League 1; and the ugly, a team which doesn't seem full able to implement a Head Coach's strategy on the pitch. Over the years, I've become mobility-impaired and don't drive any more so tend not to come to evening games. So, yesterday lunchtime, I confirmed to the pal I generally meet up with in the Riverside that I wouldn't be going to last night's game but that I'd see him on Sunday at the Cardiff game. I then carried about the usual jobs around the house for the rest of the day and, to my shame but not surprise, I completely forgot about the game until the - grimly predictable - result appeared on the television news. It's the first time I ever remember that happening and I remember thinking, "Typical bloody Rovers." I've posted on here previously that I've bought into the concept of "the Project" which will take three or four transfer windows to come to fruition. But I’m afraid that the coaching and preparation for where we are now is beginning to seem inadequate. As is, and I write this reluctantly, the quality of the current squad of players. For me the coming transfer window will be crucial. We HAVE to recruit some players capable of implementing what the Head Coach expects of them because the majority of the current squad seem uncomfortable with his expectations. Our freakish sequence of results has had us in an unrealistic position in the table but I fear that a drastic slide to - excuse the cliché! - mid-table mediocrity is on the cards if we don't see next month recruitment of some players capable of implementing the Head Coach's strategy and the departure of some who never will be.

Well, I for one, would be quite hacked off - which, I think, equates to being "genuinely upset", if we finished 7th or 8th. To have spent so much of the season in the automatic promotion places and end up with not a shot at promotion would feel like an avoidable failure. And I know that I'm one of the posters on here who's been most in favour of JDT's "Project", which he tells us will take three or four transfer windows before it will come to fruition. But to have spent so much of his first season with promotion apparently within our grasp, yet in what seems to be a bang average Championship table - witness how few points there are between 7th/8th and 19th/20th ‐ to miss out on even the opportunity to compete for a place in the Premier League would be extremely disappointing, to put it mildly.

I'm not sure - I desperately hope I'm wrong! - but when we signed Hirst on loan, didn’t I read somewhere that the terms of the deal included an obligation to pay the asking price; a bit like the deal in which Wolves have lately signed Matheus Cunha from one of the Spanish clubs?!

I gave this a thumbs-up, not just for the sentiment of the first paragraph, but also for the "plays off", which gladdened the heart of this old pedant!!👋 Incidentally, I also feel, fwiw, that, while yesterday was a "bad day at the office" for some of the more peripheral members of our squad, it was, and by a country mile, the best game Pears has had in a first team sweater.

As one of those fans, I'll bet two contributory factors were: i) seeing Rovers on a ground where they've never played before; ii) the price of the tickets (£10 for adults; £1 for youngsters, if memory serves). Even if £9.00 - nine quid!! 😦 -for admittedly the largest hot dog I've ever seen was a brutal reminder of "London prices"!

A couple of other points on yesterday: 1) An old acquaintance who lives in Hull texted me last night and made the point that there are only 8 points between QPR in 6th and Hull in 21st. Admittedly, we're 5 points ahead of QPR but we can't rest on our laurels. 2) Look who, and where, we're playing in the 3rd Round in the F.A. Cup?! My bet is that we'll have a more positive attitude to this competition than in the Mowbray era.

But isn't it sweet when you get a result like that, @DE.? I remember sitting in the South Stand at Bloomfield Road in Blackpool's only Premier League season, alongside an old schoolmate, whose daughter's season ticket I'd borrowed (she was a bridesmaid at a friend's wedding that day). If you'd seen us as Brett Emerton's goal went in in the dying minutes of that game, you'd never have known that one of us was a season-ticket holder at Ewood!