My wife was marking GCSE English exam papers a while back. The students had to write an essay about a big decision they’d made in their lives. One kid had written about how he had to choose wether to stay at his local club or move to London and sign for Spurs. He already had an agent at 16 and he was still in year 11. It was the agent who was agitating for him to move down South. In the end he decided to stay with his local club. The lad has had a long career in pro football and has played at Ewood several times.

Dingles v Red Rats tonight. United are in disarray at the moment, lots of dissatisfaction with the coach and players. A good time to play them. Sorry about the italics.

Jones hasn’t improved his decision making since he was 17. Most of his troubles stem from him being drawn to the ball too easily.

Mm, I’m not sure about Khadra, he’s really quick but his decision making isn’t all it should be.

Thanks as always Tony, we need to snap out of this spiral ASAP. We were out enthused again on Saturday. Second to too many 50/50 balls.

We could have done with them staying in the FA Cup.

At least they should come at us so we should be able to play our normal counter attacking game.

Look on the bright side, if we do miss out on the playoffs it’ll be taxi for Tony time.

That’s what happened last night whilst it was 11 v 11. Our front three were by passed much too easily. One it went to 10 v 11 the whole game changed but we were stuck with the same way of playing as before.

I know, I watched it.

It started a few games ago. Just my opinion.

And got away with it.

From a purely defensive point of view Nyambe is as good a right back as there is in the championship.

In the cold light of day it’s becoming obvious that our only way of playing, counter attacking, doesn’t work if your opponents don’t give you the space to counter attack into. We have no plan “ B “. We were sloppy from the off last night in spite of having an early chance. Our intensity was low and we were back to being second best to nearly every 50/50 ball again. I’m also not impressed with our discipline, or lack of it. Rothwell and Buckley’s bookings were poor as was JRC pushing the goalkeeper at a corner. Just plain stupid. Was I the only one embarrassed by Lenihan going down holding his face when he’d obviously got a boot in the chest ? I know other teams do these things but I don’t like to see Rovers players play acting. On the subject of the referee, I thought he was overly fussy. Most of the yellow cards were for trivial incidents and first offences at that. Apart from Giles, who looked a good acquisition, the only plus point to emerge from last nights game was that we already have enough points to avoid relegation. I think any thoughts of promotion have taken a hammering over the last month. I’ve seen us play the last four games and I’ve seen us score one goal. That’s relegation form not promotion form.

Lucky you, I had to sit through all of it. The ones I feel sorry for are the ones who actually went to Swansea.

I’d have started with them and see how it went on.

Yeah, when we had Mike England at least we got a good few seasons out of him. The Jones came along and we got a good few games out of him. Now players are gone and we don’t even get a first team game out of them.

That was embarrassing. The sending off was the last thing we wanted. After that it was all ten behind the ball and they shut up shop. Whilst they had 11 out there we had a chance of catching them on the break. After the sending off there was no chance. We could have played while midnight and not scored. The goal we conceded was poor, all of Wharton, Kaminski, and the left back have to sort it out between themselves. Last week we were under siege and we sent Ayala on as a centre forward. Like a fish riding a bike. Tonight we had Swansea under siege and we bring on JRC. Can anybody explain that. Apart from the new left back nobody did themselves justice really. Nyambe proved what a good defensive right back he is on a couple of occasions. Rothwell - as I said the other day - doesn’t do enough often enough. In the first half he was non existent apart from getting himself booked for a petulant challenge.

That’s exactly why Bournemouth bought Moore.

To quote Graham Taylor - Do I not like that. Three midfield players up front. I’d take a 1-0 now.

Declan Rice is everything Pogba could/should be but isn’t.

Let me know if you find it. We were down there on holiday years ago , pre sat nav, and we spent an hour trying to find Symonds Yat with no luck.

Me too. I liked a bit of rough and tumble as a player but not when the ball was 40 yards away.

Maybe because people are letting them get away with it.

Stanley Matthews was notorious for it. Having said that players were on £20 a week then.