This is where I am at. No surprise to anyone I’m sure but, in isolation, I can’t think of a pro-Mowbray case. Even from his most ardent supporters, the only argument for keeping him is: we might get someone worse. This is exactly where we were under Bowyer - and there was probably a greater case to be made for Bowyer’s development of players!

The only way Mowbray walks is if the fans turn. That’s where we are now.

A fan blamer - great! Maybe they have to sign something that says they can’t criticise anyone at the club?

Wing.

I’m going to defer to someone like @Parsonblue. I’ve not been following him closely enough.

Smallwood. For the wrong reasons. Mols - such a shame that Mowbray went after Chapman instead of investing more in Stefan. Thompson looked good. Very raw but I was impressed with the young left winger. I thought it was number 16 on his shirt (which would make it Dan Pike) but he doesn’t seem to have come on according to the Rovers site. I thought we did make all three subs though. Whoever it was they weren’t afraid to run at defenders and got past them regularly. His on the left and Mols of the right in a few years...

Stewart Downing?

Feel a bit short changed tonight. Only one team in it second half and got stronger and stronger. Created enough chances but couldn’t finish. Caught on the break by an inferior team. Lose a game we should have won.

Our finishing tonight is about as suspect as the First Team. ?

1-2. Been a lively game now. Tell you what, these PL teams don’t half drill their players to dive, scream and moan. Or maybe it’s a Southern thing. ?

1-1

Mols wins a penalty. Vale scores with aplomb.

Smalley Smallwood starting for the U23s

You spelled rewarding wrong.

Do you see Waggott ever doing that?

Funny how language upsets people. In a team being relegated under Owen Coyle, Gallagher did “very well” to score 11 goals (one behind top scorer Graham). As an 18 year old breaking through into the Forest first team, Brereton did “very well”. Scored 9 goals and got 7 assists over a season and a bit in the Championship. Just look at these stats - they say it all. It’s all relative.

Not saying that he (and Brereton) aren’t complete no hopers, as you allude to but... 1) Gallagher did very well here on loan when only a striker; Brereton did very well at Forest. 2) Mowbray has a list of players at Rovers who have all regressed - including young players coming through - yet he has kept his same coaching staff and erratic approach to games. 3) Both players, as well as others, have been misused and - like many others - their confidence is shot. It’s hard to judge under these conditions. They could both well thrive elsewhere. In the last few home games it has been a real struggle to pick out a man of the match based on how badly they’ve all played.

You have a point about Brereton. He has been played at CF less that Gallagher. In both cases I can remember both of them scoring when playing in the centre. Brereton last season against (an admittedly poor) Bolton and Gallagher getting 1.5 against Preston this season. Neither has been given a consistent spell there. Can you imagine Graham being stuck out wide? It’s either a lack of trust or a lack of respect. Both players have been misused but it has been poor scouting in both cases if neither were/are deemed ready to replace Danny Graham. We should have spent half of the money on a thirty-something striker and the rest on his wages. A Stewart Downing up front. It seems that someone has been seduced by the idea of doubling the money for one of them after a season scoring goals in the Championship. Yet Rhodes only brought in an extra £1m on what was paid and Dack was a cheap purchase because of his damaged reputation off the field that (almost) paid off (but we waited too long). The main players* we have really made money on under Venkys have been defensive ones and a goalkeeper (Raya, Duffy, Hanley, Dann, Olsson, Bunn, Jones, N’Zonzi) - yet we don’t reinvest any money in this area. *Gestede and Cairney being the exceptions.

I can recall very few games where he has started as centre forward and very few when Graham coming off hasn’t resulted in Armstrong going in the middle while Gallagher goes on a wing. Although granted I don’t get to away games.

And yet Mowbray is enjoying privileges afforded to nobody else in the game and we turned down a keen Neil Warnock last time out. You seem to be very keen to make sure nothing happens to Mowbray. Do you directly benefit?

We will have to agree to disagree. Internal politics? Imagine if he had to put up with what Berg had to!! He is not a victim of internal recruitment politics in my view - unless you have some insider information... Lambert walked away because he felt lied to having sold our talismanic striker for big money and got none back. In the short time he was here he brought in Bennett and Graham. Players Mowbray still needs/uses now - one as captain!

Very possible. He does look very ungainly now compared to then.

Has he got a twin brother? Because that looks like a completely different player. He is quick, holds the ball up, turns quickly. Our coaching staff have certainly not improved this lad. If this were a one-off you could blame the player but there are others who have come storming into the team who seem to have their attacking instincts drilled out of them - so much so you can see the confidence drain away. Players will accept doing a job, providing it is working and they get results and the team is successful. It’s a very fragile state though. A few bad results and it unravels.

Good post. However, your shopping list at the start is so damning of the manager after three Championship windows and, what, £15m-£18m spent on transfer fees alone? The fact that recruits in all of those areas have been to bolster the squad and not improve the first XI makes it even worse. If Mowbray was given a remit to buy all 8 (eight!) of those required players then IMHO, he would still choose 8 more players to ‘help the lads we already have’! We need to recoup some money from poor signings. Try to convince someone that he hasn’t settled at Rovers and try to get £3m based on his potential and throw in a sell-on clause to make it convincing. I’m also quite worried that financially it makes sense to try to get a small fee for Graham before the Summer but we cannot cope currently without him. Brereton, Gallagher, Samuel and... Armstrong(?) make us very weak up top. Despite our well stocked CM, it is looking like Downing is our best centre midfielder (a converted winger!). Let’s just hope someone is talking to him about doing his badges - if he isn’t already. I could certainly see him going into management a la Scott Parker. Full backs are Bennett (now injured along with Nyambe?) and Bell (least said with our first choice a crocked loanee). We are a(nother) Lenihan injury away from a crisis and our own CBs on loan don’t seem anywhere near a starting berth under this regime. Chapman has surely done himself a favour recently but, like Rothwell before him, won’t be a regular until he becomes more defensively minded (why would anyone want that?). We need to start letting attackers attack. Our treatment room is looking stronger than our starting line up, let alone the bench, which is a standard sign that the players have lost faith and don’t want tarnishing. It’s no use asking Mowbray to recruit his way out of our problems with playing staff, we will just end up with the same issues just with different names on their shirts. Anyone got any good news??

Not really a straight forward question, and it’s different from the question on the table. What do we mean by “best”. Highest calibre would be the most expensive so would depend on wage demands. Do we need “the best”? Probably not, just better than Mowbray. Would Farke or Wagner have been flagged as “best” in a candidate sift, first time round? Maybe they even applied. Faith? I don’t have faith in Venkys, no. But I do t have faith in Mowbray at this point. We should be able to have faith that Waggott would select the right candidate (or best, if you like) to make Blackburn Rovers - and by extension him - successful. If we can’t have that faith then we are back to the days of self-preservation of some of the previous incumbents. Hope about hope? I would hope that the previous experience of employing the cheapest (Coyle) and being relegated would focus their minds. Certainly it could be argued that until ‘someone’ employed Coyle that management recruitment had been improving and more sensible choices were being made. How about you? Do you have faith that Mowbray would choose the best players to improve the first team and make us play-off candidates (let alone promotion candidates)? If so, based on what?