Indeed. He also missed the point that the Hull game was on Sky. He has peaked at Rovers imho. Just hope his value hasn’t fallen too much.

Take off the blue and white goggles. https://www.theguardian.com/football/football-league-blog/2019/may/20/ten-championship-players-premier-league-clubs-have-on-radar-football https://www.footballwhispers.com/blog/championship-players-premier-league-moves https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/8-championship-players-who-should-be-premier-league-next-season https://www.efl.com/news/2019/march/efl-awards-2019-shortlists-revealed/ Conversely he won L1 PotS twice. He has it all to prove after a decent bounce season. So far, not that dissimilar to Rhodes (although Rhodes was more successful) and Jon Stead.

I’m not sure that’s true, Matty. I’ve done done some very rough analysis and we are fairly comparable. But if you look at the population of Barnsley and Blackburn (granted the last census data is from 2011), they have about 36% more people than us. So our average home gates as a percentage of the town are about double that of Barnsley. Without wishing to go off on a tangent, that’s not bad considering 27% of Blackburn’s (2011) population is Muslim, compared to 0.4% of Barnsley’s. Which is not a traditional heartland of local football support. http://localstats.co.uk/census-demographics/england/north-west/blackburn-with-darwen https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/barnsley/attendances/2018-2019

If you are Mowbray. For me, Downing has replaced Armstrong on the left. Mowbray is always switching his wide players. Downing was on the right at times yesterday - before Bennett had a go. Tbf it was very hard to pick out any kind of formation for that last 20 minutes yesterday.

“Clearly nonsense” - he’s not a top L1 player? That’s not my opinion, it’s what the records show.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/9542746/olivia-attwood-in-talks-to-join-towie-with-footballer-boyfriend-bradley-dack-as-full-time-cast-member-after-cameo/ If he was good enough in the Championship that wouldn’t be a problem. Bacuna is a Championship standard player, nothing more (relegated from the PL with Villa and Cardiff). Dack is a top top L1 player but he has been found out. We should have taken the money.

I’m convinced that Mowbray doesn’t like Rothwell [as a footballer]. At the end of last season, he finally saw what the fans saw and played him - with successful results - but the first opportunity he sees to drop him he does. Replacing him with Gallagher in order to win headers in an ineffective part of the game is bad enough but the fact that it is Dack who is now making way, just underlines that Mowbray’s current preferred style of play doesn’t fit the two of them. What a way to frustrate Rothwell, Dack and the fans - and an out of position Gallagher! Ultimately playing this way must succeed game after game or fan patience with Mowbray will last as long as Mowbray’s does with “F.O. Derrick”. It certainly was painful to watch yesterday against a Cardiff side who didn’t look anything up to a Warnock standard.

Joe Rothwell has been excellent this season and adds massively to our attacking play. If you are going to compare anyone unfavourably to last season, it has to be Dack. Did fairly well in front of the Sky cameras but has done nothing else. He really needs to step up a gear. Looks like a lad too worried about his image. You can imagine his other half - “don’t get any bruises to your face, darlin’, we’ve got a screen test next week”.

Agreed. There is no point in our players going on loan if they don’t play.

They don’t though, that’s my point. How often did we sit through “you’re support is fugging ship”?

What a dreadful game of football. Whoever it was who bet on BTTS - yeah, thanks for that. Our attacking game plan is almost non-existent, and doesn’t look like we will score. This Gallagher on the wing and Armstrong as the lone forward experiment needs to stop, its making both players completely ineffective. Downing, having been unplayable on Tuesday, was virtually anonymous today. Not sure what is happening with Dack but Mowbray is turning a £15m player into a £3m one. He was coming so deep in the first half just get the ball that he is never looking like scoring. I’ve said it before but we’ll regret not selling him. Five games in and Graham is becoming the tired looking player we were fearing he’d become, and £14m down the Shanks and we still have no alternative. Our defence was the only saving grace today. Thankfully Mowbray resisted the urge to tinker and we kept a clean sheet (as much because of how much Johnson and Travis worked in midfield as our centre backs). Bell was excellent. For 5 minutes. Then he just went downhill fast. That lad’s confidence is shot (a feature of Mowbray’s tenure being young players with ability having it beaten out of them and they can’t do the ugly stuff. (Tony, if you want ugly, buy ugly). 0-0 was probably fair after both teams hit the left hand BBE upright but it was hard to watch for large periods. Mowbray will probably see that as a well fought point against a Colin side. It could have been so much more. I’m trying to convince myself that we aren’t back at the Bowyer stage of W1D1L1 and a squad of players that we waste with old school tactics. Long balls to Gallagher just got less and less effective as the game wore on and we had no plan B. It was amusing though early in the second half after the first chorus of “Super, super Joe” from the BBE, Mowbray sent out Arma to warm up. Today’s result depends on your outlook. 7 points out of 15 and comfortably midtable after a difficult set of results. Or, conversely, a new defensive partnership, a “suspended” left back, 7 points out of 9 and no goals against in 3 consecutive games, and it’s top 6 form. Lets’ hope it’s the latter.

Not sure how Downing has stayed on the pitch!

Since June? He’d better pack in!

It’s a mystery. Let’s hope he’s not called upon.

So we’d have to pay some of his wages. Complete waste of a bench spot if he can’t be trusted should Cunningham be injured. Loan to L1 should be in the offing if he doesn’t start today. (I think he will - Mowbray can’t be stupid enough to put Williams there).

If Bell is that useless as to not even be a suitable understudy then Mowbray should have moved him on in the window.

https://www.efl.com/news/2019/august/efl-statement-bury-fc2/ New “deadline” 5pm Tuesday

If Mowbray doesn’t continue with the Williams-Lenihan axis then it will really just show that he stumbles into and out of successful formations/personnel in spite of rather than because of good management.

So... get more Rovers fans on. Trying to optimise the away fan contingent is Waggott talk. The whole 8,600 to 10,000 ST holders is tinkering around the edges. We need promotion to solve our financial woes. We need our OWN away support to be the Ewood atmosphere. It would be interesting to know how many of those are “Away Only” fans though and if this is still a protest or if the just think the Ewood atmosphere is crap so don’t come (self-fulfilling). If it is just the atmosphere and not a moral stance then Waggott should be engaging the away support to create the space at Ewood that many of them crave. Ideally safe standing but at least some kind of designated singing area - which either means reopening half the DE to Rovers fans or shifting the Riverside fans at that end and that making the DE quarter/fifth/sixth of it unreserved seating (or in a parallel universe - safe standing). Trouble is, all that would probably happen is those who do sing in the BBE would migrate and turn the home end back into a morgue. Anyway... away fans in the upper tier until someone has a more radical idea that benefits Rovers.

I’m really not interested in helping to create an atmosphere in the away end. All that does is put pressure on referees. What we need is to generate our own atmosphere. You would think it was on response to away fans but it isn’t - some of our home games can feel like away ones. Our atmosphere is generated by a referee injustice or an incident like a huge tackle or save.

Looks like Dale has just sold Bury FC and it’s down to the EFL to provide an extension to get the deal formally completed.

Imagine being a Bury fan this evening. It’s like the last 10 minutes in a must win game to stay in the league and you are 2-0 down, and you are praying for a goal and another 7 minutes of injury time. But instead of a football match, the entire club is at stake... Looking like they might have a buyer...

It does make one wonder is this is the start of the collapse of the 92 team football pyramid (72 in the EFL). Would the EFL care if this became 60 teams? If they were to replace teams en masse with National League teams the would have to greatly lower the standards. Would it really have been so abhorrent for someone to buy both Bury and Bolton and create a joint entity? I expect the tribal nature of football means that fans would rather their club became extinct than join forces. They could do well to read about Caledonian Thistle (ironically celebrating their 25th anniversary this month). They did just that and are competing in the second tier in Scotland with Terry Butcher as manager.