philipl

At this stage it is a must not lose. Yes a win would be great but a loss dumps us right in the mire. Even with all the injuries, we ought to have enough with last night's set up to avoid defeat. I wouldn't rate them as better than Oxford.

Fratton Park is usually noisy but they will be desperate after losing that 6 pointer at Swansea last night. Josh Murphy is the main threat so Aleboyusu will need to be on his game. Otherwise they seem typical scrappy Championship with more than average defensive mistakes but a decent keeper.

Including the cup game, average attendance was about 15,700 last season - https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/blackburn-rovers/attendances/2024-2025 Including the cup game and last night, average attendance is 13,500 this season - https://www.footballwebpages.co.uk/blackburn-rovers/attendances The Burnley and Sunderland games made a big difference last season.

de Keersmaker was the perfect shithouse midfielder for them but our play was too tentative and slow allowing him to be so disruptive. Tavares probably needs a sports psychologist - there is a player there if he can build his confidence. Baradji looks the real deal now if we can get more than ten minutes a game from him. Cantwell easily best player on the park when he came on. The rest of the team needs to learn howe to play with him again. Ryan's final balls were poor all night but he was constantly getting into position to deliver which is more than can be said for the others. 10,255 the official crowd so estimates of 7k or less actually being there not far wrong.

Ismael offering to relay the pitch rather than buy a player tells me there is zero budget for January transfers.

But we are so limited in our currently available personnel we would ship a load of goals without the 5 men defence. As it was we gifted Oxford a goal and a couple of gilt chances last night.

We could have been lumbered with far worse. Some of his judgement calls have cost us big time but others have worked where most of us wouldn't have chosen them.

Another bad reffing decision for Ismael's list...😝

Saw bits of the Fulham and Dingles games. Adam surprisingly by his standards had a bit of a stinker at the Turd but would have been dominating the headlines if Fulham hadn't scored one of the sweetest goals I have ever seen.

Just hope the guys with the soak up rollers are more on the ball tonight. On Saturday standing water was visible on the pitch just before half time. Why weren't they out there rolling through the interval?

I come here for the weather forecast. The football is incidental.

4th Manager in a decade about to sack the club?

Storm Bram planning to stage a pitch occupation protest against Venkys tomorrow night. In the unlikely event we get to the allotted 90+5 minutes goal for Oxford, this is a trickier opponent than their league position would suggest.

Also the factor of 48 games and counting to collect yellow cards in probably contributing to one or two additional suspensions. Wouldn't like to bet on yesterday being the last second half abandonment.

Call the Uber for 4.30...

We habitually lose to clubs at the bottom.

Both 90+xth equalisers came through poor defending in the left back position when holding a 1-0 lead albeit Wrexham leading to the corner from which they scored. Ribeiro is an accomplished left back, De Neve is on the pitch to run at and hopefully past opponents and a largely haphazard presence when in his own box.

Cost us 4 points this week bringing de Neve on instead of Ribeiro.

In the 4 minutes of injury time- The Ipswich long throw is taken from on the pitch with clear grass between touchline and back of the heel. Ref is stood 30 yards from where we are repeatedly shielding the ball in the corner and gives a goal kick when the ball clearly goes out off a ref sock after Cantwell clipped the ball onto the Ipswich shin. That was par for the entire game.

Again conceded from the hole De Neve left But The goal kick they eventually scored from was clearly another Rovers corner... Abysmal officiating all evening denied Rovers the comfortable win our superiority deserved.

We are playing Ipswich so the weather forecast is a month of rain in the next 24 hours...

So frustrating. Forshaw and Morishita were both excellent and the team played well overall.

Portsmouth and Sheffield United kicking off right now. We could be back in deep trouble before our game starts.

You don't fake Dolan's abilities. You coach him to produce his best consistently. Playing with and against much better players in La Liga is getting far more out of him than we did at Rovers. The experience might also be instilling the footballing brain that was all too often lacking at Ewood.

Random number generator needed to forecast which Rovers show up. We have beaten better than Wrexham and lost home to Norwich and Sheffield United. Don't have the same foreboding as I had pre-QPR and at least the fans will be solidly behind the lads and not as silent as Ewood.