I chalked two points dropped at Luton against Mowbray but wipe the slate clean with the Brentford performance. Just wow. The man management in getting that second half performance after all the hammer blows in the last 20 minutes of the first half was outstanding. The players went 4-4-1 like they play it every day but both the formation and the personnel in the slots were alien to their normal roles. He kept us in the game when Brentford could have run away with it then switched to offense in the 80th minute and caught them exhausted and depleted. Also really liked his subs strategy. He protected players already on yellows and had the confidence to protect Rothwell and Armstrong for their necessary exertions in the coming midweek. Seriously impressed.

My reaction too.

Got a feeling this is going to be a bigger point than many 3 points will be this season. Belief must be surging around Ewood after that display. So much got validated- the strength and depth of the squad and the sheer resilience of every player in it. All the subs were outstanding including the much maligned Bell and Buckley. Delighted for Davenport. Gallagher was outstanding throughout and how many positions did Elliott play throughout the game? Brentford's level dropped appreciably when their subs came on which suggests they are not going to have the resilience to come through this most demanding of seasons. Really sad for Scott Wharton. He rightly got the start but Ayala's performance was really solid in replacing him.

Where is Toney?

Hilarious how every game the commentary comes on just as they cut to adverts ...

The cardboard cut-outs are moving.

She does happen to have 99.98% of the issued share capital in her purse so yes we are based on her judgement. And thankfully I don't think she listens to Balaji on the subject of Rovers as much as she did...

Black Forest gateau in El Greco! The taste was in my mouth the moment I read El Greco...

That is the absolute key for me. Start well and we have a good game. Everyone is remembering struggles against Luton, Barnsley and Millwall. Sandwiched in between was Preston where we started well and kept going well for 90 minutes.

We are not the only club playing an awful lot of games in a short period of time. I'd rather not be starting the nine games of December with eleven players out but then I'd rather be us with the prospect of JRC, Brereton, Travis and Dack all available as we go into January.

Having watched it, I'd say the respective performances were not that different beyond Barnsley mistakes gifting Bournemouth one unopposed run on goal and two opposed level foot chases in on goal. Barnsley gave Bournemouth far less respect in their set up than they gave us- Barnsley were not pressing all over the park and hoping for a counter attack and they paid the price for it. Even at 0-3 Barnsley had had more corners, more attempts and more on target than Bournemouth. Heads dropped at 0-4. Like against us, Bournemouth's shooting against Barnsley was of the highest quality and that marks them out as different in this league. Bournemouth did fail to find a completely empty net from the Barnsley keeper and defender messing up outside their area before they had scored so they are not totally supermen. Worth pointing out that Bournemouth had four pretty comfortable seasons in the Premier league before it fell apart for them last season. So in every respect apart from a ground which would only be 16th largest in League 1 and 7th largest in League 2, they are by now in every respect a Premier League set-up with Premier League depth of playing talent.

Nine matches before the window opens. Anything can happen and in this crazy season and probably will. The track record of Mrs Desai from years back is that if she doesn't want to sell a player, she is awkward squad and the January window is short enough for her to be out of contact for most if not all of it. If she thinks Rovers are capable of promotion this season, her valuation of Arma is going to be very different from the way football manager video game algorithms work. For a start, the %age add on for Newcastle will be the buyer's problem, not her's so far as she is concerned. January is a difficult window to buy players in. I doubt Armstrong would be released without an immediate replacement and a significant strengthening elsewhere in the squad plus enough profit for the FFP ceiling problem being pushed back more than the temporary extension granted to all clubs. So either Rovers drop off the pace dramatically with a Mowbray slump of the kind we are all too familiar with which changes the balance of probabilities calculus, or Armstrong continues his scoring spree for someone to decide he is worth a £40m+ punt. At that price, not many PL clubs are at the races and any club in another country has the problem of him being a third country national. I am second guessing Venky's so could be completely wrong but in the final analysis they make the decision. Reasonable valuation is reasonable to them, not anyone else.

Barnsley were in charitable mood. That was some rain downpour so mistakes were inevitable- Barnsley made them and Bournemouth were clinical. Bournemouth definitely the better side but 4-0 flatters them.

I am going off watching them live in two recent games. They live dangerously and I would like to see a well organised high press put on them- oppositions are probably too scared about what might happen at the other end but we should have the confidence to play the way we did at Bournemouth and Watford and go hunting the ball down when they are in possession in their own half.

Enormous relief. Two weeks means missing five games these days...

Elvis lives!

Hugely looking forward to this game which should be very different from playing Luton, Barnsley and Millwall and more like Bournemouth or Watford- hopefully with a different result! From what I have seen of Brentford, they play open football, are a bit vulnerable at the back but clinical in the opposition area. The fate of this match is in the treatment room. If we have to play Bell and/or Carter, we will lose. Brererton is a big miss BUT the pace and dribbling of Armstrong, Gallagher, Rothwell, Elliott and Nyambe should be too much for that Brentford defence. If Johnson and Holtby have decent games by their standards we should have the platform to dominate possession and inflict damage of our own. What we don't want is Raya to have the sort of MoM performance the Watford keeper put in against us. Comparison of Raya and Kaminski, Toney and Armstrong, 2000 fans in their new home for the first time- this match is full of fascinating sub-plots. Just hope they don't pump crowd noise through the PA in addition to having those socially isolated hungry and thirsty souls...

The Millwall scorer had been left free to take an unchallenged shot from inside the area. Kaminsky prepared for the guy to hit it low either side of him so had started to lower his body ready to spring either side. Millwall player spotted Kaminsky going down and had the confidence to smack it high into the net over Kaminsky's head. 9 times out of 10 in those circumstances, the striker gets the angle of elevation wrong and ends up striking the ball straight at the keeper or over the bar into Row Z. It looked bad on Kaminsky's part but he was covering the angles for a low strike which most forwards would have gone for with the ball under control on the ground. The Millwall player gambled on his ability to control the angle of lift on the shot into the net roof and it paid off.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/18918200.mowbray-amazed-referee-sanctioned-millwall-kit-choice/

Holtby's blind passes where he plays the ball with the slightest of glances is usually devastatingly effective in launching Rovers forward but last night were all inch perfect to Millwall players. I don't have the quickness of eye of a professional sportsman but I realised during the Millwall match that I must be instinctively looking for the pattern of a colour and white halved shirt when watching Rovers games. I was sub consciously seriously resenting having to concentrate on whether it was green or blue halves- two adjacent colours on the chromatic spectrum- particularly that shade of turquoise cum off green Millwall were wearing.

Perhaps Rothwell is the closest like for like?

Never ever let a team play at Ewood in halves with white in it again! Hated that visual clash with a passion and I wonder if some of our unusually wayward passing was because of the clash. I believe our passing accuracy last night was something like 10% down on what it normally is.

I have noticed other clubs are much cuter with their throw-ins than we are.

I will add: JRC Wharton Williams Douglas Bennett Travis Evans Dack Vale Butterworth I struggle to understand the whingeing sometimes. Yes if we were back to 3, 4 or 5 unavailabilities per game but you look at Norwich having a crisis and their results and compare with us running an average approaching double figures absence all season to date and the Barnsley and Millwall wins. Desperate for good news about Ben but I fear there won't be any and we won't see him again until 21/22 season.

First of all I really really hope Ben is alright but that was a bad challenge. Ref was rubbish mostly disadvantageously for us apart from not seeing Rovers playing basketball in our 6 yard box. Two stonewall penalties in the two magicked up minutes added on to the 4 extra minutes at the end. Not having commented during the second half I don't have any venting to support unlike most of you. Not a classic performance but I thought we marginally improved second half largely because Johnson wasn't anywhere near as bad as he had been first half. Buckley's decision making was poor when he came on and Dolan looked like he was going to destroy them so we stopped finding him with promising balls. In the final analysis there were three pieces of sheer class which made the difference- Rothwell's surge and pass, Downing teasing run along the edge of their box and Armstrong finally getting slightly better than a half chance to bury it. Phew!