arbitro

I chuckled to myself this morning when I saw the goals from Liverpool v Real Madrid. Two top, international goalkeepers quite simply gave a goal apiece away trying to play out from inside their own penalty areas as they were being closed down. Whatever happened to Row Z? As the old saying goes 'I've never seen anybody score from Row Z'.

I was told there will be some investment (£750k) but this is from a payment/grant from the Premier League which is effectively to allow the Rovers Ladies to play their home games at Ewood from next season. It won't be a Desso pitch but large areas will be stitched.

I heard the Blackpool fans jeering too but in all honesty I thought it was a wayward pass simply because I didn't see Thomas. It was like he was camouflaged 😂. Even then he read the awkward bounce perfectly, attacked the space and got in a pass to create a goal which is one of the reasons we signed him.

Levitation?

I thought tonight the collective was really good, perhaps the best team performance at Ewood for some time. Lots of seven out of ten tonight for me. I have been critical of us in the past for looking a bit tame at times but tonight we had a really good old fashioned scrap and came out on top. In truth I never felt unduly concerned that Blackpool would score but a second for us would have been nice. My only concern was how tired some players looked although in fairness Tomasson did take off the more tired ones and this breathed some new life into us. With a few days rest now and players coming back we should be getting stronger. Winning football matches is what we exist to do and long may it continue. George Graham and his Arsenal team eat your hearts out 😂😂.

Info as follows. I think you can order online and collect from the ticket office. The best place for a neutral to watch from is the Jack Walker Stand.

Madine is missing for Blackpool. He is serving the fourth of a four match ban after two red cards, the first of which was given retrospectively after he trampled all over Travis. It's some kind of natural justice in my view that he can't play against us. He is in the Ched Evans mould, the type who bullies centre halves and the type who normally do well against us.

An interesting interview with Tyrhys Dolan where he says he isn't a young player any more. He strikes me as being a really nice guy and talks a lot of sense. https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/football-news/dolan-blackburn-rovers-playoffs-heartache-26286371

I was told Cirino is out for the season. Taking Leonard off is a strange decision unless he is injured. If he is on the bench tomorrow why risk him by playing him tonight, have him travel nigh on 600 miles and then get home in the early hours. It's not ideal preparation.

Mick McCarthy can only really play one way. Historically he has had a team that works hard, has a reliance on set plays and plays the percentages to win second balls, quite the opposite of Swansea actually. It will be interesting to see how Tomasson approaches the game, his team selection and tactics. I'm not expecting much in the way of scintillating football but I am expecting a win.

Dickie Davies was the face of British sport along with David Coleman. I fondly remember his role in Saturday afternoons as the anchor man for World of Sport which he carried out with skill and professionalism. RIP.

And Brereton and his agent know this. No transfer fee usually equates to bigger wages and bonuses. I don't blame him by the way, it's another mess created by the owners and their cohorts.

I think they are still working on the charm offensive after the botched January window knowing how the majority of Rovers fans feel. So if Brereton leaves for nothing in the Summer they can use the 'we did all we can' and 'best offer ever' lines again.

Irrespective of when it was offered (I don't believe £30k was on the table until recently) what about the wage structure? This is one of the reasons we lost three players we are led to believe. And if it's true what about new signings or incoming players. Surely they will want parity.

What about the wage structure that has now become legend? Didn't we lose three players last season because of this (or at least that is what we were told by the Waggettes on here). How suddenly we can offer a player £30k - why didn't we offer him this when we were negotiating several months ago?

In this picture Dack seems to be indicating something small with his thumb and forefinger. Perhaps a slight strain or something similar?

Ultimately one thing really matters in professional football and if my team play poorly but win then the playing aspect is somewhat inconsequential. Of course I want to win in style playing fast flowing, attacking football but winning any way is the be all end all for me. On the day I thought our decision making was poor overall and too many players wanted too much time and too many touches of the ball and I sure Tomasson will have his criticisms which he will hopefully look to rectify with the players. The tempo was painfully slow far too often and Swansea will consider themselves unfortunate as I thought they were better than us. From the majority of fans perspective though the objective of winning was achieved, I really am ambivalent to the way we do it.

And they play high intensity football which is partly crowd driven. It's amazing the benefits of working harder and playing quicker than your opponent can bring. One of my main criticisms of Rovers this season is that far too often our play is sedate, far too easy to play against.

We scored five at home to Cardiff last season and miraculously five at Sheffield Wednesday quite recently.

The reverse fixture was when Tomasson got his tactics spot on, more so than any other time this season. We adopted a press although it wasn't too high. We let them have the ball pretty much in their final third and then smothered them and scored twice through this. Tomasson played a diamond at the top end and rotated the players to share the workload. For me it's quite simple and as their manager only knows one way to play we exploit that. Having seen them several times the fulcrum of their game is Matty Grimes and he usually has more touches than any of their players. I'll be extremely disappointed if we haven't got another six points come ten o'clock on Tuesday night particularly after two really good draws on the road.

We discussed the same thing last night during the game. It might be coincidence but when Hyam was on we were much deeper and played laterally and backwards a lot more than we did in the first half. Simplistically I thought we were unnecessarily deeper than we were in the first half allowing West Brom to push on more. And that, for me has been a problem in many games this season.

Thomas put some really good corners in last night. He got some real pace on them and put them into good areas. For many corners this season they have been tossed in and have been invariably flat.

Compared to several away games this season (Reading, Sheffield United, Cardiff, Wigan, Coventry, Burnley, Rotherham) it was far better. After them games I was really downbeat but after the last two away games I saw far more positives and reasons for optimism. In each of them games we were flat and listless, last night and on Saturday there was more intensity and desire.

He wants the council to fund a new project when honest, hard working people are struggling to pay their Council Tax? Don't we have extravagantly wealthy owners and this kind of spend wouldn't impact on P&S?