Buckley played as a false 9 throughout our winning run.

Has anyone suggested that the injury isnt a bad one considering that there were pictures on Rovers twitter on Saturday (and prior I believe on Instagram although ill have to take peoples word for that) showing him in a protective boot with crutches?

I am as big a critic as anyone of Gallagher, well almost. If that is who is meant. But Dolan has 6 career goals and Khadra 3, Gallagher has a far better track record of scoring even if he himself is far from prolific.

Why would the FA purposely help Bournemouth out, as is implied?

My point is that I don't understand why you even at any point mentioned Dike and Moore, I can only presume that you have used them solely based on them being the 2 big transfers of the window for forwards at this level, but they are irrelevant, far too dear. Moore has had a stop start season following the Euro's and having had covid earlier in the season but he scored 20 goals last season, he is a marked upgrade on our current striking cast who I have gone into detail about below, but to be honest its irrelevant as he was well beyond our financial means anyway, and doesn't fit our system. I have never said at any point that we could have come up with a solution to a Brereton injury, in fact I have said that any team would miss its main goalscorer and that it wouldn't be possible to equally replace him. I felt that prior to knowledge of Brereton's injury, that we needed a player capable of playing as one of our (wide) forwards who has more of a goal threat than the majority of our players that we have at the moment, accepting that it wasn't an easy ask. Dolan has lots of qualities, but has 3 goals in both seasons, his goals are infrequent. Khadra has 3 in his first season of senior football, again there is no track record of anything other than occasional goals. Hedges having played as a winger again is far from prolific. You say we have potentially 7 forwards, Vale is not as serious option for a team chasing Premier League promotion having played 20 minutes of football (in a dead rubber) at this level and Markanday has a season ending injury that we knew about a week before the window closed. So that leaves Gallagher as our main goal threat who himself is far from prolific. It's not about how many you have in general, it is whether you have enough of the qualities we need. Any signing is a gamble and I concede that especially with a limited budget that signing a player (to clarify, I wasn't expecting a 20+ goal striker/direct equivalent of Brereton) was difficult but it wouldn't have to be a 5m plus player either and those examples are irrelevant.

The 2 examples that you gave where players that would have massively improved us, but ones who were so dear that they became instantly irrelevant to the conversation anyway aside from attempting to make out that it was impossible for us to compete. There would have been scope for a signing, yes it wasnt a straightforward task and yes it may well have had to be a loan.

Totally get the sentiment but your call for support will fall on deaf ears. Most people posting on a messageboard will by association be hardcore fans. I suspect the majority are already season ticket holders, or failing that will be unable to attend 5 games (perhaps location based) or are the in the very small minority who are boycotting so wont be turned by a 5 game bundle. Its the floating fan that is the target audience, they wont be posting on messageboards, they can give or take attending. These bundles are not the way forward IMO, we have seen before even as recently as selling only 500k for the double header. Waggott said earlier this season in a fans forum that the EFL dont like bundles either plus he has the access to the numbers which prove that they dont work. Floating fans dont want to commit to numerous games at once to get value, they dont want strings attached, thats why one off, no strings attached deals get better uptake. Maybe I will be proved wrong this time but I remain skeptical.

They have had a poor season with massive injury issues but the job Bielsa has done to date is excellent. They were mid table Championship fodder when he joined.

The main issue is that the pitch in general is not in the best of states provoked by an unwillingness by the owners to spend 2m on a revamp as promised last summer. Pitch problems always seemed likely from that point. I dont get why people are making out as if the referee is solely to blame, as if they know to the contrary that the pitch was playable. None of us went onto the pitch and tested it.

Very tough game. Suspect Mowbray will go with the same team as named today. Id swap Dolan for Buckley and Hedges for Khadra or even Gallagher and play on the counter attack.

The ball barely bounced at all such was the state of the pitch having been dropped from a big height.

Seems unfit to play.

No I haven't, kids football is not a barometer as to how he would do at senior level. Neither to be honest would National LEague football even if he had scored plenty which obviously he didn't. There is no evidence that he is on the fringes at the moment either, he has to my recollection never made a matchday squad. He may well be talented and have a good career, I have never claimed to be armed with any evidence to suggest that he will or won't. But a bit of logic leans me to the assumption that it would be a hell of a surprise should be be deemed to be ready and able to actively influence a Championship team going for promotion (you believe automatic) based on the level to which he has played to date, including this season. Fair enough if you didn't feel that we needed another attacker. You seem to have the narrow minded opinion that it was Maja/Healey or nobody, and also seem to have assumed that others WILL fill the gap, not might, will, based on the logic that others scored a goal in random selected games during the season. Fair enough, agree to disagree.

I never said that he did. I am sure that the players wanted to play, what I said was that even if they didn't fancy it, the goalkeeping coach wouldn't start blabbing to the fans about that fact! Whether a set of professional footballers who have trained in preparation for a game of football wanted to play or not is irrelevant as to whether the pitch was fit enough to allow them to do that. It was mentioned that there was standing water on the pitch once the snow was cleared! It clearly couldn't drain the water as quickly as was required to make it playable for 3 o clock. There is only one conspiracy here, and it is the one that the referee chose to cancel todays game as a means of gathering attention upon himself. Surely if he wanted attention, he would have played the game even in adverse conditions and would have made the actual bloody game about him in front of thousands of people by making decisions to the contrary of logic. You was at the ground yes. I presume to be able to say without a hint of doubt that the pitch was fit to play, that you went onto the pitch, dropped a ball onto the pitch on the various areas, checked to see if the ball could bounce and move freely etc? Or no, you just got there nice and early and saw the snow being cleared and a couple of keepers doing some catching practice and thought, well I want the game to go ahead and I can see a green pitch and a sun in the sky, game on, surely?! Absolutely laughable now. Simply you are refusing to believe Waggott when he has specifically said (whilst trying to defend them too, tough time in India bla bla bla) that they wouldn't cover the cost. Inject money in to the club to cover losses, they have no choice if they want to keep their business other than offsetting expenses that are higher than income. If he had made such a specific lie, surely they would sack him. These people seemingly were insistent that our manager couldn't have the autonomy to buy and sell players as he sees fit such is their stubbornness/pride. Just accept for once that they are to blame here, they cut corners, they didn't provide funding, now the pitch can't handle adverse weather.

His loan spell does matter yes, it adds a bit of perspective to a player who otherwise only has a 20 minute cameo for us and 3 goalless games at Rochdale in a brief spell as senior experience, 1 goal in 10 at a level 3 divisions below us. Hardly suggests he is ready to boost a team missing its best 2 players and struggling in front of goal but going for promotion to the Premier League! I am unsure why you live in an alternative universe whereby the only signings we could possibly make are Maja and Healey. The latter of whom has only ever been linked in passing and none of us have seen. As I said, I get that we would prefer someone who could play one of the 2 forward roles, someone quick for example, but we needed for me someone more capable of scoring goals than the likes of Gallagher, Khadra, Dolan and Hedges. Was that an easy task finding someone who fits the bill on a minimal budget, obviously not. But for me we still needed one, especially as none of our midfielders have a track record of scoring goals anything other than occasionally, bar Johnson about 10 years ago when he was a totally different player. You are implying that we don't need one because we have Vale who you are pushing for a place in the squad. There is no logic in being content with a young lad with NO evidence that he can hack it at this level at this critical point in time.

Absolute nonsense. The underlying issue is obvious as to the state of our pitch, a continious lack of funding compounded by the failure to revamp it this summer at a fairly reasonable expense not eligible under FFP. Rather than just say, yeah its the owners fault, you desperately try and deflect and speculate however you possibly can. Even if he did say that publically without asking the owners first, which is a totally baseless theory, the fact still remains that the underlying factor is the unwillingness from the owners to spend £2m to upgrade something of critical importance that definitely needed doing. Even their old friend FFP cant be blamed.

Straight forward, yes or no question. Are we weaker without having Ben Brereton available? Is our starting 11 poorer?

Paul Ince? Jesus christ.

I think you are looking a little too much into it. Besides, Brereton doesn't look like he will be back anytime soon and Mowbray has always been keen to stress that Dack won't be fully fit until next year. Ayala wouldn't have played anyway. No, why would I be in my seat nearly an hour before kick off? Ben Benson is not going to come out and say "the players all wanted the game off" is he? And to be honest, I am sure that they would rather have played. Ultimately, thats irrelevant in judging whether the game was fit to play. The problem today was not necessarily the postponement, it was the way that it was done IMO. Should have been done sooner, maybe there was scope for a delayed kick off. Thing is, you may have seen a pitch with no snow on it and with the sun shining, but if there were drainage issues and standing water, then I can understand the decision, and even being sat in your seat watching the keepers do a bit of catching practice, is that enough for you to be in a position to judge either way? Is there going to be absolutely no acknowledgement of the cost cutting from the owners in spite of previous promises in regards to the state of the pitch, or is the sole focus going to be at looking at ways on how Waggott (and at a push if you can involve him, Mowbray) could have fucked it up?

Frank Lampard the "excellent" appointment perhaps with a bit of a hiccup today.

For some perspective, for a team chasing promotion from the Championship to the Premier League, you are entrusting a rookie with about 20 minutes of senior experience who has had a loan spell at Halifax Town in the National League this season where he only scored 1 in 10, yet are in denial that we needed a striker? Let's not pretend that we didn't need a striker. I factor in the fact that to find a striker who could score at a reasonable, competitive rate, to fit within our current formation on a limited budget was a difficult task and seemingly was not helped by rejections in the transfer market. It may have well been that no one was deemed good enough to improve us, and it was impossible to find someone to be as good as Brereton should he become injured, which unfortunately he has. But it was a disappointment that we didn't get anyone in. Let's also not be of the naive assumption that every time a goalscorer is lost, others will naturally fill that void. It isn't impossible, it will happen at times, the Brereton story is a fairly remarkable one though all told. It will not happen every time, and those particular circumstances were fairly unique. Goalscorers cost the most money for a reason. Any team losing their main striker is a huge blow, and one that will weaken them, it would be the same if Fulham lost Mitrovic. If any of the current squad start scoring to 100% compensate for the absence of Brereton, they would be scoring well in excess of what they have proven in their careers to date. To suggest that "we have always found a way" is blatantly untrue, and indeed in half of the games that we have failed to score in, Brereton has been unavailable from the start. No one has really found much of a way as of yet, we have looked toothless in recent weeks. I suspect that any response will be to this that I am being negative, that I need to give Vale a chance or indeed a look back to last summer when Brereton (in fairly unique circumstances) did indeed step up to the mark, something that I have acknowledged CAN happen from time to time, but more often than not, it won't, hence why I and most people do not forsee our remaining players filling that void fully by scoring miles more than they have to date in their careers.

You cannot possibly know that, even if you was sat in your seat ridiculously early. The issue was not snow, it was water. This is from a fans forum from May, this proves that although a total relay was planned, it was the unwillingness of the owners to follow through with that intention due to cost, which was £2m: "TS stated that at the last meeting the club were in the process of tendering for a complete reconstruction of the pitch at Ewood Park. SW added that a preferred supplier had been selected with a budget of close to £2m. Unfortunately, the economic situation in India and the amount of ongoing support the owners had been making through the pandemic meant that they were unwilling to approve the expenditure for a full refurbishment." I know that this doesn't fit your agenda that the owners are changing based on whatever whispers and that Waggott and Mowbray are to blame for everything, but there you go. Black and white.

How is that possibly his fault! The owners offered funding for a totally new pitch, and then ended up not doing that. It is the owners fault, no matter how much you try and deflect.

You do wonder if he will be seen in a Rovers shirt again with only 3 months of the season to go.

The pitch was always likely to deteriorate this season when the owners reneged on their intention to invest in a new pitch last summer, instead trying to do things on the cheap. It wasn't seemingly that the pitch wasn't clear, it was The whole thing should have been handled better, I think it should have been postponed earlier or alternatively perhaps delayed, an inspection 45 minutes prior is not acceptable. But putting it down to the referee wanting to be "centre of attention" is a load of bollocks.