Mowbray has been moaning about the injuries again, and no doubt that they are a bad stroke of luck. He was also banging on about not being a Premier League club with 20 odd quality players. Theres absolutely no personal responsibility as ever. Any team that loses their best player warrants sympathy but all it does is really further expose his abysmal transfer dealings. You cant spend 12m on strikers and they offer absolutely nothing and then still whinge and moan. Regarding Cunningham, again it was a huge blow but as he was only a short term plaster over our left back problem, he now has the flexbility to be able to send an injured player back without having to keep paying his wages, surely opening up a void for another player to come in. Evans again is a blow but we are presumably paying good money to have Johnson and Downing here. The Mulgrew situation is strange too, it seems obviously that it was at the players request, but with money so tight, surely say "sorry Charlie but we cant afford to bring you back."

"We haven’t got loads of money to think ‘we’ve lost a midfield player let’s go and spend £1m to get another one in’." "Regarding the transfer window, what doesn’t change with the players we’ve tried to identify and like, when you ask in the first week or two, millions of pounds are being quoted,” “At this moment we’re miles away with trying to negotiate correct deals for the club.” Or in other words, I wouldnt hold your breath!

Why would they give us their starting left back for so cheap and why would he join a club far less likely to be near the play offs?

Whilst I also dont think he is up to it, Gallagher has put in repeatedly woeful performances all season (including many up front) and you think "theres a player in there." And you have repeatedly defended Bennetts inclusion ad nauseum. So seems a little hypocritical, based solely on what Mowbray does.

I love that you are spinning everything into a positive once more. Why didnt you reference Adarabioyo ans Reed as youngsters that we have loaned? Because they are successful and dont fit into your argument! And why are loans of youngsters from the PL the only alternatives to using our own kids considering we have money as you say. We dont want to be playing Buckley because hes absolutely nowhere near being ready. If Mowbray is right to not overpay for players, why did he spend 7m on a total waste of space, then repeat the same mistake by spending 5m on another? Its quite clear that our bids are nowhere near the asking prices and hes made a million and one references to us having a limited budget. Lets not pretend that that is down to some sort of principle that Mowbray is not buying these players, the budget is seemingly not there. I struggle to be overly excited about the rest of the season, before you spin that into a superfan narrative I will still be attending but for the reasons I have given, poor recruitment, little chance of us upgrading the squad as required, injury woe, a stagnant manager and a miniscule (at best!) chance of anything other than a mid table finish, its hard to be overly excited.

If we are talking Rhodes in his last spell, he was absolutely brilliant here, nothing less. Ultimately all of these other smaller things, hold up, creativity, they are all geared to try and eventually get goals. Rhodes made up any deficincies there by actually scoring that additional amount of goals himself. I find it incredible that goalscoring has seemingly become an underappreciated part of a strikers armoury. Having pace, strength, flair, whatever are usually tools that are used to get the player the end product of goals, but having the brain to sniff out opportunities and the composure to then take them trumps them all. That level of consistently superb goal output meant quite rightly that his place was guaranteed. Whether he could still score at that rate is a different question.

https://www.lancs.live/sport/football/transfer-news/blackburn-rovers-could-turn-youth-17581331 This is a depressing article, a suggestion that money is incredibly scarce, that we are miles off signing anyone, and that we may have to resort solely to the youth players. The whole season just seems to have no promise or excitement to it already. The recruitment to date has been really poor, and that in turn seems to have emptied the kitty meaning that improving the squad seems an impossible job. Throw in the unlucky triple blow of 3 season ending injuries to first team players, one our primary goalscorer, and it seems destined to fizzle out. Stagnation at its finest under Mowbray.

If a guaranteed 20+ plus goals a season "isnt all that" then your standards must be off the scale!

To be fair, if we are going to go back, at least go back to someone who was brilliant for us, not spend loads on someone like Gallagher who was average in his best season!

Goalscoring is the primary function of a goalscorer. If you are scoring 20 goals a season you are doing your job, even if you do have (massively exaggerated) limitations elsewhere.

Big blow him coming back and taking a chunk out of a seemingly very limited budget with his wages. He is a massive defensive liability sadly as much as he is 10x the captain Bennett is and far better from dead balls than anyone else. Talk about him tearing up his contract and spending months doing nothing at his age is fanciful in the extreme, he would require a huge pay off so either way his return financially restricts us.

Walton Nyambe Lenihan Adarabioyo Williams Travis Johnson Armstrong Holtby Downing Graham To be honest, I can't see us getting anything sadly.

If Armstrong plays up front from now, who holds the ball up and who plays wide right?

The thing with Rhodes is that he can score goals even in teams that dont give him particularly good supply. In his first season, he played as a lone striker (with a number 10 usually) and also the team behind him were fairly dismal. He nearly scored 30 goals. Gallagher for example is the polar opposite in terms of anticipating chances and his movement.

Regarding Ronan Curtis, even if we did stump up the cash you do look at Jamal Lowe who stood out for Portsmouth last season yet has been dismal for Wigan.

For me, hes had more than enough chances and hes proven to be nowhere near up to it. With 6 months to go on his contract, its time to cut our losses. Left back should be a priority but even without, I would take Downing there before him and even Williams.

He played all last season and was awful, its not being in and out of the team that causes his poor performances. The reason he is avoided where possible is because he isnt trusted clearly.

It would be a cruel twist of fate if Mowbray cannot be moved on following his own horrendous transfer dealings because they in turn have ensured that we dont have the money to let him go!

Agreed. If what Dyche did was so easy everyone would do it!

He also had better players through better recruitment. The likes of Danny Ings, Andre Gray, Sam Vokes and at times, Charlie Austin and Ashley Barnes all gave them a consistent goal threat. They scored 72 goals in each of their last seasons in this division. This season, even with Dack, we have scored 1.29 goals a game. Without Dack, that will only decrease you would think. Burnley were scoring 1.56 a game. We need to improve at both ends of the pitch, and we need to recruit to do that IMO.

Its unrealistic to expect to keep clean sheets in every game, you have to be able to score more than one goal.

I dont understand why you are so desperate to rubbish any thoughts of decent players arriving assuming that you genuinely believe that money is there. Why are we now unable to compete with Forest, especially considering that they already have a good striker so it will be more difficult for him to get regular football there? And if Wigan want Rhodes, which I am skeptical about, then hed surely rather come here. Gallagher has played up front more often than not, and has been absolute dog shit. Lets just hope he has a sudden transformation into a competent Championship striker. Sadly I am not sure we will see regarding Curtis as I suspect the cost will be beyond our means. We will see anyway. Hopefully you are right and we do have money and make numerous additions. And also Id love Gallagher, Rothwell, Chapman etc to all start scoring goals regularly all of a sudden but id be amazed if they did.

He burst onto the scene in that Arsenal game, I had personally heard of him as I am sure had anyone with a decent grasp and knowledge of Championship football. That being said, I think anyone with an ounce of scepticism would realise that any player can have one good game and make a name for himself. It was his "Emerton v Wolves" moment.

Transfer window time, ie time for Alan Nixon to suggest that an unnamed player who he cannot name might or might not be coming. Can't be proved wrong (or right) and possibly talking out of his arse to get people to desperately beg him for clues. No name and no information, not a talking point! Regarding your point about attacking players, like I maintain, there is absolutely no basis or historical suggestion that some of our attacking players are suddenly going to start scoring and assisting with regularity. When we didnt score enough with our best player, without him we are impotent. The main 2 are Armstrong, who cannot be expected to cover the goals he was AND Dack was all of a sudden, and Graham, who seems to be on the wane. We dont score enough with Dack, never mind without him. Rothwell has no history of scoring and assisting really, Downing is a good player but is not going to do anything more than chip in with a few, Holtby is a good player but has never scored many goals, Gallagher has a shocking goal record, Brereton is Brereton, Samuel is crap and potentially leaving, who is going to step up. This Ronan Curtis has good numbers albeit in a Lower League, if we could get him in and a striker, someone like Neketiah or Rhodes on loan, then we would look a lot better but I sense that our window is going to be quiet and disappointing and if it is our season is set to fizzle out. You cant expect people to just take that word as gospel though, its not fact, its a theory that will now never be proven or disproven. No chance that Gallagher would have suitors for that sort of fee, considering that he is probably one off if not our highest earner so a club would have to take those wages on. If that was the case, we would be foolish not to cut our losses now, but I suspect that even if we waived a fee there would hardly be a queue forming. This isnt aimed at you, but people keep banging on about a really bang average season he had here previously as if he was prolific, and also using the fact that he is sometimes on the wing as a suggestion that hes been hard done by, when indeed he has played more games up top and has been just as dismal.

Gallagher wont score goals, I think that is clear. I think you are expecting something to happen which the current set of players have proven themselves incapable of. We were not scoring enough goals even with Dack playing. To expect a set of attacking players to just "step up" is incredibly naive considering they arent up to it.