@JoeHtweeted this out yesterday, the average positions our players took up throughout the game. We expect a ridiculous amount from Nyambe... a right back being the second most advanced player on the pitch! They clearly tried to swamp us down their left hand side, on more than one occasion it was 3 v 1. I don’t think Elliott did anywhere near enough defensively. None of the midfield that started did. The other worry is how deep Dack had to come to try and get hold of the ball and get us playing. This is only really confirming what my eyes tell me. Games when we were entertaining and effective are becoming a distant memory. We are a stale mess at the moment. Subtle tweaks to the formation and personnel aren’t going to rectify this.

Who’d have thought training on the Ewood pitch (despite the fact Jack gave us the wonderful facilities at Brockhall) and trying to skimp on the use of undersoil heating during a prolonged freezing and snowy spell might cause lasting damage to the surface?!

Not helped by the fact he’s expected to close down their keeper more often than anyone else!

“We’ve got two left backs, I’m not sure where that came from. “We’ve got Barry Douglas, we’ve got Amari’i Bell, it would seem mad to me to sign a left back when you haven’t got any centre halves.” Mowbray with a quote very similar to what other people have been getting absolutely savaged for saying by his fan club.

This is quite apt... Tune in to Rovers Radio tomorrow at 1pm. We do a bit of a deep dive into some of the rubbish they sell in the club shop, and more generally into the clubs commercial offering and marketing tactics.

My Dad calls Mowbray Mr Punch... when I caught a glimpse of him from the side on ifollow I could see why.

Radosav Petrovic and Screech from Saved by the Bell

To use Mowbrayspeak, I hope any loan is a man and not a boy. I’d be well happy with Kipre, but bringing in a teenager seems pointless. I’d rather play Magloire or Carter. Obviously we should have invested a few quid on a centre back we could build a defence around some time ago. But that doesn’t appear to fit the master plan.

Probably caught it having talks with a new club. Didn’t buy that hamstring injury nonsense for a minute... if Buckley had changed the game positively rather than being disastrous Mowbray would’ve hailed it as tactical genius.

5/2 to score any time. That looks good value to me!

Hearing whispers of big shocks in the line up today. No more detail than that.

Superb post. I know @mheadand the Rovers Trust have been really pushing the idea of a heritage project in conjunction with the club. We touched on something on the Rovers Radio show a few weeks back when some fans were asking for a statue of Mowbray(!!!) to be erected... I know John has proposed we should have one for Bob Crompton. Every one of our fans should know his story. I used to conduct ground tours at Ewood, and the amount of history there is unreal. Tours were supposed to last an hour to 90 mins. I’d regularly do double that, or more, and always have loads more to show and talk about. It was brilliant when you had young uns on them and they were so engaged and eager. I’d make a really big deal of the Full Members Cup win... English clubs weren’t playing in Europe so it was the equivalent of the Champions League! We’ve got the shield for our three consecutive FA Cup wins back from the football museum and on display, there’s countless trophies, awards, international caps, pictures... everything! All over the place, tons not even on display. We’ve got such heritage, we need to celebrate it!

I don’t think he was. I would guess he had a similar view to the one Waggott expressed... he needed to go out and find a new manager. The best one for the job. Then Venky’s thrust Coyle on him out of left field, and he came out with that outstanding candidate shite.

While there are some player links with HSH (Smallwood, Joao, Watt) the fact our last 4 managers have come from there is very real. Bowyer was in situ, when he was sacked he was swiftly replaced by Lambert who is with HSH. Lambert walks due to not receiving the financial backing he was expecting. Cheston gets to work trying to find a replacement, interviewed several candidates fans were speculating about... the we got the “outstanding candidate” that was Coyle. Another HSH client. When Paul Senior managed to get rid of that idiot, what did we do? We employed another HSH client who was firmly on the scrap heap. Again, it wasn’t an inspiring appointment, none of us saw it coming, but in hindsight it was fairly predictable. That situation is bizarre enough, but without going into too much detail, HSH is Sheron, Honeyman, Horner. Do a quick google search... maybe throw the name Jerome in there too. I asked Steve Waggott about the relationship between HSH and the club last February. He wasn’t very happy, quite taken aback but it was undeniable the link was there. After some talk about how much he hated agents he said If and when the time comes to replace Mowbray (the way he worded it was ‘If Tony comes to me and tells me he’s had enough’, make of that what you will) he will go to market, do his due diligence, and get the best man for the job. I told him I didn’t doubt his intentions, but Venky’s May have a different idea.

This. This. This.

That chance where Nyambe crosses for Armstrong... Armstrong is wide of the near post, Brereton is on the outside of the far post. Ideally you want that ball put right in the middle of the box for an easy finish or easy header... nobody anywhere near. Our positioning in the box is always terrible!

It might be a good crossing position, but when there’s nobody to put a cross into, you need to look elsewhere for where the problem lies.

The prevailing opinion seems to be that this is all the fault of the evil EFL and poor Rovers are just a helpless bystander. I am no lover of the EFL, but I think it’s highly unlikely they have sent Steve Waggot an email this morning telling him they’ve just decided today is a bank holiday in their eyes. At the very least Rovers are guilty of selling something based on assumptions without bothering to check things thoroughly. And as for knocking a tenner off next season being the only solution. Bollocks. Just kicking the can, hoping people forget. There’s still fans who forked out for tickets to away games last season waiting for some form of recompense. That’s borderline robbery. But of course, none of this can possibly be poor on the clubs part!

I guarantee this will happen tonight... Nyambe busts a gut getting to the byeline, and a gap opens momentarily for a cross. Our left sided attacker is hovering around the far corner of the box, fairly static, being marked by their right back. One of the central midfielders is 4 yards behind him. Our central striker is dodging around the edge of the box trying to shake off his marker. He makes sideways runs without actually setting foot beyond the penalty spot. He will make a dart towards Nyambe looking for a cut back. Our right sided attacker is stood on the touch line, 8 yards behind Nyambe giving him an easy out ball, having got in his way initially. The ball will inevitably go to him, then to one of the midfielders who is in the middle third, then back to Lenihan... and we start again.

And Waggott a ready made excuse to milk the ever decreasing hardcore.

Hoping not to see Gallagher or Douglas on the pitch tonight. Kaminski Nyambe Lenihan Ayala Bell Dack Trybull Rothwell Elliott Armstrong Brereton

Yeah. That was the one where I thought maybe they had learned their lesson. Ha! It’s funny how Mowbray’s appointment is reimagined as some sort of coup. He was absolutely on the scrap heap before he came here and I bet he couldn’t believe his luck. Not a single Rovers fan would’ve appointed him if it was down to them, it was completely out of left field and the thing that set him apart from anyone else in the eyes of Venky’s was the agency that represent him. It’s worked out ok, to a point, but he should be just as grateful to us for the chance he’s had to rebuild his tattered reputation as we should be for the job he has done.

Brilliant, brilliant post! There are a lot of people asking “Who would you replace Mowbray with?” That’s a really lazy argument for keeping him. There are dozens of options out there. If the question was “Who are Venky’s likely to replace him with?” It becomes a much more valid argument.

That just sounds stubborn Chaddy. Would your position change if we lost the next three games? 5 games? 10 games?

Absolutely awful news. Sounds like he was a fantastic human being by all accounts. Seeing the best and the worst of the wrestling community today. Representatives of both AEW and WWE have been superb, from Vince and Tony Khan down. Very respectful tributes paid, and I’m sure his family will get all their support. Sadly some of the fans are showing a complete lack of humanity and decency and trying to score points off the company they don’t like.