What's going on at Ewood is clearly as disaster, and the current ownership make it almost untenable to continue to support the club. But what is the perceived end goal of the campaigns to get rid of them? Rovers are losing £20m/year consistently. The wage bill is 120% of turnover per most recent accounts. And Venky's are owed £140m from the club. So at a bare minimum, there'd need to be someone out there willing to give Venky's at least the value of the clubs assets in returning for taking ownership of a business that's going to lose them £20m/year (else Venky's would be better off liquidating it). Does such a person exist? And then the reality is that the Venky's are unlikely to simply walk-away from their* £140m. So it's going to cost a good bit more than the asset value of the club. I struggle to see a way out of this.

This was a great article, thanks.

I just asked AI to produce a league table showing over/under-achievement based on total payroll and current league position. Which I would say is the standard quantitative measure of a managers performance: Difference (Payroll Rank - League Position) For each club: Payroll Rank = where they stand by wages (1 = highest spending, 24 = lowest). League Position = current standing (1 = top of table, 24 = bottom). Difference = Payroll Rank - League Position. If Difference is positive, the club’s league position is higher than its payroll rank, meaning over achievement. If Difference is negative, the club’s league position is lower than its payroll rank, meaning underachievement. Sorting by Over/Underachievement If you sort by Difference (descending), you see who’s most overachieving (largest positive) at the top, down to who’s most underachieving (most negative) at the bottom: (+10) Sunderland (Payroll 14, League 4) (+10) Blackburn Rovers (17, 7) (+7) Swansea City (19, 12) (+7) QPR (22, 15) (+6) Coventry City (20, 14) (+5) Millwall (18, 13) (+4) Middlesbrough (9, 5) (+3) Bristol City (13, 10) (+3) Oxford United (21, 18) (+3) Portsmouth (24, 21) (+1) Sheffield United (4, 3) (+1) Sheffield Wednesday (10, 9) (0) Leeds (1, 1) (0) Burnley (2, 2) (0) Watford (8, 8) (−1) Preston (15, 16) (−1) Derby County (16, 17) (−1) Plymouth Argyle (23, 24) (−3) West Brom (3, 6) (−5) Norwich City (6, 11) (−8) Stoke City (11, 19) (−10) Hull City (12, 22) (−15) Luton Town (5, 20) (−16) Cardiff City (7, 23) Biggest Overachievers Sunderland and Blackburn Rovers both have a difference of +10 Followed by Swansea and QPR at +7 Biggest Underachievers Cardiff City at −16 Luton Town at −15 Hull City at −10

I'm fairly sure we're not going to go down this season, and the bookies have us out at 9/1. But this has got shades of Steve Keane's first season all over it. And I suspect we're going down next season.

You do realise that you don't profit from a tax write off if you have to genuinely lose the money elsewhere? Do you think they're cunning plan is to divert Indian tax revenue to Sam Gallagher and co's back pockets? And where does not selling Rothwell or BBD fit in to this cunning plan?

I've been right behind JDT but I must say there's something really off about that lineup.

So he's not world class in your opinion. But he's surely still the best we've got. What do you want him to do? Retire? Southgate has completely changed the narrative about the English national team, and his results in big tournaments are incredible. There's an awful lot of good teams go into each of these tournaments and there can be only one winner each time. England under Southgate have consistently punched at & above their weight. It's hard for many to accept that that doesn't necessarily mean we win the tournaments, but there's a very strong likelihood that whoever comes next won't do as well.

We're 3rd in the league playing that way, while our squad is nowhere near the 3rd best. You can't take all the wins that it's brought and then suggest it should have been abandoned in certain fixtures with the benefit of hindsight. The plan B point is fair. I think he's doing wonderful things in playing to our strengths, which are currently defensive. I don't recall ever feeling as confident that we can hold a lead as I currently do. But it's obviously true that we've got major problems when we concede first. I think that's a symptom of where we're at. We just don't have enough forward thinking talent or speed. Fans understandably clamour for Dack, but the fact is that he's been out for years and hasn't torn it up on return. He was never a pace merchant to begin with and it's not obvious where he can come on in to our current system to make a difference. I do think it's a sign of a good managerial project that we're setting solid foundations to build from, in establishing ourselves as a solid defensive unit first and foremost. The problem here is that he went overboard in trying to play to our strengths, in our biggest derby, and it didn't work out. As soon as Burnley scored we were f***ed. For me the only real anomalous selection was Garret. I strongly suspect Szmodics would have played there had he not been ill, and would have given us far more balance. Assuming he got ill at the last minute and JDT had to make a decision between 3 young lads (Buckley, Garret and Wharton), he decided to take the defensive option. I love A.Wharton to bits but he hasn't had the best of games of late, by his own admission. In hindsight he should have played, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. In hindsight, I should probably have listened when they were teaching paragraphing back in year 7.

Our team, our squad, is nowhere near as good as Burnley's. Everyone thinks we should be 'more' up for it than Burnley. But they've got every bit the same incentive as us, and arguably more. They're at home, they're expected to win, they're currently the better side. JDT is giving game time to an awful lot of youngsters, the future. He's openly coming up and explaining that we should expect inconsistency. That's totally understandable. He's had very little time to fully get to know the squad and bring his own players in. Of those that he has, Hyam and Brittain are brilliant. Szmodics has done ok so far. There needs to be a reality check here. Anyone calling for his head is utterly deluded. He was a great choice of manager and our trajectory is clearly positive, but not in a straight line.

A very sensible post in a sea of alarmism and borderline shameful cringeworthy hammering of JDT. We're 3rd in the league with a very average group of players and probably the youngest squad. He got it wrong today but that's always easy to identify in hindsight and we really didn't look that threatened until Gally went off injured. Burnley have a far more talented group of players than we do at present. The bookies had us 4/1 against and they're not often wildly wrong. A bit of perspective eh.

On the very off chance that anyone is in Bangkok on Sunday, give me a shout.

This is a great line-up, but i'd be amazed if he didn't play both Szmodics and Travis in the away leg of the derby. Kaminski Hyam Ayala Wharton Brittain Hedges Morton Travis Szmodics Gallagher Brereton-Diaz

A superb first half from Gally yesterday, but it doesn't half make me thing of an old Charlie Munger fable. “A man has this wonderful horse, it's got an easy gait, good-looking, but occasionally it gets dangerous and vicious. The man goes to the vet and says ‘What can I do about this horse?’ And the vet says ‘That’s a very easy problem and I’d be glad to help you. The next time your horse is behaving well, sell it."

Buckley is at least a very talented player when it's going well. How Gallagher has made it this far in the game is just absolutely beyond me. I just can't envisage him doing anything other than showing himself up in any training drills that would require a first touch.

It's lost so much of its lustre that I see it akin to international weekends these days. It obviously shouldn't be like that. It should be exciting to have another competition to go far in, irrespective of league form. But as it is I'll be more than happy if we win our next league game and get the rest periods for the run-in.

I've not watched a full Rovers game this season before that, but Buckley looks extremely comfortable on the ball and very clearly has something about him that's rare at this level. Him and Rothwell are both fantastic ball carrying, forward looking midfielders. Makes a huge difference to have 2 players like that, as our forwards, effective as they have been, are nothing like as technically gifted.

Absolute dog turd stream tonight. Buffering every 30 seconds

£20

I can't for the life of me find a conclusive answer to this, perhaps someone can help: If I buy a monthly pass today, does it expire/rebill at the end of this calendar month? Or is it 30-days from now?

For sure. And nobody is going to turn down the chance if it's presented. It's a net gain even if you come back down with zero points. But to talk about it as though we're realistically anywhere near that level is a bit pie in the sky.

Yeh, we could've been 6th if we were good enough, but we're just evidently not. Getting into the play-offs would give us 2 more games that we'd be highly likely to lose. If we made it to the prem we'd surely get absolutely mullered for 38 games. We're just nowhere near that level at the moment. But far better to be here than where Wigan or Bolton are. Let's hope we can improve next year.

It's nothing to do with Rovers. Completely out of their hands.

How can you not feel for the lad. I find it bizarre that fans are not able to comprehend that the situation is anything but his fault. Clearly he's well out of his depth and it looks like a complete waste of £7m, but he's the last person to be blamed for the situation.

It seems that everyone forgets that he's also the man that put the squad together. If he's to take the sole responsibility for the £12m on the two misfiring forwards then he must surely also take the credit for the best squad we've had in a good few years.

Does anyone know what the latest is on Davenport? He seems to be the forgotten man.