Dolan MoM? Pathetic!

Errrrr! Shefki Kuqi…….sort of!

Agreed. He went for that cross and not even a defender’s head in the way was stopping him.

Batty was great for us. He tackled like a combined harvester but he also was always there to pass to when situations got tight. Class act.

Attack impotent. Dolan should never start, Ohashi busy but struggles to impact the play. Hedges contributes very little, Cantwell raises expectations when he gets the ball but has made a few sloppy passes today. Travis quiet. Brittain off his game today. Fortunately the defence/midfield have been solid. 0-0 a fair score.

Get him off!

Pears was very good today. It was a well-deserved win…..in truth, I wasn’t really expecting much! Cantwell is classy but spoiled a few promising attacks today by poor decision making. Travis, who I criticize regularly, has been good for a while now. This version of Travis is just what we need……good passes and not the relentless momentum killing backpasses of old. Not so sure about Batth, slow and indecisive and Hedges does nothing. We wouldn’t have seen that performance if Dolan was around either! Weimann in the right place at the right time…..twice! Nice to see a forward doing his job! Gueye looked poor again. Ohashi was better today too but no end product. Silly penalty JRC. Wasn’t it good to see Baker pop the ball in like that? Mid-fielders having a go…..who’d a thought? OH! And we played it out from the back more effectively than usual. The players I didn’t mention by name did fine too.

One of Eustace’s priorities seems to be keeping everyone involved via his use of subs. As well as adding fresh quality and variety at the appropriate time, more players are getting the chance to impress. I like it.

Yes, I wonder who’s responsible…..Gestede? It’s transformed the team and given us all something to dream about. Let’s hope that Cantwell can do that every week, a bit of guile has been sorely missed. I went down to Brunton Park to watch him last Tuesday….he was ok but it was basically Carlisle’s youth team! Duberry was sharp though.

Absolutely…..the reluctance to shoot drives me crazy! The effort from Cantwell caused mayhem too.

That was my favourite.

Long-time Rovers fans will recognise this as nothing new! A failure to deliver when the chips are down and expectations are high (usually after a heart-stirring prior performance.) I had to turn this off when it got to extra time though….it was so soul destroying. Hyam, Wharton and Pears contributed to set up the first farcical goal. Sammie made a bad error for the second (a bit like BBD had a tendency to do). And the third! I’ve always cringed when defenders pass back directly towards goal……hey - everybody mis-kicks sometimes ….but this was a classic, we’ll be talking about it for decades! It looked like Pears was pausing to collect his mis-kick on the bounce but he had sliced it so well, the ball was spinning like a top and completely fooled him. Gallagher is awful. I know he has “good” games where his gallumping presence unsettles mediocre defenders but this can never make up for his lack of ball control or his inability to get into goal scoring positions. When we are moving forward with menacing momentum….pass to Sam to kill it immediately. And Dolan! Poor decision making, being too fancy…did you see him pirouette the ball into touch? There were others I could vent about……….I’ve just seen the BRFCS ratings and no one rated well . What a shambles!

It’s true but they are the only teams in the bottom 15 to win today. It’s crazy down there! Oh! And only 4 of these bottom 15 have gained more points than us over the last 6 games! We moved up to 16th today.

Courtesy of LT: Lineker added: "They deserve credit do Blackburn. It was an inspirational performance at times against higher opposition. "Blackburn and John Eustace deserve a lot of credit. They did their team proud."

Now, that would be good!