It’s only an hysterical overreaction if there is another midfielder coming in. We’re not talking 4th or 5th choice squad player here. Whoever comes in will be 3rd choice midfielder (after Trav and Tron). That person has to be decent enough that if god forbid either of those gets another injury and misses a significant number of games that they can be a competent regular first teamer. Baker, whilst a downgrade, looked ok. Stoke fans said he’d be ok. Whereas Plymouth fans are pissing their sides here.

And they still think he’s been shit. Think about it.

Are Blackburn’s recruitment team on smack?

Robbie Fowler and Wes Brown say hello. Fowler was 'only' 33 and even looked technically awful in the minutes we saw him.

I think that applies to the guaranteed minimum away tickets which must be made available which is the lower figure of 10% capacity or 2000 tickets. If, on top of that allocation, Leeds want to say "we will give you an extra 1000 but you must take them all" that will be outside of the EFL rules. Edit - a quick search found this https://oxvox.org.uk/leeds-ticketing/

Actually this league is littered with Hedges and Dolan. They are bang average championship fayre.

Averages were 88, 97 (Smith game), 90, 88. He’s a big 180 hitter but then, as you say, will follow it with a 45. Premier League line up is predictable. Aspinall and Price are somewhat lucky, having been outperformed by Chisnall, Heta and Clayton over the last couple of years, but are probably seen as a better watch. As I said previously, I just find it a drawn out tournament with little jeopardy till near the end played by generally the same players chosen to some degree on “character”. But that’s just me. Just for reference, www.dartsrankings.com is a great site for tracking player performance with regards to money and rankings (it’s always updated live even as tournaments are played, and www.mastercaller.com a good one for checking player performance (along with good old flashscores for individual match stats).

I'm meant to be working in Germany that week. I found out our January scheduling just before Christmas. I'd normally be on 16.40 flight from Munich to Manchester which arrives around 6pm. So I either miss the game, or I piss around telling our parent company they need to move a production slot. As it is, they are quite understanding so I will be coming back a day earlier. Due to work, I always anticipate missing some midweek games. But I'm already now having to miss Portsmouth in a couple of weeks (which was meant to be a weekend game) and Sky potentially meant I missed the Preston game. Still, at least the money Rovers pocket from this TV deal is being used to help subsidise my season ticket to make the fact I miss quite a few more games than I used to more palatable. Oh wait....

People are missing the point. If the manager and footballing staff want to (need to) do it to fund incomings (whether that be Mowbray or Gestede / Eustace) then it’s their job. They should be allowed to if it is within agreed budgets. Whether you, I or the owners disagree shouldn’t matter. The Dolan situation is purely hypothetically but whether the fee is 1.5mill or 4 mill is irrelevant. If the owners don’t trust the footballing staff’s judgement then they should be employing someone they do trust.

I’ve not been following the Rothwell discussion as it was painful to catch up on, but in this scenario if Eustace and Gestede both agreed then absolutely he should be sold. It’s a no brainier. You have to let the football people make the football decisions.

Which will tell us a lot about this window.

I’ve wrote that lad off. Talented, but there’s a reason he’s fallen from Barcelona to Liverpool to Ewood.

With regards to the attendance, the Preston home game is coming up at the end of the month. Can we attract half of the walk ons we had yesterday to that one? Will our ‘ground security team’ and the police be happy to give Preston the full end at 8pm on a Friday night ?

If Duru isn’t fit Garrett may well go from unable to get in Bristol Rovers first team to starting for us in the cup.

Do us a favour. Leave it 48 hours next time.

It’s actually difficult to put out a respectably strong team here and rest players. You want to drop one of Batth or Hyam for this game, but brining McFadz in usually means 3 at the back, so you need another. JRC will start but that could mean either at RB or midfield. Leonard should also get the nod up front. Other than that, it’s whether you want to throw someone like Toth, O’Grady-Macken or Litherland in and see if they sink or swim. Baker and ACD haven’t played much football so I presume they will get the nod. Dolans been in and out the side recently. It comes down to who do you definitely not want injured, and for me that’s Tronstadt, Brittain and the two centre halves.

Portsmouth is the 15th.

What a terrible Christmas that was for Rovers. Lose to that lot, lose to Hull and Millwall and the only teams we take points from are the ones who can stop Burnley getting promoted.🙄

He said there were players who he no longer wanted to take chances with now they have “achieved their goal”. He said they had been ‘carrying niggles’ He then benched Graham and dropped Raya, Bennett, Conway and Dack. In one of the Podcasts he did after he left the club DG said the players wanted to play to make sure they won the league.

I remember the period you mean. I was thinking that and Ohashi been playing they wouldn’t have been able to do it, but there is little pressing by Gueye from the front. For that spell Burnley looked pretty on the ball without doing much with it. But other than that they were far from a class above anything. They had 9 touches in our box all game. What they are is a very good defensive unit with two excellent Championship centre halves who have played almost every game. But as an offensive unit they are pretty poor.

I’d be happy with either. Schlupp still regularly plays premier league games, and some Palace fans are calling for him to start in front of Eze. I’d be amazed if he ended up here.

My biggest gripe with Mowbray was actively deciding not to try to win league one once we had got promoted. That even annoyed the players.

Depends how they treat this transfer window. If nobhead Barnes is their idea of reinforcements up front they will struggle. But if they got someone half decent in then they’ll go up.

Thought the atmosphere was pretty flat by derby standards from both ends. Sat in JW DE and until they scored you wouldn’t think they had all the bottom tier. The last time we played them at Ewood was far better. Maybe the difference between an evening kick off and a lunchtime kickoff in sub zero temperatures.

I doubt we would as Travis would have dropped in to the Tronstadt role, and Baker would still have come in.