It appears we were legged over in the summer, quite heavily, on a player Mowbray either doesn't trust or doesn't think is good enough. Lets look at it the other way - if we'd have gone out and signed 2 quality players at over-inflated fees some eyebrows would have been raised, but if those players came in and did the business we might have made the play-offs and got promoted. Unlikely, but possible. I'm sure nobody would complain about paying over the odds on a couple of players if those players gave us sufficient depth to kick on and win promotion. We'll never know the answer though, because we signed nobody and have subsequently fallen away from the pack again, but at least we can console ourselves that we 'didn't pay over the odds' whilst we stay mid table. Personally I don't think money was available, or certainly not at the level required to make worthwhile additions to the team.

Yeah, last season there was us and Wigan, by far the best equipped of clubs in that league with by far the biggest budgets, then the Shrewsbury anomaly, and other than that the rest were way behind us. Looking at it this season the top 6 or 7 seem to be further away than the rest but more closely bunched together, any only really Luton are unexpectedly there. I think Barnsley, Sunderland, Portsmouth and Charlton would have been strongly tipped to get a top 6 slot. I wouldn't have fancied our chances looking at that pack. I don't like Luton but I kind of hope they do it and get promoted, just because I would see Sunderland, Portsmouth or Charlton as a bigger threat next season, whereas Luton might struggle more. It would also be funny to see Sunderland fail to go up.

Lets be honest, for many PNE fans Rovers away is probably THE game of this season. Probably the easiest to get to, best day out, in similar fashion to our game at their place being THE game for many Rovers fans when the fixtures come out. Certainly more so than a trip to Wigan or Horwich shopping park. As such many Preston fans will pay the price of Category A tickets and an early kick off to go to the game. It isn't quite the same mentality for Rovers supporters going to Ewood. It isn't THE game, it isn't a day out on the ale or a family trip like it will be for PNE supporters. It is a strange phenomenon. When we went to Deepdale with a full away end there were only about 12000 home fans on, not much more than usual, yet previously they've brought 6000+ to Ewood. This time round I'd be surprised if it was that high as the novelty wears off a bit but I'd still expect them to bring 4,500-5,000 which is 50% of their usual home crowd. That's the issue - for the away team in these games fans will generally put up with the inconvenience as it is the big day out for them, friends and family. One game in the calendar they were always going to go to. Like us at Rochdale and Bury last season - highly anticipated away days where you go and every Tom, Dick and Harry is there for the day out. Move it to noon and the away crowd may diminish slightly, keep it at 3pm and it will still be several thousand. Keep it at 3pm and the home crowd (actual numbers of bums on seats and not the official figure) will be a lot higher than at noon. People just have a different attitude to home games than big away days.

At the moment it seems as though the intention is for Lambert to stay on post relegation. Hence we see the PR coming from Ipswich about 'our gaffer' Paul Lambert and the usual stuff from him about what a brilliant club it is, how he is going to to do x, y, z, how great the fans are etc. I suppose after the way things went with McCarthy and the outright hostility between him and some supporters they'll love having a manager telling them what they want to hear. Lambert's now in a tricky position, he probably knows he won't get a better club than Ipswich if he leaves as his spells with Stoke and Ipswich have been very poor results wise, yet his ego may struggle to take ending up as a League One manager. If he walks out he'll struggle to get back into the Championship, so he really needs to stay and get them back up, but that will be easier said than done, I don't think their squad is as strong as ours/Wigan's was last season and I think they'd struggle this season up against Sunderland, Barnsley, Portsmouth etc.

I suppose we can't really blame the club for games like Middlesbrough being on TV, but I can and do blame the club for allowing fixtures such as Leeds and Preston, which would be two of the most popular all season for home fans, to be played at noon and as a direct result of that shift enable Sky to broadcast it via the red button and deplete the number of home fans turning up. I'm still waiting, after several years, to see a proper explanation as to why Leeds and Preston have to kick off at noon when Man Utd and Liverpool can be at 7:45pm midweek and I'm still to see anyone from Rovers acknowledge that moving kick off to that time might just have some sort of negative effect on the numbers turning up to watch.

Sooner or later Mowbray is going to have to put his neck on the line with Brereton and throw him in. I agree that Ben has done little to justify a place in the team but ultimately he has cost a lot of money and the only chance we or he has of getting something out of this is for him to have more minutes to force the issue. Hiding him away on the bench every week or giving him more time to stew is only going to increase the amount of criticism towards Mowbray, especially if we're petering out to a mid table finish.

Boro, PNE, Wigan, Derby and Swansea are all going to be on Sky Sports and are all at unpopular times when crowds are always smaller than 3pm Saturday. That's 5 of 7 remaining home games on TV. Of course it won't be announced until the day or two before in some attempt to hide the news from potential buyers.

I'd like us to try something like Forest did last summer in encouraging the younger element of support. I've no complaints with my ticket price for the season but won't be impressed if it goes up again. At Forest - 4 to 11 year olds could get a season ticket for £10, 12-17 year olds would be £50, 18-23 year olds £100. Fantastic pricing and adults in most areas there are £330 so very similar to ours. Take out all the conditions, strings, hurdles, just make it cheap for those who are hopefully just getting into the habit of going every week Note that Forest got theirs on sale in February last year, and the take up was significant. We'll sit back and do nowt until months of potential sales have been lost.

We probably won't find out until June. We tend to leave it as late as possible to get the season tickets on sale whilst our rivals are getting them on sale in February. Might not make much difference to the die hards but for the floaters and drifters I'd have thought logic would suggest the longer the sales period the more are likely to be sold. We can't fall back on the old excuse 'we don't want to release season ticket info until we know what league we are going to be in'

Reading have become harder to beat recently under their new manager with a couple of decent draws but they're a poor side and struggle to get wins. I still think they'll crawl out of danger and be replaced by Rotherham before the end of the season. Only won 5 of 31 games this season but they'll be looking at this one as a must win. I'd guess at a 0-0 draw but would never be confident in us keeping a clean sheet no matter how poor the opposition. A win here would more or less secure survival in good time for a newly promoted team.

This is the problem though. Mowbray speaks about longer term development and yet Reed isn't our player, and will likely not be here beyond the summer, Rodwell is also out of contract and may not want to stick around, we simply aren't in a position to make a 'project signing'. How many of Bristol City's signings have been 'project buys'? Rothwell has barely featured because the manager hasn't played him. He's been fit and ready all season as far as I'm aware. Davenport - who is he going to ever play ahead of in this squad? Chapman is another project by the looks of things.

So what happens if we don't get the 4-5 quality signings? Either because we can't afford them, the manager can't find them or we have a repeat of Brereton and they never get in the team? What happens if we lose Dack? Does the play-off push plan get thrown out of the window? I agree Mowbray has done a good job here. As for going nowhere any time soon I find that to be concerning. Of course we all HOPE he continues to do well and by virtue of that is here long term but that SHOULD depend entirely on results and league position. We had an awful Xmas, an excellent January and now we've had two very poor results in February. I'm afraid regardless of contract situation and 'visions' for the club the manager is judged on results and if those aren't good enough then he SHOULD be under pressure from above. You seem to be suggesting that he should be safe in his job irrespective of results just because the owners like him and gave him a contract extension.

Yeah Adidas would be smart. Looking forward to a more traditional Rovers shirt next season. Not against Sky blue in principle as a one off but I do miss the proper blue. Fed up with us wearing the away shirt when it isn't necessary.

Probably realised that nobody will employ him in a managerial capacity after being on the scrapheap for well over a year. Time to do some digging into his latest club, I'm sure somewhere there'll be a 'connection'.

1000 less than we took to Preston, also a 3pm kick off. Only at Rovers do we agree to restrict our crowd potential and income to satisfy some strange policy.

Villa no better off than when Bruce was manager, but their new bloke can fall back on 'good' football as they score plenty but can't keep a clean sheet.

Another winding up petition submitted on Bolton by HMRC. About time they were deducted points for this. Not fair on clubs like Rotherham and Burton who have been fighting relegation with them over the last 2 years who pay their bills fully and on time.

Yeah I find Johnson to be very cocky and he's another one like Dyche who spends more time moaning at the officials than anything else. Bristol City have a knack of scoring late goals so we need to watch out for that. They're very good at recovering late on from losing positions or nicking wins by the odd goal.

I suppose it could be some sort of seminar or course for managers to attend at FIFA HQ and he's just visited the museum whilst there. The fact that the owners have had business interests in Switzerland and appear to be frequent visitors there adds another layer of intrigue.

Got to applaud Bradford City who have announced prices for next season (how long until we get ours released?). Any adult over 16 gets a season ticket for £150 Under 16s £100 Under 11s £25 'Flexi Cards' are £50 which entitle holders to pay £10 on the turnstiles for whichever games they fancy Now that is making an effort to get them in. Particularly after a poor season for them. Only another 3-4 months to wait until we find out what Rovers will be doing. I suspect they'll have more signed up by mid-April when the window closes than we'll have by August.

I'm an 1875 member. The only 'benefit' I have received from buying membership has been to get 5 quid in club cash back which I can only spend toward expensive merchandise. The other benefit is I get to buy away tickets in the first window of sales but really my buying history in itself should see to that, and this season it hasn't been necessary anyway as no games have sold out before general sale.

No chance. Middlesbrough have traditionally turned up at Ewood in large numbers as it is one of the closest away days for them, and given they are well in the top 6 Waggott will be expecting another big following. I don't think they are on those lines these days as the novelty of being promotion chasers has worn off a bit and Pulis football grinds them down. Think they turned up with less than 1,000 at PNE for a midweek game earlier this season. Probably get 2-3000 for a Sunday at Ewood so that will be Category A pricing, followed by the pre-match plea from Mowbray or a senior player to back the boys and turn up in your numbers. On the subject it's another home league game not taking place at the traditional time and also available on tv. as a result. Off the top of my head that's going to be Boro, Leeds, PNE, Swansea, Derby, Wigan, Reading, Sheff Utd, Aston Villa possibly, as home games that haven't been Saturday 3pm kick offs.

I don't doubt for one minute that Mowbray has a plan of what he wants to do, and from that stems recruitment and everything else, and I've no doubt he has tried and will continue to try and sell that plan to the owners and prospective players. The difficulty we have isn't really Mowbray or his plan, it is Venkys and their plan. It all hinges upon them having a plan of their own. An idea as to what they want, how they want to get it and an alternative if it doesn't work out. To me, as an outsider looking in, I've seen no evidence to suggest that is the case. It appears as though they are currently taking sensible advice and are trusting their manager to get on with the job in hand. There are no suggestions dark forces are still at work, it seems they are allowing Waggott to run the operation from Ewood Park. I think however that there are a lot of similarities to the Bowyer era, more so than people acknowledge. Lets not forget to start with that the owners didn't headhunt Mowbray to deliver on some grand plan of theirs. He arrived mid-relegation season after his awful predecessor was finally sacked, far too late. It appears the man responsible for Mowbray's appointment was Paul Senior, who subsequently left the club and his position no longer exists. It appears they stumbled across Mowbray by good fortune in the midst of chaos, liked the bloke so gave him the chance to get us back up from League One, which to Mowbray's credit he managed well. Both Bowyer and Mowbray were stumbled across by the decision makers at a time when the club was in dire straits and they brought calm heads, sense, professionalism to the operation. Both only got anywhere in the job because they recognised the need to get a direct line to Mrs Desai. Both had a lot of respect from the supporters as genuine, decent blokes doing their best. Both set out to assemble young mainly British squads of players with one eye on growth in squad value (the only way cash will be extracted from Pune is with re-sale in mind). Other than that we've replaced Derek Shaw with Steve Waggott. Neither it seems were sourced by Venkys but by people on the ground at Ewood or in this case the manager putting a good word in. The major difference, perhaps crucially, is they now officially have 'their man' involved at the club in Suhail Sheik or Pasha. As alarmed as I was by his involvement I do concede his time at the club has eventually seen an improvement in the structure and hopefully that is down to his work and the owners going with what he suggests and that hopefully will prevent a repeat of what happened previously. It's going well at the moment but it will take more than 6 months of overachieving and some semblance of a plan to convince me that lessons have been learned. Bowyer had 2 years where they left him alone to get on with it and we appeared to be a normal club. Mowbray will have reached that point at the end of this season. Lets see if it can be sustained. Hand on heart I loved Bowyer's work and the squad he put together and having watched them swing a wrecking ball at it from afar I'm reluctant to 'believe' this time round. All it takes is for one day that phone in Pune to be off the hook and for Desai or her husband to lose interest or refuse extra funding like they did in 2015 and the whole thing comes crashing down around us. Lets hope that doesn't happen again, but I think you're naïve or oblivious to what happened 4 years ago to think it can't or won't happen again.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/3800844/ex-rangers-mark-warburton-hoping-return-management-mystery-takeover/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1548586454 Sounds like this might be in relation to Bolton. A club potentially being taken over to install Warburton as manager.

I think Lambert's biggest problem since leaving Norwich has been the jobs he has gone for and taken on, all of which were poisoned chalices in one way or another. Villa were a sinking ship and had been since O'Neill walked out and their owner decided he was cutting back and putting them up for sale - Houllier, McLeish, Sherwood and Garde all came and went with no better record or worse than Lambert's there. His results were poor but I'm sure survival in the Premier League would be better for Villa than their current position. He then took on the Rovers job, very much a poisoned chalice. Whether you believe he took the job under false pretences from the owners, or just used the opportunity to reinvent himself and get himself back onto the job market, either way it was never likely to last long. His record wasn't bad, it was steady. We survived in mid-table comfort having been looking at risk of relegation mid-season. He didn't break any pots but with the squad we had I don't think our results under him were particularly poor. Wolves was a similar situation, Recently taken over by their new owners, they were in a mess after the failed appointment of Zenga and chaotic recruitment, he went in and steadied the ship and ensured they finished mid-table, he wasn't sacked, but wasn't compatible with their Portuguese agent run operation they wanted to bring in. His record at Stoke and Ipswich is dreadful but again, he's picked two poor jobs to go into there. Both clubs struggling to adjust after long term managers in Hughes and McCarthy departed. I agree he needs to stick at it with Ipswich and get them up next season to repair his reputation, I think comparing him to Coyle is absolute nonsense. Coyle's 'success' amounted to a good run of form at Burnley and Bolton and complete failure ever since. Lambert did very well at Wycombe, Colchester and Norwich and steady jobs at Villa, Rovers and Wolves. I think he is a strange man who has made some strange decisions in his time but I recognised an immediate improvement to our results when he took over and up until around February or March 2016 we seemed to be making progress - looking better organised and fitter than we had for a long time previously. A very different character to Mowbray, who seems to be more in-tune with the supporters and more relatable and crucially more willing to play the game how Venkys want it to be played, whereas at the time Lambert wasn't prepared to do it. I suspect part of that is evidenced in Mowbray not being able to get a job before us after what happened at Coventry City, whereas since walking out of Rovers Lambert has had no problems in landing Premier League/Championship jobs.