No urgency. You can’t force it, I get that, but the central defenders are far too slow to get it forward.

Tronstad struggling with the team’s shape and speed of the game.

I’d be livid if it was given against us, is the thing. We need to permanently make space for Hill, he’s adding a lot of security.

Weird line up, but I don’t hate it (save for a recognised striker and Siggy not starting). Dolan’s started brightly, as have the front four as a whole. Hyam storming forward as a stopper is a role he is visibly not comfortable with. Weird one that we keep asking it of him. He’s positionally solid, dashing forward nullifies this trait. Carter’s clumsy, so I get why you wouldn’t want him doing it, but maybe just don’t have a player doing that? Intrigued to see what happens, we need to walk away with something here and a clean sheet is top of the wishlist.

In the end, we didn’t have the killer instinct or the stamina to stand up to this challenge. “Men against boys” is probably a fair assessment, literally and figuratively. Their forward line wages are probably our whole squad’s wages and while that’s not the most telling of metrics, it’s a good shorthand for what we saw today: a gulf in quality. I don’t dislike our shape and formation in certain games, I think it can get us somewhere. Today, though, we clearly needed three in the middle. It should have been a three, with Sigurdsson, Moran and Szmodics up top. A much closer affair, likely. “We’re going to score more than you” only works when you actually do that. Somewhat prone to overthinking it, but this style of play is set up for developing players that will go on to bigger and better things. Those who give their all in our squad deserve better, but this is what the CEO has publicly instructed the manager to do. The manager could merely be giving the CEO what he wants. Szmodics, Moran, Brittain and Pickering had good games. Carter and Wharton could do with a spell out of the first team. I’d be cautious to add Hyam to that, but he’s looked poor recently. We move on, Coventry is a tough-but-winnable Wednesday night challenge and QPR should net three points. COYB.

Good finish but Leo was barely competing for that. 4-1 is poor, even against the team I think wins the league at a canter.

He’s not able to do the full 90. Don’t think he has the fitness (yet) to do that and his mistakes creep in as the game goes on. Some excellent moments but the mistakes and the fitness need to improve. Fingers crossed for a 5-minute Semir hat trick? “Give the lad a chance” I believe the shout is?

All rather aimless at the minute, but 20 minutes left, so we have to be a bit more strategic than tactical and stay in the game long enough to push towards the end and try to knock the wind out of Leicester’s sails. A draw here is a good result, playing to keep that aim alive is alright. I want more than we have on the pitch, unfortunately. Dolan and Markanday have basically the same attributes and flaws, which are easy to marshal. There’s no recognised striker, no aerial threat. We’re hoping for Sammie to find a second rabbit in today’s hat, which is a big ask of him every week.

He’s played one good through ball and couldn’t get on the scoresheet in a 5-2 hammering of Cardiff, so you can see why.

Yeah. Siggy will feel he had more in him, but I’d rather have him available for more games and fewer minutes. He’s had a good game today and looked neatly aligned with the other forwards. But I want him starting the next game and the one after and so on.

You’ve got to use some kind of indicator when you’re being sarcastic, people will get upset.

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

Pickering does well there to cover for Hyam and Pears’ inadequacies. And Adam Wharton dawdling. Can see that the effort of the opening hour causing mistakes. Markanday is done for today, decision making has been poor and it’s causing moves to break down.

Think that was proven a myth?

It’s less than 20% of games played, the table is always slightly exaggerated at this stage. If we’re there or lower by November, then it’s a time to get concerned.

I’ve honestly always liked him. Great story, great player. Plus he has to put up with that for a wife, so he’s got a free pass from me. She must be a nightmare.

That’s a well-worked goal and a magnificent finish.

We’ve had a good pop at them here and probably unlucky to only have one. Expect the next 15 to be in their favour as they grow into the game.

I haven’t lamented the Kaminski sale to date, I’m a believer in constant regeneration, but you have to wonder if Kaminski causes or allows the volume of goals we’ve conceded. I don’t think he can be that much worse at distributing the ball than Pears seemingly is at literally every other goalkeeping task. I don’t know what Leo looks like, have t seen the Carabao games, but if the staff don’t think Leo’s better than Pears, then what else can he do?

Fettis was pretty bad.

Telalovic is some distance from being the answer to the striker problem. Unfortunately for him, he’s going to need to find a lot extra in his game to challenge, as evidenced today. Leonard would have got the nod if fit and Telalovic doesn’t get the nod as the only recognised, fit striker. Even still, there’s four players with goals to their name up top. It’s a dynamic front four, but one of compromise. Sammy’s not a natural centre forward and does prefer to find deeper pockets of space/play between the lines, so cutbacks from the bylines could find nobody in the middle. I’m not optimistic, I think two in the middle will struggle unless they are responsible and switched on, but JDT may view home advantage as something to press. An opportunity for the players to impress against one of the top teams in the league. I said earlier in the week that this game won’t define our season, but we should be aiming to give a good account of ourselves. If we have ambitions of premership football, we need to be causing problems for and bloodying the noses of teams like Leicester.

Really poor decision, as was Macallister’s earlier in the season. It can get rescinded, they can suspend the officials involved for a week, but the impacts that each has on the games are irreversible. They might yet win this one, but I’d be asking Howard Webb for the head of the next official to incorrectly award a red card against one of my players, if I were Klopp. I’d probably go direct in the match itself. EDIT: ref’s got the look of Steve Kean about him, so he’d definitely get a whack from me.

Feel a bit for Buckley, I’d initially thought Wednesday would do alright (after watching their second leg semi-final and playoff final appearances) and try to vaunt up the league. He’s somehow managed to walk into a bigger shambles than Ewood. Glad he’s getting minutes and I’m certain he’ll learn an awful lot between now and January, but I’d be of a mind to recall him if their downward spiral were to continue. There are only so many positives you can take from getting beat most weeks.

It’s a narcissistic character trait to wade into subjects outside of your own expertise (irony alert on this post) and there’s a clear case for business leaders who take a shining to the limelight to be narcissists, whether natural-born or acquired. The reason we see so much failure of football club ownership, I believe, is because the people who decide that owning a football club is something they’d like to do - usually despite not really being deep-pocketed enough, being savvy enough or even being fans of the club - aren’t up to it and are too stubborn to recognise their shortcomings, as is the case with a lot of narcissists. Whether you deserve the praise or not (and I firmly believe our current owners don’t, for example), when running a business that is successful, you’re liable to develop an inflated sense of self. What we’re seeing with a lot of the incompetent owners in the football system is the perfect storm of people who believe they cannot fail and market conditions that they simple cannot contend with. It’s not unique to football (see technology companies that fail after raising eye-watering sums and squandering it all), but it seems that football has unique outcomes. When a football club fails, a town and a community suffers. The very football pyramid itself suffers. When a startup that caters to a ridiculous niche serving little to no purpose fails, it affects the employees and investors’ portfolios but nothing much wider. There simply needs to be an evaluation of what a football club is, above and beyond its fundamental status as a vehicle for capital/limited company/“business.” I think I’d hoped the independent regulator/governing body/whatever that’s been mooted/proposed would be in effect and beginning to challenge the existing system. As it is, the body that governs the top level of our domestic game has fostered, promoted and sustained the existing paradigm, which is inherently unsustainable and very possibly a poster child for the question, “what happens when the worst people you can imagine chase the most amount of money, with the least amount of forward planning and oversight?” I think we’re all at least loosely aware of the “50+1” model in Germany, but even that is a one-club top league, basically, so there’s clearly no silver bullet. I believe football clubs are assets of community value and should have safeguards around them. Part of that should be community ownership and I think only when feckless owners can be challenged and punished for mismanagement (the owners, not the football club) will you see fewer chancers riding roughshod over the clubs, as we see currently. I’ll admit that it could be confirmation bias, but I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Tony Bloom’s measured and sustainable approach at Brighton came from an owner who is a lifelong fan. Same goes for Matthew Benham. Of course, they’re very likely to be exceptionally capable (I know some that work for Tony Bloom’s firm and attest to that) but they are examples of what happens when owners think not what their purchase of a football club can do for them, but what they can do for their (in the sense that Rovers are “ours” as fans) football club.

Pears starting is a real head-scratcher, but he’s mentioned training performances and we know he expects consistently good performances there before he lets a player into the first team. I can only chalk it up to something on the training ground. Flip side (and this is a reach): he’s hanging Pears out to dry against an almost laughably proficient attacking side, in Leicester. He could concede a bucketload against them. After that, Pears would have no complaints being dropped. Think we’ll see Telalovic up top. My opinion on him after his initial introduction hasn’t changed and this is a very tough ask against the defence that Leicester has. Best hope for us is he can provide an outlet to hold the ball up and play in on-running midfielders, which to be fair to him, his through ball to Szmodics demonstrated he can do. The reactive move to facing Leicester would be Wharton and Tronstad in the middle. I’m not convinced Travis has the sense of positional responsibility to provide cover that I believe Tronstad has. I’d have liked Hedges in as an outball and catalyst for moves, as well as good cover for right back. JRC should start if we have the above middle pairing, to provide a body in midfield and someone with a bit of natural spark when carrying the ball. Brittain has been very solid, though and JRC hasn’t quite hit last season’s heights in his appearances so far. I expect Brittain to get the nod. Pickering is going to get targeted, meaning we need somebody tracking back from the left. Moran has done this to an extent, but I think Siggy was pushing harder on that front, in his cameos. Whether he’s got enough in the tank to start is probably the decider. This is a v tough ask, so I don’t think our season hangs on it and won’t be too concerned with a loss, unless we ship a lot of goals, which is a danger. Having said that, losing is a bad habit and three in the league is a confidence knocker. Hoping for a 3-2 win, expecting the reverse result.