Mowbray not flawless. We do lose games through his selections, tactics and substitutions we should otherwise be getting points from. But in a dirty industry of mega egos and prize shits I am deeply pleased we have a human being who fundamentally tries to be decent and do his very best as Rovers manager. Mowbray is a welcome change considering the open sewer we had running through the heart of the club in all too many of the recent seasons. I am grateful Rovers now look like a football club in senior management. Sure not of the calibre of Williams Finn and Hughes but what we have now is a blessed relief compared with the rest of this decade. I am also grateful that I no longer shame for being a Rovers fan and can feel genuine optimism and excitement about approaching games and for the future of the club. Mowbray is the football boss and just as the criticism stops on his desk so should the recognition praise and thanks for us being in a better place now, a much better place in reality, than I think any of us could have realistically forecast when he first walked into Ewood.

Only saw him play once and that was for Villa. Rip, another legend gone too soon.

Storming come back from 2 down and 1-3 to win 5-3 away at Brighton with Samuel and Chapman braces.

Tosin is a nice problem to have when he is fit again.

I hope they have a sports psychologist working with him because he looks like he is playing with fear from the tiny bits I have seen of him.

January window

Swansea look like this season's Norwich- selling top players and raising over £25m only to emerge a much stronger outfit. Early days but I wouldn't say we are in an easier league compared to last season. Strikes me all the clubs have enough about them to be able to punish opponent's weaknesses as Stoke and Huddersfield are discovering all too painfully. Reading absolutely clobbering Cardiff was a wake-up to everyone that there are no easy games in the Championship. Leeds v Swansea tomorrow will expose credentials. Thus far Leeds have had one fixture against likely challengers (won 3-1 at Bristol City) and Swansea have had one (drew 1-1 at Derby) whereas Rovers have their third game against a club in the bookies' list for the top 6 tomorrow. I hope we can get a point at West Brom- if the side we know can turn up performs at the Hawthorns there is no reason we should return empty handed. However, the real test of Rovers' ability to kick on are the fixtures after the international break in September- Reading, Millwall and Luton- if we can win those games reliably, we are serious about challenging for the play-offs this season.

FISHER not first choice at Northampton but is getting some games. That performance at Sheffield United has killed Leutwiler's prospects at Ewood so bringing in a serious challenger for reserve keeper shirt makes sense- even if he is a Crewe reject.

This is the first I have heard about audits looking for cash drains. Cash may has been spent hugely inadvisably particularly in the first four years but Mrs D has always kept a tight system of authorising and accounting for expenditures.

Got to remember relegation in 2016/17 was an existential crisis. All options would have been on the table for consideration by the KPMG and Deloitte teams including highly distasteful ones. So look at the club now compared with the one in 2016 and there has been a wholesale revolution. Even more so than in 2015 when Balaji's preferred funding method suddenly dried up and we had a Chairman we were openly slagging off in a Court of Law... The route chosen in 2017/18; take a £20m hit including retention of Category A academy thankfully was rewarded by immediate promotion with a squad and management decently assured of staying up. Again retaining a cat A academy doesn't guarantee anything but it now looks feasible that having a Premier League level youth facility could be beginning to yield Premier League level young players. Doubtful Rankin-Costello, Travis, Buckley, Butterworth are going to be the backbone of a promotion winning squad this season but 20/21 could be a different matter. There are other players who will be coming into contention too.

They were the consulting divisions of accounting firms accompanied by their less illustrious bean counting colleagues- hence the eye watering six figure bills And with the money at the top end of football these days, the city offices of consultancies are getting quite a bit of work from football and building considerable expertise.

They only survived because the Davies Family took another huge hit through their trust so that Anderson didn't. After Rovers' experience of Jack's family utterly resenting his involvement with Rovers, Bolton can be immensely grateful to Davies and all his family.

sorry repeat post

The strategies were written by the consultants in the summer of 2017 and seem to have been adhered to. So no you won't see any difference until their next strategic review which would probably come around 2022 unless something completely unexpected happens. For what its worth, I think if you watch is happening and being said, the strategy is aiming for promotion in 20/21 to the Premier League with the fundamentals of a squad capable of staying up.

Yes Strategy. The £500K plus spent on consultants in the close season of 2016/17 will have given them a strategic bible for Rovers which it would appear they are adhering to.

In the absence of the injured Aderarbaiyo, Brereton, Butterworth and Davenport, the team picks itself (Samuel and Gladwin obviously not deemed ready yet either): Walton, Bennett, Lenihan, Williams, Cunningham, Travis, Johnson, Downing, Dack, Gallagher, Graham. Nyambe and Bell improved but didn't do enough to force back into contention while Rothwell equally hasn't shown enough when on the park while Armstrong is at least 50% liability. Would like to see Rankin-Cistello and Buckley get game time off the bench. Both are going to be big players for us, quite possibly this season. Like Cardiff, let's assume this is a top 6 6 pointer so we have to avoid defeat. Back to clean sheets please. We have too much going forward to remain scoreless- the stats for shots on target are improving.

If you look at number 5 on that list, you can probably see the Venky's strategy.

Sheffield United v Sunderland if only both results had been reversed...

Stewart Day rightly gets completely trashed by the Financial Times this morning. https://www.ft.com/content/5f185398-c9a6-11e9-a1f4-3669401ba76f?segmentId=a7371401-027d-d8bf-8a7f-2a746e767d56

Seen the highlights. Horribly let down by two goal keeper foul ups and a penalty kick as bad as they come.

A huge amount of inaccurate stuff about Rovers on this thread. I wish fans would have taken as much interest in 2011 and 2012. Glad Gigg Lane is covenanted which leaves me wondering what the heck Blackburn lad Stewart Day ever thought he was doing there.

Bolton administration suspending winding up. Staff jobs safe for time being.

At face value... Stewart Day had sold the stadium which has a debt on it of around £3.7m. The interest charged, eye watering. He had sold car parking spaces, around 250 of them, at £10,000 a pop. Without a deal to settle these liabilities there was no hope. So that’s £6.2m A tweet from Andy Holt who was helping C&N due diligence into Bury. Blackburnian Day is emerging as the true villain in this story it would appear.

From the stats we totally bossed that one. Shame stupid mistakes let us down so badly. As the BBC wrote about their goals "Poor from Blackburn"

The problem with this is that what should be our regular back 4 are being taken apart by a bunch of reserves.