Huddersfield had enough good chances to have won easily but statistically we comfortably dominant. Pears looked very confident and was just about the only Rover to do so. Adam Wharton anticipated so well for his goal. Chrisene totally frustrated. So many opportunities to drive into open space and was cutting back inside every time. Makes the QPR game more anxious.

Rumours Mowbray is bidding for Gallagher.

Looks the strongest team we could currently put out. Will be a big blow if we don't win. Dropping from 10 unavailable to 4 out injured transforms the bench as well.

I would start with both Gallagher and Garrett. Our confidence is bound to be brittle but from what I have seen of Huddersfield they can be pressured into giving goals away. Gally and Garrett are a totally different proposition for Huddersfield defenders to face from Leonard and Moran.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/mancity-premier-league-charges-relegation-31915493?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mirror+-+Football+Newsletter_newsletter&utm_content=&utm_term=&ruid=65793af6-e550-407a-9098-19d8798f0366 Well that's one promotion spot tied up next season.

Quite a big game this one. Not losing is rather important. No reason why with the returnees from injury and illness we shouldn't return to November's form. Despite the recent rotten run, JDT has some nice selection headaches.

I fell for an AI generated hoax.

Not at all. Yes things could have been handled much worse but SWAG is still the first person I would fire. Looking backwards, he completely ducked the O'Brien fiasco and is speaking out of turn about senior colleagues but more importantly, looking forward, he is the wrong man for the job. He doesn't have what we need going forward under most scenarios. I would only keep short term if Venky's get an ambiguous answer from the Indian Courts later this month.

Very interesting the LT have focused on the first person I would fire too. IF there were to be a change of ownership, Rovers would need a CEO with far more JUDGEMENT, MOTIVATION, COMPETENCE and RELEVANT EXPERIENCE than SWAG has. In the more likely even of Venky's staggering on, Rovers need a CEO with more ENERGY and ORIGINAL THINKING than Waggott is ever likely to bring now after Donkeys' years in the seat.

No matter how bad we were at Huddersfield and West Brom, it is still a big ask for a bottom three club to make up 10 points in 19 games. All of Huddersfield, QPR and Wednesday have to win at Ewood to send us down.

I didn't have our play-off prospects to be at an end at 4.45 on 13 January when looking forward to the 23/24 season last August. But here we are. To go down, all of Huddersfield, QPR and Wednesday have to win at Ewood so being realistic a long tail of mediocrity is what we have to look forwards to unless the Cup can lift our spirits. I never expected I would be desperate for the return of Pears but here we are. Goals 1 and 3 only needed Wahlstedt to grab a ball in easy reach. A keeper on top form makes a decent attempt at stopping 2 and 4 also. I understand the experiment of Brittain and Carter at full backs but it didn't work and doesn't say much for Chrisene as a loan signing. Garrett has got to keep his place and Moran lose his. Garrett was the only bright spark yesterday. Gally showed us what we have been missing. Physical presence and a first touch which breaks down our forward momentum. Oh dear.

Astonished there isn't a melt down on here about Sweden almost certainly offering JDT the national job. And remember he won the title twice with Malmo. To be honest with the absence of Swedish players coming through (Walstedt and Ayari excepted of course 🤔) the Swedish national team is a bigger opportunity to destroy a reputation than Rovers and even less upside. So I think it is only 50/50 JDT would take it. Irrespective of the football, virtually every interview JDT gives, his humanity and intelligence leaves me with a happy smile in stark contrast to his predecessor who was perfectly OK . JDT is totally different class and not only for his Champions League Medals and Danish top leading scorer..

Hopefully you won't get to hear "Houston, we have a problem" from The Hawthorns Have a great time!

Pears played midweek and said today's bench warmers will get minutes tomorrow if they don't get minutes today.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67948389 Extraordinary story!

We are bottom of the current form table folks.. Another way of looking at it, this is a 6 pointer against one of the two in the play off places we realistically could still catch. Hull doubled over us so... West Brom have been unpredictable and we should have our tails up. A draw slightly more likely than a home win with Rovers prevailing a distant prospect.

So got a L2 side at home AND a glamour tie. Going to get punished for all this good fortune with Plymouth or Brentford away in the 5th round...

Rovers employ around 240 people. The non-playing staff don't live on fresh air. Given the execs and highly trained specialists in the operation, they could add as much as 10m in wages and wage costs (remember employer's ERNI)

Hmm. I have just posted that SWAG fails on judgement trust and integrity - the most basic requirements of a CEO. BUT I acknowledged that he was plunged into a situation sometime in 2023 in which he had no idea when and how much the next lifeline cash would come from Pune.. Believe me that could have been handled much worse than he did. AND If no more Indian cash were forthcoming, keeping us in the Championship and the young player development were the basic essential requirements to make Rovers a rescuable proposition. That was the stark reality we were facing and JDT getting us into play off contention until the protracted injury crisis took its toll was a phenomenal achievement using playing resources GB had rustled up out of empty crisp bags.

Look at all the new contacts. Are they being signed with no wage increases? There's your answer.

There is a lot of discussion of "our CEO" as JDT calls him elsewhere. Swag has as hard a time managing the Venky's slashing of budgets as any at Ewood. Some of his decisions have been bizarre in the lack of sensitivity to his paying customers (closing the Blackburn End and Digital Day) but by and large he seems to have managed relatively well. My objection to him is he has broken the two cardinal rules of being a CEO 1) Not standing up to take responsibility for an egregious error on his watch. Bad enough to be at the Birmingham game on transfer deadline day which is dereliction of duty but not to stand up and be counted for not having failsafe processes in place to avoid the January deadline fiasco last year (which cost us O'Riorden's fee in legal bills for the appeals) was totally unacceptable. 2) Even worse, to have undermined Broughton (who did stand up and dig SWAG and Silvester out of the mire last January) with not one but a series of comments in effectively a public forum in his meeting with Glen and co. is totally intolerable. I maybe wrong but I get the impression he is miffed at the "sexy" football meddling part of his role has been taken away from him.

Doesn't take a genius to work out that Blackburn with Darwen is not unusually highly represented with people with debit and credit cards holding unspent balances in the first week after the Festive Season. All Digital Day has probably done is send a message to the hard working fan facing people in ticket sales that SWAG would get rid of them if he could.

As Ennis and Telalovic have shown, we don't have the cash to buy a reliable Championship goal scoring striker. So we gambled on those two and it is no adverse reflection on the recruitment team the gambles haven't worked out yet. On the balance of probabilities, one or other of them will have a purple patch- with Ennis it is possibly behind him at Plymouth last season. It is only 7 January and we are already two in, two out (or is it four in four our counting our junior loan recalls and sending outs). I suspect this month is going to be an exceptionally big jigsaw puzzle for January so I am not freaking out over stories of Leonard and Garret going out on loan much as I'd like to see them stay. For what its worth, I think Hayden Carter will make a very useful PL central defender and is far more PL-ready than Adam Wharton. My central prediction is there will be five first teamers in before the window closes which could rise as high as eight if the Carter rumours are true.

In Telalovic defence, the Cambridge lads were putting some excellent blocks in and every shot Telalovic hit got blocked. Even the neutral commentator said so at one point.