Stoke won 90% of their tackles. Rovers committed 1 foul. Who needs xg with two stats like that?

That Attenborough decision totally stunned me.

We won - a nice Stonehouse goal - but I have never seen so many grown men crying at the end of a game, even on the train back to London. And that crush getting out was scary too.

https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/webcams/keele_united-kingdom_7292467 They don't seem to do webcams in Stoke. Snow free in Crewe nearby but well covered on the highground of the Staffordshire Moorlands. With the current weather forecast I would guess we are OK if the stadium approaches are being cleared and salted. Denise Coates can probably afford the Stoke City electricity bill..

To sell a player for reinvestment, you need an offer of a decent amount of cash. Rothwell apart, that hasn't happened. And there would have been demonstrations at Ewood last January is 2nd placed Rovers had cashed in by selling to 3rd placed Bournemouth.

If postponed and we win at Bramall Lane, we are are looking at a Saturday Tuesday Thursday Monday last nine days of the season. Rovers should already be in a hotel close to the stadium and ground covering heating working but can approaches and the stadium itself be made safe for spectators?

Whenever I watch a Rovers game with non-Rovers supporters, it is always Dolan who catches their eye. That rabona cross at Leicester!

Chelsea game interesting last night. Dortmund looked the much better coached and Bellingham easily the best player on the field. But man for man the other Chelsea players were easily superior and Dortmund didn't give it much of a go considering the quality of their support.

We finished on 69 points so took just 1 point a game to the season end last year. Sheffield United and Luton in 5th and 6th both ended with 75 points. Will be devastating to only take 11 points from our 11 remaining games again this time around.

There is a lot to be proud of now.

At one point Bilic had 16 Watford players out injured. They have super stars up front and the midfield and defence are very ordinary. They are a club that would benefit from a project...

I am going to be naughty and talk about planning for the Premier League. Although in my defence, I am taking my lead from both Gregg Broughton and Jon Dahl Thomasson who have made it totally clear the project is to make Rovers a sustainable Premier League club. The parachute payments are the bain of Championship clubs >4 years outside the top flight but clubs making it into the EPL against all odds without parachute payments in recent seasons have tended to survive the first season up. One reason for this is because such clubs are not burdened by retaining players on PL wages who were too poor to shift when relegated and are proven failures at the higher level which typically bedevil the squads of yoyo sides. Forest are at the furthest extreme but a newly promoted Rovers would have a clean sheet of players on reasonable wages coming up and a transfer budget approaching £100m including wages to strengthen to decent Premier League level with. How we use this one off opportunity would determine the club's future well being for years to come. I have no doubt GB and JDT would deny it if asked but I bet they have been doing PlayStation transfers in their occasional spare moments. With the best will in the World, the Welsh FA is not playing at the level Rovers would be shopping at if the next 14 EFL games deliver us into dreamland.

Szmodics is a club legend for announcing he was going for a poo at half time when guesting on Rovers TV. I thought he under performed compared with what he did at Peterborough but since he returned from injury and got his break with the Dack injury, he has been playing brilliantly. All credit to him. Again from his stint in the commentary box, Neil Yardley asked him about players coming in and seizing their opportunity. Sammie bubbled away enthusiastically adding "and look at Dack, what a player, he's undroppable now " and his voice slowed down as the penny dropped.

Others may correct me but O'Brien only became available on either deadline day or the day before because Forest needed to complete a deal. Venky's carry the blame for an awful lot of things during their first seven years of ownership but the Company Secretary not making sure a two page form was in an email attachment on time on the night of 31 January this year is not something I would pin on them. The Brereton signing was not at such short notice and was a case of a long standing instruction from Pune to invest significant money in a young highly promising player who wouldn't break the wage structure.

Two of the three goals they scored at Millwall were straight from the set piece coach. In fact the players went over and celebrated with him. Wagner has improved them but two corners turned defeat into a win at the New Den. Millwall were caught cold. No other Championship side should be now.

It could be 10 pence, the amount is irrelevant. In the past decisions from Pune were very slow to come through. Finally, there is a mechanism and a focus to get an instant ok out of the Venkys compound. That is the point I am making.

One game at a time lads. I am just happy that no matter what happens in the next round of fixtures, we stay in the top 6. If we keep that buffer it will avoid sleepless nights about going to the New Den... Now if Sheffield United and Boro kindly find a few banana skins to slip on, there will be other types of sleepless nights. The FA Cup is a wild card- I don't expect us to come through at Bramall Lane but it is not beyond the realms of possibility. In which case we are looking at this fixture list April 7 Norwich H April 10 Huddersfield A April 15 Hull H April 18 Coventry H April 22 Wembley FA Cup Semi-Final April 25 Burnley H April 29 Luton H May 3 Preston A May 8 Millwall A May 13 or 14 Play-off first leg May 20 or 21 Play off second leg May 29 Wembley Play Off Final June 3 Wembley again FA Cup Final

You are missing my point. In the past there would have been a weeks maybe never delay on getting a decision like that. They made a decision quickly and irrespective of the conditionality and PL riches, making a 10m commitment is not a small decision. If we went up, it automatically triggered the purchase for 10m as soon as the summer window opened. From a cash flow perspective, that meant millions going out before PL riches come in.

Boro got a couple of the softest penalties you are ever going to get in this league yesterday. Reading weren't brilliant but didn't deserve to lose by 5.

I don't believe it is negligence. At Christmas last year, we were 2nd were we not? At Christmas this year, we were in play-off contention. The ownership backed management by not selling Rothwell to the club we were scrapping for an automatic promotion slot last season and have backed management again by not taking 7m or 8m (the actual offers made) for Ben when he could yet come good again and fire us back into the Prem. I believe the issue is FFP, not the Venky's being parsimonious.

Watched the extended highlights of the Stoke 5-1 demolition of Sunderland yesterday at the Stadium of Light. Sunderland were so woeful defensively that all I learnt was if we give Stoke enough gifts, they will hit 5 against us. Not entirely true because the first Stoke goal was an extremely sweet three man move passing move down the right touch line which we need to be alert to. Sunderland did carve the Stoke defence open a few times in addition to the unmarked inside 6 yard box goal they did score with. Expecting a good game and for our run of decent results at the Britannia/Bet 365/not the Victoria to continue. Should get a draw and with the squad playing so well, we could squeeze out a win.

Problem of a rock Rovers are in a tiny impoverished town surrounded by other clubs and 3 of the 7 biggest brands in global football within 35 miles of Ewood. And hard place Rovers are perennially at the FFP ceiling requiring revenue to be raised to be able to increase the budget. So Waggott has to optimise income to create budget more than a case of Pune being short on funds for the club. Which means any drop in prices HAS to be compensated by a larger than offsetting increase in gate size. We probably need 26,000 on against Reading to make a permanent low ticket price a serious proposition. Not impossible. We had 26,000 on against Oxford in League One. Average attendance was 26,000 less than 20 years ago.

Is it in entirety? Somebody got to the bungalow compound and got Madam sign off on £10m for O'brien within a couple of hours on 31 January. That is a complete change of gears in Pune. Yes the ball got dropped a few hours later in the Company Secretary office but the transfer offer suggests Venkys are much more engaged behind the scenes.

Superb wind up by Alan Nixon. Dingles suggesting Rovers give them a guard of honour welcome when they come to Ewood.

The more players we have whose places are at risk because understudies have come in and played even better, the better it is for everyone. At some point inevitably Ash Phillips and Adam Wharton will come in and displace players we currently think unreplaceable. That said, Bradley Dack thankfully showed enough both that he can play in the JDT way of football and that he is still one of the most gifted players in the Championship. My guess if we ever achieved the nirvana of the current squad 100% fit and playing to what they are currently capable of, Dack would still be an automatic pick in his favoured hole behind the front man position.