I think so. Even when he was subbed off it felt like a farewell to the crowd. Kind of felt sad in a way, as he has stepped up of late and has become an important squad member. It's one of those, where another player looks to be leaving just as he is showing some form. Not again, is my thought. Are there better players out there than Dolan? Yes. Will this lot replace him with better? That's the issue. If he is leaving, let's hope it is in spectacular fashion at Wembley.

A massive three points. Unbelievable to think we are still in it when it looked like the season was over. Have to give credit to Ismael and the team for the late surge, despite how his reign started. We owe Sheff Utd and Wilder one. Bring 'em on. Also, how brilliant would it be if PNE, yes PNE, were to help us make it into the top 6 and go down at the same time. Their forum would explode. Roll on next weekend.

Get in!

Superb finish from Cantwell!

1-0 Watford. We just can't get it done when it counts. The repeated tale of the last 15 years.

Sounds very quiet inside Ewood. Nerves all round, I think. Flat performance, apart from the final minute of the half where we picked up the pace slightly. Haven't looked like scoring though. Needs somebody like Kargbo to liven things up and Dennis to finish a chance off. Watford lucky not to be down to 10. Their centre back is a red card in waiting. We should be targeting him right from the off in the second half.

"I think our fans...they still have in their mind the Premier League title, which is great, it's 30 years ago when Mr Walker was spending a lot of money at the club to transfer, to bring players in. Premier League money, which is completely different. Now, we are in the Championship for over 10 years now, so you have to understand that you cannot just spend the money how you used to do and, erm, we have to be creative in the way we recruit players". (Gestede) I'm going to say this politely. I think you are being played, Rudy. Do yourself a favour and walk away. You do not have knowledge of the past 15 years at this football club, that's despite you playing for us. You have shown that you do not understand why many of us strongly dislike this hierarchy. IMO, you have been fed total rubbish and are making yourself look ridiculous in these interviews. There's still time for you to walk away, just like those before you did. NOBODY is asking any of you to do what Uncle Jack did. NOBODY is expecting fees of £10m, £15m, £20m to be spent on players. This is a false narrative. He mentions early on in the interview that the owners watch our games, they ask about players, the team and so on. How would Rudy know any of this? He said himself in the Big Sam interview, that he has never spoken with them directly. He is therefore, merely repeating what he has been told about the owners. In the three stooges interview, it was Pasha who said, with a chuckle, "I know people don't believe it, but the owners watch every game, they follow every game back in India". Waggott has said in the past, "I can't risk the future of the club by overspending". In this interview, Rudy says "we can't overspend and go for promotion as we would risk the future of the club". From now on, I won't be reacting to anything that Gestede says. It's obvious he hasn't a clue. I have said it before and some might not agree, which is fair enough. I don't think Rudy is a bad guy, but he is showing extreme naivety in this role. He has landed a great opportunity here, he's trying to learn the role, he's trying to communicate as he sees best, but it is coming across terribly. It gets worse with each interview because a) he is inexperienced and b) he is metaphorically reading from an oft repeated script. A script which makes certain people seem like poor, innocent lambs, who are being bullied by spoilt, entitled fans. Ratings are low and the script writers are worried, so the new angle it seems is to have viewers genuinely believe that we want a repeat of 1995 and nothing less. Unbelievable. Good work Eddie and the team on conducting this interview. You guys did well to keep it cool and professional.

Another top striker to have played for Rovers. Makes me both happy and sad to think of him playing for us. Just as he said in that message. Happy, due to the calibre of striker he was. He still had the class even in his mid 30s. Sad, because he was here during an abysmal time with darkness surrounding the place. Fantastic to see him support us. Hopefully, more to follow.

Said I'd do a summary for those who don't want to watch it but might be interested in knowing, so here goes: 10:15 - Rudy is asked why Eustace left. He said he doesn't know the exact reason why, but was told it was for personal reasons, to be closer to home. He then says he heard it was for some other reason, but that he believes it was for personal reasons. He doesn't seem to be in the loop, does he? 27:25 - Natalie asks him where the money is from Wharton and Szmodics and how was it reinvested into the squad. He says we spent around £5m across the summer and January and that was our budget almost done. He says the club could have communicated better their plans for next season with the fans, and that the fans may have then understood that the club did not plan to spend in January to push for a play off place. He states that the plan was to build step by step, to lay the foundations for next season. If we made the play offs this season, he said this would be fantastic but that it was not the main aim at the start of the season. Jam tomorrow? Just think...there we all are getting excited about us sitting 5th place in January. Eustace appears reasonably excited, the players reasonably excited. Eustace publicly states that he and the players want quality to come in. Plenty of us are thinking 'maybe, just maybe this time'. Yet this lot upstairs appear to have had no thought about promotion. An insult to all of us. They let Eustace go and brought in a manager with NEXT season's championship 'rebuild' in mind, whilst sitting 5th! Next season, folks. Don't worry. Actually, make it two seasons. We're building. Foundations, guys. Foundations. Bollocks. Mowbray was also building seven years ago. That's not on Gestede, but we have heard this for many years. This is going to be some mega project when it's complete. A project to rival all projects. Tossers. 31:50 - Natalie states that there is a disconnect between the £30m bought in and the £5m spent on new signings. The fans want that money reinvested, but you're (Rudy) saying Blackburn need that money to sustain: Rudy: It's not the plan at the start of the season that we are going to reinvest the money coming in straight into transfers. That's not the plan. We want to develop our own players, to buy cheaper players that have resale value, like we did with Szmodics. That's the model of the club. The plan of the club is not to spend money to go back to the Premier League and to win the Premier League again. Step by step we're developing the club again. We've got good foundations. We need the fans onboard". Firstly, if somebody has told you that we are unhappy because we want Venky's to win us a second Premier League title, Rudy, know that they are lying and have an agenda. No Rovers fan is asking for that. That aside, the ambition of this hierarchy is clear to see. Sell players, stay in the Division. What else can be said? Nobody mention the Brighton or Brentford model again. There appears to be no intent to do what those clubs have done here. The Academy route, IMO, is nothing but a cheap, money saving exercise, as Big Sam subtly suggests at one stage of this interview. 32:43 - Rudy reiterates the need to better communicate plans for the club with the fans so that we can understand: "If we are in the play offs next season, or even this season, that is fantastic. But that's not the first aim. We want to develop the club and make sure when we bring in a player that he's got resale value. That's how we're going to operate going forward. Then, when we've got more money coming in the business and we break even with the revenue and everything, then we can start to go higher and higher". Ah. A few more years, folks. I'm sorry, but everybody needs to relax and be patient. 40:38 - Rudy on minutes for Academy players: "Last season we only gave 142 minutes to Academy players under John Eustace. The plan for our squad is to give as much as we can. The year before that it was 2,000 minutes for our Academy players and almost 3,000 minutes the year before that. So, now we want to go back to those numbers". Seriously? Who gives a toss about that? It means nothing. The cream will always make it. Win us football matches. Win us promotion. Again, Big Sam says something like the Academy players should be a supplementary element, not the main focus of building a team. Sam knows the score and he knows you don't get anywhere by just focusing on kids. 47:00 - Fantastic point from Natalie. She says, Venky's bought a club in the Premier League with incredible history and during their tenure the club has just gone down and down. "What is down?" Rudy asks sharply. "Because we are in Championship fighting for play offs. I'm not sure it's that 'down'." Tell me you know nothing about the the last 15 years, or the stature and standards of Blackburn Rovers, without telling me you don't know about the last 15 years, or the stature and standards of Blackburn Rovers. Finally, Big Sam makes an important point to him: 47:45 - "if you get in the play offs this year or next, you have to win it. If you don't do that, you won't get there again". If this lot think they can wing a promotion somehow whilst just being bothered with player development and saving the owners money, then they have to be the most deluded set of individuals in European football. Despite everything Rudy has said here, my issue isn't really with him. He's the one facing the flak, when it should be Pasha out there answering questions. There are similarities here between Gestede and Broughton for me. The issues back then with Broughton and now with Gestede are the same, in my view. Those further up the chain.

Having calmed down, it's looking more and more like Rudy is the latest fall guy in the metaphorical firing line. That interview is infuriating, but I think it suits a few out there for us to be laying into Gestede tonight. A lot of what he says echoes what Broughton was saying two years ago. Things like "we need to be clever in the market to go up as we don't have the budgets, we need to develop our own, we need to add squad value etc". This suggests he is following a script. It's the script writers and the ones feeding it down that we need to get after. Other complete nonsense from him displays his naivety and how wet he is behind the ears. Comments such as: "the fans should be grateful" "there would be no matches at Ewood on a Saturday/Tuesday without Venky's funding" "the club's plan is not to spend to win the Premier League again" Wake up, Rudy, and read the room. The latter quote is a frankly absurd suggestion that I think someone (not Gestede), somewhere, is trying to put out there to discredit us fans with. IMO, much like the "fans have a dark agenda" seed that was planted years ago. Find me one Blackburn Rovers fan who is unhappy with Venky's because they won't lead us to a second Premier League title. They won't find one. It sounds amazing though alongside the "it's not 1995 anymore" line. Remember, for all the nice man stuff, the man who said that is part of the same umbrella. Saviour? I don't think so. Whether intentional or not from him, the end result is that it made us all look like extremely 'entitled' fans for wanting Venky's and their stooges out. There have been so many campaigns against club owners from fans over the years, but how many of them have had this much PR around them to try and protect them? When has an agent ever gone on TV before to defend an ownership and hit out at the fans of that club? When have we seen another Rudy type at another club going on podcasts/interviews etc telling fans to "be grateful"? I have never seen such things until this ownership rocked up. It isn't normal.

So much to say about that load of shit from Gestede. Will provide a short summary later for those who don't want to watch it. It was obvious that the hostess and Big Sam saw straight through his bullshit. Fair play to Natalie for putting the real questions to him on behalf of us fans. She said it as it is: "They (Venky's) bought a Premier League club with incredible history and during their tenure, the club has done nothing but go down". Gestede trying to argue "but what is down, fighting for the playoffs in Championship isn't that 'down'." Fuming after that, but good on the podcast hosts for their line of questioning. Big Sam, of course as a former manager here, knows about the standards of this football club. More and more people are seeing through the bullshit. Carry on wheeling him out, Pasha. There's no hiding place left for you.

I often recall how a former SEM stooge, who thought we were 'entitled' fans, was on social media trying to suggest that the Portsmouth and Wigan fans would swap their FA Cup trophies for Championship stability. Making out as if being stable in this Division was the be all and end all. He was also keen to point out how difficult it was for relegated teams to make it back to the Premier League and spouted on about FFP. When certain posts of his were shared on here, he deleted them and made his account private for a couple of days. Strange. On a different note, I think Suhail let something slip in passing during the three stooges interview that says plenty for me: "Obviously, the cost base would increase in the Premier League". This was said in the context of it currently costing around £43m to run the club, not directly about promotion. However, I think the bit in bold is a factor behind the cost cutting crew seemingly being content with staying in this Division. We go up, costs immediately go up. I'm sure recent Premier League rule changes mean we would have to upgrade certain areas of the stadium, such as facilities for the disabled, the press etc. That's before even mentioning the rise in expectation levels, wages, the need for Premier League quality signings and global attention being on the club. There's no room to plead poverty with £150m having been received, no room for a batch of frees and loans in the Premier League, no room for a "development project", no hiding place. If you are a non footballing person, who has little knowledge of the game, who doesn't understand the importance of Premier League football for the club and town, who is only looking at things in terms of how expensive you think it would be for the owners...then you do what we are seeing. Managing upwards requires asking the owners for more money. "The owners have been so generous to us, we need to give them something back. We can't keep asking them to spend more money each time". (Waggott in 2018) Survival for as cheap as they can do, is what it looks like at upper level. While we hope JDT, Eustace and now Ismael pulls off what many of us have wanted for 12 years and counting. I hope I am wrong, but I think Ismael will go the same way as the previous two managers have done. Pasha out. Waggott out. Venky's out.

I stand corrected. The point stands though, that John Williams wanted to win. Souness has stated in interviews that both he and Williams would push each other on to constantly improve and do better. Another important thing Souness has mentioned is that the Board during his time here wasn't in it for financial gains, fame or to do favours for others, they were all on the same page wanting the best for the football club. Compare that to the mess in the Boardroom today that dares to attach itself to the name of Blackburn Rovers.

In isolation, a fantastic performance and enjoyable game. We genuinely could have scored 8 or 9 with the chances we created. Brittain, superb today. JRC, Carter, any other stand in at right back, aren't a patch on him. The absymal thing under this regime is that, just when a player starts to play well and you like what he brings to the team...that feeling is cut short as that player is about to leave the building. It has been happening for years under this regime. Why? Not due to a "natural" move up the football food chain, but because this lot don't bother tying up the better players in good time. They see pound notes where we see footballers. All talk of "building", "projects" and "re-builds" is total bollocks for this reason. Tronstad, outstanding performance. It is no coincidence that our best performances and runs this season came when Tronstad was at the top of his game. He brings out the best in Travis too. I usually agree with most of Rev's views on Rovers, but not on Tronstad. Corry Evans was a crab of a player for us. Tronstad isn't just a bit better than him, he's in a different league entirely. Evans never performed like this in a Rovers shirt. It's not about goals from Tronstad, they are a nice bonus. However, he has spent most of the season turning up in the right place at the right time, making key interceptions and then moving the ball forward. That's his role. An important player for us, who, will probably be moving on soon due to his contract situation. Massive feeling of frustration, as others have said. Are there some positive signs for next season? Based on that, yes. But when you take into account the upheaval that is to come with a mass of players leaving and coming in, it's difficult to say. The words "too little, too late" might not be pleasant reading, but that is exactly what this is, sadly. Win, lose or draw...the message should never change and it won't ever change from my point of view: Suhail Pasha...get out of our club. Waggott...piss off. Venky's...let's just leave it at Venky's out.