The Rovers Return

Tomorrow’s game at Stoke, on paper, would appear to be crucial, and yes, a result would be appreciated!

However, this isn’t the game that’s going to save our season. We still have four points between ourselves and the bottom three, and our three home games are the important ones.

Newcastle travel to Spurs, so hoping for a favour from the Cockneys. Boro host Fulham so former boss Roy Hodgson could do us a real favour by turning them over.

Having said that, we are still well able of relying on our own results to ensure our safety, and that’s what Sam has to concentrate on doing tomorrow.

Stoke, on paper, are shit. But they have a fantastic manager in Tony Pulis who has done enough, it would seem, to keep them in the league this season. This has been based purely on their home record – their away record has been abysmal (remember our 3-0 tubbing of them in Big Sam’s first game?)

For that reason it will be extremely tough for us to take anything from the game, but we are well capable and should go into the game with a positive attitude, not the frightened, full of respect style of play we used at Anfield last match in which we looked completely out of our depth!

We have a solid following, having sold out our 3,000(ish) tickets for the away end, helped to an extent I reckon by the club laying on free travel – good on them. Unfortunately the sellout means this Rovers blogger has to miss out on the action and will have to put up with Jeff Stelling on Saturday afternoon!

Santa is still out, in fact the team is much as it was at Liverpool. It would be nice though to see Sam play two men up front, instead of the negative five across midfield! The only real difference is Vince Grella back, who came on as a sub and was largely ineffective in the last game. I rated this guy at first but, having had endless injury problems, need to see some consistently good performances to be persuaded he’s worth the £4m price tag Paul Ince paid for him.

Interesting to see where Samba plays though!