What a strange season this has been. Starting the season was strange a weird feeling of despair/ humiliation and optimism. The idea that I’d be watching league 1 football on a regular basis for the first time in my life was strange. My head told me we would succeed and so did every pundit in the country. However there was also the small barking sound in the back of my head reminding me of our first season back in the championship. Everyone taking about how we want to bounce back to where we belong, spending a lot of money on players that people were not sure about. It rang a lot of alarms in my head and all too often have I raised my hope for a match or a season only to see them dwindle into nothing more than the false hope of a naïve child. So this time round I prepared myself, I was ready for the fact that we may fail I was ready for the fact that we would lose games and I was prepared for potentially toxic atmospheres at games and online. Yet when we lost that first game against Southend and then again against Doncaster and this was the league table…
 | It pulled at the heart strings, so that small irritating barking in the back of my mind was now getting more attention and it was starting to make me physically feel ill. I wanted to feel optimistic but even by the 12th of august I wanted to give up, I didn’t want us to fail again. |
Two league games later and things were staring to look better, beating a Bradford City team who hadn’t been beaten at home for a year and putting 4 past a very poor MK Dons side had lifted spirits massively we were still only in tenth and massively off the pace makers but things were looking like the team finally knew what they had to do to win games…
 |  |
September was good month, 6 games, 4 wins, 1 draw and another loss. It made the league table much easier to look at with things looking like they were only on the up. With Samuel, Smallwood and Mulgrew currently the key our team!
 | Shrewsbury were storming the league as a surprise to everyone with Wigan just on their tail, the top 2 spots still looked a long way away and they would remain with their current theme for a long time to come! Also keep in mind before the season had started id said that to get automatic promotion you can sacrifice 6 loses but after 10 games we already had 3 we couldn’t afford to give away anymore extra points. |
October saw a downturn I our luck. 5 league game, 1 win, 3 draws and another loss to Oldham of all teams! You may remember the “Feed the Nutt” movement which actually saw Nuttall break into the first team and then actually score his first goal in the league against Fleetwood! This was also the point in the season where Bradley Dack really kicked off and started showing what he could do! 3 goals for Dack in October but no movement in the league and ground on the top 2 lost again…
 | 11 points off the pace and the automatics looking less and less likely by the day, Wigan and Shrewsbury still dominating the league. |
For the first time in the season Blackburn finally went on a run in November 4 wins on the bounce curtesy of brilliant performances from both Antonsson and Mulgrew who both scored 4 in all competitions that Month. A great month that saw us make up 8 points on the top 2!
Another unbeaten month for Blackburn including the fatefully 3-3 draw with Crewe after having gone 3-nil up only to lose two men and concede 3! This time it was Graham’s month to shine scoring 4 times in 5 games seeing us win 3 and draw 2.
 | Fears of failure from the start of the season were well and truly caged but we weren’t there yet, with the top 2’s lead stripped to 3 points there was a lot to look forward to in the New Year! |
January was probably the biggest month of the season so far. 5 games, 3 wins, 2 draws but more importantly a massive 3-1 win over Shrewsbury in what was by far and away the best performance of the season so far. With that Charlie Mulgrew Freekick sticking out more than anything! This month also signalled the start of disruptions and cancelations which by the end saw Blackburn for the first time in the top two of the league! The challenge for Automatic promotion and even the title was now well and truly on!
February saw Rovers take 13 points from a possible 18 and also saw us lose for the first time since October when our run was ended by Plymouth the team who also started the run. February also saw the introduction of Adam Armstrong who scored 2 goals to get Rovers back to winning ways against Portsmouth. But after a 3-0 win against Wimbledon the table made for Brilliant reading going into March… Even with Wigan having 4 games in hand.
March was a strange month with Blackburn only playing 3 games with one of our biggest games of the season against Wigan also included in the trio of home games that month. You we beat both Bradford and Blackpool but only after drawing 2-2 with Wigan even after leading 2-0 but at the end of the month with Shrewsbury all caught up we still topped the league but well aware that with two games in had Wigan could shoot back to the top at any moment.
So far April has been a good month 2 wins and 2 draws so far with only 4 games to play means we are in a position where 5 points ahead of Shrewsbury in 3rd means only a perfect 4 games for Shrewsbury and Rovers losing two games will lose us our automatic promotion place.
But whatever happens this season you have to remember the long hard road that we’ve taken. Teams have upped their game against us which is why we have drawn so many games. We lost our games early on and we’ve been riding the wave since October whereas Shrewsbury have gone the opposite way staring incredibly well but staring to fall before the end. Mowbray’s signings have been massive. Dack (definitely player of the season) who has won league 1 player of the year and has been included in the EFL team of the season, Smallwood who has been a rock in midfield. Downing who acted as an incredible stand in at the start of the season. Hopefully we end this season on a high and then hopefully we can follow the path of Millwall and Sheffield United who are both going for a playoff place in the championship. I just really hope we can keep this group of players together and players like Mulgrew and Graham stay on for just a bit longer, who knows what we can achieve!
Thank you so much for reading!
(Also apologizes for the picture quality i really don't know what happened!)
Thank you so much for reading!
(Also apologizes for the picture quality i really don't know what happened!)
RSS Feed
