Blackburn v Pompey: The Opposition View

Bradley Dack joined Blackburn from Gillingham in the summer

Unfortunately, it hasn’t quite worked out like that for them so far. Defeats arrived in the first two games and that’s put the team on the back foot.

There was four wins in a row after those opening few games where you thought they were going to go on a roll. But then they lost at home to AFC Wimbledon, which was a setback.

After that, they beat Rotherham and Gillingham going into the international break, and the feeling was this was their chance to really establish themselves in the top six.

But they came back after that and were poor at Oldham, where they lost 1-0.

Then on Tuesday, against Plymouth, they had enough chances to win three or four games, but ended up drawing.

They’re just not scoring the goals so far. There’s only been three occasions this season they’ve scored more than once.

For the attacking options they’ve got, that’s not really good enough.

You can forgive it away where they have been a bit more defensive, but at home they need to be scoring more goals.

They’ve changed things around, but have yet to settle on something that is working.

They do still have their games in hand, so the table is looking slightly skewed.

But they are becoming pressure games now if they want to catapult themselves up the league.

The situation they find themselves in is symptomatic of seven years under the current owners.

The fans haven’t had much to cheer about after getting relegated from the Premier League.

The attendances have been good. They’ve still been averaging over 10,000 and taken nearly 13,000 to the opening six away games.

So the support-base has been pretty incredible really for the third tier.

People were really optimistic at the start of the season.

Yes, some of that has dwindled away, but there are people who think there’s more than enough in the squad and there’s still a long way to go.

There has been more spent in this transfer window than the last three or four when they were a Championship side.

They spent £250,000 last year but upped that to around £1.5m this year. There’s no sign of the owners even coming to a game or speaking, though.

The man to look out for is Bradley Dack. He came with a reputation after being League One player of the year, and is the one with that little bit of quality you need.