AS A truly awful season at Ewood comes to a close, may I, as a long-time supporter, make a few comments?

I was really disappointed by our manager's outburst two games before the end. He slated the players for lack of effort and later he, in effect, stated that it would be a long time before Rovers returned to the Premiership.

When will some managers realise that they do not have to make comments for the benefit of the television reporter, especially in the heat of the moment?

All the blame cannot be laid at the players' door as they do not dictate tactics, which, in my opinion this season were totally negative.

Even allowing for the terrible injury problems we still had at least two strikers - except for one occasion - and always at least two wingers, but the game plan was not to lose.

The wingers were mainly used as extra defenders and consequently we posed no threat to the opposition who were given three-quarters of the pitch in which to form attacks.

If you don't attack, you won't score and if you don't score, you can't win.

In game after game, we have thrown points away by this tactic and it should have been obvious weeks ago but, to our amazement, nothing changed, and at times the players seemed to be like lost sheep - and there are some good players among them.

We are now in the First Division and let's hope we see some adventurous attacking football. We can't do any worse than with other tactics, and, let's face it, if we don't, here we will stay.

G DUCKETT (Mr), Eskdale Crescent, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.