YOU know that dread feeling of Groundhog Day you get with Blackburn Rovers?

How can it span four decades and a hundred different defenders, at least?

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The inevitable late lack of concentration when pressure is not exactly at its height?

The misjudgement by Jason Lowe still left Bristol City’s Aaron Wilbraham with a bit to do but Lowe compounded his error by letting him jink inside.

And the way our luck is running it was bound to find the net.

In a game of speculative efforts it was the one chance sniffed out.

The string of injuries is something that causes me concern.

There was a period last season where niggles and strains were legion, perhaps a result of Paul Lambert’s ultimately doomed attempt to work the players in training until they learnt something.

Now, again, players are dropping like flies and although Rovers have some depth in the squad, quality is shallow and constant changes in personnel are thwarting any chance of consistency.

See...excuses like this are all we are left with.

The grim thing on Saturday is the fact that the away bench will contain a caretaker manager who remains a hero to many of us elder Rovers fans and the home bench a man who has not won over the fans at all. Some of which is due to these kind of feeble excuses.

Scott Sellars is remembered as a link between the fun times, the ‘nearly’ times and the second greatest day of all; his last appearance in a Rovers shirt, at Wembley in May 1992.

And those narrow, gallant, but heartbreaking, attempts at promotion that preceded it now seem like halcyon days of hope and missed glory.

Now the near future offers nothing but small victories and a fight for survival.

Maybe we are at the end of our pain and misery. Maybe it’s just beginning.

The only victory to be won on Saturday is on the pitch.

Any major change in our fortunes can only be ‘gifted’ to us by the owners.

So however much you hate the club, get behind the team.