HE’S an awful manager, too close to certain players and you wonder just how he has kept the job since 2013.

But enough about Gordon Strachan and his insistence on automatically choosing the goal-shy Steven Fletcher, flat-track bully Leigh Griffiths and wasteful winger James Forrest, rather than selecting the provider/goal-scorer dream team of Craig Conway and Jordan Rhodes, thus booking himself a summer of punditry.

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Now qualification all but needs snookers, he recalls Rhodes, a likely understudy at best.

Mind you, absence from the last few squads has improved their form and for us fans international ‘recognition’ is all that matters, not actually watching them being ill-used/injured.

For me, club v country is a contest as one-sided as some predicted Saturday’s game at the KC would be.

I wrote my ‘whinge about referees’ piece early this season and so, rather than sound like a stuck record, I won’t speculate on what may have been if – as even Hull-based fans and media admitted – the blatant free kick had been awarded to Rovers on the edge of the opposition box and the hapless Curtis Davies given his marching orders prior to the Hull goal.

And despite their obvious anger, there were no petulant sulks from the team. What has been most admirable about Bowyer’s Rovers is their resilience and knack of earning points late on.

That unforced mistakes have begun to be kept to a minimum lately has also helped to steady the good ship Rovers.

Statistics may state that Jason Steele had to make some great saves, and Hull did make a great deal of the running, but to have gone gung-ho at the KC would have been foolhardy.

This division is currently much of a muchness, the top two apart, and it will be Christmas before the table levels out, and we see who is poised and who is looking down a barrel with Fleetwood at the end of it, but a point away at Hull is always welcome.

With the table being so tight, home wins are a must and as Ipswich’s pace-setting has slowed to an arthritic jog in recent weeks, Rovers must seize the initiative and, with a meagre away following expected, this is when the crowd must continue the positive support and roar the lads on to a victory.

Ewood Park doesn’t have to be full for it to be a fortress; 10,000 claps will always be stronger than 30,000 tuts. Let’s play our part.