Sitting in the car, as we twisted through what my fellow passenger erroneously identified as Snake Pass, on Tuesday night, listening to music, the opening to Teenage Kicks was an open invitation to the words “T Mowbray’s team, so hard to beat.”

Sadly the only other forthcoming lines on the journey were “can I have another travel sweet?” It was a long day, writes Simon Smith.

Yet it is a measure of how far Rovers have come in a year that a cracking game, delicious Dack goal and hard-fought point against Aston Villa and a defiantly stoic point at moneybags Derby is viewed by some as a bad thing.

Taking my nine-year-old son to school yesterday I saw the slumped shoulders, the hand thrust deep into pockets, the pursed lips and the stone-kicking amidst mutters of “I’d rather have lost one and won one; be a point better off” and “We won both games last time and STILL got relegated.”

Not from Alfie, but from a fellow parent.

I DO love that these fans care so much and take every result as a stain on their skin, or a medal on their chest. However proud we are to be Roverites it is an irony that pride is viewed as a sin and, boy, do we sometimes get punished.

Saturday’s trip to Stoke should give Rovers another test and it is clear that Tony Mowbray is not yet prepared to put the newcomers under the microscope.

I heard some absolute twaddle on Bolton Road last Saturday, about Ben Brereton, basically formed as a result of him costing the same as Kevin Davies did.

This is somewhat to be expected from the ‘plug and play’ generation.

As someone who is STILL waiting for Manic Miner to load on a Commy 64 tape I’m more patient I guess.

I know it is hard to revert to watching Rovers grind out draws after a season of wins and expressive play, but we are a work in progress. And we ARE progressing.

Some teams are in decline. We are higher than we’ve been since May 2015.