A QUESTION that has been posed often to me during the international break has been ‘where do we go from here?’

From here we go to another game. This is why we are urged to focus on the next game and no further. Even managers - especially in these job-precarious times - focus on clumps of games in sixes or eights.

We may envisage, as did Uncle Jack, a five-year plan. Yet it will usually be tossed and blown out of recognition by reality.

So, to avoid getting too deep on you of a Thursday morning, from here we go to Preston and us 5,000 gathered there will hopefully see a strong Rovers squad.

The creeping injury list that many clubs get around this point of the season can lead to desperate pleas for signings come January.

Rovers’ main concern is keeping the lads they have. Yes, some additions would perhaps drive us up the league but the wrong kind of person can wreck a team.

Older supporters will recall Rodney Marsh at Manchester City, less oldies may remember Faustino Asprilla at Newcastle and the vain yet hapless Richard Witschge.

All these players arrived all guns and gobs blazing about their talent and yet they derailed the smooth running of a title challenge.

Fortunately Sir King Kenny was more canny than Malcolm Allison and Kevin Keegan and didn’t choose, nor buy Witschge, after an appalling debut in 1995.

We do need more quality if we are to continue our rise but everyone knows that gifted players often come with less appealing characteristics.

The fine balance struck by our current players may fall occasionally on the workmanlike side rather than the flash maverick but 11 Ruben Rochinas never won promotion.

So where do we go from here? Well, as the song goes The Blues Go Marching On On On!