Duncan Barkes

It certainly clearly isn't a skill thing or a speed thing.

He just needs to have it in his heart to take on a guy knowing that 18,000 people are going to go, oh.

If it doesn't quite work out, that can be the mental challenge.

But if he's got Real Madrid running around in his head, if he's aware of any conversations that are actually taking place about him with one of the world's biggest football names, that's unsettling.

He doesn't want to get injured if he's got a prospect of running out in the white shirt, albeit the white shirt of the Real Madrid reserves to begin with, or youth team even.

That's going to be a distraction.

That's going to be in his head for sure.

However, we now look at Yang in a slightly different light, don't we?

And if there is anything in this conversation, Pompey will be in the loop.

And we may well see him starting again on Saturday, as much as anything else, now on future reputation, which can happen.

Amen to all of that.

Would just add a small note of caution though, and it's this.

According to AI, as of today, in the current 2025-26 season, Blackburn Rovers have scored just five goals from set pieces in the championship.

And although AI says that they have caught attention for their innovative and unusual corner kick routines this season, despite this tactical creativity, they are among the teams with the fewest set-piece goals in the league.

A majority of their goals this season have come from open play.

So, whilst we kept a clean sheet set pieces-wise, it seems that the team that we were playing aren't very good at set pieces, or at least not very successful at set pieces.

Or maybe by being overly creative at corners, they're depriving themselves of the good old opportunity of getting the ball in underneath the goalkeeper and seeing if you can get somebody on the other end of it, which is good old English, especially championship football, at its very best.

However...

However, let's again keep our fingers crossed.

Maybe we've got the set-piece hoodoo behind us and we will start scoring from corners more often and also outlying free kicks more often.