Two of the most in-form teams in the Championship meet at Ewood Park on what is a historic day for the home team. This is the designated match in which Blackburn Rovers are celebrating their 150th anniversary as a professional football club.

The ownership has probably been saved from a big protest by the form of the team, but Derby come to town with John Eustace as manager, which brings an added layer of drama and intrigue to the match, given Eustace left Rovers for Derby last season.

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📈 Blackburn v Derby Form & Tactics

Blackburn come into this match on a three-match winning streak. It is obviously very timely for them and for Valerien Ismael, who was coming under increasing pressure as Rovers fell into the relegation places. However, to be fair to Ismael, Blackburn’s underlying data had been much stronger than their league placing and results since the beginning of the season.

Blackburn have moved up to ninth on expected goals for, and when this is paired with their fifth-best expected goals against record, they actually rate as a play-off contender on performance over the course of the season as a whole. Recent performance form has been good as well; they have won the xG battle in six of their last seven matches.

Derby also come into this match off the back of a good run of form. They now just about sit in the top half of the league, having been really poor in the first few weeks of the season. Derby can go one better than Blackburn, coming into the match having won their last four matches, taking them to 19 points from 14 games.

From a seasonal statistical perspective, there is still much to improve on for Derby. They sit 23rd in expected goals, but they are overperforming that metric, and they are bottom for shots on target, averaging fewer than three per match. However, we know that John Eustace teams are usually defensively solid, and though they are 15th in expected goals conceded, this is on the improve from early in the season.

📔 Blackburn v Derby Formation & Team News

Blackburn have switched formation a number of times this season, but Ismael seems to have hit on a really effective use of his players. They are currently using a 3-4-1-2 system, but the use of the #10 has been interesting. Axel Henriksson was used against Leicester. The Swede is more of a destroyer than a creator, but his energy really helped Blackburn to press Leicester into mistakes, whereas Ryoya Morishita has more finesse about him; the combination can work really well.

There has been some bad news for Rovers in terms of their goalkeeper, Balazs Toth. He is confirmed to be out til around Christmas time, and he has been excellent for them. Aynsley Pears will deputise. Sondre Tronstad will be missing through suspension, and Scott Wharton will also have an assessment on a knock. Kristi Montgomery or Adam Forshaw will start in midfield, with the reliable Yuri Ribeiro likely to come in if Wharton misses out.

John Eustace has also found favour with a 3-4-2-1 formation after trying a few different formations to begin the season with. There are a lot of former Blackburn players in the Derby squad, but Ben Brereton has provided something to the attack alongside Patrick Agyemang in recent weeks.

There are likely to be no changes to the Derby XI for this clash, with Lewis Travis and Owen Beck still not fit enough to return to Ewood Park.

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* All odds displayed correct at the time of publishing.