Rovers have found themselves on the other side of the variance coin of late. There has been nothing much between the sides in their festive fixtures against Sunderland and Middlesbrough, but they have fallen to both North East sides by a 1-2 scoreline.

The latest of those defeats came at Ewood Park where despite edging the first half and going into half-time 1-0 up, it all unravelled very quickly. John Buckley’s fairly idiotic decision to bounce the ball off Riley McGree’s head in reaction to a sly, but equally innocuous, dig in the ribs by the Australian, let his side down as he received a straight red for the incident. Not only did that allow Boro all the initiative to go on and win the match, through McGree of course, but also that means Buckley is not available for this and the following two matches.

That is going to affect this match a lot because in all likelihood Cardiff will allow Blackburn a degree of ball possession. This is often a good tactic against Rovers generally as their record when having over 50% possession is poor, but without Buckley there are fewer players with his level of control and distribution. It was he who assisted Ryan Hedges for the opener against Boro and though the Welshman has been impressive this season, he is not prolific.

Indeed, none of the Rovers players can be described as prolific this season. Ben Brereton Diaz leads the scoring charts but hasn’t netted in the Championship since November 5. It is perhaps fortunate for Blackburn that they now come up one of the weakest attacking outfits in the league. A total of 20 goals from 24 matches from Cardiff is hardly inspiring and it is a fair indictment of the lack of options at the top of the pitch for Mark Hudson.

It is bottom of the goals table versus bottom of the xG created table though because Blackburn’s chance creation has been the worst in the league. There 21.4xG total translates into less than one 1xG per game and although this does improve to just over that line when solely taking in home fixtures it is clear to see that neither team in this fixture has maximised its offensive performance so far this season.

With the additional issues of key absentees and this being the third fixture in a short amount of time I think that supporting the unders is a sound ploy.

Since Tony Mowbray took over at Sunderland, he has had to deal with a lot of problems that were beyond his sphere of influence. The most important was that he had no centre forwards for 6-8 weeks, Ellis Simms and Ross Stewart both suffered fairly bad injuries and the former Blackburn boss had to get creative with his team set-up and positioning to deal with it.

Now that there is a centre forward available Sunderland look to be a very dangerous outfit. There is balance to their play with Simms and Stewart having rotated that central role and allowing Amad to float around them. This will be impossible to do now that Ellis Simms looks to have been recalled by Everton, but as long as Ross Stewart can maintain his fitness, they should be fine.

Stewart can then combine with the wide players, often Patrick Roberts and Jack Clarke, though there are options in those areas too and Dan Neil can supply from deep or join in the attack as a mobile runner. If one includes the impressive timing of overlaps and rotations in wide areas, then there is a completeness to the Sunderland team in possession that bodes well for this match and future matches.

Blackpool, on the other hand, don’t have the luxury of that setup. Though they haven’t been performing too badly the results and the goals just aren’t flowing for Michael Appleton. They have been beset by injuries and though it feels like the players are still playing for the manager, there is a lack of quality going forward that can’t be solved by Appleton at the moment.

A scrappy effort by Marvin Ekpiteta got them on the scoresheet against Sheffield United last time out but outside of that there was little to convince that improvements are being made.

To underline the task facing Blackpool here this match pits the 2nd worst home record in the division against the 3rd best away record. Whilst I don’t necessarily hold as much stock in home/away records as much as most, this is quite a stark contrast and actually says quite a lot about each team.