ROVERS boss Gary Bowyer has criticised the Football League’s fixture computer for landing the club’s supporters with four long away trips in 21 days.

Between October 18 and November 8 Rovers have games away at Ipswich, Nottingham Forest, Millwall and Brighton, as well as home fixtures against Birmingham City and Reading.

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Any supporter doing all four away games will travel 1,796 miles in the space of three weeks, slightly further than driving from Blackburn to Gibraltar at the southern tip of Europe.

Bowyer’s side have taken four points from their away trips to Ipswich and Forest, and now face Reading at home on Saturday, before travelling to Millwall and Brighton next week.

“I don’t think whoever organises the fixture list has been too kind to our supporters to be brutally honest,” said Bowyer. “To have Ipswich away and Forest away, and then following that up with Millwall and Brighton has not been very kind to our supporters, but that’s full credit to them because they turn up in their thousands for us and with magnificent support for us.”

With such a hectic schedule Bowyer is glad to be back on home turf this weekend, as Reading come to Ewood Park after ending their seven-game run without a win by beating Blackpool 3-0 last weekend.

But Rovers are in the better form, they took seven points out of nine last week, and are now six games unbeaten, and victory tomorrow would see them record a third league win on the bounce for only the second time in seven years.

“It rounded off a fantastic week for us (at Forest),” said Bowyer, “to get seven points out of nine with two difficult away games at Ipswich and Forest, coupled with the Birmingham game, they sacked their manager the day before the game which made that even harder, so to come out of there with seven out of nine is full credit to the players.”

At the City Ground Bowyer started with Jordan Rhodes on his own up front, before switching back to 4-4-2 after an hour, with his side 1-0 down.

Fifteen minutes later they were 3-1 up, but Bowyer said he would continue to tinker with the usual 4-4-2 if he felt it was required.

“It’s horses for courses,” he said, “we’ll pick the players we feel are right to go out and do the job, some games it will be 4-4-2, some games it will be 4-3-3, some games we played the diamond last season so we have the ability to do that.

“The players have taken to whatever we system we play because ultimately it’s about the players, you can put the system up but it is about players.

“If you lose playing 4-3-3 you’re classed as boring, if you lose playing 4-4-2 you should shore it up, you can’t win sometimes, but it’s about players going out and giving their all and that’s what we’ve got at the moment.”

After ending their poor run of form Nigel Adkins Reading are 14th in the Championship, but Bowyer thinks they are a better side than that position suggests.

“They had a good win on Saturday,” he said, “prior to that they had conceded some goals in the previous games, but we had them watched on the opening day of the season and they drew at Wigan and were unlucky not to have won that.

“I think they’ve got a very good manager in Nigel Adkins, he goes about playing the game the right way.

“They’re a good team, we’re aware of that, their league position is probably a little bit false for the calibre of players they’ve got at the club.”