Forshaw's calm in storm is just what Rovers need

With four games to go in this gloriously unforgiving Championship season, there's no escaping it now - every kick matters.

Phone batteries everywhere are being tested by relentless score-checking and every table update raises an eyebrow.

This is the point of the campaign where tension creeps in quietly and then flatly refuses to leave. You can feel it in the stands, on the touchline, and in media areas up and down the country. Nobody's sleeping easily, least of all those with a vested interest in not joining Sheffield Wednesday in League One next season.

Form-wise, things remain delicately poised. Over the last eight league games, Oxford United have been among the division's pace-setters, West Brom have also kept their noses out front, while Rovers have quietly gathered 10 valuable points. Portsmouth's recent run hasn't exactly set the pulse racing, but their late winner at Middlesbrough served as a timely reminder that no lead is safe and no gap comfortable at this stage of the season.

For Rovers, on the face of it, a draw at Stoke was a pretty creditable result. Without their goalkeeper Balasz Toth making another wonder save, they'd have left with nothing.

They took the lead through Adam Forshaw in the first half and held on until the break, despite them being more wide open at the back than in previous games.

Once Stoke were level, it looked like a case of putting the point in the bag and heading home.

As is always the case in this league, the afternoon came with its usual dose of emotional whiplash. At various moments, the gap to the relegation places stretched reassuringly, only to shrink again as results elsewhere filtered through. The Championship does not do calm or predictable.

The reality is that a four-point cushion is fine - but not enough.

There's little time to dwell on it either. A tough trip to an in-form Southampton awaits before Friday night's meeting with Coventry, while Portsmouth face promotion-chasing Ipswich. Points are precious, goal difference may yet have a say, and calculators are once again being dusted off.

If your glass is half full, Michael O'Neill's side could be almost home and dry with positive results in both, but football fans in general always look for the worst-case scenario. How will it all look by the trip to Sheffield United on Wednesday next week?

So many times this season I've written and spoken about the absence of key players and the need to keep as many of the ones still standing available to go time and again, Forshaw being perhaps the biggest case in point. He's been worth his weight in gold of late.

At 34, he certainly doesn't represent the future, but it's a no-braine to grive him another year's contract whatever happens.

Forshaw signed as a squad player, an option if required. He was released last summer before being re-signed. You wonder where they would be now had he gone elsewhere.

Supporters have recognised that contribution. Forshaw is a player that every side needs in a scrap: dependable, calm, and rarely flustered, even when everyone else is.

As ever, this brilliantly entertaining league continues to deliver. Leicester City appear to have been written off by many. I'm not in that camp, and with the Foxes at Ewood Park on the final day, it could still be set up for one of the most tense afternoons that the old stadium has ever seen.

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