Yep, same every season. We've got enough to do alright in the first 4 to 5 months, then fade away when the lack of strength in depth becomes brutally apparent.

I feel sorry for Eustace - he's getting everything he can out of this squad but, as always, lack of backing from the Ewood hierarchy is absolutely killing us.

Not many teams who could do back-to-back promotions and then stay in the PL, I'd wager. Tough result for Ipswich today, but any team could get hammered by one of the big boys considering the sheer gap in finances and structure. They need to try and keep the score down at Anfield and then get back on track at home to Southampton. At this point I imagine it'll be two of Wolves, Ipswich and Leicester to go down with Southampton - but which two remains to be seen. Ange surely can't have much longer left. He seems to have no tactical flexibility whatsoever which is bizarre for a manager at PL level.

Unfortunately I think it's more than just not seeing urgency. There's no ambition, which negates the need for urgency. They'll have seen JE drag this squad into 5th with barely a penny spent and be thinking there's no need to spend any more, as it's probably already wildly above expectations. Works out for everybody in positions of power - Waggot and co saving the owners money whilst the team seems to be doing well, whilst the owners get to continue putting as little in as possible. The ones getting shafted are the fans, the manager, his staff and the players - the latter three getting no support whatsoever despite vastly exceeding expectations. Until we have owners and board members with genuine ambition we are never going to get anywhere, even when we overachieve (which I'd argue we've done quite a few times since 2018 under Mowbray, JDT and now Eustace).

We're just lacking quality in squad depth. Fortunately not the only team with this issue, but you can see how hard even just a couple of injuries hit us.

We aren't getting anywhere near top six without attacking reinforcements. Problem is our owners simply don't care.

https://www.brfcs.com/forums/topic/31709-archived-glen-mullans-blogs/

FM OGs know you only ever sign a player up to age 32 maximum, then sell the year before contract expiry. I thought Ipswich were starting to get going, but it was a really poor result for them against Brighton. United will steer clear of trouble purely through having quality players like Amad to step up, but they're a long, long way off getting close to the top four any time soon. Top half might be beyond them at this point.

Isn't that what we tried with O'Brien before we "accidentally" forgot to submit the documents on time?

If WBA want to keep a steady position in this division that falls somewhere between 7th and mid-table then TM is probably a shrewd appointment. If their plan is to get promoted then probably less so. Depends what their aim and general situation as a club is. Mowbray did some good here and he did some bad, as any manager would after 5 years or so. Ultimately he simply stayed on past his best before date and we didn't have anyone in a higher position to make the correct call to move on and try something new. Anyway, as far as transfers are concerned, if we fail to bring in a decent attacker in this window then Eustace will deserve manager of the season if we finish in the top half.

Netflix only has part of the library, unfortunately. WWE Network had literally everything. I haven't watched a full WWE show in years now. Tried to watch the first Raw on Netflix, but was just reminded of why I stopped watching in the first place.

The most pleasing thing about JE's tenure thus far is the shift in mentality. Thus far, touch wood, the death spirals largely seem to be a thing of the past.

Big win, especially as this is the type of game we'd normally slip up in. Back into the playoff places.

Big Mak, legend.

Buy a bloody striker ffs. This is painful.

Think Brereton would be a big risk for half a season. He's a purple patch player and if we get him when he's not in one of those patches he'll be no more use than the players we have now. He was part of a group of players who had a poor mentality, a group of players that couldn't handle it when things weren't going well, and for that reason alone I wouldn't want him back as Eustace has done a good job of finally getting rid of that in the current squad on some level. Perhaps he could change Brereton's mentality in time, but not within a six month loan spell. Anyhow, it's all moot if Sheff Utd and Sunderland are also interested. He'll go to one of those and quite rightly so, from a neutral perspective.

Are there fans who see anything in Buckley these days? Weimann may be a bit past it, but he's one of the few players we have who seems to have a knack for finding the net if given enough minutes on the pitch.

Yep, not sure if both teams just bottle it in matches against United, or if the United players just raise their games briefly for those matches and then revert back to normal.

It's hard to fathom the decision making at Stoke when it came to buying Gallagher and Ennis, unless the main criteria was strikers who don't score many goals and are injured a lot. In which case, well scouted, I suppose.

The league has been this way for a while now. It's why teams like Brentford, Luton, Ipswich, etc have been able to get themselves up - just needs intilligent people at the top with a plan and a dash of luck. Plenty of bang average teams in the division (inluding ourselves) so a team with the right strategy and the right personnel can get themselves promoted even if they aren't one of the fancied clubs. We'll have to wait until Venky's finally leave before we become a team with that kind of potential though. Until then we'll just tread water at best.

Meanwhile those responsible probably didn't even know we were playing today.

Seems a bit harsh to me. From what I've seen from Ohashi he's good value for what we paid. Nobody should have been expecting a 28 year old player from the J-League, with no experience at this level, to be banging in the goals. He's done well so far imo. Leonard, still don't feel like I've seen enough of him to say for sure. He's obviously not going to be a prolific striker in future, you'd have seen glimpses of that by now if so, but I wouldn't write him off yet. At the very least I think he'll have a decent career in the league below if he doesn't make it at this level. As for Big Mak... god bless him. I have no idea how he's made a career of being a footballer at the levels he's been playing at, but fair play for doing so. He's OK to bring on as a nuisance to introduce some chaos at the tail end of matches, but he will never be the answer to our goalscoring problem. We simply didn't address the striker issue in the summer. The two we brought in are suitable for certain purposes, but not as a primary, goalscoring forward. We still need that and we're hamstrung as a team without that kind of player. There are other issues but this is the most obvious.

That's pretty much just how they play normally. They're basically a £150m version of us - as their paucity of goals shows. They've only scored 3 more than us, lol. They just have a much more expensive and overall better defence and midfield to keep goals out and come out more often on the right side of tight games.

The fact that team, managed by Scott Parker, is 2nd with only 9 goals conceded says a lot about this league though, and leaves me hopeful that starting from Portsmouth at Ewood we can get back on track. Absolutely nothing to fear from 90% of the teams in this division, even with the albatross that is Venky's constantly weighing us down.

The players worked hard but the quality just isn't there. For what it's worth, nor was it for Burnley save for one moment which decided the game. It certainly wasn't obvious that one team had spent a fortune on their squad whilst the other had seen their squad systematically dismantled by inept, disgraceful owners over multiple periods spanning a decade plus.