Incredible result for Wigan, especially being down to 10 since the 14th minute. Shocker for Leeds - are they going to bottle it right at the end? So long Bolton. Not sure they're going to be bouncing straight back up again.

Looking grim for Smallwood and Mulgrew. We're so much better without them.

Jesus, he moved like he was 39!

An injustice yes, but not blatant cheating. You can accept a marginal offside as your team has probably benefitted from the same thing in the past, but purposefully handling the ball into the net or diving with absolutely no contact is a different thing altogether imo.

At the moment I think VAR should only be implemented for blatant injustices. For example Henry's handball for France a few years ago that sent them through at the expense of Ireland. Stuff like that ruins the integrity of the sport. An accidental handball or marginal offside doesn't.

I actually think the debate is pointing in the wrong direction by solely looking at VAR. I think to a large degree it's the rules of the game itself that are causing problems. Offside, as an example, was introduced to stop players goal hanging. If a player is blatantly standing behind the defensive line then it's fair to classify them as offside. Should it also be called if we're talking about a player's knee being marginally ahead of a defensive player though? Has it given the player a significant enough advantage that it should be ruled illegal? For me that's where the crux of the debate lies, and you could say the same for handball. These rules have been made so tight over the years that they've arguably become self-defeating as it's less about whether a significant advantage has been gained and more about implementing a rule by technicality. If Aguero had been miles behind the Spurs defence when he got played through I don't think many people would be complaining that VAR ruled it out, irrespective of celebrations, emotion, etc. It's mainly because it was such a tight call that people are asking whether it should have been given.

I don't think it's that much different to fans cheering when an offside goal is scored, only to quieten down when the linesman raises his flag. In theory VAR shouldn't need to be implemented any more than that, and certainly not for every goal. We've had goals ultimately given as offside (or fouls, handball, etc) wildly cheered for decades so I'm not sure VAR will change things that much. It's basically the same thing, just theoretically more accurate than a ref/linesman giving the call. Just as an example, let's say just after or just before Sterling scores against City the offside flag is raised. Does that change anything in relation to how the celebrations happened? Nope. A few people might catch the offside flag being up, but most will be focused on the play and not immediately know the flag is up. The ref would then need to go over to the linesman and have a debate before deciding whether to award the goal or not. However there would have been significantly more pressure on the officials to have got it right, which means they probably err on the side of "I'm not sure" and end up giving an illegal goal, sending City through to the semis despite scoring a goal that shouldn't have stood. You get the same thing with VAR, except the fear of making a mistake is taken out of the equation somewhat as the decision is being made with far more information to hand. I know nowadays the mentality is "win at all costs and fuck everybody else", but sport is supposed to be proving that you are the best by playing to the rules. If you win through cheating then in reality it's a hollow victory. I appreciate I'm probably in the minority thinking that, but for me if VAR means that the rules of the sport are more fairly implemented then so be it. I don't see how football retains its integrity if the rules are only implemented as long as they don't get in the way of spectators celebrating.

If it's the latter then I think they've got the wrong manager in place. Have any of our young(ish), saleable assets increased in value this season? Raya - made a number of mistakes and has been publicly criticised by Mowbray, can't see his value having increased Nyambe - can't get ahead of a utility man in Bennett, been on the bench for huge portions of the season, so probably a decrease in value Armstrong - possibly a slight uptick in value but I don't think we'd get much more than the £2m or so we paid for him, add in wages and at best we'd probably break even Rothwell - based on the past few games maybe a slight increase, but again has spent most of the season on the outside looking in Chapman- yet to play Bell - can't see too many Championship clubs being interested based on his performances Brereton - we'd be lucky to sell him for £700k let alone recoup the £7m we paid Dack - a fairly poor second half of the season means that at best his value has stayed the same, but more likely I'd say it's decreased by a few million at least Lenihan - injuries and our terrible defensive record means at best another one whose value has probably stayed roughly the same Travis - a definite uptick So, really, just Travis, and I'm not sure how much he'd sell for. Maybe £3-4m? Either way if the plan is to make a ton of money increasing the value of our players and selling them on I don't think this season has been much of a success in that regard, as I think we could have sold most of these players for more or the same price at the start of the season.

I think I'd have to give two ratings, in terms of the potential I think they have and how Tony has used them so far... Rothwell - 8 for potential, 5 for usage this season as Tony has waited far too long to bring him into the first team Reed - 9 for potential as a Championship midfielder, 6 for usage this season as he's been shunted out wide repeatedly with some good and some not so good performances Palmer - 6 for potential, 2 for usage. Tony had no idea what to do with him. Armstrong - 7 for potential, 6 for usage. Had a great January, mostly average to poor for the rest of the season. A decent buy considering the price. Rodwell - 5 for potential, 3 for usage. Has looked a calamity at times at CB and was simply the wrong option to rely on as cover for our other injury-prone CBs. Chapman - 7 for potential, 0 for usage as he hasn't been used at all. Brereton - 6 for potential, -10 for usage. He showed at Forest there is talent there, but we paid an outrageous fee, have only played him ineffectively out wide every so often and the simple truth is that he has not contributed anything despite being here since August. A waste of time and a hell of a lot of money. We can only hope pre-season does him some good. So for me a lot of potentially decent signings there, but all wasted by Mowbray's inability to slot them into the team effectively or in some cases at all. Very frustrating. I don't think the manager has, over the course of the season, got anything close to the best out of any of his signings which is very concerning. The closest is probably Armstrong.

I would like to think some of it has been shop window but I can't see who is realistically picking up the likes of Smallwood, Evans or Mulgrew after they've just been given new contracts... especially considering the performances of said individuals! One thing we know about Mowbray is that he values loyalty, so I'd be surprised if we see any serious change to the coaching structure. I hope I'm wrong but I'm not sure TM is ruthless enough to get rid of underperforming staff.

Whilst I agree backroom staff appear to be an issue (coaching across the board seems to be poor, our team and style of play hasn't improved at all during the season, instead getting worse) if TM is ceding a large amount of control to the senior players then no amount of staff changes is going to have much of an impact. I hope that it isn't as bad as is being suggested but when you see certain players in the team no matter what, whilst certain others seem to be dropped for the odd bad game or digression, it does make you wonder what is going on.

Dack came in unusually early, 27th June with a £750k outlay. That summer Whittingham came in on 13th June, Smallwood on the 20th and Gladwin arrived on the 28th so we appear to have been well prepared and I assume we had these targets in mind very early on with budget already agreed. In comparison this season we only made one signing in June, Rothwell on the 22nd, and wouldn't make another signing until Kasey Palmer joined on loan on July 30th. The rest of our signings all came in August with the season either just about to begin or already underway, suggesting a very different approach.

In fairness we are still in the very early stages of VAR. I think in the next few years there will be a huge improvement in the technology and how it's integrated into the game, but in the process there are going to be some bumps in the road. It's easy to say "it should have been tested more before putting it into big matches", but at some point you have to put it out there on the big stage to see where the issues lie. It's not going to be the same as trying it out in random minor leagues. You aren't going to get the same type of reaction to a worldwide televised VAR decision in a big match that you'd get in a non-televised, barely viewed League Two match. Most big sports have a form of video refereeing and it has ultimately been a positive, and I think eventually that will be the case in football too. The game was so late to the party though that change is difficult and the system will require some continuous tweaking before being largely accepted and appreciated.

Lambert definitely has an ego, but then most managers do so I'm not necessarily going to hold that against him. Based on his post-Rovers career I wouldn't want him here in place of Mowbray... ideally I'd want better than both! Unlikely with the current ownership though. I think the likes of Mowbray and Lambert are the best we can hope for.

Oh I agree completely, he's neither a very bad or very good manager, just somewhere in the middle depending on circumstances. I just see a lot of people rip into his tenure here like he was another Coyle, which he clearly wasn't. He took a poor team and made them average. I'm still not sure why he gets such ire on here in all honesty. Because he decided he didn't want to work with Venky's? Can't really blame him for that! The positive reaction from the Ipswich fans towards him is pretty baffling and amusing though. He hasn't achieved anything there but a few nice words and it's all good. Maybe if Mick had sucked up to them a little more he'd still be in a job too. That said it's hard to praise fans who chant that you're a paedophile. Allardyce is a far better manager than Lambert so I agree with you on that, but as far as Wolves are concerned, much like us he wasn't really there long enough to get going and this time was pretty much forced out rather than walking. I think it's really hard to seriously judge his tenure with us or Wolves based on such a short time span. He did OK but we never saw how he would have developed either club long term. My guess is it would have been more of the same, mid-table to lower mid-table finishes with fairly poor football on display, but that's more or less what we get now too. It feels like he gets a hard time on here for what was a very brief stay with average results.

When Venky's first rocked up their utter destruction of our club was and I think in some ways still is unique. With that said you're right that there are a ton of dodgy foreign owners around nowadays who are doing just as much if not more damage to other clubs. You can add Ipswich into that who owe Marcus Evans £95m and are heading to L1 on the back of one of their worst ever seasons. In regards to keeping the current staff employed, sure, but how many lost their jobs due to Venky's absolute negligence bombing us out of the PL and then doing the same when they cost us our Championship status with the hiring of Coyle? Not to mention all of the businesses affected by Rovers' lower fanbase and general match day activity. These victims tend to be forgotten about these days and I'd wager there are plenty of them. Of course you always run the risk of seeing this happen if your business heavily relies on a football club being in a certain division, but when that club is dismantled so thoughtlessly in the way ours has been the owners must take some of the blame for that too. Also in 15-16 we were for some reason relying on emergency loans which still makes me uneasy. Why did this happen and what guarantee is there that it couldn't happen again? The last couple of years have been relatively smooth sailing as far as the owners and the club is concerned, but we had a period of that under Bowyer before it all came crashing down. I don't think I'll ever have confidence in Venky's, as I can't help but feel based on their past history that another disaster is just around the corner.

Overall Lambert had a possible 87 points to gain with us. He managed 38. Comparatively in the last 87 available to Mowbray he's taken 35. So I don't think Lambert did as bad of a job with Rovers as people make out, especially considering he was parachuted in mid-season whilst Mowbray has been here nearly two and a half years. Granted this season we have just come up from L1, but I wouldn't say we have a significantly weaker squad than the one Lambert was working with. In fact it's probably slightly better. Lambert's career has certainly gone on a dive since leaving us though. He did OK with Wolves but then took two doomed posts at Stoke and Ipswich which have, imo, done some major damage to his stock.

I still have a feeling that Reed said or did something to piss Mowbray off. Hence his sudden bench time and now returning to Southampton with no indication he'll be back this season or next. I think we will unfortunately have to forget about this one and move forward. It seems to take Mowbray a long time to regain trust in a player after they've done something to annoy him. Look at Travis! That red card last season seemed to make him persona non grata for a long time.

Could end up being Williams with a new left back being brought in as competition for Bell. Or just have Williams cover both roles and rely on an u23 player to fill in when injuries strike.

Yeah, but they'd have to pay money to get Lambert out of his contract for a start. Then explain bringing in a manager who has relegated two clubs in his last two jobs. Even for the SFA that's a stretch imo. Much more likely to be Strachan or Moyes. Free and relatively safe appointments.

Just out-and-out revisionism. The reason we've looked much better is because we dropped Mulgrew, Smallwood and for the Derby game Evans as well - three of Tony's favourites, and we actually gave Rothwell a chance to shine along with the rarely used Travis/Reed combo in midfield against Derby. Nothing to do with an injury crisis. He's gotten it repeatedly wrong and whilst I wouldn't expect him to say so in public, I'm not convinced in his own mind he thinks he's done anything wrong either. "Facts aside we've done well". OK then.

I can't imagine Scotland would be interested in him anyway tbh. His recent managerial record doesn't exactly read well, and with the likes of Moyes available you'd think Lambert would be well down the list of potential candidates.

McLeish vacates the Scotland post... I wonder if Lambert will use this as an excuse to get out of Ipswich?

At the end of the day football is a sport that is governed by rules, and those rules should be applied as fairly and rigidly as possible, otherwise you might as well not bother having them at all. People have been conditioned since 1992 to see football as entertainment first and sport second. Personally I'm very happy to see a system implemented which is going some way to putting an end to illegal goals and cheating. It isn't perfect but it's better than what came before it. VAR is dramatic in of itself and more importantly it has a far better chance of getting the right decision as opposed to the most entertaining or biased/Old Trafford decision.

TM received plenty of praise when he got us promoted and similarly during the start of this season, not to mention when we were in reach of the playoffs at the end of January. I don't understand how anybody could expect positive reactions to losing 9 out of 11 games. Yes we've had a couple of decent wins in the last couple of games but our form between Nov/Dec and Feb/Mar was and should continue to be a big concern. If we start off next season with that kind of run we will be in huge trouble, and does anyone really think our squad is going to have the bottle for a relegation battle? I certainly don't.