PS4 not being backwards compatible does suck, but in Sony's defence it hasn't stopped them from dominating the market over the past few years. Also retro gaming wasn't as big in 2013 as it is now, so I think the sudden surge of interest will play a part in Sony making the PS5 backwards compatible. Plus the shitload of amazing games that have come out for the PS4. I'll be keeping mine either way, as I do with all my old consoles

As it stands Belokon is disqualified from owning the club as he somehow failed the fit and proper owners test.

I noticed yesterday that, much like us, Norwich are shipping more goals than their position can allow long term. I think they've conceded the most out of the top 9! Obviously they've been scoring a lot which keeps them up there, but much like with Rovers when those goals stop coming so frequently the tumble down the table begins... all great sides build from the back.

I'm not at the stage for calling to the manager to go just yet, but there are some serious and very concerning problems in terms of our defending. It's no overreaction to say it's bad enough to put us in serious jeopardy if the team goes through a lean spell in front of goal. Needing to score 3 goals to win matches is never sustainable and will ultimately end badly. We got away with it in L1 because the opposition were very poor, but if we don't take action in the summer to correct this issue then I fear we are looking at a relegation battle next season. Tony Mowbray has shown absolutely nothing as of yet to suggest he can put this right. The ball is very much in his court to sort this out before it's too late.

Needed to be rested for the upcoming defeat to Boro.

A really sad state of affairs. Our team has never been able to defend under Mowbray, he's come out and said he doesn't see it as a problem, so do we just accept this is it and watch the club slowly regress as the likes of Dack leave for pastures anew and our older players begin to wane? If we had proper footballing people in charge questions would be asked about this consistent problem that is massively impeding our progress. Unfortunately I imagine nobody will notice until we suddenly aren't scoring as many but still conceding regularly, and at that point we may well be in a relegation struggle. Possibly as early as next season. The signs are ominous, especially when you take into account Mowbray's dubious record in the transfer market. People will cling to the fact this season was always meant to be consolidation and mid table is fine, but the warning signs are there for all to see - the goals conceded column makes for grim reading and the points column will look a hell of a lot worse if and when the goals aren't coming as often as they have done.

Frankly, if we have aspirations of staying in this league in the next year or two we need to sort the defence. As soon as the goals dry up and/or Graham's age catches up with him and/or he picks up an injury we are toast.

I think we have enough points in the bag to stay up this season, probably fairly comfortably, but we are a bottom three team without Dack and Graham in the side. There's just nothing there in terms of quality.

Worrying times. Another goal in the goals conceded column. It's alright though, Mowbray says defence isn't a concern.

It's going well then?

I suggested after the last defeat that it might be a good idea for Tony to experiment a little... didn't exactly mean like this though. What a bizarre team selection. Hopefully Reading aren't up for it tonight.

Good luck to Blackpool. Their fans have been through hell. In 2012 I thought we had the worst owners in the country, but the Oystons said "hold our beers" and made Venky's look almost benevolent in comparison.

In fairness it was the first half where we were abysmal, we did improve in the second half but still looked useless going forward. Dack wasn't playing though which largely explains that. I don't think we can call ourselves unlucky in that match considering we got two penalties! We let in two very poor goals and if you can't keep it tight at the back you'll never get anywhere, as history has proven time and time again. It's an area Mowbray doesn't seem to consider important which is a big concern.

We would have lost to Reading if not for the generosity of Paul McShane. We were absolutely appalling in that match, two down after 25 minutes and defensively all over the place. Clawed back a point with two penalties, didn't look like we'd score from open play in a million years. We've improved since then but anybody thinking tonight will be an easy three points has already forgotten how poor we are and have been the entire season defensively. Only Ipswich, Rotherham and Villa have conceded more than us. Reading have actually conceded 44 compared to our 47, but they've score 10 less goals than us which puts them in the position they're in.

An impressive win for Bolton tonight against BIG club, away from home as well.

I think it's only the second proper interview Evans has given in the last six or seven years. To be honest he comes across as a sensible and decent bloke. Ipswich are 14/15th in terms of Championship wages so it's not like they're criminally underspending. He just made a terrible, terrible mistake in appointing Paul Hurst, I'm not sure I've ever seen one manager have such a devastating affect on a team in such a short space of time- and I would even include Steve Kean in that. Hurst ripped the spine out of the team and replaced it with lower league quality. He destroyed morale both on the pitch and behind the scenes. It's really amazing how badly Hurst screwed Ipswich over. I think the majority of neutrals expected Ipswich to struggle this year, but to only have three wins by mid-February is shocking. They've totally collapsed. Ipswich have a lot of loan players who will leave, which should give scope to bring in a few decent players next season. Looking at the players they have on permanent deals, they have the foundation for a decent L1 team. I'd expect Bialkowski and Knudsen to go (and before anyone says anything, no, we don't want them, no better than what we already have), but there shouldn't be much more movement in terms of outgoings. Gerken should be a good enough GK for League 1, and they've got the likes of Chambers, Skuse, Nsiala, Nolan, Edwards, Harrison, Jackson, Ward, Spence, Judge and Huws who should all be competitive at that level. They'll need reinforcements across the defence and probably up front as well, but theoretically their senior pros should give them a solid base to build from assuming most of them aren't sold. In terms of youngsters they've got Lankester, Bishop, Dozzell, Nydam and Downes who have all shown a lot of potential this season. If Ipswich keep hold of them and use next season to really blood them into the team then, again, they should have a solid base to work from. It'll be interesting to see if any of those players are poached when Ipswich take the drop. If Evans if serious about getting the club promoted at the first attempt he'll do everything he can to keep those players. So, it's not all doom and gloom for Ipswich. There are some good players in there, but it'll all come down to how many leave the club and whether the manager - whether that be Lambert or somebody else - can erase the losing mentality they've picked up this season and mount a serious promotion push.

He recently did an interview where he said over the past year or so he's become much more hands on. Basically the club was running itself with Mick at the helm, but with him leaving and the upheaval it caused he felt he had no choice but to get involved. Obviously it hasn't worked out very well so far, but if he wants Ipswich back up at the first attempt he needs to stick with Lambert (assuming he stays) and back him with a reasonable budget. Ipswich are going to need some surgery in the summer to be competitive in L1, but it can be done. They have to hold on to their younger stars (as we did with Nyambe, Lenihan, Raya, etc) and bring in some wise old heads who know how to get the job done. That's where Lambert needs to earn his crust and use his contacts to bring in players that can do the job, as he did for us with the likes of Graham and Bennett.

They extended it for a year a couple of months ago. https://www.eadt.co.uk/sport/freddie-sears-contract-extended-1-5818710

The Villa/Lambert debate reminds me a bit of the Ipswich/McCarthy debate - was the shit football down to the manager's preference or a neccessity in order to get the best out of very limited players with hardly any resource to strengthen? As far as Ipswich and McCarthy were concerned I'd say the latter, I can't say I saw enough of Villa under Lambert to make a solid judgement - but they've been going downhill since he left which suggests a structural problem rather than it being purely down to the manager. I think your conclusion is harsh to be honest but I'm not interested enough in Lambert's career to start researching in depth! I think he was a good manager in his younger days, the Villa job ground him down and now he's an average manager at best. Put him in a mid-table team and he'll basically keep them mid-table. Put him in a relegation-threatened team and they'll more or less stay in the same position. I don't think he's a bad manager but I don't think he's a good one at the moment either. Just somewhere in between.

The problems with Hurst went beyond just results on the pitch - I think if it was just results they may have stuck with him longer. Unfortunately for him he managed to alienate a lot of players and backroom staff as well, and that added pressure to an already delicate situation. Lambert hasn't improved Ipswich's results but he's a good politician which gets him a lot more leeway from the supporters and usually the owners as well. Hurst was very naive in that respect. As if things aren't bad enough for Ipswich, now Freddie Sears, their top scorer, is out for 12 months with a knee injury.

He was pretty good at Wycombe tbf, and imo at least did a solid job at Villa. His career hasn't gone anywhere since then though. A short stint here which basically just got him back into the spotlight, an average tenure at Wolves followed by really poor spells at Stoke and Ipswich. He now has little choice but to stay at Ipswich (who seem happy to keep him for the foreseeable future) and try to get them promoted from League 1. It won't be as easy as it was for Mowbray though, as Ipswich don't have a Danny Graham, an Elliott Bennett, a Charlie Mulgrew, a Darragh Lenihan or a Corry Evans to hold on to. They have a much worse playing squad than we had when we went down, and Marcus Evans hasn't invested in a long time, so it could be a tough slog for Ipswich next season. I can see them being similar to Rotherham and ending up in the playoffs.

It's clear from his quotes about being frustrated about the summer budget when he left that he was expecting more assurances than he ended up getting. I think he outright said that, and it seemed tied into selling Rhodes as that was done with great urgency in January when previous managers had failed to do so. As with everything Venky's related it's all smoke-and-mirrors and it'll probably be years before we know the real truth behind the Bowyer sacking, Lambert appointment/resignation, Coyle arrival era of 2015-2016. Some strange stuff going on there regardless.

No argument from me. My main concern as an Ipswich fan right now would be the new signings, which seem absolutely pointless. Their squad when Lambert arrived was nowhere near the required standard, and multiple signings later it's still nowhere near. If you're going to buy Alan Judge at least play him in his correct position, otherwise why not buy a wide midfielder or a winger? Some strange decisions going on there. Will Keane is like a shit version of Andy Carroll, ponytail and all.

In fairness, the owners (or their adviser(s)) did appear to lie to Lambert about the kind of funds he'd have available. Whether that makes him leaving right or wrong is open to debate, but if you don't trust your bosses and they've massively lied to you within months or taking the job (and you put a get out clause in your contract assumedly because you weren't 100% sure if they could be trusted) then it's hard to be too critical on him for walking away. Stoke's squad was really poor and I think their performance this season in the Championship shows a lot of those players were never very good to begin with. Rowett and now Jones haven't been able to halt their slide either. He was very lucky to get that job but they needed a proper firefighter like Allardyce to have any hope of staying in the PL. If he quits Ipswich then yes, I'd think he's done for a while at any decent level. He has improved their general play (they actually played quite well against Norwich in spells) but he hasn't been able to cut out their defensive mistakes and his short term signings all look well short of the standard needed to get Ipswich the points they need, which begs the question of why they were signed in the first place. Judge is decent but being played on the wing. Quaner and Keane no better than what Ipswich already had. Same for the likes of Bree. Just desperation signings with no real purpose. At least we got a couple of decent players in Graham and Bennett. Ipswich might as well have signed nobody at all.

If Tony actually plays him up front for a few matches he might get a couple. If he's continually played as an inside forward then I'll be surprised if he scores any.