You can't blame him for taking the job at Stoke, I bet he couldn't believe he was even offered it. Very strange appointment. Ipswich was a hopeless job but yeah, no improvement results wise. I expected a bit better from him down here. He'll need to get it right next season at Ipswich or that might be it for him at any decent level. Then again, if Coyle can fail repeatedly and keep getting offered positions...

Keeping Villa up over multiple seasons was a success in my book. He did well at Wycombe too. Not sure Wolves can be considered a failure, would say pretty average before he was ousted by the agent takeover. Seems to have lost steam over the past few years though. Made some odd career moves - keeps jumping into impossible jobs. We were a difficult one at the time, Stoke almost unsalvageable and Ipswich needing a miracle to survive. He'll need to get Ipswich back up next season to restore his reputation.

Nope. I feel the same way but I don't want him out. I think he deserves and has earned time to prove me wrong, and I'm sure it's the same for anybody else with similar doubts.

The amount of people who genuinely want Mowbray out are so small in number that it genuinely isn't even worth mentioning. Unfortunately as soon as someone posts "Mowbray Out" it somehow morphs into everybody with a legitimate concern or criticism apparently wanting him out as well, although at most only one or two people have actually said so.

He was actually on the bench for that Forest match, our one and only available CB in case of injury to Hoban or Ward. Scary.

Also worth noting our goalkeeper for most of that season was Jason Steele - assume he was injured for this match? Other gone and now forgotten from the 16/17 squad - Adam Henley, Gordon Greer and Stephen Hendrie.

That Lowe/Akpan centre midfield pairing will never be beaten in terms of sheer ineptness. A black hole that sucked the joy and life out of everything on and indeed off the pitch.

Much like Bowyer, I think Mowbray prefers the grafters to the creative players. Probably feels less anxious with a worker bee like Conway on the pitch as opposed to the less predictable Rothwell. Unfortunately this mentality isn't going to get us to where we need to be. Sometimes you need to be brave.

Only one sub from that Forest game is still here: Emnes, Stokes, Joao, Guthrie, Tomlinson, Brown, Fisher As far as the first team, not many left from that either: Raya, Nyambe, Ward, Hoban, Williams, Mahoney, Lowe, Akpan, Feeney, Bennett, Gallagher Fair to say we've seen some significant improvement across the pitch since those dark days.

Ideally, but even so collapsing to a 5-2 defeat against Brentford having been 2-1 up at HT suggests the so-called team spirit at the club isn't as strong as we might think, especially when you consider the 4-1 hammerings we took at Preston and Bristol City. Then there was the no-show in the 3-1 defeat at Wigan, the points we threw away against Birmingham, Boro, Leeds & Norwich, not being able to beat the likes of Rotherham at home... I don't know. There's a lot of question marks there for me. Our goals conceded column does suggest a pretty big problem with our defensive play though. I hesitate to just blame the back four & goalie as I think we also have problems with midfielders giving adequete protection to the full backs and centre backs. Corry Evans has been a constant as a defensive midfielder in a team which has never been able to stop leaking goals. Bennett/Nyambe and Bell/Williams rarely get protection, although to be fair to our wingers I think they're meant to be playing as inside forwards which means they technically wouldn't have the same defensive duties you would associate with out and out wingers or wide midfielders. That's a tactical issue that Mowbray has never addressed and at this point I'm not sure he will ever address it. Nonetheless we've overall conceded more than everyone below us except Rotherham and Ipswich. If we go through a lean spell in front of goal then things could get quite difficult. We should be OK for this season but our defensive issues urgently need to be addressed in the summer.

Team spirit isn't just about the lads getting on with each other, playing FIFA tournaments, taking videos of each other in the shower (wtf was that about anyway?) and so on... a bigger part of that is getting the best out of each other on the pitch and being able to collectively deal with adversity and high pressure situations. I have no doubt that the general mood in the camp is happy, content, satisfied, and so on... but as far as team spirit is concerned I'd say we're only half way there, otherwise you wouldn't see these kinds of collapses happening over and over again, whether it's losing a lead in the final few minutes or getting absolutely hammered by average teams. People talk about Brentford being a good team, but the fact remains they're 17th and the last time they scored 5 goals in a match was the start of the season when they beat Rotherham.

I'll keep at it then. Unfortunately I've come to realise the English subtitles are just subs for the English VAs, which means it's often totally different to what the Japanese VA is saying. I'm no expert when it comes to speaking Japanese but even an amateur like me can pick up when entire words and phrases are being missed out. Still, English voice acting in games tends to bug me so I'll probably just stick with the Japanese voices and try to fill in the blanks.

J-Lowe was an England U-20's captain and played regularly for the U21's as well, so yeah, it doesn't mean that much.

If anything I'd say the popular opinion seems to be that Bennett is rubbish these days. I hold the opposite view and think he's decent enough - could definitely be upgraded on but worth having around for his versatility and commitment. As for unpopular opinion, I still think Nyambe's a long way from being the finished article. I think he's caught out of position often and that might be why TM is leaving him out of the team at present. I wouldn't be rushing to give Rodwell a new contract. Had some good games against some poor teams but still has some way to go to convince me that we should be offering him a long term deal. I also think we've been more lucky than good this season. I can think of a few games we were lucky to get something from, but not many (any?) where we've lost/drawn but deserved to win. I imagine that's partially because Mowbray always sets us up to play as underdogs.

It is shocking, but I think it's mainly a confidence thing. I've said it many times but there are too many nice lads in this team who are great when the going is good, as it often is when we're playing at home, but have a tendency to crumble when the pressure is on - whether that be from the opposing team or the opposing fans. We need an Andy Todd or a Ryan Nelsen in there barking orders and banging heads together when things start to go awry. Instead we have a group of players who collectively glance at each other guiltily after conceding and saunter back to the centre circle, confidence and purpose suddenly eradicated through self-doubt. The ability is there - we wouldn't be where we are if it wasn't - but the team is missing a true leader to galvanise and refocus the players when things get tough.

I agree on both points, but worth noting the manager should not really be "running the club" at all, and that's been a common problem throughout Venky's tenure. Way too much responsibility put onto the manager's shoulders. I'd argue in Bowyer's defence that he could only dream of having the kind of structure in place that Mowbray does, being able to essentially hire his own boss for a start!

It's not that I'm not enjoying it, I'm just not blown away by it either. It seems to be following the typical FF formula without taking too many risks, which is fine but I've already played so many JRPG's that use the same premise that it becomes less interesting over time. I'm currently on Chapter 3 I think? I'm doing the Deadeye sidequest at the moment.

How long would you say you need to play before it starts getting a grip on you? I'm a few hours in and not majorly excited to jump back in, but I'll keep going if it eventually gets good.

Just a feeling I've got. I will say that of the games against the top three we've played this season the Blades were by far the most impressive.

Norwich and Leeds for me. I think Sheff Utd will ultimately run out of steam and have to endure the playoff lottery.

I can't help but get deja vu when I read what people write about Mowbray. It really is GB all over again, right down to the tactical naivety and strong relationship with the owners. Dack is Mowbray's Cairney and Brereton is his Rhodes ( whoops).

In comparison to the teams around us our major deficiencies (imo) are LB, RB and CF. Two of those are first team issues (none of our full backs are great, although Nyambe is getting better) whilst CF is squad depth as we have nobody decent to cover Graham. I think we're fairly well stocked in other areas, enough to support a playoff push at least.

And yet both Tony and a good portion of our fans seem happy with not spending available money in the window. Hmm. We didn't strengthen a great deal in the summer either, so when exactly do we plan to add some actual quality to this squad? Can't help but look at the Championship right now and think a couple of decent signings might have us in those playoff places rather than being constant nearly-rans due to lack of squad depth.

An utter embarrassment. Shameful. How do you go from a five game winning streak to that?