I'm not so sure, Garret aside I'm not sure how many of our players would cope with the rough and tumble of L1. Last time we had multiple players who were clearly well above that level - Raya, Mulgrew, Dack, Graham, Lenihan, Armstrong - this time we'll have players who may be suited to that level but not many who I'd consider above it based on what I've seen from them this season.

Looks like the WBA manager made it clear their first half performance was unacceptable, they're much more up for it in the second half.

"Steve, how do we bridge the financial gap if we get relegated?" "The owners have assured us that they will continue to fund the club." "What if the Indian courts are still refusing to allow them to send money to the club?" "The owners have assured us that they will continue to fund the club." Rinse and repeat... we'll get nothing useful from Waggott. Realistically there would have to be a firesale and what remains in terms of playing assets will be sold. If that isn't enough they'll look at what else they can flog to raise money. I don't think anything will be off the table.

JDT did well in his first season. Obviously the second half of 22/23 was pretty galling, but when you've got a squad filled with weak-minded players it's somewhat inevitable. We also had our main goalscorer totally lose form after Christmas and stop scoring, which was a hammerblow to our chances of keeping up with the teams around us. This season we were doing fine until November, at which point injuries crippled us and the proverbial chickens came home to roost insofar as our dismal recruitment and financial cutbacks are concerned. The players seemed to lose faith and confidence (doesn't take much with this lot) and we went on a huge downward spiral. JDT was either unable or unwilling to change how we played to try and shore up, so we were just conceding ridiculous amounts of goals with no end in sight. The manager's position had become untenable by January as seemingly the "senior committee" of players had lost their trust in him and the relationship between JDT and the higher-ups was irrevocably fractured. It probably had been since the summer when he first offered his resignation. I think we only got to see glimpses of what was possible under JDT as he wasn't suitably backed for the project he had signed up for. I'm sure he was clear on what he saw as requirements to succeed before he was appointed, so that's on the owners and upper management if they were not able to commit to the manager's vision during the course of his contract. Obviously things can change financially, but at that point JDT did the right thing and offered to leave and the owners stubbornly refused to let him go. Again, that's completely their fault. Nobody with a modicum of sense would force the manager to stay in that scenario. JDT was never the problem, and the truth is neither is Eustace. The owners have always been and will always be the problem. They aren't capable of running this club properly and they've had long enough to prove otherwise. Until they go we are stuffed no matter who comes in. At best treading water in the Championship, at worst hurtling down the leagues if things really do start to unravel.

The form table for the last six games, in regards to us and the teams below us: Plymouth - 4 points Rovers - 5 points Stoke - 9 points QPR - 10 points Birmingham - 7 points Huddersfield - 7 points Sheff Weds - 12 points Extrapolate that over the next six games (I know it isn't that simple, but just as a comparison point) and the table would look like: Stoke - 50 points Sheff Weds - 50 points QPR - 49 points Rovers - 46 points Birmingham - 46 points (game in hand) Plymouth - 45 points Huddersfield - 44 points (game in hand) Rotherham - 19 points (let's just assume they'll lose every match at this point, doesn't matter either way) Obviously that deosn't take into account who each team is playing during the next six games, so form can drop quickly, but even if the likes of QPR, Sheff Weds and Stoke stutter a little and drop to 5/6 points over the next six we will still be well in the mire unless our own form picks up dramatically in games we are unlikely to get anything from. We really need to hope Plymouth, Birmingham and Huddersfield continue to falter alongside us, as if that is the case we will probably just about finish above them. That does rely on us continuing to pick up around 5 points from our next 6 matches and, considering our last 6 were against teams we'd be expected to get something from, and the next 6 are Boro (a), Ipswich (h), Sunderland (a), Southampton (h), Bristol City (a) and Leeds (a) ... well, you can predict three easy defeats there immediately. To replicate our current five points from six we would likely need to beat one of Boro, Sunderland or Bristol City - all away - and draw the other two. At least one must win and the other two must not lose. Away. We've won 5, drawn 3 and lost 10 of our away matches - but our last six away matches read LLLDDL. So yeah, I really think we are in the shit and we are going to be relying on other teams staying as bad as they are or getting worse. In some cases a lot worse.

All I can say is I don't think I've ever watched a losing team so devoid of attacking intent. It wasn't just that we were poor, we didn't even attempt to threaten them. It was absolutely deplorable, a national league team would have put up more of a fight than we did on that day.

Mowbray won two of his first three matches (away draw against Burton two days after he was appointed, two home 1-0 wins against Derby and Wigan). We then only picked up 4 points from the next 21 available, a run which basically relegated us. Four draws in a row and then three defeats. We finished the season with three wins and two draws, but the damage had been done. Most likely Mowbray's initial results will prove to be slightly better than Eustace by way of those early two victories, but there won't be much between them. Goes without saying that the reason Mowbray probably got less flak was because he took over from a dismal joker in Coyle, who the majority of the fanbase hated. Eustace has taken over from JDT who was nowhere near as reviled, albeit sections of the fanbase never took to him after he spoke the truth rather than pretend everything was OK.

I'm always careful with my wording for a few reasons, but I believe you.

If true then I can't pretend it surprises me in the least. We're a rudderless ship. Standards aren't just low, they are effectively non-existent as the CEO talks of having no pressure on results and the latest manager praises today's pathetic showing as an "amazing effort". The players won't be answering to Eustace, Waggott won't care and who knows if the owners even know we played a match today.

I hope you're right, but for the past four months or so we've been neck and neck with Rotherham as the worst team in the league. Extrapolate that to another two months and I think it sees us playing League 1 football next season, and deservedly so. Ironic if the likes of Gallagher then leave due to contract expiry, as he might finally have found his level otherwise. To quote an old nemesis of ours - "miracles now, I'm afraid it's miracles now". That's how it feels, anyway.

Why even say "no excuses" when every interview is littered with them. Simply because it's an empty 'positive' cliché.

Highly likely we lose all four of those. If we somehow won three and drew two of the others we'd only get to 52 points, matching 16/17. Realistically we'll do well to win two of the five and draw one of them. Seven points, 48 overall, a good chance we go down. No worries though, today wasn't a must win after all.

When Spurs beat us 2-0 in April 2012 I don't think I've ever seen a match where a team was less obvious about not wanting to win. We played that match like a training game. Even the pundits were gobsmacked at how lifeless our performance was. I'm not suggesting it was fixed, but for whatever reason our team had no desire whatsoever to get anything out of that game, despite the fact we needed every possible point to survive.

That would require common sense, urgency and competency, three things that are solely lacking at Ewood.

I said before Millwall I felt we needed at least four points from them and Plymouth. We got two. Hard to see us getting another win this season, and it feels like we'll need a couple of surprise wins now to stay up - either that or two teams below us (Rotherham are already gone) go on runs as bad as us. Eustace hasn't had any kind of new manager bounce which obviously isn't a good sign.

Should have just given it to Johnson. At least he was able to beat one of the poor sides at Ewood.

I am fairly sure even our relegation team of 16/17 didn't go on a run as embarrassing as this.

Eustace got the point he was hoping for. Two wins in nineteen. Beyond pathetic.

We aren't talking inexperienced lads either Hyam, McFadz, Brittain, Pickering, Wharton... plenty of experience there. No excuses, as the manager would say.

What is your PC/laptop setup like? If you have a decent setup with a relatively good graphics card you can use a local install of Stable Diffusion to edit pictures. There's a step-by-step guide below which advises how to install the AUTOMATIC1111 extension, which is what I've used in the past: https://stable-diffusion-art.com/install-windows/ Once you've installed it, you can use the img2img tab to insert your original picture and then use the prompts to change it, or inpainting to remove certain items. It can take a little time to fiddle with settings and prompts to get what you want, but generally it does a good job. There are other options such as Google Collab if you don't have the local power to run an AI generative tool - the program itself is installed on a remote server, so you're only using your browser. Similar to cloud gaming. https://www.unlimiteddreamco.xyz/articles/how-to-run-stable-diffusion-in-google-colab/ Otherwise there are the more traditional methods of using Photoshop or GIMP to edit photos. If it's something relatively simple like removing items from a table, then using something like the clone tool to edit the table surface over the item on the table can sometimes give perfectly good results. Depends how complex it needs to be.

When you've won two games from eighteen, games against clubs around you in similar form, especially at home, become must-wins in terms of common sense, even if mathematically it's not, because the evidence doesn't support many points being picked up from elsewhere. Technically no game is 'must win' unless you mathematically require it to be so, but looking at our fixtures and based on our sustained poor form, I wouldn't disagree with anyone saying tomorrow's game is.

Eustace's comments are basically the same as 99% of managers at any club. The only ones who speak their mind openly are those who know they can walk straight into another job via their reputation alone, or those who don't really need the job but just can't give up the football bug even in old age when they should be long retired. It's a self-preservation thing first and foremost. Not only for their current job but jobs in the future as well. Other clubs aren't going to look upon you too favourably if you've been spouting off about your previous club's issues when you were there. Being media-savvy and onside with higher management is the name of the game - whether you're in football or practically any other industry. Football just happens to have a much wider audience than your typical job, magnifying any comments made in public. We had 18 months of a bloke who didn't feel the need to pander to those above him. Someone who was quite happy to speak his mind, presumably because he felt like if he did go he would get another job elsewhere without downgrading. By the end I imagine he felt like practically any job would be better than dealing with the incompetence of Rovers under Venky's. Going from JDT's brutal honesty to a 'normal' manager toeing the line was always going to be difficult. You get used to the refreshing honesty, only to return to cliché's and empty words. It is what it is. I don't blame Eustace for the stance he's taken, and all I care about is whether he improves the team and gets enough points on the board to keep us up this season. Early assessment: better defensively, but still conceding and not scoring much. It's obvious the balance still needs to be tweaked. We'll see if he can get it done.

I never really got a 'puppet' vibe from Mowbray. He was self-indulgent, came out with some really ridiculous comments ("I don't look at the league table") and was a bit dull... but it was obvious he had his own way of looking at the team and at football as a whole, regardless of whether we agreed with it or not. Eustace just spouts clichés and comes across as not being genuine in what he's saying. It's a pretty sharp reversal from JDT which makes the whiplash even worse. That's no comment on Eustace's ability, that remains to be seen, but what I've seen and heard thus far doesn't inspire any confidence in me. Obviously hope he proves me wrong - if so what he says in the media is irrelevant to me, short of praising Burnley or Venky's.

It's the poorest squad we've had since the 16/17 relegation, and it isn't even close. At this rate this lot won't even match the number of points we got in that season, so you could arguably say they are worse - if not for individual talent then for mentality. Other than Szmodics, and maybe Tronstad, I wouldn't care if any of the others left tomorrow. A mixture of inconsistent, injury prone and weak minded - sometimes a combination of all three. With an overhaul extremely unlikely it's impossible to see how we stay up next season, even if we somehow scrape survival this season. I don't even want to think about being humiliated twice by Burnley again if we're in the same division.

We leak less goals now, but we're not good enough at the other end. Draws aren't going to keep us up, and that seems like the best Eustace can do with this team.