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.

Also yet another game where we can't come from behind to win. It's embarrassing how spineless we are.

Not good enough. Next game is now a must win, but I fear we've already thrown away too many points against clubs we should have gotten something from. If we can't beat the likes of Millwall or fucking Rotherham at home then who can we beat, realistically?

Some turnaround there. They looked dead and buried.

His lack of consistency is why he's 24 and not even come close to fulfilling his potential. If he was consistent he would have been sold for a decent price a long time ago.

I should clarify that when I said our players deserve to go down, Sammie was very much excluded from that. The only one we can rely on.

We're going down, and it's no less than these owners or our players deserve. Not so much some of the fans.

Even if you take the view that it was the staff at Ewood to blame for the mistake, it still leads back to Venky's as they have allowed such incompetence to fester due to a lack of any accountability for these supposed errors.

Great quotes from you @Herbie6590, you represent the fanbase incredibly well.

I think our first eleven is good enough to stay in the division, albeit our squad depth is poor and players like Gallagher and JRC are extremely injury prone. The biggest problem isn't so much ability as it is mentality. The squad has a really weak menality, emphasised by the suggestion that a few scattered boos led to players being upset at half time recently, and the fact we cannot come from behind to win a match if there are any actual stakes involved. Half the time we can't even come back to draw. On Saturday as soon as Swansea scored you knew the best we could hope for was a point. I appreciate comebacks in away matches may not be that common, but it's the same at home. Other than McFadz, Szmodics and possibly Tronstad I don't think the correct mentality is there with this group. It's been the same for so many years that it is clearly a deep-rooted issue at the club and almost certainly stems from the top.

One time where I was he had been lying.

Weirdly I can remember Waggott's August interview, where he stated we're a development squad with no ambitions other than to stay in the division, being widely praised - even on here by some. I was baffled as it did nothing but raise massive red flags for me. JDT evidently felt the same as from that point onwards he needled Waggott in practically every interview for months afterwards - including the many jabs at the fabled coach he claimed we'd bought but are actually leasing.

I may just have a low tolerance for this kind of thing, but JDT was a breath of fresh air when it came to a manager speaking his mind and not treating the fans like idiots. It's one of the reasons I had respect for him even when results weren't good - at least he was honest. It felt like he was 'one of us' regardless of whether I agreed with how he was setting us up on the pitch at times. He's probably the only Venky manager we've had who I actually trusted, which is why I knew he wasn't destined to be here very long. For what it's worth though, and I think you've said similar in the past, I ultimately couldn't care less what a manager says in interviews or pressers if results on the pitch are good. I can ignore the media stuff, but I can't ignore the results or our position in the table. So in the end that's all I'll seriously judge Eustace on.

He speaks like an automatron programmed by Waggott. After JDT's honesty I can't be bothered with hearing that, so am already skipping all of his interviews and press conferences. In terms of the job he's doing, if we don't get at least 4 points from the next two games then we're most likely done for. He says we have a good squad and "no excuses", so let's see.

Our home form is going to be absolutely vital in the run in. We play the following teams at home: Millwall Plymouth Ipswich Southampton Sheff Weds Coventry Draws won't be enough. We probably need to win at least three of these, maybe four. Might get away with two and a few draws if we get a surprise away result against Boro, Bristol City or Sunderland. There's a good chance every team we face at home is going to have something on the line. Probably no dead rubbers. One win in fourteen, two in seventeen, shows the mountain we have to climb to stay in the division at this point. Good luck JE. If we don't get at least four points from Millwall and Plymouth then we're staring down the barrel. Two huge matches. Six points would give us a decent platform to survive - this season at least.

The only successful season we've had during their entire tenure was in League 1. Other than that it's been a repeated pattern of missed opportunities, weak management, weak mentality, dwindling gates and various degrees of chaos and crisis. The Mowbray years have probably been the most 'stable', but even then you had the death spirals, a manager essentially running the whole club and not judged on results, ridiculous transfer fees for average players, allowing players to leave on frees rather than sell and reinvest, the attempt to sell Brockhall, and so on... just a neverending nightmare.

"No excuses", immediately uses Tuesday as an excuse for our slow start.

Yeah, up until around a month ago I figured we'd scrape enough points to survive this season and then drop the next. I think there's a high chance now that we go down this season. Looking at our run in things look bleak.

When was the last time a team went down from this league with a player having scored as many goals as Sammie? Feels like it would be some achievement if we do pull it off.

Could argue there isn't one on the pitch in blue and white either. Not that I could recognise, anyway.

Some ability, perhaps. Mentality? Weak as piss. I'd have Nyambe there instead any day, and Nyambe is no world beater either.

Depends if you're being generous and giving him Stoke or not. For me at best it'd be 85% Johnson and 15% Eustace in terms of credit for that match, but regardless it's been pretty poor considering Brittain's triumphant interview telling us "the shackles are off" and the senior players committee claiming they know it isn't good enough and it'll get better. Any timeline on that lads? Wouldn't want to upset you with some scattered boos again.