They gave Ten Hag a one year extension in the summer, based on winning a one off cup game, then sacked him a few months later - £15m down the drain. Then spend £10m+ hiring Amorim who has been just as much a dismal failure. Ratcliffe is responsible as the leader of football operations. Any responsibility taken from him for this collosal waste of money? Lol no, just make the poors suffer some more.

Of the teams above us, current home form reads: Coventry: 12 points from 15 WBA: 10 points from 15 Bristol City: 12 points from 15 Rovers: 10 points from 15 Away form reads: Coventry: 12 points from 15 WBA: 3 points from 15 Bristol City: 4 points from 15 Rovers: 3 points from 15 Not difficult to see how Coventry have surged up the table. They're a force both home and away at the moment. WBA, BC and Rovers are all struggling away from home recently, so it seems like this will be where the difference lies. Obviously if home form also drops off for any of the three teams then it's probably game over insofar as playoff aspirations are concerned. Of the teams directly below us, Watford's home form is poor at the moment, Boro's is average and Norwich is the same as us and WBA. Away from home Watford are also average, Boro are poor and Norwich are also poor. So, there's no immediate indication of a surge from any of the teams below us, although that could of course change quickly.

Oh, and for comparison, Rovers are 5th in the league table for home form (1.86 PPG, just behind Bumley on 2.06), whilst Derby are 23rd with 1.24 PPG. Away from home Rovers are 11th with 1.12 PPG and Derby are 22nd with 0.44 PPG. Our recent away form is pretty poor having picked up just 3 points from 15 available. We've lost 4 of our last 5 away matches. However, Derby's home form in the last 5 matches is even worse, having picked up just a single point from their last 5 home matches. So, the stats are in our favour... but...

Pretty much all of their home games at the very least are in must-win territory now. Their remaining home games are: Rovers (8th) Coventry (5th) PNE (15th) Burnley (3rd) Luton (22nd) Stoke (20th) Some tough games in there - Stoke and Luton games in particular likely to be crucial. If they very optimistically win 4 of those 6 games (keeping in mind they've only won 7 in the entire season) that would get them to 41 points. Realistically nowhere near enough to survive. So then they're going to need to take a fair few points from their away matches, which are: Plymouth (23rd) Swansea (16th) Portsmouth (17th) WBA (6th) Hull (19th) Overall you'd have to say they theoretically have more chance of picking up points against these teams, but the games being away is problematic, especially when you factor in Derby have only won one away game all season. The other six were all at home. So yeah, they look like they are cooked. It would require a hell of a turnaround in form for them to escape the drop at this juncture.

Everyone was hoping for that to happen last year, but they ended up going with Undertaker instead. Whether they'll retread the idea with Stone Cold this year remains to be seen - it feels like a missed opportunity to not have one last Rock/Stone Cold showdown on the biggest stage. I suppose the worry would be that two Attitude Era stars might (again) take the spotlight from current stars.

He just isn't that good. It's why we got him for a relative pittance with little competition. He's a player who at this point can be 'decent' at this level but that's about it. Yes he's slow but Dack wasn't exactly roadrunner and he was still a thousand times more useful than Cantwell.

Vince was surely the reason it never happened in the past, despite there being many occasions to do it and have it actually mean something. It's a bit late in the day now, and a weird time to do it considering this is supposed to be Cena's retirement tour. It does make the buildup more interesting than a face Vs face dynamic, at least, but with Cena being a part timer for basically a decade at this point it's not the same as Hogan (96) or Stone Cold's (01) turn. It's just a cool moment as opposed to an industry defining event.

Cena turning heel on his retirement tour wasn't something I was expecting. I don't watch WWE nowadays but I did watch the end of EC to see how they pulled it off. Interesting to see where they go with it.

Norwich did a lot of passing without really having an end product to show for it. From talking to a few Norwich fans post match this seems to be something they're used to away from home (apparently this isn't such a problem at home). We weren't terrible, but not great either. Average performance and probably lucky to have 11 on the pitch for as long as we did. Fair I think to have expected a bit more fire for a new manager, but maybe that energy was already given during Lowe's first couple of matches. It looked like a couple of mid table Championship teams duking it out, and perhaps at the end of the season that's what it ultimately will have been. There's plenty of inconsistent teams around us, so it isn't over yet. Coventry may well break away if their current form continues, which would just leave 6th up for grabs. The opportunity is there for Ismael and the lads, but we'll need to be winning against teams like Derby. Huge match irrespective of Eustace.

It's looking increasingly grim for Derby at this point. Another defeat today leaves them bottom, and if Hull win their game in hand against Plymouth at home on Tuesday then Derby would be 7 points from safety. They will be desperate regardless by next Saturday, and we've all seen this script before. Nonetheless even if you assume the high likelihood they'll take 3 points from us, it still looks like a monumental task for Eustace to keep them up now.

I wouldn't say it's reasonable to pay £20k pw for an unfit impact bench player. We might as well have just kept Siggy!

At least Dennis is only a loan for a few months. Still a horrendous waste of money, but still, could be worse.

They were poor today, I thought. If you didn't fair enough.

Indeed, home draws against poor teams aren't really enough now regardless of when we equalise. Can't blame Ismael though, as he only just got here. As usual it's the owners fucking everything up for, what, the 4th or 5th season in a row now?

Have to gratefully take the point and fair play to the lads for not giving up. Out of the playoff positions now though.

No new manager bounce, a lack of discipline and now bombing out of the playoffs as we have a shit second half of the season. As standard as the sunrise and sunset at this point

£20k a week well spent. Cheers recruitment team 🙄

I like how the video is just called "Jason Lowe" with no description. None needed. Everything you need to know about the lad summed up in 9 seconds.

I can't say I care about any letters being written by the manager. I don't care if it was written for him or not (although some of the lines were verbatim from his introduction interview video, so we would have to assume that was written for him as well). It's fine for fans who want to get emotionally attached to a manager but I'm long past that point. For the most part all I care about is performances and results on the pitch. The media stuff is just fluff. It's nice that he's got long-term ambitions for what he wants to do at the club, but so did JDT and Eustace, and look what happened there. Without the support of the owners it's irrelevant, unfortunately. For now all that he or the fans can focus on is the rest of the games we have this season. Anything after that is at the whim of owners who have consistently shown they could not care less about the long-term future of the club beyond keeping the lights on and losing as little money as possible.

If anybody wants one of their recent posts from the previous thread moved to this one, send me a DM and I'll do the necessary.

Difficult to have any optimism after what happened with the last two managers. Or indeed, what's happened in general over the past 14 years or so. However, I'll judge him based on how we perform on the pitch. Clean slate and no pre-judgement. Let's see what he can do.

New thread opened:

Officially announced. https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2025/february/25/welcome-valerien-ismael/ https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2025/february/25/-to-be-the-head-coach-of-the-club-is-something-special-for-me-/

A long read here from The Athletic on Ismael's Watford tenure (apologies if already posted): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5311623/2024/03/12/valerien-ismael-watford-exit-explained/

Unfortunately the £600k pa salary tracks if you assume Venky's are not putting any additional money into the club. If we guess Eustace was on around £600k, and factor in his compo to be between £500k - £750k (conflicting info from different sources) you'll end up at around £1.2m. £600k and a 2 year deal (or 2 years + a few months into June) would mean a manager coming in on £600k pa essentially costs them no more than they had already budgeted for. Zero ambition, as usual.