It’s all very noble but if clubs followed your advice no manager would ever be sacked. Interesting point you’ve made about not being able to compare season on season as there are different teams. By that logic, his record in League One cannot be used in his favour. They were almost all different teams (and a different standard). Mowbray’s Championship record here is abysmal.

I think they’ve a Go Ape event planned in October so maybe a month after that.

I do wonder if Mulgrew called him out.

He made a huge mistake in telling Bauer that he had to fight his way into a team that had Mulgrew or Williams as front runners to partner Lenihan. It’s all well and good people saying the player’s attitude was wrong if he expected to be an automatic starter (his place to lose). I’d argue that Mowbray’s attitude was wrong.

He only has himself to blame.

It’s really interesting when posters like your good self lose patience. Kind of tells it’s own story.

Worked out okay for Jason Lowe. This is just another poor decision to add to the ever-increasing list. Everything we don’t want is what happens. Fan relations are going to really strain if we continue on this poor run. Bennett is like an on-field version of Mowbray. Enthusiastic, passionate, honest, great in League One but no longer up to the task and just keeps going regardless. Venkys - Waggott - Mowbray - Bennett We are leaderless and rudderless so we will have to hope we drift to safety and Venkys keep footing the bill.

The $64,000 question...

Why 15? Why not 25? Why not 46? We have been on a downward trend since the January window closed. We haven’t fixed the problems that caused that - in fact we’ve made them worse. Mowbray has peaked.

We have a squad now which is difficult to put into a system to get the best out of them. Any new manager is going to need a couple of windows to get some balance back to the squad and jettison some of the duplicated central players.

People were saying this all through the window yet Mowbray didn’t address it. Well, he did, he let Wharton, Magloire and Mulgrew go out on loan all at the same time!

My mistake!

Our best back four is presumably Cunningham Tosin Lenihan Nyambe? The jury is well and truly out - and Lenihan is injured. Cunningham Tosin ????? Nyambe isn’t quite as good.

Apparently our defence was fine on Saturday so provided he helps to keep the GA down to 2 per game, Bell can expect to be in for a good while yet.

Very naive. There is no loyalty in football. Since February we are running at a return of less than one point per game - including dead rubbers. And it’s getting worse.

I get the sentiment but I really don’t want zero points from six games. I guess the hypothetical question would need to have an incentive: we stay up and get someone like Hughes instead.

Gary. Nobody... nobody... is making a judgment after two games. Well, apart from those people who have forgotten/ignored everything except the last two games...

Fair. Maybe you could research for each player and add that. I was making the point that we have a very inexperienced and threadbare defence. Three of those have been with us for years and aren’t close to the first team. Only two are new - which is part of the problem. Cheers for the contribution though.

Shearer was a one-off. That’s the equivalent of comparing manager’s to Ferguson. However, Mowbray would probably have agreed with you and played Shearer out wide with Ripley on the bench and Warhurst up front on his own. I personally believe that every professional footballer should be able to use both feet but, much to my disgust, that isn’t the case. Footballers become specialists in certain areas and good managers knit these specialists together as much as possible with as few as possible played out of position. Mowbray seems to think that versatility is the future but results don’t seem to back him up. For me we have a poorly balanced squad with every player a narrow one and at different times they take turns in trying to make up for Mowbray’s poor recruitment. We have blown a £15m budget in the last 12 months (over three windows) and this imbalance still hasn’t been addressed if anything it has been made worse. Below is where I would say our players naturally play. In some cases these could even overlap. Blue are Tony’s XI from yesterday. Is it any wonder we are not playing with any real style? I could scarcely bring myself to include Hart.

Our crossing is horrendous because we’ve only bought one winger in 5 windows - who doesn’t play. We play centre midfielders or strikers out wide. Nobody should be surprised we can’t get crosses into the box.

Bennett (88/129) Williams (40/64) Bell (38/50) Nyambe (25/53) Adarabioyo (1/1) Cunningham (0/0) Hart (0/3) Platt (0/0) Grayson (0/0) That’s all of our defensive options if Lenihan gets injured. We have precisely two senior centre backs at the club, and that includes Tosin who has played one game for us! Our first choice right back is a midfielder! Three of our options have never played a Championship match! Not replacing Mulgrew is a big problem. Mowbray is far too heart over head in my opinion. Successful football managers are far more ruthless, even calculating. If we were going to let Mulgrew go this should have been managed not a last minute reaction. (*Championship games / EFL games for Rovers)

We have what we have for the next 4-5 months? The window has only just closed! We will not overcome our problems, let alone start winning games, by having Armstrong and Rothwell (or whichever non-winger he plays out wide) practise crosses. If our game is to be built on crosses we should have bought wingers instead of centre midfielders and forwards. As you say though, the substitutions yesterday were questionable and in my view he had completely lost the plot and went into kitchen sink mode. That can have merits but the personal involved made us more negative as a team. Bell for Downing? Travis off? Rothwell off? His loyalty to Bennett is going to be his undoing. If Nyambe isn’t up to it then he should have targeted a right back. We weren’t able to move Smallwood or Evans on but we still bought Johnson. He seems to value versatility but in my view that means jacks of all trades and masters of none.

Or he really believes his way is the right one and he is able to make excuses to himself about why it didn’t work there.

I think there is some logic to it. This could well be Graham’s last full season. We have to develop a style that doesn’t centre around him as the target man. Having him hand over the baton to someone else, playing for 30 minutes rather than 60-70. I’m not fully convinced he is an impact sub though because of the personnel we have. Defenders are well in the game rather than softened up. The bigger issue is that we don’t yet have the right player to hand over to, with Mowbray wasting the big money we had. Brereton (our wide forward) looks like he has already been replaced with Gallagher, and Gallagher isn’t pulling up any trees. Mowbray might turn this around and get enough points for us to stay in and around lower midtable but I fear that this is a similar story to Bowyer’s embarrassment-of-riches season where - although lower in quality - we still don’t know how to use them properly. Ultimately we fell backwards when patience (and lines of credit?) ran out and it was time to cash in. I honestly think he has taken us as far as he can. He has been a horror show when it comes to recruitment; his tactics and team selections are more miss than hit; and his substitutions baffling. I’m fearful of suggesting that Johnson be promoted to first team head coach in case he is then removed as part of a future cull but we need to do something differently. Venus and Lowe have to share some responsibility for how poorly staffed and drilled our players are we are - particularly as Mowbray has all but pointed the finger of blame at Venus for the players we have signed.

I’m looking forward to us winning one game and the ensuing “were r all the haters now??” backlash. Because we’ll have won a game. Funny that they don’t tend to concern themselves about ‘only one game’ when that happens though.