Plymouth have obviously improved over the last couple of weeks, but this is an absolute must win. Anything other than a win here and there will be a bit of rot setting in.

Still want to do it? Shocking today and, overall, we've been rather poor for the last 2/3 matches. Playing against 10 men has helped results, but the quality has been missing.

So managers should be rewarded for meeting expectations and then having a good run of 7 matches (in which he's played against 10 men for the 45 of the last two matches). Come on. We'd be handing out new contracts 3 times a year.

Kind of? Leicester were heavy favourites to go up. Ipswich can be used as an encouraging sign for the benefits of a good start and momentum, but we can't really compare our situation to data that we can see from recently relegated sides.

Bit of an insane statement. Are we going to give a manager a new contract after every decent 6 months? We're off to a nice start, but the test of a Championship season is as the slog really starts. Plus, he probably won't benefit from playing against 10 men for half of every match on a consistent basis. Great start to the season, but nearly every single one of our Championship season has contained at least one very good run of 10 results.

Has the game gone soft or has it not? I hate the 'shithousery' term, but I loved the Haaland move. It's great to see teams that genuinely hate each other and loved him throwing the ball at a couple of pricks and then barging into one of them. Good to see a footballer who isn't just a big mouth followed by the hopes of some teammates holding him back.

Still not really sure of your point. It's only been around since 1960.

Or showing how desperate they are. Could find themselves in a relegation fight if this continues.

Any point away from home is a decent result in this league (aside from maybe Plymouth and Portsmouth). But that's a missed opportunity against 10 men for an entire half. You should be winning from that position and we failed to even really trouble their keeper.

What's your point?

Of course clubs that win it will enjoy the experience, but let's revisit your comment in the early rounds of the cup next year and see how many supporters are saying things like 'this isn't a priority', 'I won't be too disappointed if we lose this', 'let's rest all of our players'. Using the example of the winning side's enjoyment of the competition in that season is, quite frankly, an absurd way of trying to imply that there is an overall value in the competition. I don't care much one way or the other when it comes to the league cup. I'm happy for a bit of an early-season distraction, but I don't think I'd miss it much if it disappeared. The only strong argument for keeping it is the fact that it has been around for a while. Then again, there will be a few posters on here that are older than the League Cup...so it really isn't that old.

I think it's possible to view BBD's post-Rovers career as both a failure and a success. He's got to play football at a higher level and earn far more money. That is an undeniable success and most footballers or aspiring footballers would happily trade places with him. BUT, he had a moment in his career where he was here and one of the hottest properties in world football outside of the big 3/4 leagues. At that point, I'm sure he was imagining a career as an established player at a good side in the Premier League or La Liga and a consistent place in the Chile best 11. He now finds himself in a struggling side, rarely starting for Chile, and likely headed back to the Championship. It certainly wasn't a mistake to leave, but he may have gone to the wrong club as his next destination and he will surely be disappointed with elements of his career.

It's a valid point, but it still poses some problems. Plenty of people are dissatisfied with the value that they get out of their TV subscriptions as we are now watching lower-quality football as a result of the number of matches being played. Rotation would solve this problem, but then many would complain that they're paying for TV subscriptions or showing up for matches and not seeing the stars (see the NBA). The other fix would be to reduce the overall number of matches, but vary kickoff times and match days more so that TV viewers would feel like they were getting better value. The downside here is that it makes life difficult for those actually attending matches (see the general complaints about the Championship this season). The Nations League should be scrapped and players should be given proper breaks throughout the season. A 2ish week winter break and a week off in each half of the season would suffice. I don't mind scrapping the League Cup. Big teams don't take it seriously until the later rounds. Even a club like us will only take it seriously a couple of rounds in. It serves virtually no purpose and no one really cares about it. Do players earn millions? Yes. Does that mean we should not care about their wellbeing our how playing too many matches could impact the quality of football that we watch? No. We just watched a pretty dire European Championships and tiredness was certainly a factor. Did players in the good old days play tons of matches for far less? Yes. But they also played at half the speed and had their careers typically finish around 32/33. There's plenty of room to remove fairly pointless matches from the footballing calendar.

Not a lot of very strong candidates out there. It's unfortunate timing.

Do you not think that it has been planned? There was already discussion surrounding his fitness and injury when the original squad was announced. Had he been in the full squad, withdrawing would have been a lot more complicated. Had they left him out of every squad it would have looked rather odd.

For the sake of the England team, it would be great to have a lot more playing around Europe. There's no doubting the benefit that it can have on a player's development to go and play in a different league, learn different styles, have a pretty major life experience and mature as a result. You start to look at countries and wonder 'what do they do better'? Often it isn't a question of talent, but I do think that many of them benefit from going abroad and learning a different side of the game as a result. What's more, I think it is one of the biggest factors behind why we see a general lack of good English coaching/managerial talent. You look at the post-Southgate discussion and there was a real lack of talent amongst the English options. No English manager has ever won the Premier League and I think only 8/9 have ever managed a Champions League match. Again, our game is so big and has so much money that this isn't because we don't have the right funnel for coaches and managers, but we may suffer from a lack of retired players who can see football in a more advanced or well-rounded way. The easy argument against that will be that Klopp never played outside of Germany and Guardiola barely had a career outside of Spain - but both have lifelong interests in the world outside of their home countries and that has then influenced their coaching career path. We see that same lack of adventure in the player decision-making on the coaching level. As for your list, pretty notable that you're choosing 'have' played abroad and you're also listing some players that aren't part of the current England setup.

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves - we are 4 matches into the league season and we're a few days removed from an awful performance and tactical approach against Blackpool. Great to see improvement over last season and he's addressing some of the doubts and concerns that were rightfully their in the second half of the season, but there's still a very long way to go yet.

The England team could only benefit from more players playing abroad. On top of that, I'd much rather have players who are involved at sides actually winning matches and competing for things over players plodding along in midtable (at best) mediocrity. That isn't a knock on Wharton's potential, and I admire how defensive the Wharton stans are on here, but to be so dismissive of Gomes because you don't watch him regularly is ridiculously dumb.

What a stupidly England-centric view of world football. He's going to be playing Champions League football this year, but, you're right, he'd be better off playing for Crystal Palace.

Pretty ridiculous thing to say.

Very gutsy performance and you'll have to go quite far back to find a better goal being scored by us in any match - nevermind the derby. Referee was pretty awful and not helped by his linesman when we should have put ourselves 2-1 up. Silly by Gueye and hopefully he will learn that you can't do that here, but I will be watching Harrington very closely this season to see if he is consistent in his application of that particular law. I don't disagree with it, but a lot of players will get away with it in less important situations.

Hard to see anything but a defeat today, even with Burnley in a bit of turmoil. That being said, definitely the most hope we've had going into one of these fixtures in a while. The good start and the signings yesterday also mean that this fixture doesn't have the same (league) pressure that it could have.

Not to be an ass and flog this one to death - as it is incredibly boring - but you have an objective truth that is an indisputable fact and you have an objective truth that would be the consensus opinion of an unbiased group of people. This is a common usage in a lot of fields; otherwise, you limit the usage of objective truths to situations in which there are only hard facts that have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Incredibly boring discussion. But, there it is. My main point is that this is a messageboard and people will be sharing their opinions. Telling them that it is just their opinion is both pointless and mind-numbingly boring. And with this series of posts I have made my daily contribution to the mind-numbingly boring section of this website.

This business will have cost us a lot more than 2.5 million.

I know, it's crazy, but it actually does make sense.