Hahaha, yea I should have written abject, dark, Kean days. The sad thing is how after the promise of last season, and the first third of this season, it has all unravelled so badly, so quickly.

Yes, couldn't have summed it better. It's the hope that kills you. I truly believed too and was the most excited I've been about our prospects since the Kean days.

It's been so depressing over the last 4-5 months that I have not been able to muster the energy to post my thoughts about our farcical season. But after watching that s-show yesterday, I feel that I need to let it out. I'm in the Eustace = useless camp. I did not like his appointment from the start, because I thought his good spell at the start of the season was a purple patch and not indicative of his normal standards. But I did not want to pre-judge him and certainly hoped that he would come good. Given our constraints, we need our head coach to be able to get the team to produce at 110% of as a collective, and I just don't think he has the tactical and coaching nous that we need to be able to do so. Eustace's initial comments about togetherness sound like an empty soundbite recycled from JDT, who in contrast, meant it when he said it. In fact, Eustace lost me on day 2 with his dramatic entrance in the second-half of the Stoke game. I thought he saw that we had a safe win, and wanted to claim credit for it, though I'm sure one could argue that he genuinely wanted to shore the team up. For me though, it was more performative than substance given that he had not had any training session with the team before that. The fact is that the Stoke game was one of the few positive games that we've had in the last six months, and Eustace did not set the team up. Since then, I've not been impressed at all with Eustace's contribution. Sure, he shored the defence up somewhat, but the team as a whole looks disjointed. For all the players' complaints about JDT and our poor results this season, we could see a plan and a method to the madness - there were indications that the players knew what to do, what patterns to play, and were well-drilled. Whether they could do it or not is a different story, but on balance, I would argue that JDT extracted more from them than they otherwise would have been able to produce. In that sense, our current situation is just a reversion to their normal standards. Going back to statements and how he presents himself, Eustace has also proven useless. No clear communication, hides in generalities, and as yesterday's comments show, does not pursue accountability and certainly does not set the right standards. These are basic leadership traits which you would expect a good coach/manager to possess. I hoped he would prove me wrong; after all, who expected Gary O'Neil to turn out so well? Unfortunately, Eustace is more in the Ince/Coyle/Appleton class. On JDT, I lament what could have been everyday. I think he's the best we've had in the last decade, and could have done something special with us. It pains me but objectively, I definitely hold JDT responsible to some extent for this season's mess too. In this regard, I think his broken relationship with the board is the key factor. There was no trust after the Lewis O Brien incident last year and no alignment of vision, and I think JDT found it difficult to be motivated in such a demotivating environment. If Maggot had been more professional, if the board had been straight with JDT, if they had set more ambitious targets despite the financial difficulties - tell JDT we need to ride it out this season, that we still want to have a good go despite the limitations, find a way to do it - we might have had a better outcome. (Remember, JDT showed that he could deploy tactics to shut the shop and play the dark-arts when he first arrived - I remember this well during our win/loss sequence in the first half of last season, when we barely conceded when we won, and it looked like we were playing some form of 90s Italian tactics.) Instead, Maggot obfuscates and publicly says that mediocrity is ok, sets no targets except to develop players - well, my assessment is that JDT decided to work to rule and gave Maggot exactly what he asked for by playing an expansive game at all costs and giving kids like Adam Wharton and Harry Leonard (too) much game time, even when it might have been better to rest them at times. In the end, JDT's departure was inevitable. That said, if we got relegated, I would still have more trust in JDT to create something with a youth squad in L1 - in fact, I would be pretty confident of a reset and our chances of winning the league by a clear margin, given how we regularly spanked lower league sides with youth-heavy teams over JDT's reign. Now with all the above said, the root cause of our woes is still Maggot and Venky's, no doubt about that. I don't know how involved or uninvolved the Venky's are on a day-to-day basis, but if we had a competent CEO who can set the agenda correctly, aim high, and maximise what he can within his remit, we may have a fighting chance. Instead, we have a chancer, more than happy to settle for the mediocre, so we get what we get. Put it this way, if we sign Coventry rejects (both in the boardroom and on the pitch), we get Coventry-standards (the terrible version from a couple of years back, not the heroic one at Wembley yesterday). Finally, our prospects this season - we're certainly doing our best to snatch relegation from the jaws of safety. I've had a foreboding feeling all season. Too many similarities to our relegation in 2016/17 - massive cost-cutting, terrible signings (Telalovic - Stokes, Moran loan - Emnes loan, Greer - McFadzean etc), the same type of FA Cup draw (good effort and near upset against a big PL team - Man Utd then in the freezing cold and Newcastle this time), freakish results in the run-in (I remember thinking that we had done enough when we beat Villa(?) was it, and Brentford on the last day), but the other relegation candidates fought hard and chalked up enough points elsewhere. I'm praying for a miracle in our last two games, but am not optimistic. If we somehow survive this, I pray that we can somehow reset in the summer. But back to the start of this post and the theme of this thread, Eustace is not the man to get us there.

There was probably a reward for a job well done

It's another wage off the books. Tick for Swaggot.

We'll probably end up with just Billy nobody, who we do not need, and fail to get the rest over the line. This really smacks of the league one relegation season again, but at least we had Graham and Mulgrew then. We can't even point to people of similar ilk now.

Didnt think we could go lower than last year's window, but we did!

If these numbers are accurate, it's a con-job on Orlando to get them to loan him to us for whatever we could find in the cookie jar. No way are we intending to make the deal perm, even if he hits a goal a game.

Ah thank you, i thought my computer was going nuts.

Sorry to trouble - just to check if anyone has issues logging into the Rovers' website? I can't log in despite trying three different browsers. The website just resets itself whenever I click log in, without the log in page actually coming on.

I read it as JDT taking a dig at Waggott's no-expectations comment from the summer, and the ownership's lack of ambition.

We look so leggy today. It's kinda understandable after a busy week with two tough games, but more worryingly, we look like we have nothing viable to rotate. If Tronstad still can't get a game in this situation, JDT must really think him not ready/not rate him. And GOAL! Come'on, hope it gives us the momentum to push on. Don't give anything cheap away, please!

My stream's gone dead again but we were abject for the 15min that it worked. Need a response in the second half.

It's not working for me in Singapore too

If we stay in the championship: 2 forwards (replacing BBD and Dack, who I don't think we'll keep in this scenario), 1 midfielder (replacing Morton), 1 left back, 1 centre back (replacing Ayala), 1 utility (replacing Mola + Edun). Of these, I think we would aim for at least one of the forwards and the midfielder to be first-11 quality for a top-6 championship team, and possibly the left-back if the money stretches far enough. (Someone said Manning would be available on a free - we should be all over that!) Some of the current rotation options, like Dolan, may get promoted to regular starters. The rest will probably be rotation options to build depth. I think the centre back will depend on what the market looks like - may go for it if someone like JPVH becomes available, but we probably wouldn't look to pay a significant fee for a cb. If we go up: 2 forwards, 2 midfielders, 1 left back, 1 centre back, 1 utility, 1 right back, 1 goalkeeper Immediate needs are not too different from the first scenario, but would obviously have more ammunition and hence chances of getting better quality. I think we may keep Dack if we go up, simply because there would be more space to carry his wages in this case. Additional goalkeeper in this scenario because I suspect both our keepers, while good for championship standards, won't be good enough as prem starters. And similarly for right back and centre back too. Also, I hope we would go for a practical approach - strengthen wisely with quality in key positions, a bit like how we did in the early Hughes years (i.e., accepting what we thought was sub-optimal players like Dickov, Kuqi, Mokoena etc) instead of replacing the entire team ala-Forest. (You just know that we would go down in the year they remove parachute payments, so we better build sustainably if we do make it!)