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Oldest saying in the book - "The table doesn't lie". If the away form reverts to what you would normally expect from a team around 20th, we really are struggling.

It is a very poor league this season , unfortunately we are in the piss poor bracket ! The squad , imo will be weakened during January , relegation will happen , I also think the owners and their acolytes have been wanting relegation for 3 seasons . It never happened because Eustace and JDT were far superior managers to Ismael !

Exactly. After nearly half a season, we absolutely deserve to be where we are in the league.

Same around me in the JWL, a lot of ST holders taking the comfortable option of watching from home.

Sorry, 4!

Teams that go down are always full of sob stories. But guess what? Jettison your experience and bring in cheap replacements who don't know the division and you end up staring down the barrel. Not 'unlucky', not 'if we'd just'. We aren't and we didn't and that's solely due to the very conscious choices made by this disgusting regime.

That's somewhat of an indictment on the recruitment when you signed 3 central midfielders in the summer.

One of the main drivers of the decay has decamped to India apparently and isn't even there to witness his handy work over the last few games. Convenient eh.

McLoughlin is nowhere near good enough to be in the middle of a back 3. That header for there goal summed him up. You might get away with him on the left side of a 3.

I could see this being a disappointing night. Everything pointed that way We have the basics of a competitive squad but it is too imbalanced. Not enough competition in the right places, combined with injuries, has meant that we lack options from the bench to change our style and the game. I think we did well to get back into it and get a point where in times gone by we may have collapsed. Ribeiro had a poor game but has not played much. Tended to move backwards instead of forwards. We miss Hedges down that left-hand side for sure. I'm guessing that Gardner-Hickman got injured but he was a big miss in the 2nd half. Tavares just hasn't got it has he? I quite like it when a player looks relaxed but as I said last night, it isn't relaxation with him it is being lackadaisical. He gives the ball away too often and there were times he played these short passes with absolutely no purpose other than to move the ball on. I don't think he has it cut out to be a player in the Championship We were unfortunate not to finish the Gardner Hickman chance. He couldn't do much more and the keeper made a fine save. It was a lovely knock down by Gudjohnson. The Yuki chance was another which should have gone in. Except this time it was poor finishing instead of good goalkeeping. I think if Gudjohnson was there, it becomes 1-1. I am not overly enamoured by our defensive options either. McLoughlin is a bit slow off the mark and a couple of occasions him being turned back to his goal nearly brought problems. There's still glimpses of hope. We aren't as bad of a squad as I thought going into the season. We need to defend our box better and we need to be better and more ambitious when in possession. For sure in January we need a centre half but we also need a central midfielder who is prepared to take this game by the scruff of the neck. Take Tronstad out of the team and we don't half look like a pushover in midfield

But they didn't. Because they're not good enough.

As has been said above, put them together and we are sat in 20th. Nowhere near good enough, all could have and should have's. Lose on Saturday and we'll be in huge trouble with the next few fixtures coming up.

Quite a few regular ST holders who sit near me weren't there last night, I suspect that they had the same view as you. I pretty much had the whole row to myself. 8k tops on Ewood last night I reckon, and it'll only get worse.

The protest has happened and is continuing to happen. We had an average crowd of 25,000 when they arrived, how many people were *actually* in the ground last night? 5,000? Any other club this would be leading to end game, the owners would know the jig us up. Here? Does anybody really think alarm bells are ringing? Or will it just be Suhail ordering more cut backs for next season and the next and the next until we are sharing facilities with Accrington Stanley.

"Hasn't been great" 🙄 Worst in 150 years.

Miller's header was similar to his goal header against Preston. McLoughlin's header got to much on it. TGH should score there

He's got a good leap on him as well. I think we saw glimpses last night of why we were prepared to sign him with his injury. Short term pain for long term gain hopefully. It's also why I find it baffling that people write players off after seeing them play for 10 mins.

Our away form has been excellent and 3rd best in the league, the home form hasn't been great and we should be talking about 3 home back to back wins, but failed to see out the Ipswich game, the Sheffield Wednesday abandonment was piss poor and yesterday we should have won

And I never said it was realistic. And I know that it wont happen. Its just roughly how light I think the squad is. I have no doubt that even come February that the squad will be nowhere near how we need it to be.

This was the toughest category to narrow down. Recency bias and not wanting to make it too much about Venky's and that initial 2/3 years of catastrophe. I ultimately want to try and focus more on the positives of the list, but you can't have the yin without the yang. I did think about Jerome Anderson/SEM/Kentaro as a vote candidate, but decided amongst Venkys/Suhail/Kean there was enough scope to gauge the mood. Intrigued to see how the vote plays out.

Absolute rubbish. Ten signings. Baradji has been really good. Give them that one. Gudjohnssen has shown glimpses of promise and obviously has some potential - but his all round game is sadly lacking, may or may not make it overall. The rest have been generally shite. Baradji might or might not turn out to be decent, but a player who still isnt fit enough to start two weeks shy of Christmas can't be classed as a good signing. No other way of dressing it up Im afraid. Tavares, Miller, De Neve and Henrikssen are particularly poor in my book and Forshaw should never have been re-signed. Hickman and Mcglaughlin have just about been average and Moreshita (unlike Kargbo) looks to have some natural ability but we need to see far more from him.

Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Its easy to almost exclusively dismiss any errors made by people at the club in favour of pushing the hard luck and woe is me narrative. The main reason for our lack of depth is due to failings in recruitment. We have a number of new signings that if they were even ok, the squad wouldnt look as exposed as it does. If Gueye/Henriksson/Tavares/De Neve were even ok then we would at least have some competition for places. Baradji shouldnt just have made his first useful cameo on December 9th to make us think there might be a player in there, not far off half way through the season. And again, the defensive problems are totally self inflicted. You seem to be justifying and making excuses for the recruitment. I get that no club has a 100% recruitment success rate. But its about 2 things. To have half of our signings not only not really working but being absolutely awful, thats whats not acceptable. And also, its as much about what we didnt do in the summer that is costing us, especially in defence. We have injuries, its the middle of December, all teams have injuries. If you just want to pin it all on injuries and not look internally, then thats fine, Gestede will be happy with that at least. And that all levels out with us in 20th. We can seperate home and away form but ultimately it all comes down to where we are with those combined and its crap.

Because he's clearly not fit.

4 great chances, but converted none of them. Perhaps that's because the players just aren't very good.