Those two offsides at the end were really frustrating.

I know. Most of us know. Very few people (if any) are saying they expect top 6. It doesn’t mean today wasn’t a bad performance and can’t be called out as such.

I think the disappointment on here is more that we lost team who hadn’t won away in 8, and only scored 3 goals during that period. @Forever Blue over-dramatised it by picking up that someone said the death spiral had started. I think your point is actually aimed at him - “you’re expecting us not to hit a death spiral with a non scoring forward line? let’s have some realism”

Last year Ipswich, who were near the top of the league and far exceeding their expectations, had Travis wrapped up by Jan 5th. Let’s see if we can move that quickly.

ACD was the obvious positive but it was a day when quite a few negatives reared their head. Firstly Cantwell was awful. You’d expect it would be his attitude and work rate that might be an issue, but his quality on the ball was piss poor today. The miss and the ‘offside’ through ball summed him up. We’ve still not seen too much of Baker, but he’s seems a big downgrade on Trav. Slows everything down. Big Mac once again came up dry and looked poor. Beck hasn’t looked as good defensively over the last couple of games. I suspect he needs a rest but there’s no ideal cover. On our corners, they left us 2 V 1 every time. In the first half we exploited it which led to Bakers header at the back post. However in the second half we just put everything directly in. I’d have had ACD with Cantwell, give it him and let them go at the sole defender. Ref was a clown. Stoppage time additions were way too short, and he still blew early in the first half. The first ‘drop ball’ was a difficult call,but the second one he only blows the whistle when we are in possession. Therefore it should go back to us. It wasn’t all one way. He gave soft free kicks to Beck and Baker which riled the Hull fans, and from a free kick into the box he gave another phantom free kick to us. Forgot his cards as well by modern standards. And finally, I think I’d genuinely rather have Garrett coming on than Buckley, and he can’t even get in the other BRFC team. Bah Humbug.

I notice he says “stadium security” rather than the police. So I suspect it’s internal.

No tickets left. I just hope it passes off peacefully and there’s no infiltration with home fans in the away end. 😉

Dolan is replaceable if you spend an average budget on proven championship players. The problem is we won’t. Therefore when he leaves I suspect it will be a noticeable loss to our squad. I also suspect he will spend most of his time ending up at a similar club to us with similar performance levels in the Championship - only better paid.

Last time we played Burnley at Ewood the Rovers fans in the JW upper were a lot more ‘angry’ than those we usually get up there. So I wouldn’t like to be a Burnley fan jumping around even up there. There will be a few in corporate in the centr, but like every rumour of infiltration it will be over estimated. If you listen to Sunderland fans, they were supposedly all over the home ends.

I wish those Millwall player last Saturday had ‘moved on’ and cut inside instead of crossing into the box in the last minute.

Pears Brittain. Batth. Hyam. Beck Dolan Tron Baker Hedges Cantwell Yuki Although I have a feeling he might put JRC in front of a Brittain today to keep a tighter look in Travis’s absence.

Bit late, but from twitter:-

When you think about it, despite the clubs official channels confirming that Eustace first official game in charge was Birmingham away, it was a strange situation that some fans were desperate to credit him that win some 3 months later. Even odder they still bring it up out the blue 10 months later.

Like any club. Having a pop at them for turning up by labelling them names is fucking idiotic. If we’d only sold 12,000 you’d be moaning the other way.

0-2 The bubble bursts. Rovers always tend to disappoint a big home crowd.

Screw up incoming.

I thought it was pretty in keeping with the Boro and Wednesday performances. They had a lot of the ball but created very few clear cut chances, whereas the ACD and Weismann chances were the best in the half. I doubt we concede with 11 . Therefore the defeat hurts but doesn’t worry me as much as the injuries do and the upcoming workload on Baath and Hyam does. I worry the Burnley game will feature a team fairly different than those which won 6 on the bounce.

That’s a fair appraisal although the wheels were still on in November. The start of the bad run was the first game in December. But we still beat Bristol City pre-Christmas (and we’re unlucky not to beat Watford due to Wahlstedt). It was the back to back heavy away losses over Christmas and then a failure to beat Rotherham at Ewood when I’d say they came off.

Our form had fell off a cliff long before Wharton was sold, although I agree on the point with Travis. I said it was ludicrous the moment he left. But none of that changes my view on JE last season. Ultimately his absolute minimum achievement for me was making sure we stopped up and we just about did that. I said he'd get a clean slate this year, I aired no criticism over the summer and this season he's proving to be an absolute masterclass.

I think the previous 18 month and a 44% win ratio (despite the awful ending) had given JDT some grace. However at that QPR game it was planly obvious JDT had lost the players and had no intention of changing tactics to try and alter anything. Subsequent players comments confirmed this. I can only speak personally, but I felt that removing JDT and with us posessing the players that had gathered so many points the previous season and up until December, that Eustace should have been able to get some form of new manager boost. Therefore yes, I was expecting improvement in form within the first few weeks and I was worried when it didnt happen, especially when we started to really need points and yet showed no attacking urgency at home to Millwall. I'm not sure my reactions were too unrational. I didnt agree with people who wanted him gone last season, although were there that many saying that?

In what way?

We had amassed 5 point from the previous 11 games due to 3 reasons - JDT being stubborn in his methods, injuries, players downing tools on the manager. When Eustace come in, 2 of those excuses were then removed, and the injury list was better than it had been in December. Therefore it was right to replace JDT, but I expected a new manager to come in and get better results. We failed to win a home game, we were pretty negative at home and it took 3 remarkable away wins to save our neck on the last day of the season. I said all along if Eustace kept us up then that was his job done, and that he would get a clean slate for next season. But he flew very close to being a failure, hence why criticism was justified. This season he’s been absolute top class. A proper man manager with a good tactical nouse. Going back to the comments at the start about “JDT fanboys”, many of those criticising agreed that JDT needed to go, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t expect better from Eustace. It’s just we had zero new manager bounce - and that wasn’t cos the squad was bad as it had already amassed the 33 points early season.

Your problem is it appears that there are three teams breaking away at the top of the league. Early season it looked like just you and Wrexham, but Wycombe have really got on a roll. One of you will miss out, and like Leeds last year, being clearly third best will be no guarantee of play off success. Normally id probably want the underdogs to go up and the bigger clubs to miss out, but in this case I actually want the Wrexham hype machine to come unstuck.

The only major attribute of Hedges is discipline. He holds the team shape and does his defensive duties. Im presuming he’s on a slightly above-average salary in this squad. If we were financially OK then I’d understand having him as a squad filler. But as we need every penny to be competitive on salaries I’d rather fill that role with academy or development players, and use the cash to get people in who can improve the first 11. I’ll caveat that with the fact Beck is now filling the ‘disciplined’ wide man role, and he’s not here next year so we will be back to being light in that position.

Baath and Hyam have been outstanding recently. Hyam has rediscovered hi first season form, and Baath has massively exceeded expectations. But I do worry about them having to keep playing 90 minutes of every game, especially with 5 games in 14 days coming up. At some point I think mcFadz is going to have to step in, which would be a worry.