Tony Parkes and Bobby Robson at the end, love that.

I thought he looked alright in the couple of League Cup games I saw him play in, and he was actually one of the better players v Forest. But there must be a reason that he'll be 22 at the start of next season and has barely kicked a ball in senior football.

You must have missed the Reading home win out - it's five points from six games/18 points since then (not that that's anything to shout about, of course).

The Sheff Utd home game at the start of last month felt like one at the time. But our form has been so poor since then that it definitely can't be classed as season defining now.

And he couldn't hang on to either of them.

He was like that in the Forest cup game too just before Christmas, which I'm guessing was his last senior start if his last league one was start of November. He looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. It's a shame as, if somebody had said at the end of August after the Stoke and Blackpool games that he'd go months without playing this season, you'd have been very surprised. I only saw the highlights from the Blackpool game but he was superb against Stoke when he came on - and was even playing well after that too, e.g. goal v Birmingham and lovely assist at Hull in October. Hopefully he'll get there eventually.

The current crop of players (not necessarily the team that played last night) are better than the period I mentioned, which does cover the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup under a manager that should never have been near the job (it'd be like England appointing somebody like Steve Bruce at his age now). Things are never as bad as they seem - that failure to qualify for the 2018 WC preceded something which would have seemed impossible at the time, a world record unbeaten run (not just the seven games in the tournament) where they deservedly won the Euros. You say England's failure but that's only the final. Italy had sailed through the group before knocking out the likes of Belgium and Spain. They were deserved winners of the tournament. Yes England won last night, deservedly so after the first half showing. But they've played each other four times in the last couple of years. Both teams have won one (by one goal) and the other two have been draws. Two played in England, two in Italy. "That's how low Italian football has sunk" is OTT. The domestic leagues are often separate issues, e.g. England's last failure to qualify for a tournament coming in the middle of the Premier League's last peak before now of 2005-2009. The decline of Serie A years ago from possibly the strongest domestic league there's ever been was indeed for the reasons you've given. But it's worked its way back up well enough to the point where it's very competitive at the top (Napoli are about to make it four different winners in the last four seasons), attendances are finally booming and no country has more representatives in the quarter finals of the three European competitions this season. That's all without having gulf or state-owned clubs and bottom half teams that can spend £30m on a player without anyone batting an eyelid.

The current Italy pool of players is better than around 2015-2017, which was masked a bit by an excellent defence and Conte squeezing every last drop out of what was overall a limited group at Euro 2016. Obviously it's not a patch on the team stacked with legends of 20 odd years ago, but that's the case for a lot of countries. That Italy team would be the best national team in the world if it were playing now. They did have a few injuries for last night, players that would surely have started (Bastoni, Chiesa, possibly Raspadori). Despite that Mancini got the starting eleven wrong IMO - and is possibly running out of credit after the Euros win. Picking a 35 and 32 year old to start at CB, none of which are even experienced internationally, is pointless when you've been talking about a rebuild. You may as well still pick Bonucci. It'll be Bastoni and probably a promising youngster called Scalvini there going forward, but there were still other options for last night. Tonali should be ahead of Jorginho now as part of the midfield. Pellegrini is out of form, though nice little through ball for the goal, whereas Gnonto is always a handful.

I had a look on there yesterday. Two of the first posts I saw suggested putting 'a screen up in Preston' and taking 7k there to watch the game instead (I've no idea either....) and the other mentioned putting a big screen up in a car park somewhere. Strange bunch to say the least.

Ten years ago today.

Coventry dropping points is very good. A win for us tomorrow night and we’ll still be in a strong position. God knows how anybody could concede 6 to Blackpool by the way, QPR are a real mess.

It is. But surely there's no way anyone can think Gallagher's performance at Stoke was worthy of Championship team of the week? He scored, but was otherwise ineffective.

Good news about Sunderland winning. We know that they're no threat to the top 6 with Mowbray in charge, so keeping Norwich three points behind us would be great.

Utd-Fulham will have to be Sunday (Utd playing on the Thursday before), which will make City the Saturday yep.....but yeah you could be right about the trains being a factor. Can't be long until they announce it can it?

Could have been much worse. Just wanted them at home when it was clear we were last two. Come on Rovers!!

I'm in a similar position. Going away the Sunday morning so I was first gutted the derby was moved to Sunday, then delighted last night meaning it'll be moved, but now I'm dreading missing an FA Cup QF....which could even be against that lot after all. Get that draw done tonight and the dates/time sorted (preferably Saturday 18th for us) asap. Oh and come on Fleetwood!

Get in!!!

Cannot believe he missed that. No need to try and get it in the top corner.

A depressing list. And if people have forgotten Chris Taylor from that era, how about Paul Taylor?

They wouldn’t have made the final if it wasn’t for this 👀

How has a dolloper like Waggott managed to work in football for 30 years? The mind boggles.

Can tell they're winning a few games this season.

Whatever people may think of JDT and our overall performance levels this season, he can point out that he's had us comfortably in the top 6 (mainly top 3) for most of the season. He'd rightly then expect to be backed going into January and with the team needing strengthening in a couple of key areas. What he gets is one player on loan and then the O'Brien embarrassment. Yep, anything can happen now then it'd be back to desperate managers on the scrapheap being the only ones that'll be prepared to put up with how badly we're run.

The only successful 'wide target man' (player role name nicked from FM) I've ever seen was Mario Mandzukic. Apart from that time Hughes successfully stuck Santa Cruz on Evra. So no surprise that Sam Gallagher wasn't up to it.

Get in!!