I agree that the league position is the most important factor, but the 2/17 run certainly adds meat to the bones and emphasises one of Mowbray's key weaknesses - his inability to stop us descending into increasingly awful runs of form.

Mowbray himself said during the 2/17 debacle that any other manager would have been sacked for such a poor run of form, so I don't think highlighting it is strange at all - especially when the manager has a habit of taking us into death spirals which completely wreck our ambitions.

Let's see what happens when the weather turns cold.

Ipswich fans seem to think so. I think that's what Sky Sports were getting at with their questioning, and why Cook got so defensive over it. I haven't followed Cook's career closely enough to say whether or not he's been affected by the change in assistant or not, but it's one major difference that can be pointed to when comparing his record at other clubs. I have to admit I thought Cook would be a good appointment for Ipswich, but something is clearly not right there. Assistant manager aside I think Cook tried to change too much too quickly. His assessment that practically the entire Ipswich squad were failures and needed to be moved on was flawed, imo. I believe that the club is still reeling from the scale and speed of the change implemented. He's almost put 11 strangers on the pitch and asked them to work as a team. If the aim for this season was transition and next season a promotion challenge then it might be acceptable, but I don't think that is the plan and the fans definitely don't see that as the plan. They wanted a promotion push this season, and it's already looking very unlikely that it's going to materialise.

I'd say the fans are on their way to turning. They aren't seeing much difference between Cook and Lambert. There's already booing at Portman Road and the main fans forum is turning distinctly more negative as each game passes. The local journos are trying to remain neutral but after yesterday they really had no choice but to pile on as well. Sky Sports were actually the ones that went in hardest yesterday, which got Cook riled up. Not sure what he was expecting after a 5-2 home defeat in all honesty. All very Lambert-esque.

When we were in the PL under the likes of Souness, Hughes and Allardyce we never wrote off games against big teams at home. We made them fight for any and every point taken away from Ewood Park and I'm sure no big club fancied facing us at Ewood. We shouldn't fear any team in this league on our own turf. Unfortunately the attitude we require to achieve this kind of mentality comes from the top, and we have a manager who makes it seem like we should be thankful to be in the presence of the bigger teams, let alone take the game to them.

Even if he did bring Butterworth on he probably would have put him at right back or something equally stupid.

I'd be surprised, still seems too early for that. Not sure how Ipswich's new owners operate though. If Marcus Evans was still in charge I'd say no way, but who knows with the new owners. It's been a terrible start to the season for Ipswich, no matter how you look at it. Cook has been making excuses about the squad needing time to gel, and it's a fair point considering the upheaval over the summer, but you can't use that as an excuse for the kind of performance they put in today. It was also his choice to completely overhaul the squad and arguably boot out some players who could have helped maintain consistency, so the 'we need time to gel' rhetoric holds a limited amount of weight for me. They need to pick up wins urgently over the next few weeks, or they'll already be too far gone to even mount a playoff push. Personally if they fail to win in the next two matches I'd be seriously looking at removing Cook. His overall record there, I think, is p23 w4. That's incredibly poor irrespective of any excuses that can be made.

Judging by his performances so far we probably made the right call not playing him very often and sending him back in January. He barely looks League 1 standard now, so there's no way he was ready in 2017. He didn't get a great score in the local rag: Meanwhile, Harper...

Ipswich 2-5 Bolton. Good debut for our old friend Christian Walton.

Until we learn to defend we have no hope of getting anywhere. That will require a new manager as the current one has shown over the past few years he is incapable of doing so.

Honestly it's hard to understand what he's thinking at this point. It's almost like he does stuff like this on purpose to rile up NXT fans. The amount of talent (NXT and non-NXT) that he's wasted and buried in the past 2/3 years is astounding. Even with guys you'd expect him to be all in on (eg. Braun Strowman) he finds a way to wreck them. Even Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson had to jump through a ridiculous amount of hoops to be truly accepted by Vince as a top tier player, and this was someone insanely talented who was insanely over. The fact they were going to go with Randy Orton Vs Batista at WM as the main event when Danielson was on fire says it all really. Back then they still listened to fan backlash if it was loud enough, but nowadays I actually think they would have ignored the fans and gone with Orton/Batista anyway. The only hope we have is that Vince wakes up to the fact AEW is serious competition and sorts himself and WWE out. I'm not really sure he has it in him anymore, but AEW's momentum is undeniable at the moment and if I was a younger fan I know which promotion I'd be gravitating towards.

1.3m viewers for Dynamite this week, and they also beat Raw in the 18-49 demo. Obviously you have to take the PPV bump into account, and the debuts of Adam Cole and Bryan Danielson, but still very impressive. It'll be interesting to see if they can maintain those numbers.

To further emphasise the above on WWE, apparently their plan for Adam Cole on the main roster was to have him become a manager for a newly-turned heel Keith Lee - and they also wanted to change his name. Even by WWE standards that's hilariously stupid. No wonder Adam Cole said it was an easy decision to go to AEW.

I tend to agree - I can't imagine Tony Khan could have foreseen that this much talent would be available in such a short space of time. He had built AEW on the basis of having Jericho and Moxley as their main two 'stars' and may have hoped they could snatch another one or two decent names after that. They were probably hoping/expecting Punk would turn up sooner rather than later, but there's no way they could have known WWE was going to release so many big names in the past year and a half. Their business model is going to have to evolve very quickly to adjust to it. I don't think it's a bad thing, but it might bring forward a lot of plans they were saving for 2022/2023. As you say, it may necessitate some roster trimming too. They've got a lot of programs to highlight talent (Dynamite, Dark, Elevation & Rampage) and they've got good relationships with various other companies, so sending talent to those companies is an option I'm sure they'll exercise as well. With that said there's definitely still room to streamline the roster and I expect they will. Personally I think Jericho still has some value. Not as a main event level player at this point, but as their OG big star and with the history he's built in AEW there's still room for him to contribute effectively imo. Matt Hardy and his Hardy Family Office schtick has fallen pretty flat, but I think he can still be used to elevate people if done properly. Depends how much he's being paid though. I'm always a little wary when it comes to comparing AEW and WCW. There are some obvious similarities, but also a lot of significant differences. AEW has WCW's production values and similar network/financial backing, but in terms of the product I think it's closer to an amalgamation of ECW and early TNA. I've watched WCW extensively over the years and people forget how bad some of the wrestling was - even during the golden years. The cruiserweights were great and they had some solid mid-carders too, but they also had crap like Jim Duggan, the Nasty Boys, the Amazing French Canadians, the Dungeon of Doom, Squire Dave Taylor, Glacier, Jeff Jarrett, Mongo McMichael, etc - who were taking up a lot more time than is generally remembered. The main events also tended to be pretty poor, whereas AEW tend to deliver on their main events. For what it's worth, whilst AEW's fanbase is very loyal, it's because they are listened to. They feel connected with the product, the wrestlers and the people running the show. It isn't blind loyalty where they would just accept anything that's thrown at them. If that was the case then Brandi's faction wouldn't have been pulled, and the Dark Order wouldn't have been completely restructured. The fans let AEW know when they don't like something - the difference is that AEW listen to them and act on it. That's why this loyalty exists. I am sure if the show was flooded with WWE mid-carders and the storylines and matches went to shit the fans would let the company know. As for WWE... there has been a terminal decline going on there for over a decade. Ratings and attendance have been slowly eroding for a long time. Lack of serious competition made them lazy and arrogant, feeling like they could do whatever they wanted and thumb their nose at the fans. They are very fortunate TV rights for live sports are so lucrative right now, as without that they would be in trouble. They've become a company that succeeds even in failure. If they went out of business tomorrow it would be fully deserved as they have shit on their fans for years now, but I don't think WWE is going anywhere any time soon. They'll plateau at some point and it will be far below the level they were once at, but as long as they have TV deals, the Saudis, etc, they'll be alright. Personally though I find their entire business model to be deeply flawed and Raw in particular unwatchable. Smackdown is OK. NXT remains to be seen now that Triple H and Shawn Michaels are being usurped.