Really strange that they sacked Farke, after a win, without having a replacement lined up. Surely the whole reason you remove a manager before the international break is because you have somebody ready to take advantage of that time to come in and get to know the club, players, etc?

Just glad he's not our problem anymore.

Our form and performances don't really change whether Dack is there or not, which maybe says something.

Honestly I delegate pretty much everything to the assistant or coaches except for tactics, transfers, first team contract renewals and match day. I've never noticed any major issues as a result of doing that - only when I've changed an assistant or coach and the game didn't automatically reassign the new staff member to the previous tasks. Morale seems to mostly be affected by results, team selection and contract renewals - particularly if you piss off a team leader, but that can normally be mitigated by having a meeting with the disaffected players and picking the right options. It's not quite as straightforward as the past versions of the game, but there's no need to do any kind of deep diving into data, training, etc unless you really want to. Granted I am talking about FM18 here so it's possible that the newer versions have further complicated things!

Last FM I bought was FM18 and sadly don't have much time for it at the moment, but you can turn a lot of the more complicated stuff over to staff members and just focus on transfers, tactics and match days!

It was definitely a freak result. Part of the reason it was so shocking is because we so rarely lose by huge margins under this manager. The most aggrevating thing from my perspective was his inability to react to what was happening. Mowbray has been in the game long enough to know that when things are going that badly you move into damage limitation and see the game out at a respectable score. I can't understand why he let us get humiliated like that without even trying to shore up.

Thanks Rolo 🙂 I've probably been overly critical of Mowbray myself at times, particularly during certain match threads, and his interviews certainly don't help matters. Stripping away the emotion and attempting to look at it objectively, though, I find it hard to argue that he's been a bad manager for us. He's undoubtedly led us through some extremely poor runs of form, and matches like Wednesday are inexcusable, but in terms of the bigger picture he's just been a Bowyer-esque 'average' manager who has strengths and flaws, the latter of which don't improve over time but aren't so deep that they cause the club to completely nosedive like a certain couple of Scots who darkened our doors in 2010 and 2016. I'll hold my hands up and say I thought we'd be in a relegation fight this season. I genuinely expected us to struggle. Whilst I do think there is some merit to the suggestion the division is just full of poor teams, credit does still have to go to Mowbray for keeping us above the majority of those poor teams. We can talk about Mowbray getting lucky with BBD's form, but at the same time Mowbray was the one who took the gamble on spending £7m on the kid (still a ridiculous figure), so you can't really hand wave it away by calling it luck. He does need to consider the things he says to the media though. Lack of apology aside, some of his comments after Fulham - particularly inciting fans to argue with each other - were completely out of order. He's talked nonsense for most of the time he's been here so that just is what it is, but there's no excuse for some of the things he said on Friday.

I don't know enough about the situation at Villa to comment. It seems harsh from the outside but judging from the Villa forums they seem to accept it was the right decision, albeit they all seem to be pretty sad that it didn't work out. Not too dissimilar to how the reaction would probably have been to Mowbray's departure if it had been confirmed 18 months ago.

Just a reminder that insults aimed at posters are not acceptable - I'm not somebody who likes to hand out bans, so please consider this a fair warning that whilst debate is encouraged, personal attacks on fellow posters are not.

I wish we had the kind of foresight and future thinking that Boro do. Rather than wait until the end of the season with a manager they knew was leaving, they snapped up somebody available who they believed could take them forward in the long-term. Paid off Warnock without any quibbles and everybody leaves on good terms. A very professional way of doing things.

This is the big problem. As much as I genuinely enjoyed the result and the performance yesterday, we know it won't last. Under Mowbray it's a fleeting moment of joy before crashing back down to Earth. Especially with us being so close to the top six. If TM genuinely was one game from the sack yesterday, then frankly he should already be gone. If the hierarchy has lost faith in you to the point where a single result could end in a sacking then the situation is already too far gone. Particularly when you consider we're generally in a decent position considering the squad available. There must be more to it than just results alone.

As far as Mowbray is concerned he is obviously doing some things right, or we wouldn't be 7th, we'd be scrapping at the bottom. I don't think TM is useless or completely inept, he just has some deeply-ingrained flaws which stop his teams from overachieving. We have a somewhat solid base which is repeatedly derailed by the same cracks in the foundation. Top of this list is the constant worrying about the opposition and weakening our own team in misguided attempts to combat the supposed threats of the team we're facing. TM doesn't have enough confidence in his own team and style to just leave it be and let the opposition worry about us. He overthinks things which causes us to lose consistency, especially when we're hovering near the top six positions. Secondly I think he struggles to adapt if things are going against us during matches. Today we came back from behind to win, but that's a rare occurance. Normally if we go behind we struggle to get ourselves back into the game. We saw midweek against Fulham that the manager was simply unable to handle the increasingly worsening situation on the pitch, and couldn't even make obvious decisions like get everybody behind the ball and engage in some damage limitation. When things are going our way and we're looking confident it's fine, because he doesn't need to change anything. Even today it's not like we changed anything. Sheff Utd's early goal wasn't because they were set up better than us, it was just one of those things that sometimes happens at the beginning of a match. Overall we were still set up better than them and by the end that was unquestionably proven to be the case. TM's inability to influence matches during the game itself is very reminiscent of Gary Bowyer, and was also one of his biggest weaknesses. Thirdly, and maybe somewhat related to the above, he doesn't seem to have an answer when it comes to the team losing form. The infamous 'death spirals'. If we lose a couple on the spin we know it's going to be a while before our next win. He eventually finds a way to get us back on track, but usually too late. He just doesn't identify the reasons for our loss in form quickly enough, which means by the time we've started picking up form again we've lost a significant amount of points. Too many to mount any kind of playoff push. It often seems like rather than solve the issue, he simply stumbles upon a solution either through a random team selection or by coming up against a team even worse than us, gaining a win which boosts confidence and masks the underlying issues for a while longer. Although I admit that it may be a little harsh to put this down to luck, but whether it's by luck or design, it takes too long to arrest our poor runs of form. I'd say those are his three biggest flaws and the main reason we struggle to overachieve with him at the helm. It's not that he's doing everything wrong, or arguably even a lot wrong, he just has some major flaws which he is either unable or unwilling to improve. Regardless of all of the above he does seem to be able to keep the players onside, which is arguably one of the most important traits a manager can have. Losing the dressing room is the kiss of death for the majority of managers and this never seems to happen with TM, even when we're on a horrendous run it eventually turns around, even if too little too late. Is Mowbray a bad manager? For Rovers, probably not. He's just an average manager who is unlikely to improve himself enough to be able to get us to overachieve to the point where we'll finish in the playoff positions. The fact remains that if we have ambitions to get into the playoffs (and with the division as poor as it is there is no reason we shouldn't have that ambition) we need a manager who can impart a proper winning mentality and improve the areas where our current manager is weak. Do Venky's have it in them to find that person? I doubt it. 11 years so far and no sight of a genuine winner in the dugout. Yet at the same time keeping Mowbray means we stay mid-table at best, and that surely can't be the height of our ambition as a club.

I think Warnock is a little more complicated than just a poor start to the season. They're only 4 points off the playoffs so they aren't doing that badly. From what I've read it's more of a case of they know he's leaving at the end of the season anyway and had identified somebody available now who they felt would be a good long-term option - which appears to be Wilder. Makes sense to bring him in before the January window so that he can begin shaping the squad as he sees fit. They agreed to pay Warnock off for the time he had left and no hard feelings, judging by his interview after the game. McCarthy and Hughton did have absolute nightmares this season, but let's remember Mowbray has had plenty of those himself. It happens - sometimes things just don't work out. In fact if Mowbray was being judged on the same criteria as those two were at their clubs he'd have probably been removed during the 2 wins in 17 run last season.

It's so frustrating that TM feels the need to change our tactics so much depending on the opposition (especially for a man who supposedly doesn't believe in tactics). Just play to our strengths, we've got enough to trouble most teams in this divison because there really isn't any outstanding teams beyond the top three. With a consistent shape and style we can challenge the vast majority of teams in this division without needing to radically adapt to try and counter the opposition.

Assume they must have someone lined up.

A shame we got that thumping in midweek, as otherwise a draw would have kept us in 6th.

Warnock gone apparently.

Yep, so make the most of the next couple of hours!

Forget him walking, he'll have a new contract and a statue after today.

Probably one of the best teams we could have faced after our midweek result. A bit like United facing Spurs after getting humiliated by Liverpool. 6th 😅 what a division this is.

Sheffield United are a bit like us the first season we came down. Parachute money aplenty but utterly hopeless.

Are BBC match stats on the fritz for me or has there seriously only been one shot from either side in 25 minutes?

Any crowd reaction beyond a few mutterings?

Bizarre line up. Although when Mowbray does this we quite often tend to get a result, defying all logic..Sheff Utd are poor so it could happen again.

You can imagine Mowbray's reaction if Rovers were booed off like that? He's incredibly lucky that as far as most of the remaining fans are concerned for whatever reason he's achieved practically godlike status, and for the rest the apathy is too strong to even muster a reaction like that.