That was basically what most Sunderland fans were saying, factor in they also had affection for Mowbray and it makes it even worse that they have binned him for an unpopular choice who doesn't seem to be an upgrade in any obvious way.

Tbf they wanted him gone from the moment he was announced, he was a hugely unpopular choice from the get go.

City will make it a war of attrition with lawyers and legal challenges. Uefa didn't have the stomach or deep enough pockets for it, and I doubt the FA will either. It'll quietly go away at some point with a fine and a slap on the wrist, as the financial rules continue to morph to only benefit the already wealthy clubs.

I genuinely thought he'd leave after the amateur-hour debacle last January, most likely in the summer after we missed out on the playoffs. Have to admit I'm also surprised he's still here. Fair play to him for sticking it out, but it's obvious to everyone now that this isn't getting and won't get any better. You have to think it can only be professional pride keeping him here.

Assuming this window goes as badly as the last two, it'll be three windows in a row where he's watched the side stagnate or get weaker whilst he's been here. At some point he'll get tired of pushing the boulder up a hill that continues to get steeper and leave. You'd think he'll have to consider his reputation at some point, particularly considering our current form and the amount of goals we're conceding. As an inexperienced manager he needs help, and he doesn't have any.

For what it's worth I don't think people would necessarily prefer administration to Venky's selling the club, a lot of people probably just see it as the only realistic way of the current owners ever departing. There have been many times when you'd have expected them to entertain a sale - when we were relegated from the PL, when we had cashflow problems in 2015, when we got relegated in 2016/17, and now with the current problems - but they have never even hinted they are interested in selling and from what we've heard from people who did attempt to make offers of either part or complete ownership some years ago, outright rejected any advances. So, I think it's mainly down to administration being the most realistic option to force them out of the club. I assume pretty much everyone would, ideally, prefer to avoid administration if it was at all possible.

Would be a poor signing that doesn't address our primary issue of leaking goals to the point where we're the worst in the division for it. Unless we're planning to do something radical and play him at centre-back. Or maybe in goal, would probably be better than Leo at this point.

Hyam was solid enough last season, he's just suffering from being put right back into the side after injury and a lack of confidence - having a goalkeeper behind him who is guaranteed to gift at least a goal a game to the opposition won't help. I don't think it's a question of ability, just very low confidence which a lot of our players are suffering from at the moment.

Sadly yes, this would likely be the case. I disagreed in another thread with the idea we couldn't replace SG for £1.5m - as many of the league's current top scorers cost less than that - but the chances of enough money being reinvested and/or our recruitment team finding a suitable replacement seems highly unlikely to say the least. Gallagher is at best an average Championship striker, but Ennis and Telalovic have been worse than that - with the former seemingly barely able to stay fit for longer than a week - so selling Gallagher now seems pointless. If we can keep him fit to play 10-15 of our remaining games and he scores a handful of goals it might be enough to keep our heads above water. It's all so depressing to think about though, as even if we stay in the division this season I see no hope for us next season unless there is an unrealistically dramatic shift in our owners' mindset and their ability to fund the club properly. I get the feeling next season could be even worse than 2016/17.

Assume the u-turn relates to us now being unwilling to sell, whereas before we were entertaining offers. Hard to tell from the article tbh.

Selling Szmodics would be tantamount to announcing "we want to be relegated". Unless we are financially on the brink of going onto administration it's an unfathomable scenario.

Not sure I agree that you can't replace Gallagher for that kind of money, when you look at some of the top scorers in the league. Morgan Whittaker was around £1m. Jack Clarke reported to be £750k. Crysencio Summerville reported to be around £1.25m. Conor Chaplin around £750k. Our own Sammy Szmodics was £1.8m according to the Peterborough chairman. Good deals can be done if recruitment is up to scratch. Our current recruitment team's record on strikers is pretty appalling thus far though, so would I trust them to find a decent striker with £1.5m? Probably not. Besides of which, we'd probably see none or barely any of the money anyway, making selling Gallagher a pointless exercise.

I know, I was kind of following on from your answer as opposed to directly responding to it. Should have made that clearer.

Eh, they've been utter rubbish plenty of times when Trav was here too, so probably nothing in it beyond Travis having a lot of friends in the dressing room who genuinely want to see him do well. Agree on Hyam - not even close to being captain material from what I've seen. We don't have many leaders in the team, which is part of the reason we are where we are, but Szodmics and JRC - when fit - are better picks imo. With that said, players know who the actual captains/leaders are, regardless of who is wearing the armband.

I lost count of the amount of times people stated Mowbray had "lost the dressing room" during a death spiral only for results to eventually turn. Very rare for a manager to actually lose the dressing room. Low confidence and inability to implement the manager's ideas isn't the same as losing the dressing room. I don't think it's much more than that.

Boss Jon Dahl Tomasson told BBC Radio Lancashire that he does not blame his players for mistakes after the defeat. "Don't blame the players for individual mistakes, give the coach the blame," he said. "If you look at the whole game we were just as good as West Brom but games are won in each box, by winning personal duels and are you smelling danger and scoring goals? That's football. "November was a good month for Rovers, December was not a good month, a period when there were too many games for a stretched squad."

Possibly, but I don't think he's an idiot, and he must look at our goals conceded column and realise this is not working. Our form for the past year, almost a full season, has been pretty poor overall. Bombed from 2nd to 7th last season, now bombed from 7th to 18th this season. Either he can change things and is refusing, or is unable to change things and just hoping things improve once injuries start clearing up. Neither is ideal, to say the least, but the latter at least is one of the pitfalls of hiring rookie managers. Bowyer couldn't adapt either. Mowbray, for all his faults, was able to change how we approached games if needed. We had that spell of possession football which did not work, so we switched to something different. Our underlying flaws were never addressed which is why we saw the same seesaw pattern of streaky results, so in the end it counted for little, but nonetheless.

At a normal club, maybe. Here... not convinced. Not sure who's giving the order. It would require someone to actually care. Tough to explain otherwise why he is absolutely refusing to change anything. He's either incredibly stubborn, incredibly stupid or just pissed off and trying to get sacked.

I think he potentially does have enough about him to turn it around, I'm just not convinced he's motivated to do so. Almost feels like this is being done out of spite. You brought me in to play this style of football, so here you go, this is how it goes when you fail to back me - so either back me or sack me. His comments in the press certainly suggest he isn't scared about being binned at this point.

If we fail to improve in these fixtures then it'll be fair to say the players have lost confidence in JDT's style, whatever you'd call it. We surely have to get at least a couple of results from these fixtures.

Rovers commentators (probably) = "nothing out of the ordinary here"

Walsall put 3 past us back in August.

Gone way beyond acceptable now, even with the myriad of genuine reasons JDT can point to. This inability to defend is absolutely embarrassing.

Good to see JRC back... Gallagher kind of... just hope we aren't rushing them back too soon. I was under the impression both were initially penned for a February-ish return to the team. Maybe a case of needs must.

Sometimes it's like watching somebody who won a competition to be out there.