DE.

Bright but clumsy start. Some shocking final balls so far. Need to try and compose ourselves a bit. WBA have been terrible so far.

We all know Ayala doesn't play in the winter months. A few cameos at best.

No, because going behind under Mowbray is basically akin to defeat. At best we're getting a point if we go behind. I imagine you could count on one hand the number of times we've come back from conceding the first goal to actually win under TM.

No chance. It was crazy we even managed to climb up to 2nd in the first place, on the back of an incredible run of form from BBD and incompetence from Parker. Looks like Bournemouth may have bought enough players to make up for his managerial inadequacies and get them over the line. Should they go up though it'll be Fulham all over again, except Bournemouth may not keep Parker until the season's end. Imagine he'll be gone by Christmas. Barnsley picking up only their 4th win of the season against QPR is unexpected to say the least. Looks like they deserved it too. Reading lose their 7th game in a row, with 6 points deducted, and are still 2 points clear of the bottom three. Make of that what you will.

If we don't go up I'm ready for a change, even if we finish in the playoff positions. I haven't forgotten Mowbray inciting the fans to argue with each other on the terraces when small sections started to get on his back before Christmas. For me that in of itself was enough to want him gone - irresponsible and childish behaviour. There have been other incidents, but that one in particular I find very hard to get past. Trying to pit the fans against each other is extremely poor behaviour from the club's manager, to say the least. I won't argue against the idea that he's done a good job getting us into the position we're in this season, but there are a lot of managers who have had excellent one off seasons which don't represent their actual ability. Owen Coyle for one. Mowbray is well above Coyle but the general point remains that this kind of thing does happen for certain clubs sometimes. Shrewsbury had a very similar situation during our League 1 campaign - Paul Hurst then went on to tank Ipswich into oblivion and now manages Grimsby in the non-leagues. If we finish outside of the playoffs then of course he should be shown the door as soon as it's mathematically impossible for us to reach 6th. That would be a monumental screw up, eclipsing the 2 wins in 17 disaster which nuked any chance of playoff contention last season.

Khadra isn't a full game player yet. Has some excellent moments and periods during games. When off-form is basically a passenger. He's only 20, though, so we have to expect this type of inconsistency when loaning young, creative players.

Will be surprised if we score more than a couple in those fixtures. Mental how we've gone from scoring so many to suddenly looking like the most inept team in the Championship in front of goal. We must be up there at this point! 2 goals in 7 games. Could easily see it becoming 2 in 12 at this rate. We really are dire.

It's just a question of how far we fall now.

High-press, cede possession to the opponent, counter with speed, keep things tight at the back. Works with the right personnel, as proven by our rise to 2nd. A few players injured and off-form, however, and we have no response. No adaptability. We've gone from second highest scorers in the division to looking like we'd fail to score even if the opposition played without a goalkeeper.

Amazing how quickly things can unravel when you have a manager that has no Plan B when Plan A begins to falter.

We all know what the general odds are of us winning the match once we go a goal down. Forget automatic, we just need to pray we're still in the top six when this emerging death spiral eventually ends.

I misspoke there, as I was actually referring to Watford/Newcastle/Norwich, so not the bottom three, but rather three of the bottom four. You could probably argue Watford haven't really 'woken up' either at this point, but I do think hiring Roy gives them more of a chance than sticking with Ranieri.

Yeah I'd be pretty worried if I was an Everton fan at this point. Newcastle have enough to get out of it now. Hodgson will get points on the board for Watford over the next few months. Dean Smith has got Norwich climbing towards safety. With that said Brentford are falling fast at the moment too, and Leeds are far from safe themselves. Now that the bottom three have all woken up at once, suddenly there's a lot of clubs who will be starting to worry.

Little chance he'll be sacked, but yeah, tough to see a way back for him after that. To not only do something like that, but think it's OK for it to be filmed and broadcast publicly... well, the bloke obviously needs help as he must have some severe mental and/or emotional problems. Heartbreaking that he's bringing his children up to think stuff like that is OK. Makes you wonder if he was brought up in an environment where actions like this were normal. It doesn't excuse his behaviour at all, as anybody with any ounce of common sense or decency knows that physically abusing a defenceless animal is wrong regardless of upbringing, but usually behaviour like this traces back to some kind of source.

Both most likely around the end of this month, if I recall correctly.

Problem is right now we are relying on our defence being absolutely perfect and keeping clean sheets, as we simply cannot score regularly, as 2 goals in 6 games attests to. A solid defence is the backbone of most promotion sides, but we need the attacking side to step up in the next few weeks as well. With BBD, Gallagher, Dolan and Khadra all returning imminently we should be OK for firepower, but we need these lads to hit the ground running as we are already beginning to lose ground fast and numerous teams below us are riding their own waves of momentum right now.

Our defeat to Wigan in the cup was the first game that worried me. We had a pretty strong team out that day and didn't look up for it against a League 1 side. Since then performances have continued on a slow decline. Obviously injuries don't help but this is where the tactical and recruitment nous of the manager and club (or lack thereof) come to the fore.

We know we're highly unlikely to turn a game around if we concede first. Much better to put our best players on at the start and withdraw them when we're (hopefully) in front, rather than putting them on when we need goals because we're losing.

Tonight's game was on ESPN+, a US-based subscription service. They show a fair amount of Championship games, so worth the $6.99 a month if you have any interest in the competition.

I can understand the thought behind saying we were unlucky, when it comes to missing a couple of very clear sitters which on another day would have been dispatched comfortably. However, it also has to be acknowledged that the reason one of those fell to Buckley - a notoriously poor finisher - is because he was being played as a false 9 and therefore more likely to be in a position to take that chance then another, more capable player. One also has to question why our other major sitter fell to Lenihan. What was he even doing storming into the box from wide attacking position, and where were our other attackers? That stuff isn't luck, it's just poor game management.

I dread to think what our record is over Tony Mowbray's tenure in that regard, but I'd be very confident in saying we'd be up there with the very worst teams in the EFL when it comes to gaining points from a losing position. It's a mentality problem that has never been addressed.

Unfortunately he'll be toiling out on the right wing somewhere so likely won't have the opportunity to benefit.

We've scored 2 goals in the last 6 league games. This is not just a bad game in front of goal, it's a clear issue.

Simple fact is we don't have good squad depth and a few injuries reduces us to being the team we were last season - lower mid-table and not very good. We can get by with a couple of injuries at most, where we can reliably swap like-for-like without any major drop in quality from the replacement player. Beyond that we just don't have what it takes to adapt. Key players like Buckey and Rothwell go missing when things aren't going our way, and we must be one of if not the worst team in the entire EFL when it comes to gaining points when going behind. We couldn't score playing against a dismal Swansea side with 10 men for 40 minutes. We didn't even look like scoring until the very end when we started missing sitters. Don't kid yourselves, this is an awful Swansea team and we barely worried them until the last 7 or 8 minutes of the game. Try to name a decent save their keeper made over the 90 minutes. Swansea going down to 10 was probably the worst thing to happen, as that meant the only gameplan that works for us - let the opposition have most of the possession - was off the table and from that point all of our weaknesses from the past came back to haunt us like an extremely early halloween exhibit. Watching this match and the Hull match I'm pretty sure we aren't getting automatic. We don't look or play like a team that's a cut above the rest of the league. We've been able to ride an incredible wave of momentum buoyed by a frankly ridiculous purple patch of goalscoring from Brereton, but that's gone now and we are looking very much like the Rovers we're all used to seeing under Mowbray. Bournemouth and probably QPR will finish above us imo. Just a question of if we can hold on for 5th/6th. That's where I see us now. Not signing a striker at the very least in January will cost us. I felt sorry for Giles tonight, he must be wondering how the fuck we are second top scorers in the division, when most of the team seem to think the objective is to strike the ball anywhere other than between the sticks.

SMH. Why is Lenihan of all people getting all of our chances?!