DE.

The only slight comfort in our present situation is that all of the teams below us are down there because they can't put together a decent string of results. It's possible one or two will do, as tends to happen towards the end of the season, but 7 out of the 9 below us? It isn't impossible but we would have to lose practically every one of our remaining games. Knowing our luck rather than scrape to safety we'll end up winning every remaining game, meaning absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things but giving TM a boost going into the summer and ensuring he's in situ for another dreary campaign next season.

Looking at the table, the chances of us being overtaken by all but two of the teams below us is very slim I'd say. We've probably done enough to drag ourselves over the line. It's certainly not where we should be, though, after 4 years with a manager who has had a very unique luxury of not having to sell anybody and being funded a decent amount every season to boot.

1 win since the end of January, 13 games, and he thinks we'll win enough games not to be concerned? Proper head in the sand stuff. I think we'll scrape enough points to survive but to be in that position from where we were is horrific. Mowbray's blasé nature about the whole thing is even worse. He's shown himself to be a manager with little to no real ambition and unfortunately that will affect the players as well. I've said it time and time again but we need a winner in the dugout who genuinely cares and gets upset if his team fail to perform and fail to win matches - not somebody who looks like he's on the verge of nodding off at any given point during the match.

I don't necessarily blame Mowbray for clinging on to the bitter end, however I think he deserves to be called out for his hypocrisy regarding integrity and resignation due to his comments at Coventry. Which, as a reminder, were: Keep in mind this run garnered 6 points from those 10 games. Comparatively, we've got 7 points from our last 13 games. Where's his "honour" now? This is worse than the run he resigned from at Coventry, supposedly out of honour. He made a rod for his own back with those comments, and it needs to be highlighted because we've heard all too often that he's a man of 'integrity' and 'honour' who will 'do the right thing' if things aren't working out. What we're seeing now is that he's the same as every other manager out there, clinging on even when the ship is sinking rapidly and waiting for a payout. I don't blame him for doing so but I also can't help but look at his words when he left Coventry and wonder what else he's lied to us about over the years.

The only minor positive from this disaster is that it proves to those who insist otherwise that the owners are indeed as clueless and apathetic as the day they darkened our doors. Nothing learnt, nothing gained and nothing to be optimistic about with them at the helm. If Mowbray goes the best we can hope for is that they luck into a cheap appointment who does well for a couple of seasons. That's our limit under the present regime and always will be, as they are simply unsuited in every way to own a successful football club.

Becoming obvious the only reason TM resigned from Coventry is because they weren't paying him much and his agent likely convinced him he could find a better paying gig elsewhere. Nothing to do with 'integrity' as he would have held his hands up and walked away from here a long time ago if his true values matched his words.

Mowbray is embarrassing himself as much as us now. He ran his race for us a LONG time ago, any competent club would have got rid during the 9 losses in 11 run. The fact he's still here and now actively regressing us shows how little the owners know or care about the club. Learnt from their mistakes my derriere.

Mowbray isn't going anywhere this season and we're still not safe yet, so we need to be pleased with any points we get at this point.

We could only really call this a good point if it was building towards something. I suppose if you think we're in serious danger of getting relegated it could be considered an unexpected point away from the danger zone. Otherwise it's just another step in the mind-numbing journey of utter mediocrity Mowbray has us on.

The last time they were in the PL they came straight back down without putting up much of a fight, so that doesn't mean much!

This Norwich team are bossing the division. They're distinctly average at best. Absolute joke that we're 15th in such a poor league.

But as usual no goals. I wouldn't care if we only had two shots on target the entire game if they both went in and our opponents scored less.

To be honest I find it hard to put much effort into dissecting Armstrong, or any of our other players, so long as the manager remains in situ. Venky's aside he is the biggest problem the club has right now and eclipses any individual player's pros or cons insofar as our team's performances are concerned.

I very much disagree on embracing Armstrong's selfishness. I don't think we should be encouraging any one player to shoot as often as Armstrong does, nor should we accept the burden of goalscoring being placed on his shoulders. In order to spread that duty around we need a better team game and that includes AA. I do agree he has a poor supporting cast and our tactics/style of play are shit. New manager needed before that can be solved though. Personally I thought AA had some excellent performances out wide. His pace and cutting in could be lethal and gave defenders a headache. He also scored some absolute belters from outside the box. I think he could have been and still could be trained to be hugely effective out wide, although admittedly not by Mowbray and his coaching staff. Again, new manager and new coaches needed. What I like about Arma is that he can add value out wide and down the middle, depending on what shape we need to play. He gives us flexibility and the ability to be dynamic during the match. All we need is a manager who can utilise that effectively.

It's nice that Armstrong has scored 19 goals this season but we're 15th, so whatever we're doing as a team isn't working irrespective of his personal stats. If we had a better manager at the helm I believe AA would score less but be more productive for the team overall, which is what we should be aiming for. He only scored 5 goals in 18/19 when we finished 15th, so I don't think his goal stats are the be all and end all of our hopes.

Yeah, I think it'll see NXT's ratings go up and take the pressure off to try and compete by hot-shotting Raw/Smackdown wrestlers onto the show for no reason other than to grab a bigger slice of the audience.

It'll be very interesting to see how the numbers pan out. Unopposed shows suggests both audiences are loyal to their respective brands, with AEW viewers more likely to tune into NXT than the other way around. I think there's a good chance for AEW to regularly get over the 1m a week mark, but I think NXT is likely to benefit more from the schedule change.

As an aside, NXT is apparently moving to Tuesdays after WrestleMania. Great news for them.

In fairness the only reason WWE is making money at present is because they lucked into a TV landscape absolutely desperate for live events that a decent amount of people will watch. The vast majority of their other metrics (attendence, audience engagement, ratings) have been trending downwards for years and continue to do so. The big thing wrestling has going for it is the fact it's cheap programming. It doesn't cost much for a network to have wrestling on the roster, and historically it's always pulled in a core audience of loyal fans. Even TNA in its better years was averaging a million viewers a week. Traditionally wrestling's biggest hurdle, as far as TV is concerned, is that it's considered low-brow entertainment with a largely poor, working class viewing audience. This makes it less attractive to advertisers, as even though wrestling pulls in a solid audience, it isn't the type of audience major companies have much interest in. I'm not sure how true that perception is in modern times, but it's definitely still there. Up until the past few years it's been virtually impossible for any company other than WWE to get a remotely decent TV deal. When TNA left Spike they were in the wilderness for a long time, landing on barely known channels despite having a track record of pulling in over 500k viewers a week, even during their down periods. ROH only got on TV because they were literally owned by a TV company (Sinclair). The sudden demand for live entertainment that people will tune in to watch means there's been a sudden interest in getting wrasslin' onto network television again, allowing the likes of AEW, MLW, Impact and NJPW to get TV timeslots. In terms of audience wrestling has not really recovered compared to past peaks - WWE only manages just over 2m on prime time FOX, whilst Raw is trending down to 1.6-1.8m a week on average. AEW tends to be just under a million viewers on TNT (TNA got more viewers on Spike in the late 2000s), whilst NXT manages between 500-700k. The other companies are in the 100-200k range weekly. Obviously there are some caveats, particularly the fact TV viewing habits have changed dramatically in the last decade. Streaming and TiVo are eating into regular TV viewing metrics, so it isn't really fair to judge shows based on ratings from over a decade ago. With that said there's definitely a difference between the profits being made during the Attitude Era, for example, and the profits WWE makes now. In the 90s they made money because the product was hot as hell and managed to perfectly tap into the cultural mindset of the time. Nowadays WWE make money because they are a niche form of programming with a very loyal fanbase that will watch the show live, and TV execs want that more than anything right now. IMV they make money in spite of the product they put out, rather than because of it. Smackdown is decent for the most part, but Raw is fucking tragic.

Honestly I don't think any amount of protesting would have changed our trajectory. Venky's are so far removed from us in terms of location, let alone values, that protests only constitute a headache for those running the club locally. I genuinely think we could have had 30k protesting every week back in 2011 and Kean would still have been standing on the touchline every game at an empty Ewood Park until we were relegated. From recollection our deputy CEO sent a letter to Venky's during the middle of our PL relegation season asking them to sack Kean, and he ended up getting the boot before Kean finally resigned. The worst part about Venky's ownership is the feeling of utter helplessness at not being able to do anything to affect how they are running the club.

With or without Dack we go through the same cycles of good and bad runs of form. There's one common denominator and it isn't any of the players!

You could literally apply kayfabe to anything by that logic, including movies and TV shows. Kayfabe is at its core 'protecting the business' by making it seem real to everybody outside the business. Beyond children there is no kayfabe anymore*, wrestlers are more akin to incredibly athletic soap opera actors nowadays and the vast majority of people watching it know that. The only 'real' part of the business has always been backstage politics, which have often been more fascinating than the show itself. As for peaks, wrestling has had two. The Wrestlemania/Hogan years in the 80s and the Monday Night Wars boom in the mid-to-late 90s. I doubt we'll ever see it become that popular again. *Exceptions for places like India where a significant amount of people are still wrapped in the innocence of kayfabe.

Sadly I feel like this has been the sentiment almost every season around this time since Venky's took over.

There's definitely a large element of comedy to Omega's heel persona. The big difference between him and comedy heels in other companies, particularly WWE, is that he actually has credibility and is presented as a genuine threat as well as being a comedy heel. By comparison Miz, for example, is not presented as a serious threat and is just a comedic heel who you would fully expect to lose handily against any decent opponent.

Kayfabe has been dead for years. Everyone's in on the act nowadays. Most adults watch it because it's simple, fun, doesn't take itself seriously and has some amazing feats of athleticism. It's no different to asking why people watch movies or TV shows. It makes as much sense to ask the "don't you know it's fake?" question about those these days as wrestling.