DE.

I'm not sure if Christian returning was a one time thing or whether he'll be a recurring character again. My only concern with him challenging for any title (24/7 aside) is that it's once again going back to older stars to carry the load, and if Christian ends up in a WM program that's taking a spot from a regular roster member who could have used that match to elevate themselves. For me I'd much rather see people from the current roster being put in good storylines and positions higher up the card, as WWE desperately needs to build their current crop of talent, rather than keep going back to the Attitude Era/Ruthless Aggression well. I feel somewhat the same about Edge winning the Rumble, but slightly less so as dude is clearly still in very good shape and after so long out over the past decade is in a lot of ways a fresh face. I think it was "The Death of WCW" book that said "TV age" is more relevant than actual age. If a 35 year old has been on TV consistently for 10 years then their "TV age" is older than a 45 year old who hasn't been on TV during that time. As long as the returning wrestler has been away from long enough, looks decent and can still go they have value, albeit not necessarily one you're going to build on long-term. They just have to be used in the right way.

Going off past history I wouldn't be relying on him to see a full season out, but if he mostly does this season then that's a step in the right direction.

Overall I thought it was a solid PPV. Drew/Goldberg was booked pretty much perfectly. The match was short enough to hide Goldberg's weaknesses, but he still looked fairly strong in defeat which made McIntyre's win seem impressive. Banks/Carmella was good - not quite as good as their last match but still solid. Carmella has improved a lot in the past couple of years, and I think Reginald is an entertaining addition to her act. Banks going over makes sense. Nothing wrong with this one. I actually quite enjoyed the women's rumble match. There have been reports of Vince being very high on Belair, so no surprise they are strapping the rocket to her. Ripley winning would have been good as well, but as she's on NXT and Belair is on Smackdown it makes more sense to have Belair go over this year. It was cool to see Victoria again. The 24/7 nonsense during the match was poor form and unnecessary. Not even going to comment on Rosenberg winning it. Reigns/Owens was fine, I guess, but I'm burnt out on this feud. Already feels like they've had too many brutal matches so this was just another one to add to the list. I never felt like Owens had a chance of winning and the botched ending was dumb. Time for both to move on to something else. The men's rumble was OK, but nothing special. It was great to see Carlito, who is in amazing shape. He has been talking about doing another WWE run for a while, so hopefully this is more than just a one off. He was one of my favourites back in the mid-2000s. Christian showing up was a welcome surprise too. Edge winning is a great story, and I don't have a problem with it, but it does still point to WWE being unable to create new stars to carry the company. I'd rather Edge win it than Rollins, Strowman and Orton though, so it worked for me. I'm wondering if Sheamus and/or Keith Lee somehow get added to the title mix to set up a three or four-way match at Wrestlemania. Edge Vs McIntyre would be fine, but I just don't know if it's big enough to feel Wrestlemania special. I guess they have a few months to get there.

The problem with Douglas is that one of his supposedly major attributes, crossing, is wasted here as we rarely play with a target man. Would have been a lot more useful when we had Graham up front, not so much with Arma. He's also slow which causes problems in our current formation. I'm an advocate of moving away from 4-3-3 anyway, and think we absolutely have to do so for Douglas to be useful for the second half of the season. Our CB issue will be a big one in the summer, again. Lenihan an average Championship defender who spends a fair amount of time suspended or in the treatment room. Ayala doesn't like to play during the winter. Nyambe also struggles with fitness and is our primary RB. Williams out of contract and presumably leaving. Wharton had a good start before getting injured, but we can't get too carried away with that. He still has plenty to prove. CB/LB have been the two areas that Mowbray has thoroughly neglected throughout his tenure here and it has caused us plenty of problems. Hopefully Pickering will be a good long-term LB option but frankly I'd never heard of him before we were linked to him, so I can't say whether he'll be any good or not. We can only hope, as I don't think we'll be spending much more than that on any defensive position.

Hulkamania had a bit of a downturn after Hulk was caught on camera admitting to being a racist in 2015. He comes back on occasion now for cameos but that's about it.

The fact the staff at the club needed to learn that lesson "the hard way" is more of a concern to me than what people on here are saying. I'm also not sure how much of a lesson was really learned as we continue to rely on injury-prone CBs and find ourselves short once again in January. Nonetheless this City lad seems to be highly-rated and hopefully won't cost too much, so for the short-term it's a good solution. Would be nice to sort it long-term as well, but as we seem to have a significant cap on transfer funds for defenders I doubt it ever will be.

I'm honestly not sure who is going to win the Rumble this year. I would have loved to see Keith Lee win it, but Mia Yim has been diagnosed with covid and Lee hasn't been on Raw for a couple of weeks... so it's possible he won't even be in the Rumble. Sheamus is a possibility, as they've been building to him potentially turning on Drew at some point. Not sure McIntyre Vs Sheamus is the big WM match they want though. As far as McIntyre Vs Goldberg, anything other than a clean win for Drew is going to be shit. Miz (along with Morrison) has been booked into total oblivion. Nobody cares about them and they are the most annoying part of Raw or Smackdown. Miz having the briefcase is a complete waste. They'd have been better off leaving it with Otis in all honestly.

Not sure why we needed to go through that to learn anything, hard way or otherwise. I seem to remember most of us on here desperately hoping for a CB as we were so short on cover, and knew Lenihan was both injury and suspension prone. If that's a lesson anybody at the club needed to learn they're in the wrong job. It was obvious long before the Brentford game and our CB shortage came to the surprise of nobody with a brain.

Same old swings in form with TM. We all know it won't be long before we're leaking like a sieve and dropping back down the table. It'll be exactly when we have a chance to get in the top six. Might as well enjoy this while we can because it ain't gonna last. Anyway, doom posting aside always nice to get a win and clean sheet, even if the game was the usual turgid Rovers affair. Kaminski is the best pound for pound signing we've made in a long time. If only the fabled European scouting network could source us a good, cheap left back.

Also won damages from Kean back in 2013 and had the club publicly apologise to him, so I think he had his last laugh as far as we are concerned some time ago.

Lambert has done plenty of things in the last year or so which haven't been great for the image of the club. He's even aimed a few barbs at Evans himself. I don't see the newspaper piece doing much. Evans did an interview a couple of months back where he took a veiled dig at the fans with the old "be careful with what you wish for" line - going on to suggest that he shouldn't have caved to fan pressure to sack McCarthy. Remember that Lambo only got handed a new 5 year contract a year ago, despite doing a pretty poor job at the time, so there's obviously something there that Evans likes. He sees Lambert as a long term project, although if they miss out on the playoffs by a wide margin again this season I think he may be left with little choice but to admit defeat and make a change.

I don't think I'll pick up a PS5 until PSVR2 comes out, and by that point there should definitely be stock! In the meantime I've still got a ton of games on PS4 to play, so I'm in no rush.

Lambert has been attacking the media for a couple of months now, going so far as to ban one journalist from the TWTD forum from attending press conferences. So, not a surprise to me that they are snapping back at him. Not sure this will make much of a difference as far as Evans is concerned though.

If it was the other way around we'd all be spitting fire and fuming that it wasn't a red. We were lucky to get away with it today. Warnock's reaction was OTT for sure though. He admitted in his post match interview that he didn't think Branthwaite meant it, and don't tell me he's never managed a player - especially a younger player - who made a reckless challenge. No need to go at Branthwaite like that at the end.

With the right diet and training regimen he can absolutely bulk up to be competitive in professional football. If we were talking rugby or American Football I'd say yeah, he's probably not cut out for those sports at a professional level. As it is he doesn't need to end up looking like Hulk Hogan, just needs to seriously improve his core strength. He can look to Brereton as an example - the lad looked similarly weak last season but has obviously worked in his strength in the summer and looks much better prepared this season.

Not the first time he's looked completely lost out there. Today will have dented his confidence for sure, but we'll see the measure of him as a player in how he reacts to this. Mowbray and the coaching staff really need to look at what is best for Buckley long-term - whether that means going out on loan or bulking him up a bit to contend with Championship football. We're not talking about a real youngster here either - he's 21, so only has a couple of years realistically to get these issues sorted. Otherwise I think he'll end up dropping down the leagues.

It would be nice for us to play 4-3-3 well, but the reality is that formation only works if a manager has a firm grasp of the defensive side of the game. Despite being a defender Mowbray has proven time and time again that as a manager he simply doesn't and I don't think ever will. To go anywhere under TM we will unfortunately need to grind out results using a fairly attritional setup. It won't solve our defensive problems but it'll make us a little harder to score against. It is not a good use of the talent available though, so I would advocate a new manager with fresh ideas before sticking with TM reverting to attritional football - because let's face it, we'll still finish mid-table.

I'm sure none of his players have ever committed a dangerous foul. He should be angrier at his own players for being unable to score against a dire Rovers team for 70 minutes and then totally withdrawing into their shells for the last 26 minutes.

I think it's time to drop the 4-3-3 idea and switch to a style that better suits the likes of Dack. We haven't played well using 4-3-3 for months now, it worked at the very start of the season but has been steadily declining in effectiveness since then.

Terrible first 70 minutes, then came to life after we scored. Boro looked shellshocked and were unable to recover. Obviously massively lucky not to concede a pen at best, play most of the match with ten men at worst. With that said I didn't see anything from Boro to suggest they'll finish any higher than us. We gave them the majority of the game to score and they didn't take it. Need to seriously consider sending Buckley somewhere to develop. Not ready yet. Douglas continues to look like an incredibly poor signing. Arma missed some key chances and spent most of the match isolated. Branthwaite at times looked good but at other times, especially in the first half, looked out of his depth. Par the course for a youngster though so not going to criticise him any more than that - I'll only say he was a lucky boy to still be on the pitch after that big boot. On the plus side it was Lenihan's first solid game in a while. Kaminski was incredible. Nyambe struggled at times but was a key part of our goal. Rothwell and Elliot similar. We still play most of the time like a team with no real identity or direction. I'm like a broken record at this point but get a good manager in and this team could go places. Under Mowbray this WDL overall season pattern won't change. Too much reliance on individual skill digging us out of holes, not enough team coherence.

Dack has done more in a minute than Buckley did the entire time he was on the pitch.

Great time for both to come on, after a sucker punch Boro are struggling to recover from. I'd say Buckeroo coming off has helped us a lot as well.

Boro haven't half collapsed since we scored. Knocked the stuffing right out of them. Suddenly we're looking like the team we were at the start of the season.

Should be forced to watch us week in week out for the rest of the season. Am sure they'd change their tune fast enough.

BBC suggesting Elliot wasn't happy at being subbed.