As an aside I've been watching old Raw episodes recently, specifically between Royal Rumble 98 and Wrestlemania 14. For all the talk of WWE being on fire at the time... the shows really aren't that good and I wouldn't say they are really any better than what WCW was putting out at the time. There are a ton of really poor storylines and matches going on during this period. The Bad There's a huge focus on Sable, who is a total charisma vacuum. She's completely over (I wonder why) but her segments are snoozers. The NWA faction - god I forgot about this. What a dumpster fire of an angle. Related to the above - Jeff Jarrett. Makes me want to fast forward every time he's on the screen. The Headbangers being involved in anything is just lame. These guys suck. Steve Blackman - yawn. Goldust in this weird phase where he's "the artist formerly known as Goldust" - fat, out of shape and just weird in a bad way. Teamed with Luna who does the best she can with Sable and Marc Mero, but... yeah. Michael Cole and Kevin Kelly - what a couple of nerds. Stone Cold threatening JR, and JR siding with Vince during this period is just weird and largely forgotten in historical retrospectives of Stone Cold's journey. Kane and Undertaker's spooky lightning powers and promos during this period are just so hokey. Laughably so. For some reason they keep having Sunny come out to announce Taka Michinoku's matches, normally against Brian Christopher. She seems high on something every time she comes out, and is an awful ring announcer. I don't have to say anything else about a Taka Michinoku/Brian Christopher feud, do I? Racism - quite a lot of it here, and it's kind of blatant. Some towards Taka, but at one point when D'Lo comes to the ring Ken Shamrock calls him a 'monkey' twice. Jeez. The Disciples of Apocalypse are on the show a lot and they really, really suck. Ditto The Truth Commission (funny seeing Don Callis as the Jackyl, though). The Good Stone Cold in general is entertaining. The DX/Tyson dynamic is great. Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie vs the New Age Outlaws (pre-DX) feud is fun. The Nation of Domination itself sucks, but the Rock's slow detachment from the group is really well done. Also Rock is awesome, even at this point. The Legion of Doom breakup storyline is quite well done. The Vader/Kane storyline is good. Vader is really over for pretty much his entire WWE run, but for whatever reason they never really wanted to do anything with him. I guess because he built himself in WCW. It's a shame. So yeah, there is some good stuff in these episodes for sure... but holy crap there is a lot of terrible stuff as well. Also for all the retrospective talk of WCW being the place for 'older' wrestlers, WWE has plenty of them around this time period, many pretty recently in WCW: Ricky Morton (ex-WCW) Robert Gibson (ex-WCW) Barry Windham (ex-WCW) Terry Funk Vader (ex-WCW) Legion of Doom (ex-WCW) Cornette Lawler The Quebecers (ex-WCW)

Keep in mind even the likes of Lowe were on £20k a week. Rhodes was probably on double anything being paid to our current crop. Henley, Hanley, Duffy, Robinson, Dann, Cairney, Evans, Marshall... all likely on £15k+ or thereabouts. It's little wonder we ended up under embargo as we were paying a fortune to some very average players. I don't have the figures to hand, but I have to believe our wage bill under Bowyer was a lot higher than it is now. Agree on the glass ceiling unknown - TM has thus far been on a slow upwards trajectory, aided by having no pressure to sell any of our best players, as was the case with Bowyer. Once the taps do start being turned off, as they inevitably will at some point if we don't get promoted, we will see how TM compares to Bowyer - if he sticks around for that.

Vince happened to NXT. They moved to TV and suddenly he became interested in it. Unfortunately whilst back in the late 90s and early 00s he had the midas touch, now he has the opposite - everything he touches turns to shit. I think the other thing hurting NXT is that it has stopped feeling fresh. The regular call ups to the main roster have stopped, meaning the likes of Gargano, Ciampa, Undisputed Era, etc have been down there for a lot longer than usual. The main positive for AEW as far as being linked to Impact is definitely potential talent exchange. Impact could hugely help AEW with their women's division especially. I don't watch Cultaholic regularly but I have seen a few of their videos - not that one though! Wrestling with Wregret is really the only wrestling channel on YouTube I watch consistently. The only other third party media I consume is the Observer, just because I find Dave & Bryan's dynamic unintentionally hilarious.

I haven't really watched much if any Impact since... 2014? I basically stopped watching TNA when Samoa Joe, Sting & AJ Styles left. It was pretty much over at that point for me. I never thought Tenay and Taz were a great commentary team, but even they are streets ahead of the current team. It was cool hearing Dave Penzer as the ring announcer. Didn't realise he was on Impact. I watched Raw yesterday and it's still terrible. Smackdown has come into its own since Roman Reigns began his tribal chief shtick, but Raw is a horrible mess. NXT has also gone down the toilet since it moved to network TV. I didn't even bother watching the Takeover at the weekend - it's the first one I've missed in years, but even though they were doing the War Games gimmick I just wasn't interested.

Omega's matches with Okada in NJPW were absolutely incredible, but I haven't watched much of him outside of that. He had a good match with Moxley on one of the early AEW PPV's, but other than that his run in AEW has been fairly lukewarm. Mostly tag team and exhibition stuff. As far as I can tell he is going for smarmy/overconfident heel rather than comedy, but before this he hasn't really had a character in AEW (other than just being Kenny Omega) so I guess he'll need some time to establish what he's going for. He's a fairly divisive figure, much like the Young Bucks. People seem to either really like these guys or are completely indifferent to them. The Elite have a mid-90s WCW mindset for the business, by my estimation - and Tony Khan does too - which works for me as that is my favourite era by far. I can understand other people seeing it as WCW-lite or being unimpressed by it - yet at the same time WCW was by far the second most successful promotion ever, so I don't think it's a bad thing to try and emulate some of the stuff they did during their heyday. You just don't want to remind people of the painful final years. Impact was OK but I have two main issues - Josh Matthews on commentary, terrible, and the lack of any kind of crowd/reactions. WWE and AEW both found solutions to the silent arena aesthetic and it improved both shows a ton. Impact apparently opted to remain with the empty, silent arena and it's kinda tough for me to watch a show like that. It just feels so bland with no crowd noise or reactions. Not too dissimilar to football. I'd rather have fake, piped in crowd reaction than none at all. Still not sure this Impact/AEW crossover does a whole lot for AEW, but either way I don't think I'll be watching Impact regularly.

TM and Bowyer are more or less on equal standing for me at the moment. I don't really blame TM for our relegation, and I very much doubt we would have been relegated had he been in charge the entire season. Almost all of the blame goes to Venky's and Coyle for that. The squad was not so bad it was doomed to go down, TM proved that when he got here. We were moulded into relegation candidates by a terrible manager who should have been nowhere near the club. Bowyer probably had more wiggle room in terms of wage budget, whilst TM has had more to play with in terms of transfer budget. I'm not sure how those would balance out if compared, but I get the feeling they wouldn't be too far apart. To leapfrog Bowyer, TM needs to do what Bowyer could not and at the very least get us into the playoffs. Whether we were ultimately promoted or not, a playoff finish would be empirical evidence showcasing a clear progression from Bowyer's time here.

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I meant above us right now, but from a historical basis of when we were lower in the table, sure. I would still want to see us beat a team in the top six, personally, before feeling confident that we can sustain a challenge for those positions. In past seasons we struggled with beating the lesser teams in the division, but so far this season it's more the other way around. One positive I do take from our games against the better clubs is that we have been competitive even if drawing/losing. If we had looked overmatched and overpowered then I'd be feeling a lot less hopeful, but for the most part we've looked on par with these teams, just unable to beat them. Bristol City will be a good test as unlike Preston or Millwall I expect them to be firmly in the mix towards the end of the season.

Absolutely. Hughton has clearly been a more successful manager than Mowbray in recent years, it isn't even a contest. To suggest no manager could come here and do better than get us to mid-table is nonsense imo. With TM it is always theoretical. At the very least we need a playoff finish this season to prove we are genuinely moving forward. Otherwise we are simply at the same level we were under Bowyer - a man with far less experience than Mowbray. I am encouraged by a lot of what I've seen this season - but we are still yet to beat any of the teams above us. There's always some kind of hard luck story - but when it happens over and over again it isn't bad luck, it's a mentality issue that needs to be addressed. If we are able to address that then a corner may be turned.

Wouldn't surprise me if he does get the job. A "name" for the new owners to hang their hat on.

If you thought it was bad before... it's a lot worse now.

Millwall fans boo players taking the knee. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55111474

Great result in the circumstances. Well done Rovers.

Wouldn't mind seeing a Johnson/Davenport dynamic when we're resting Holtby.

Pack it in with the arguing lads.

No way we can use the hard luck excuse after getting away with three penalty box handballs in midweek. The ref has been terrible, but that's standard at this level. Buckeroo at RB is the worst decision of the day thus far.

When you stockpile injury prone defenders you can't really complain when you run out of options. It's a problem of our own making.

Like Brereton doesn't do the same whenever he feels contact. It is what it is.

Just when you think things are changing, it all reverts to type.

Generally I'd agree, but it feels like that was more true in past seasons than this season. We've won most of the games you'd expect us to win this season, barring one or two, whilst we have lost or drawn most of our matches against better teams. Beating Brentford tomorrow would be a real statement of intent and give me some genuine belief that we can seriously challenge for promotion this season.

One of these is not like the others. Anyway, Brentford have scored 22 goals compared to Barnsley and Millwall's 17 and 13 respectively, so defend like we did against the latter two and we're likely to be punished. Big improvements needed there. Brentford are fairly solid defensively too, having only conceded 13 goals so far this season, so we will probably need our attackers to be a lot less disjointed than they have been in the past couple of matches. Despite six points from our last two games, the performances were poor enough to leave me more anxious than confident about this match. Hopefully Brentford's style will work more to our advantage in terms of how we play. Regardless, we need to show more endeavour, as in the last game especially we were noticeably second to everything for long periods. At some point we need to be able to prove we can beat the better teams in the division. Whilst I would take a draw in this one considering the calibre of the opponent and the fact it's away from home, a win would be a huge psychological boost, whereas a draw/loss would just further reinforce that we can only beat the lesser teams in the division.

Great news. Would have been gutting for BB to be on the shelf long-term after such a strong start to the season.

AEW certainly delivered on their promise of this week's show being the most important episode of Dynamite ever. Firstly - even at 61, Sting returning to wrestling and TNT was an incredible moment. Tony Schiavone genuinely marking out like it was the late 90s all over again was something to behold. Sting has apparently signed a multi-year deal with AEW, but I imagine he'll mostly be in a DDP/Jake Roberts/Arn Anderson type role where he's more of a mentor/on screen character than an active competitor. It would be nice for Sting to have a proper sendoff, as his WWE match with Seth Rollins definitely wasn't a good way to go out, but not sure how his neck is nowadays. Regardless, his character has enough presence and charisma that he can be a massive benefit to the show without ever wrestling a match. Secondly, the ending to the show was really wild. I expected Omega to take the title off Moxley, but I did not expect his first appearance as AEW champion to be on Impact. It's interesting how AEW is so open to working with other promotions (NJPW, AAA, MLW, NWA and now Impact), especially compared to how WWE treat other companies like they simply don't exist. I'm sure it'll get a lot more eyeballs than usual on Impact next Tuesday, although I'm not sure how much of a bump it'll give AEW, as Impact's viewing figures aren't that high to begin with. Nonetheless, a potential partnership does open the door for talent exchange, which would be a great thing for both companies. Exciting times. Whether you like them or not, AEW coming along is exactly what the industry needed to shake things up.

Rowett's comments. https://newsatden.co.uk/77907-millwall-boss-gary-rowett-reveals-two-blackburn-players-told-him-they-had-handled-the-ball-in-controversial-ewood-park-defeat/ "You only have to look at Armstrong, I think he’s scored more than our whole team put together" ?

Can't say it was a pleasing performance, but at the end of the day 3 points are all that will be recorded in the history books. We don't want to make a habit of playing this badly - we will eventually get punished for it. Some work for Mowbray and his team to do, but it's rare for us to get away with something like this once, let alone twice - so we might as well enjoy our good fortune.