DE.

If we lose to both Derby and Stoke in Ismael's first three games then the outlook is going to be very bleak indeed. As other teams begin pulling away the pressure piles on, and we know how these lads deal with playoff expectations. Fully expecting another miserable defeat as the force of nature that is our second half season collapse continues on unabated. Desperately hoping I'll be eating my words at full time.

100%. The cursed second half of the season was already happening before Eustace left. It's just something that happens now, like the tides or the sun rising each morning. An unstoppable force. We could be 20 points clear at the top at the end of December and we'd still end up finishing 8th.

The "players aren't playing for him" idea might have slightly more weight if we didn't regularly lose to teams in dire straits. At this point teams on a poor run of form likely mark Rovers on the fixture calender as a target to get back to winning ways.

We haven't paid off a manager since Coyle over 8 years ago, and we're currently spending as little money as possible, so I think this is unlikely to be honest. It may be possible if Ismael has us in relegation trouble - but just like Coyle, Venky's will pull the trigger too late and we'll be sunk anyway.

They were better than usual then.

Nah that £10,000 fine they get will definitely scare them straight.

We can't keep bringing in cheap, out of work managers and expecting miracles. It was always going to end in disaster and I imagine there's a good chance next season it will do. This season the hierarchy's aim is already achieved - safety with less money spent.

I didn't realise how far ahead Liverpool are at the top. Even if Arsenal win both of their games in hand on Liverpool they will still be 10 points behind. If Nottingham Forest won their game in hand they'd still be 16 points behind! What an embarrassment for a lot of big clubs who have spent a lot of money to be incredibly average. Hard to see the bottom three getting out of it now either. They're all well below standard, and it's likely to be the second season in a row all three promoted clubs go back down. Must be disappointing for Sky, lol. No title race to hype up and the relegation battle looking more like relegation acceptance. I guess they'll have to focus on the best of the rest with the battle for 4th.

Having someone who can do the basics and not cost us at least one goal per match would also be OK.

For this season, we needed someone to come in, hit the ground running and have an instant impact. Not easy, but that was the requirement (from the fans, not from the higher ups, they couldn't care less). We haven't seen that at all, so it's already looking like this is a failure of an appointment. We needed to see an immediate reaction and it isn't there. However, he obviously isn't being sacked after two games and nor should he. I think suggestions of this are just people venting and quite rightly angry over how the club is being repeatedly screwed over by the people in charge. Predicting how he'll fare next season is tough. If we exclude the Stoke game, Eustace didn't get his first win until his 10th match in charge - which is insane really, even taking into account that we'd been struggling before he came in. Can't imagine many of us genuinely believed Eustace would get us into playoff contention this season. Eventually Venky's luck will run out though, insofar as hiring out of work managers and having them perform minor miracles. JDT had an aura about him. Eustace had done well with Birmingham before being booted for Rooney. Ismael... lasted less than a year at Watford before being sacked after one win in ten games. Fair to say this may be the one that doesn't work out.

Ismael may have found out some things about players today, but then he's going to look at the squad and realise there's very little he can do about it. He's going to receive a paltry budget in the summer and realise there's very little he can do about it. JDT & Eustace saw the writing on the wall very quickly and got out however they could. In JDT's case going off on Suhail and Venky's until they let him go, and in Eustace's case applying for any and all jobs until he found someone - anyone - willing to pay his release clause. Ismael will find out soon enough exactly why his predecessors were so desperate to escape. The only question is whether he can stomach working in these conditions or not. Three years is a long time, especially in football.

Kind of, but what happened during that time is still a bit mysterious. Our budget was slashed and it was confirmed the club was having to take out emergency loans for the basic running of things around 2015 - but to my knowledge we never found out why. Then we had two auditing companies come in to assess the books - from memory, again, we never found out why two companies were needed - and it all culminated with hiring a terrible, cheap manager who doomed us. This time around at least there's some transparency around the budget cuts (in the sense we know about the court case, anyway), and so far at least they've steered clear of trouble for longer than back then - but it still feels like a matter of time until it all implodes. Ismael isn't Coyle-level bad in terms of an appointment, but he may find himself in big trouble next season all the same.

Staying in the league and cutting the budget to the absolute minimum required are the only ambitions this club has. To those in charge, a year where we stay in the league with reduced costs is a great success. With this mentality, it's a question of when we get relegated again, not if. By the time they've realised the cost cutting has gone too far it'll be too late, and nobody at the club will have had the foresight to prepare. I thought this season might be the tipping point, but Eustace far exceeded expectations. This no doubt frustrated the higher ups as he now had a legitimate reason to call for backing and a pay increase. JDT all over again. Neither were given because that doesn't fit into the model of staying in the league with increasingly less expenses, so much like JDT, off Eustace went. They're banking on Ismael being the guy who will keep us floating around mid-table on a minimal budget. His track record suggests for the short term he's perfect for this - although his budget at WBA and Watford was surely larger than it will be here. Barnsley was one season and may have been a fluke. They're playing a dangerous game and will eventually get burned.

I'm guessing he just has a list of things to say in the majority of interviews and doesn't significantly deviate. Honestly I rarely listened to any of his pressers or post match interviews whilst he was here because it was always the same. I got the feeling he wasn't interested in the media side of things and so did the bare minimum to fulfil those obligations.

All I hear is hissss, hissss 🐍

I'd give Toth a go at this point. We aren't getting top six so give the boy a chance and let's see what he can do with a run of games. Not giving players a chance when first teamers are consistently underperforming sends out a terrible message and doesn't give the second string players any motivation.

I felt like we were going to end up mid table even when Eustace was here. I'm even more sure of it now - maybe even lower mid-table. If the summer is going to be as brutal as Eustace evidently believed, then yeah, we might be in for a very rough time. I think us hurtling into oblivion at the foot of the division is the only way you'll get any serious form of protest from the remaining fanbase, though.

Think we got our "new manager bounce" with Lowe, unfortunately. Albeit for just two games before reverting to the usual. Not entirely sure, but I get the feeling we have an underwhelming history under Venky's when it comes to the new manager bounce phenomenon.

This is what happens when you bring in a new manager with new ideas in February. It's going to be disjointed. We had plenty of performances under JDT and Eustace where we looked equally shit. The shameful match against Rotherham during JDT's reign immediately springs to mind. There's no evidence from Ismael's past jobs to suggest he'll wreck us Coyle-style and take us down. Maybe he will, but it seems more likely we'll just become very average. The main difference will be that, unlike in his previous jobs, Ismael won't be able to escape early because Venky's won't let him leave and they won't sack him either.

Here's what will happen. We'll continue getting shit results, some level of frustration will build up. Then all of a sudden we'll get a few results when we're barely still in it, which make it technically still possible for us to get top six. Sentiment will change to "get behind the lads ffs". We will fail. Then it'll change to "let's see what Ismael can do with a pre season behind him and new players".

Far too early to make a judgement on Ismael yet. However, it can be said the players have not had any reaction to him at all. They have instead almost immediately regressed (to what is the norm, tbf, but still). Dark signs.

Two people who 100% deserve this result are Suhail and Waggott. Unfortunately the same two people couldn't care less. The gravy train keeps rolling on either way.

It is strange, seeing as we're actually 8th and now 3 points off 6th. Looks like we're going to allow Mowbray to take another team to the playoffs as our expense.

We already know most of them can't be trusted. There are many players in this squad who have repeatedly been involved in our embarrassing collapses. The only reason most of them are still here is because the club has no budget or ambition. But this is what happens when the club is run the way its run. The players with talent and ambition move on fast. The players with talent but no ambition stay. You also get a lot of very average players starting week in and week out, safe in the knowledge they won't be replaced.

Not going to sit here and pretend an individual - Ismael, Pears, the ref - is responsible for this. This is what happens every single season when we're near the playoffs. Second half of the season collapse and embarrassing results against terrible teams. Goes all the way back to Bowyer. A decade plus of the same bullshit. It's something far more rotten than the manager or the players. You have to start looking at the constants. We know who they are.