Yeah I wouldn't go out of your way to watch SS, it was a bit of a joke. What's worse is that young/newer talent got buried by old/part-time talent three times in one night. Styles squashed by the Undertaker, Ricochet squashed by Lesnar and the Fiend squashed by Goldberg. I'm also an old school WCW fan so I love seeing Goldberg around, but using him like this is just wrong and detrimental to the future of the WWE product on multiple levels. It would be a bit like Hulk Hogan coming into WWE in 1999 and beating Kane in three minutes after no-selling a tombstone. It's not quite the same as Hogan was still an active wrestler at that time and was still one of WCW's top guys, but it would still have destroyed Kane's mystique at least 3 years before WWE did that themselves. I'm not sure there's a historical comparison for what happened to the Fiend at SS, it might be a first. What made it even worse was at the end of the match the Fiend got back up and was behind Goldberg as he celebrated on the ring posts, but rather than attack him the Fiend just gave a childish "arrghhh!" and then the lights went off and he vanished. Very sad. I didn't watch SD last night but from what I read Goldberg was booed a fair bit and Reigns got cheered, so I guess WWE will get what they want at WM with Roman cheered winning the title. Fuck everyone else as long as Roman gets over, I guess. Can't believe they're still doing that after, what, six years of it not working? I like Roman but the whole reason people hated him in the first place was because he was being forced down everybody's throat at the expense of other popular wrestlers on the roster. If they start doing that again it won't be long before Roman is being booed again, which is going to be horrible given Roman's battles with cancer.

Problem is, how does what happened at SS make anybody want to watch Styles Vs Undertaker at WM? The guy squashed him in 20 seconds with a single chokeslam. Didn't even need a tombstone. If Styles had been in the gauntlet match right from the start then OK, but he'd barely done anything. Also not sure how Undertaker can win the match when he wasn't even officially in it, but whatever, it's wrestling so that part doesn't necessarily bother me. It's more how it happened than what happened.

Rich Sharpe holds no blame here whatsoever. If anything he's been remarkably restrained waiting until now to question Gallagher's signing and the way Mowbray is utilising him. Most of us were asking these questions months ago.

I just watched Super Showdown. Oh boy. Where to begin. It's funny they are still using "When Legends Rise" as the theme song for these shows - I swear it's been the same song for the last 3 or 4 Saudi shows. I actually quite like the song, but a new one wouldn't go amiss. Anyway... Firstly, the gauntlet match. Comedy fodder R-Truth going through the likes of Lashley and Andrade - I don't get it. What does this achieve other than make both of the latter look bad? Especially Lashley who was beaten by R-Truth in 5 minutes in a genuinely competitive match. At least you can chalk Andrade's loss up to a fluke with the clash of heads, but either way it was silly. Undertaker returning was fine, I guess, but beating Styles with a single chokeslam? Come on now. He didn't even take his hat or coat off. I think his entrance lasted longer than the time he was in the ring with AJ. Great work if you can get it. The New Day/Miz & Morrison tag match was fine. I think Kofi looks ridiculous with his blond dye-job to be honest, but that aside it was a somewhat entertaining match. Can't say I give much of a shit about Miz and Morrison winning the titles as it feels like they've time travelled from the previous decade with all growth in between forgotten, but whatever. I don't watch Smackdown anyway so I don't care. Garza/Carillo was okay. Garza winning repeatedly makes the rivalry seem pretty one-sided though. Maybe they have a plan going forward, but Carillo can't cut a promo to save his life so I'm not sure how far you can go with him. Garza definitely has a lot more upside. Seth & Murphy Vs The Street Profits was again alright, but the problem is when you have AEW and NXT putting on consistantly great matches just being 'alright' isn't enough, not for me anyway. Standard matches don't really hold my interest and that's exactly what this was. The only other comment I have is that this stupid, bizarre practice of removing first names is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. Buddy Murphy is now just Murphy. OK. Am sure that will help. Love how Mansoor gets the Roman Reigns treatment in Saudi Arabia, and the Al Snow treatment everywhere else. The first time they had Mansoor win the rumble or whatever it was cute, but now it's so laughably transparent that it's embarrassing. Ricochet is such a dork. I don't know if he's like that in real life, but in WWE he just comes across as a massive geek. I didn't follow him pre-WWE so I have no idea if he can cut a promo, but every promo I've seen from him in WWE has been cringeworthy. With that said, banging theme music and a great wrestler. As far as the match is concerned, again, I don't get it. Why bother even trying to build up Ricochet as a threat when he literally just got tossed around like a child and squashed. It absolutely ruins Ricochet's credibility as a contender for the belt. They fucking destroyed him, he didn't get a single piece of offence in and was beaten with a single F5 in, what, a couple of minutes? It's so stupid and self-destructive. You would never see this kind of nonsense in AEW. Reigns and Corbin... please fuck off with this. I don't care if it's in a cage, on a scaffold, in the missisippi river or on mount everest these two fighting is BORING AS SHIT. Just stop it already. I forgot Bayley was champion, and I'm happy to forget again. Boring. The Fiend Vs Goldberg. Ohhhhh man. What the fuck did they do here? Seriously, what the fuck did they do? Poor Bray Wyatt. Now for the record I feel the Fiend was given the belt much too quickly and it severly limited his character and those he was feuding with. I knew WWE would screw up Wyatt's new persona once he got to the main roster. With that said, the Fiend is still over and has been built up as a ridiculously powerful, practically unstoppable force. He's smashed through huge stars like Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan, he's also easily beaten the Miz. The scope is there, with the right storyline, for somebody to get over big by beating the Fiend. That first loss should have theoretically meant something huge. It seemed obvious to have it happen at Wrestlemania. Then suddenly Goldberg challenges the Fiend for a match at Super Showdown. OK, cool. It's an interesting match, Goldberg still has star power left, looks incredible for his age and is enough of a badass that the Fiend still gains a lot by beating him. Or if WWE really wants to protect Goldberg then have the Fiend do something crazy to get DQ'd or brutalise Goldberg to the point where any normal human being would be knocked out or incapacitated. Plenty of options. Goldberg wins. What. Goldberg wins? Are you fucking kidding me? I can't even... I'm not sure I can really articulate the levels of ineptitude involved in this booking. It blows my mind. Not just Goldberg winning, but the way it was done. Keep in mind the Fiend's history, particularly with Seth Rollins. The guy survived about ten thousand stomps and got back up after Seth literally tried to murder him at Hell in a Cell. He's been shown to be practically immortal. Then a semi-retired 50+ year old wrestler shows up and annihilates him in a few moves after easily breaking out of the Fiend's finishing move, finishing the Fiend off with one of the shittiest looking jackhammers ever? Just... what? How utterly shit does that make the wrestlers who got destroyed by Wyatt look, for a start? I know that squash matches are Goldberg's MO and it's what he does, but not like this. It's so, so damaging to Bray Wyatt and IMO the WWE brand as a whole. It cheapens and tarnishes over a year's worth of work on the Fiend's character and storyline. It turns everything into a joke. For the record I'm not angry. I don't care enough about modern WWE to be angry at their shitty booking decisions. My heart is very much with AEW now, and to a lesser extent NXT, so WWE fucking everything up on the main roster is irrelevent to me. I just can't help but marvel at their utter stupidity, and feel really bad for Bray Wyatt, who deserves so much better after putting this much effort into reinventing himself. WWE just shits on him over and over again and it's just sad. As an aside the announcers are idiots who apparently have forgotten Goldberg's history, talking about how he's put 'everyone down with the spear'. No, you idiots, his finisher is the jackhammer. The spear has always been the setup move. I imagine he's pinned no more than a handful of people with the spear alone. Imbeciles. 2020 and WWE's two world champions are Brock Lesnar and Goldberg. No wonder their younger viewership is disappearing in droves.

If you're going to comment on an interview please try to link it as well, otherwise remarks are lost in a vacuum of non-context. I assume you're referring to this interview: https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/18269866.no-points-target-set-mowbray-wants-continual-improvement/ Can't say there's much I disagree with there in all honesty, particularly the comment on form tables being largely nonsense.

It was a bit bizarre for the Ministry of Truth to suddenly produce an actual criticism of the manager and one of his signings. Rich has probably been sent for re-education.

If Gallagher starts 0-1, if he doesn't 1-1.

Salary caps always tread rocky legal ground in this part of the world, but something has to be done to stem the financial losses incurred by practically every club in the Championship. The league itself is completely unsustainable as a business model, relying almost entirely on owners bailing out clubs to the tune of tens of millions of pounds season upon season.

I tend to take a dim view on attempts to silence balanced criticism, which Sharpe's was. IMV it's emblematic of a fragile and entitled mindset. Mowbray has taken a similar stance when he suggested a couple of months ago that he shouldn't be questioned over his decisions. If you can't take constructive criticism and look to gain from it then you'll never get anywhere, and maybe that's part of the reason we bottle it every time we get near the playoffs.

In fairness to SG he often does, the problem is it never leads to anything because we aren't set up to take advantage of that. It's like the old meme... Hit diagonals to Gallagher Gallagher wins header ???? GOAL If we're going to persist with this stupidity then at least fill in the question marks so that it means something when he wins a header. rather than it leading to nothing more than the opposition collecting the ball.

Sharpe's article is more a criticism of the manager than SG. To try and paint it as a single-minded attack on Gallagher is little more than deflection and misdirection. I'm not sure Graham even read the article - if he did he either failed to understand the underlying theme or deliberately tried to alter the primary message which reflects worse on him than it does on Rich Sharpe imo.

Not always but last night he really was being lazy. At one point in the first half Tosin was jogging out of defence with the ball and motioning for Johnson to come closer to get the ball, but he just stood there and then strolled off to the side leaving Tosin looking visibly annoyed and instead passing it to Travis. Really frustrating to see that.

Johnson could barely be bothered to run yesterday, let alone do anything else.

Highlights the risk of bringing in somebody like that I guess. Although saying that Berg was a club legend here and he got 60 days or so ?

Because we have a team of soft lads created in the image of the manager. That's why we don't sign the likes of Maddison. Bring in talented 'nice lad' type players and it's enough for a comfortable enough mid-table position, but is the ambition and cunning there in these lads to push on past that? I don't think so. All teams need a couple of players like Short, Todd, Savage, Mokoena, etc to dabble in the dark arts when required, or dish out some serious bollockings when things aren't up to standard. We have very little of that in the team and under TM I doubt we ever will.

Not sure it can get much worse, but I suppose it would depend who they brought in. I don't think it would be too much harder to find better than Woodgate though in all honesty.

I think Stoke had at least double the amount of shots we did in the first half and spent a significant amount of time in our half, so if they set up defensively I dread to think what we were doing!

I think if Boro drop into the relegation spots Woodgate will be removed. A transition season is one thing, getting relegated is another.

Hah, that's some propaganda. I remember Butland making one save low to his right in the second half, but other than that every shot or header we had was directly into his arms. Walton made better saves over the course of the 90, and as you said in your previous post Stoke actually had better chances than us to score - although both teams were ultimately pretty poor in the final third. You can see why Stoke are where they are, but I imagine after last night a fair few of their fans are wondering how we are where we are.

I think it was as much to do with our ineptitude as them being good. Armstrong up top on his own with long balls being pumped up to his head would be easy for most Championship defenders to deal with. As would the likes of Gallagher and Bell toiling on the flanks. Rothwell's comeback was hugely underwhelming as he did nothing of note and Downing struggled to create anything either. It was a bad day at the office for us - particularly the first half where we looked incredibly disjointed and slow. It was nothing to do with Stoke, we just didn't come out prepared or motivated. Second half I was much happier with our effort but it was obvious the quality was still lacking. Stoke really didn't have to do that much. How many saves did Butland have to make? All our shots were directly at him.

I think Nyambe has all the attributes to be an excellent right back, but whilst he has the speed and drive for the wing back position it's no good if he can't create good chances for his team mates from out wide. Today we were very reliant on our wing backs getting high up the pitch, but there was once again nothing produced. Neither Bell nor Nyambe have a single league goal or assist to their name and we need our wing backs to at the very least provide some assists, especially on nights like tonight when we can't get through the middle. Nyambe is young and talented enough that with the right training he can improve this side of his game - whereas I don't see Bell getting any better than he is right now.

The standard in this league is often poor enough that Bell can get away with looking decent in some games, but in games like tonight when we need some quality from our full backs against a stubbornly resistant team you can see it just isn't there. Worth noting that whilst Nyambe has improved considerably as of late he also remains on no goals and no assists for the season, and didn't get any last season either. Even Cunningham managed one assist in his brief time here, and Bennett has 4 assists this season.

Our movement by default switched us to 4-4-2 when we were near Stoke's penalty area as we had Armstrong/Gallagher in the box. Out of possession and when we were in our own half we were at our standard 4-2-3-1 though. We were trying to play with some fluidity but it didn't really work. The players looked a bit confused about what to do when Gallagher moved centrally and this caused a few problems, mostly in the first half. Second half Gallagher seemed to be out wide more often which held our shape a little better, with Downing in the middle trying to support Arma. SG did drift inside a few times in the second half but definitely not as often as he attempted in the first half - possibly because Mowbray saw we were vulnerable down the right as a result.

Please don't quote my post without providing full context. I said we switched to 4-4-2 when attacking which was obvious as Armstrong and Gallagher both moved into the centre when we were pushing forward. I assume Rothwell was meant to be covering the right hand side but he tended to stay in the centre which meant Stoke could break down that side without resistance when we inevitably lost the ball.

I can't fault Bell's effort but I just think he's technically lacking at this level. Some of his passing in the first half put us in danger, and his ball control in the second half when we were pushing forward more ruined some promising attacks. There was one moment in particular when I think Downing pinged the ball out to Bell who had considerable space... but Bell's touch was so poor that Stoke had plenty of time to close him down before he then kicked the ball out of play for a goal kick. A real shame Cunningham got injured.