TM has never been able to balance a squad properly, going all the way back to his Celtic days when he was playing six strikers at once. Not saying he should be completely removed from the transfer process but should certainly not be in charge either. Same with contract renewals - his opinion should carry some weight, but he's made too many expensive mistakes (Mulgrew & Smallwood the most obvious ones at present) to be the decision maker. Ideally should have some kind of DoF above him doing the more cerebral stuff, leaving Tony to concentrate on the footballing side of things.

Yeah that's pretty bloody worrying. Would we have been relying on Leutwiler?! A lot of the transfer window talk just comes across as excuses to me, although at least Mowbray did essentially admit it was a failure and he had failed and would have to answer for it - although I doubt it'll be much of a grilling.

Injuries are to be expected as we have a number of injury prone players (Nyambe, Lenihan, Evans, Holtby off the top of my head) but season-ending injuries are rare and we've definitely been unlucky losing Dack, Holtby and Evans in the way we have. Hard to legislate for that irrespective of how the January window is viewed.

It's up to you as to how you believe Mowbray was relaying the information. If you feel he meant it to be private and trusted it not to be blabbed elsewhere then you shouldn't say anything, but if it was just open off-the-cuff remarks then I see no reason why it couldn't be repeated on here. Totally your call.

I've seen this guy posting on Rovers FB groups and I'm pretty sure he is who he says he is.

There are definitely opportunities there for fringe players to step up and make themselves known. Maybe for youngsters like Buckley and JRC too. Very rare for so many first teamers to be out long-term like this, so somebody needs to step up and take their chance.

Only £1.3m being available to spend (does that include wages?) is pretty scary to me. That's lower level/relegation candidate level transfer budget. Unless we have a lot more in the summer to play with we are looking at an incredibly difficult 20/21 season with the amount of investment the squad is going to need.

Really shit news. The two best pure footballers at the club out injured for the season within practically a month of each other. Add Rothwell and Evans to the long(ish) injury list and it's already looking bleak for the rest of the season. Going to need some low-key performers to start stepping up quickly.

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/sport/ipswich-town/big-ipswich-town-interview-bartosz-bialkowski-1-6500191 Some brutally honest comments from Bialkowski about Paul Hurst's time at Portman Road: On Lambert and the season post-Paul Hurst: On Mick McCarthy: Quite rare to hear a current player speak to openly and candidly about recent events. Hurst sounds like a total buffoon. Lambert comes across as a positive person but without the answers to change a really bad situation. No surprise to hear Mick was loved by the players and it's obvious the players were hurt by the way the fans turned on him.

Judging by AEW Dark it looks like they are breaking up the Nightmare Collective. Thank god for that.

My assessment of his character is that he's spent badly. My conclusion over potential lies is simply a statement of fact if such speculation had any grounding in truth. He's either lying to us about the owners meddling in transfer business, which is clearly hindering the club's progression, or he's not. If he is then we as fans should surely be concerned about the implications to the club itself rather than loyalty to a manager who is covering up what is really going on. As I said in my previous post though, I'm more inclined to believe he's not especially good at recruitment and would preferably relinquish those duties to a more suitable person who could better identify and secure targets to improve the team whilst keeping us in line with FFP requirements.

Then you have to accept he's outright lied to you and the fanbase as a whole, which makes him another yes man towing the Venky line to keep himself in a job whilst the club continues to stagnate. That doesn't paint him in a good light either, so personally I'd prefer to believe that he genuinely has just spent badly and isn't very good at Championship level recruitment.

Mowbray himself takes full responsibility for our transfer policy and repeatedly states the owners will back him if he asks for money. Any talk of constraints, forced signings, etc are total speculation seemingly designed to try and shift some of the blame away from the manager and towards the owners. I put a lot of the blame for our current position at Venky's door, but to exonerate Mowbray on the basis of speculation and ignoring what he directly tells us in public is confusing to me.

Makes you wonder what we could have achieved if Bowyer had been assistant or head of scouting, with a proper manager at the helm. Of course the idea of a 'proper manager' being hired under our current owners is fantasy-land stuff, but with the squad we had back then any manager worth his salt would have at the very least had us in the top six.

Agreed, I think Bowyer was far more humble than TM, who seems to have a bit of a Messiah-complex going on at times - saying nobody has any right to question him recently, for example. Bowyer was out of his depth but I never remember him being that condescending. There's no comparison between Mowbray and the likes of Kean/Coyle. Totally different scenarios.

Quotes like that are why I don't fully buy the FFP excuse. Absolutely no mention of it in that article from Mowbray whatsoever. Are we seriously suggesting that within the space of three months everybody at the club suddenly realised we were on the FFP threshold, having not realised before? It seems highly unlikely to me, and even if it is true then all it does is paint a woefully inept picture of the current boardroom and manager.

Really sad news. Horrible illness. All the best to Tony and his family.

Yeah I don't think the Norwich connection has ever been much of an issue. I rarely hear it mentioned or referenced. Much like with Coyle the primary concern is that what's happening on the pitch isn't very good.

I already know what the answer would be. "The owners were willing to back us but there wasn't any value in the market and we have to sign the right characters and agents and crazy wages and excuse excuse excuse..."

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/17930673.where-aiming-year--mowbray-outlines-rovers-target/ I guess that didn't work out then.

I have to listen to Ipswich fans gripe every day so I'm unfortunately well versed in their issues. Whenever they've asked me about Lambert I've simply said he wasn't here long enough to form a solid opinion, but overall he talks a lot without producing much. I think last season they were just glad to have anybody other than Paul Hurst, and there's no doubt Lambert is very good at PR spin and getting the fans on his side - especially when he's happy to take veiled digs at previous incumbants in the manager's seat and even the owners. I was kind of stunned Marcus Evans gave him a five year contract when previously Lambert had been low-key blaming Evans for Ipswich being in the position they're in (and passive-aggressively mentioning walking out on them) but it feels like Lambert has a way of talking out of both sides of his mouth and never saying anything specific enough to get him into serious trouble. It's always "read between the lines" type comments which can be dismissed as a misunderstanding if he's put on the spot. He's a sneaky character imo and not a particularly good football manager. He might have been a decade ago but then so were a lot of people. The simple fact is he wouldn't be managing in League 1 if he was as good as he tells everybody he is, so you just have to take much of what he says with a pinch of salt and instead analyse what he's serving up results-wise. Personally if I was an Ipswich fan I'd be unhappy with the way things are going. Being 4th isn't the end of the world but they owe that almost entirely to their early season form which was very good - up until November. Since then they've began falling away and losing ground rapidly. It's kind of the opposite to us where we started the season poorly but improved as time went on. Ipswich are going in the other direction which is obviously not a good thing and should be setting alarm bells ringing.

The reaction to the five year extension was understandably largely negative, as it came at the beginning of January when they were well into the two month winless run. Even Lambert's more vocal fans amongst the Ipswich support are starting to see that he's largely smoke and mirrors. He may get Ipswich up on the basis of squad quality alone, much like Mowbray did with us, but Ipswich have nowhere near the same level of quality we did so I'm not convinced. They don't have a Raya, Lenihan, Mulgrew, Dack, Graham - even a Bennett or Smallwood. Very average team with an average at best manager, but still should be good enough to go up automatically. If they don't then I think they will be down there for a while. For what it's worth I thought Lambert did a decent job during the brief period he was here, but it wasn't really long enough to judge how it would have panned out long term. I don't think he would have relegated us like Coyle did, but I don't think he would have gotten us close to the promised land either. Mostly mid-table finishes watching crap football. So pretty close to what we already have.

Lambert talks a good game at times but there's no way Ipswich should be going two months without a win in League 1, nor should they be conceding 5 goals against Lincoln or 4 at home to Peterborough. They can still go up automatically but they desperately need to find some consistency in the next few months. Apparently Lambert is worse than Mowbray when it comes to unnecessary rotation which is causing a lot of their problems.

Things can always be worse, but it's perfectly understandable why Ipswich fans would be concerned by what they are seeing currently. I don't have much sympathy for them after they hounded McCarthy out, mind. Many of them are getting exactly what they deserve.

Not winning for two months (November 9th - January 11th) will give most fans cause for complaint - particularly when the manager is rewarded with a five year contract during that run, having relegated them the season before with a record that showed no improvement on Paul Hurst. They've also failed to beat anybody in the top eight this season (D6 L4), and have been beaten 5-3 by Lincoln as well as 4-1 at home today by Peterborough, who are local rivals. The performance in the 1-0 loss to Rotherham midweek was terrible as well. A lot of the teams below Ipswich have games in hand, so feasibly they could be out of the playoff positions fairly soon. If I was a Town supporter I'd certainly be worried.