Especially considering the wages he handed out to the likes of Mulgrew and Smallwood in the last round of contract renewals, essentially making them unsellable.

I'd give JRC a few games to try and find his feet, especially at home where we typically get better results. I'm not convinced Chapman is going to be here long-term and like many of our squad he's so injury prone I wouldn't want to rely on him to start regularly. Put him on the bench and bring him on if we need an impact sub.

I don't think we can put Holtby down to bad luck as he's a known crock. Dack and Rothwell however I'd say it's fair to put down to bad luck as neither are known for having long injury spells, particularly Dack who has missed very few games since joining us.

The bottom three have been largely shocking this season tbf, although Wigan are beginning to come back to life with 9 points from their last 15. Stoke and Huddersfield definitely not out of it yet - and neither are Boro.

As with most of our Championship seasons, this type of result is good in isolation but due to poor form during other periods ultimately does nothing other than keep us in mid-table. If that's the goal then it's a solid enough result, if it's not then we've already dropped too many points to accept drawing a match we were winning. I didn't catch the game today so can't pass comment on the performance, but the injury situation is becoming problematic. It's like a re-run of last season where we failed to strengthen in January, started losing players we couldn't afford to lose and our season collapsed. I get the feeling the current gap to the top six will be even wider by the end of the month, unfortunately, and we'll be fondly reminiscing of the days where we were only 2/3/4 points off the top six.

Lambert won't be too popular either tonight after Ipswich were trounced 4-1 at home by Peterborough. They are now down to 4th after going 1st and proceeding to lose two on the spin.

That's why he's here in fairness. Much like Mulgrew in 2016 wouldn't have been anywhere near us otherwise.

This, pretty much. It's obviously possible but would need a significant change in mentality from the players and coaching staff which I just don't think is realistic. I think we'll do our usual of having good and bad periods of form culminating in another mid-table finish.

Smallwood - Sunderland obviously feel they have better options, and if they get promoted will probably be looking for better than Smallwood long-term. Probably figure they can wait until the summer when he's on a free to decide whether he's still worth a punt. Chapman - the fact even League 1 teams only want him as backup is obviously not a good sign. Although if he had confidence in his abilities you'd think he'd take the chance and believe he could force his way into the first team for some regular playing time. Brereton - should have been loaned out, can't understand why he's still here. Mulgrew - if we're planning to use him then fair enough, if not then surely any of his significant wages off the books would have been worthwhile. Can only assume we think we can do a better deal in the summer when he'll be available to play for anyone, but his wages will be a stumbling block no matter what - plus six months older and likely having barely played during that time.

Problem is mate we really needed some signings with Dack, Rothwell and Evans all being out for a while, not to mention the rebuilding job that's unquestionably going to be needed in the summer. I don't really care what other clubs are doing, I just know that we needed reinforcements and for the second January in a row we didn't get it. We're a Lenihan injury away from huge problems at the back alone, never mind how thin on the ground we are across the rest of the pitch. We really have to hope some of the youngsters can step up, as I think we're going to need them now.

All we know for sure is that we're on the threshold, as per the last fans forum. It's obvious Venky's had no grip on the FFP situation a few years ago as they let us walk right into an embargo and then instigated a fire-sale of our squad to get back out, which we're really only just recovering from. My guess is that one of Waggott's tasks is handling FFP regulations in relation to transfers so that Venky's don't have to concern themselves with it. SG being bought for £5m seems to have used up any wiggle room we had in regards to budget/FFP, as since then it's been essentially one in one out with Raya's sale seeming to go mostly towards Tosin's loan fee/wages and Mulgrew's temporary departure allowing Cunningham to come in. No sales or loans out this window evidently means nobody can come in either. I imagine the Atsu nonsense was us trying to do a deal on the super cheap hoping Newcastle were desperate for him to get game time and were prepared to let us pay little to none of his wages to make it happen. Not too dissimilar to the derisory offer we put in for Reed when we tried to bring him back.

Official word from Vince is that there was a difference in opinion in the direction the company should go, but that seems unlikely to me. Not saying it wasn't a problem but there's no way that alone would cause immediate termination. To risk wiping a billion off the company's price just because of a disagreement over direction seems ridiculous to me, even for Vince. Something serious must have gone down - need big Dave on the case pronto to get this investigated.

Considering the manager is their choice and they already watched him throw £7m down the toilet a year and a half ago I'm pretty sure they have to take some of the blame...

Some interesting goings on at WWE right now to say the list. They've fired both the CFO and CRO, who were effectively co-Presidents and the highest ranking people in the company besides Vince himself. Both sacked with immediate effect, no transition period, no gardening leave, just straight up gone. Goes without saying that's highly unusual. Their accounts forecast investors call is on 6th Feb which suggests it's going to be bad news to say the least. https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/wwe-executive-exits-spook-analysts-143700718.html 1 billion knocked off the company's price in the immediate aftermath of the news breaking. They've got their Saudi deal and the monster TV deals as a financial cushion, but all other metrics are trending negatively and have been for some time. Attendence, gate receipts, merch, ratings, WWE Network subscriber count... pretty much everything is trending downwards and has been for a while. If not for their lucrative TV/Saudi deals this company would be in some major trouble. Meanwhile the XFL starts in a couple of weeks, meaning Vince will be juggling his time between two huge projects... fair to say investors are spooked and rightfully so!

I think the two go hand-in-hand. It would be tough for players with speed and creatviity to be motivated in Bowyer's teams because we were so slow and cumbersome. Effective at times but never the type of team likely to take the game to the opposition or give them a battering. Very similar to where we are now, unquestionably. I've said for some time there are a lot of parallels between Bowyer and Mowbray, although I think Bowyer was far better at recruiting until the taps were turned off.

When we were pushing for the playoffs in the 13/14 season we brought in Tom Cairney, Rudy Gestede and Craig Conway during the January window. Hard to imagine us ever doing business like that nowadays.

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/17401247.rovers-owners-prepared-spend-january-says-boss/ Can throw in some quotes from this one too.

Oops, I've been so caught up in the excitement that one slipped my mind!

Nobody in. Nobody out.

I certainly appreciate Dack's optimism and I'm sure he wants to be back as soon as possible - time isn't on his side as far as getting a move to a PL club is concerned - but rushing back from that type of injury would be the worst thing he could do. I really hope we aren't in a position next season where we have to risk bringing him into the fold early, as I can only see that ending badly.

You aren't wrong, but just for once it would be nice to have a manager who simply tells it like it is. Granted these managers would likely not come in the first place or be gone in six months Lambert-style, but it's been nearly a decade of this shit now and it's really, really getting old.

Sadly you're right, although I still don't think we'll see much of Brereton anyway. Most likely it'll be Gallagher directly replacing Rothwell, with Arma or Graham taking the striker position. This is problematic in of itself as Gallagher can't really play that position well either. Very few of the strikers Mowbray have signed can, which begs the question of why he keeps doing it.

It's becoming obvious that this is a mounting problem. Wonder if Sharpe will have the guts or permission to ask TM about this, or whether it'll be glossed over as per usual?

Dack is out for 12 months I believe, so we're probably looking at closer to a November/December return for him unfortunately. We're likely to play half of next season without Dack as well as the rest of this one. That's a scary thought. Brereton doesn't even play Rothwell's position naturally so this really shouldn't be a consideration. It is because of square peg round hole syndrome but we've already seen Brereton is not effective at all playing Rothwell's role. Gallagher too, although I would guess he's now nailed on to start there in Rothwell's absence.