DE.

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.

Unfortunately he's also made of glass.

I'd rather we weren't relying on youngsters to make an instant impact, but unfortunately we are where we are. Rothwell has had a number of games this season where he's struggled to have an impact and has much more experience than JRC, so I'd be okay with giving the lad some more time to show what he can do. Chapman seems lost in no man's land at the moment and I get the feeling the manager doesn't rate him, so I'd expect JRC to be ahead of him in the pecking order at present. Of course, we'll most likely see Gallagher shoved ineffectively out wide anyway - most likely with Downing out on the left and Arma playing behind Graham in the middle.

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.