I'm not offended, but I do feel you're being a bit harsh! We're talking about what it takes to get our team out of the Championship, which is very different to getting it out of League 1, hence I don't consider that portion of our recent history hugely relevant. Mowbray has done a good job of bringing the club closer together, raising team spirit, and restabilising the club - absolutely - but again that is not what is being spoken about. We've lost to Luton and Charlton, scraped past Barnsley with a dire performance and just drew with Wigan - all at home - and you think my opinion is based on one game? Come on now.

It's just my opinion mate, but you obviously aren't quite open minded enough to accept that happy Christmas!

Sorry but this is just making excuses. Of course we were the favourites last night. We were at home against a team who hadn't kept a clean sheet away from home in something like 33 games, who have an absolutely shocking away record in this division and who are way below us in the table in significantly worse form. If you don't consider us favourites in that scenario then I think we have vastly different definitions of the word. As long as attitudes like this prevail, where we are the perennial underdogs, we will never get anywhere. Successful teams embrace being favourites and thrive under the pressure of proving just how good they are. Unsuccessful teams wilt and struggle under the same circumstances. Since being in this division we have always been the latter because, imo, we've never had a true winner in the dugout demanding the absolute best and making the players believe they deserve promotion. You're right that no game should be considered easy or a walkover, but to suggest we shouldn't have been expecting a win last night is ridiculous IMV. The only reason to expect a draw or loss is because you consider the team to have been significantly overachieving recently, which doesn't match a proclaimation that we can get into the top six.

Problem is we've been saying that practically since the day we landed in this division, and we've never gotten it right. It's always the same two things - "we need to find a way to beat poor teams at home" and "we're only (x) amount of points away from a playoff place". We've never solved the first problem so we always remain "(x)" number of points outside of the playoff positions. I think we were 6th for about an hour once under Bowyer and that's it. Last night shows that we still haven't found a solution to the issue of beating teams when we are the favourites, and that is a mental and cultural change that I think is probably beyond Mowbray unfortunately.

Evans' purple patch appears to be over so I'd agree with dropping him, although I wouldn't play Gallagher & Brereton together. Would probably play Holtby in Dack's role (for as long as he's able) and either Bennett or Rothwell on the right.

Yep I actually thought Walton did well handling some really stupid backpasses from our defenders, and at one point the cameras showed him getting visibly annoyed with it. The passing across the defence was shocking all night though - especially Lenihan and Williams, who gifted the ball to Wigan's attackers on far more than one occasion. Thankfully Wigan are rubbish so it didn't matter, but a better team would have made us pay for that.

Think it's probably a bit of both, although Del's performances earlier in the season were definitely better than last night.

Yeah I got the Card Mod ability straight away, it helps massively with stocking up on magic and items. I'm doing the CC group side quest at the moment and their members have some pretty awesome cards which can be refined for stuff like Holy, Tornado, etc.

It's unlikely as no team has gotten into the playoffs with less than 71 points since Leicester in the 2012/13 season. Blackpool also crept in on 70 points back in 09/10.

Yeah, it was near the end of the match.

We perked up slightly in the last 20 minutes and actually looked better when Dack came off, but still a largely poor performance. Sadly Wigan looked more likely to nick something in the last five minutes which was really disheartening. Dack's injury is going to be a huge blow to us for the rest of the season. I guess now we're going to see if we really do have the personnel to step up in his absence.

Feels like our whole season going up in smoke in one game.

Really, really poor half. Embarrassing to play like that against one of the worst teams in the league in front of one of the biggest crowds of the season. A good thing Wigan are shit as well, because any decent team would have put us to the sword by now. The players need to have a word with themselves at half time because that was a million miles away from being acceptable.

Pleased to see Rothwell in the starting lineup - if there's any game for him to really show what he can do it's this one. Tosin being out is a blow but Lenihan/Williams should be good enough for Wigan.

It feels wrong at first but it isn't long before I'm x3 speeding almost everything also as an aside the design of Balamb Garden, and actually the design of FFVIII as a whole, is absolutely top notch. You do have to level up to some degree yeah. The best way to gain AP for your GFs whilst not gaining too many EXP points is to go down to the beach area just beside Balamb. There are a couple of fish enemies which give 6 AP points per battle which is way higher than anything else at that point during the game. I've just started Disc 2 and I think Squall is on something like level 25, with everybody else quite a bit lower.

I'm sure it'll be fairly straightforward - they wouldn't be as popular otherwise! Already onto Disc 2 of FFVIII (well, as per the original discs, obviously this is all digital...) and that's whilst doing all the side quests. Amazing how much of a difference it makes having the x3 speed option. Half of the time in these games is lost waiting for dialogue to conclude or slow moving characters to finish what they are doing. Even in battles you can speed up summons and spells. Overall makes the experience much more enjoyable - along with the ability to remove random battles, although you could do that in the original game by getting the Diablos GF to learn Enc-None. FFVIII is unique in that monsters level up with you. So, the higher your characters level up the more difficult enemies become. That's why it's best to try and avoid levelling up your characters as much as possible. You can boost all of their stats via GF abilities anyway, so by keeping your level low and your GF abilities high you can absolutely smash through almost every enemy in the game.

I've never used a retropie machine but from what I understand they work really well when set up correctly. I've used MAME before and don't remember it being too difficult to configure, although that was on a windows PC rather than a retropie setup. I'm sure that there are plenty of guides available using google which will go through it step by step! In terms of controllers I think 8bitdo are considered some of the best. You can also use XBOX 360/XBOX One controllers with minimal issues (I've used my 360 controller for a while for emulation and it's pretty good). PS3/PS4 controllers are a little bit trickier due to not being natively compatible with windows.

When I was younger I didn't understand the junctioning system at all, so eventually I got stuck and gave up. It was only a few years ago that I replayed 8 (on a PS1 for authenticity's sake) and realised how the system actually worked... which ironically made it too easy. It's an interesting concept, just executed in a way that can break the game really early and completely erase any challenge. Fortunately I still love the environments, the triple triad card game and the story (even though it's completely insane and generally makes no sense). Character development of the supporting characters is a little bit lacking (especially compared to 6 & 7) but the main characters & the Laguna storyline are really well done. I also really like the "Squall's Dead" theory even though I don't actually think it has any basis in reality: https://squallsdead.com/

I never completed FFX. I remember playing it as a kid and getting to a point where I got stuck and I just never went back to it. I think I actually have the remaster of FFX (and X-2) but I haven't played them yet. I should probably get around to that at some point! The FFVIII remaster doesn't look as bad as I read. Yes the difference between the new character models and the unchanged backgrounds are noticeable at first but it quickly becomes normal. The x3 speed option alone makes it worth it tbh.

Another loss for Ipswich today, they're now down to 3rd albeit still with a game in hand. Apparently there was a "Lambert Out" banner in the Ipswich away end today.

Derby are in major free fall. Beaten 3-0 by Reading today, 17th in the table and haven't won a match since November 23rd. No idea how long they'll give Cocu but with Rooney waiting in the wings the pressure is on...

Leeds' Christmas collapse continues on.

I noticed the FFVIII remaster is down to £10 on the PS Store so decided to pick that up as it's one of my favourite games of all time. I've heard mixed reviews about the remaster but at that price it's worth picking up. The N64 Everdrive arrived today as well so will be loading that up and seeing how it works.

Yeah, even if Luton go down they should be in a strong position to mount another promotion push. It would be a great story if they did stay up but much like Burton Albion even if they do it's probably only prolonging the inevitable. Nonetheless I have a sneaky feeling Stoke will find a way to survive this season - but regardless of whether they stay up or go down they need a massive clearout and to essentially start from scratch. Easier said than done though as I imagine plenty of those players are on decent wages that nobody else will be willing to pay.

Nah I catch it on the watchwrestling website the day after it airs. I don't mind a little bit of weirdness in wrestling - it's supposed to be fun after all - but AEW has gone way overboard with aliens, cults, etc. They've got a lot of rabid fans who will defend everything the company is doing, but the proof is in the pudding. Their debut had 1.4m viewers, they're now down to 683,000. That's a massive drop, there's no getting away from it. They've gone from regularly beating NXT in viewers and demo to now losing on both. If people seriously think the Dark Order are going to turn things around then they are deluded.