DE.

This week AEW scored 967k whilst NXT got 548k. Decent results for both. NXT was just an awards/clip show essentially so their rating was always going to be low. AEW's stiffest competition was college football but they posted a much improved audience share despite that, so good going. I actually thought Dynamite this week was a significant improvement on the shows that ended 2019. The set looked different due to the arena which was cool, and the show overall felt fresher and more interesting than we've been seeing recently. Having the focus on the Elite in the opening package and the ending segment (and having them go over) was a smart move and a step in the right direction, as was leaving the Dark Order off the show completely.

Ah back to the Rothwell bashing, yet no mention of captain fantastic who has been even worse. Also love this quote about Chapman. That's some motivation. Play well and maybe you'll get to sit on the bench.

I always found the criticism of Dack and willingness to see him sold baffling, and I think it's going to become really obvious over the next few months how critical he is to us.

No Tony, you don't, but it would certainly gain you some good will if you did, rather than take the high and mighty route of "I know more than you so shut up". Even if it's true that's a pretty shitty way to deal with fan concern IMO. Perhaps if we didn't sign so many f'ing crocks we wouldn't be in the position of having half of them in the treatment room. Just a thought.

Honestly magic beans would be more useful than what we've gotten out of the dynamic duo at this point in time.

Haven't read it but does he explain why in September he was confident of getting funding from India, and now suddenly there's nothing? I'm not having FFP as his excuse as he would have known about that at the end of September if it was a genuine barrier to investment.

Unfortunately we're incredibly short on intelligent footballers so I think we're probably going to have to accept 1/2 and hope that's enough.

We're entering 'conspiracy' territory here which the more 'negative' posters often get criticised for, so in the interests of fairness we can really only go off what the manager has said. He has taken responsiblity for the Brereton signing and said it was his decision, so he's either a liar or he's at fault for the transfer. Not a great look either way. I don't see how Raya's relatively tiny £3m fee goes much towards helping with FFP, and again there's never been any public suggestion that this was the case. Everything points to Mowbray simply not rating Raya and wanting to move him on - I believe he did speak about using the Raya funds to improve the squad elsewhere, but there was never any suggestion it was forced upon him and as it turned out those Raya funds were not used in any obvious way unless they went towards Tosin's loan fee/wages, but to swap out a goalkeeper for a defender and then not bring in a suitable replacement goalkeeper would be nonsense anyway.

I don't think there's ever been any suggestion Mowbray was forced to sell Raya to be fair. It was pretty obvious from his public comments at the end of last season that he was frustrated and unhappy with Raya's performances, as evidenced by him being dropped towards the end, and I think Mowbray simply felt he could do better. Obviously his plans for various other keepers fell through and we ended up with Walton on loan. Much like Brereton it's a mistake he simply has to hold his hands up for and admit he got it wrong.

Possibly but honestly I'd rather not go with any other 'what if' scenarios right now. We already have Rothwell and Holtby who we know can play in that position, so they should really be first choice and if neither are available then look at alternatives. Technically we have a number of players who could play in that role, but it's supposed to be Rothwell's natural position so why not put him there and see how it goes? If it doesn't work out then okay, but at least it's putting a round peg in a round hole.

Mowbray is often too candid for his own good. Frankly he should already have prepared for the possibility of Dack being unavailable for a while - especially if it's true that we were planning to sell him in January anyway. When a player is that important you have to consider backup plans if they suddenly get injured or are sold. I mean theoretically I suppose Mowbray could have had a target in mind to bring in when Dack was moved on, but I'm sceptical considering our haphazard approach to Raya and Mulgrew's departures in the summer. Plus any new arrival would probably spend weeks "getting used to the way we play" before being introduced anyway, so what would we have been doing in the meantime?

The link-up he had with Dack was crucial to his and our overall game. Without that he's nowhere near as effective unfortunately. I think Holtby's the best chance we have of bringing in somebody on a similar wavelength, but good luck keeping him fit for longer than 65 minutes.

Holtby has looked decent at times but I think like many others in the team he's confused about what the manager really wants him to do. Plus his natural fitness appears to be pretty poor so relying on Holtby is asking for trouble. I had high hopes for Rothwell but frankly he's disappointed for the most part since being given his chance. Brereton is useless at present. I completely agree that it doesn't need to be so complicated. Go back to what we were doing during the winning run - we obviously can't replicate that team man for man due to injuries etc, but get as close to it as possible. Walton - Nyambe/Lenihan/Tosin/Downing - Rothwell/Evans/Travis/Armstrong - Holtby (or Buckley, or Rothwell with somebody else out right) - Graham. Same formation, same tactics, same overall preparation. Give these lads some consistency in approach and pray that results come. The mad scientist approach Mowbray is taking right now is the exact opposite of what we need. It worked once against Bristol City but I think it's becoming clear that it was much more because they had an off day than because we were just too good for them.

It really is. Dack has dug Mowbray out of the shit so many times in the past, now he's relying on the likes of Holtby or Rothwell to do the same and I just don't think it's going to happen. Not with anywhere near the same level of consistency anyway. We could be in for a really bad spell over the next few months.

Yep, although in Forest's case Brereton was a free transfer after Stoke released him, so it's not like they even paid anything for him initially. Pure profit. I bet they couldn't believe their luck.

To be honest I think the logic kind of falls apart when you're talking £7m. That's a big risk on a young player who may or may not make it. It's a great strategy if you're spending smaller amounts, Dack as an example at just £750k. At this level Brereton's fee should be reserved for the type of player who can come in and make an instant impact, not a future prospect. Certainly made logical sense from Forest's perspective though. They're laughing all the way to the bank.

Just shows how shit our transfer business has been when we're talking about bringing Mulgrew back to play in defence!

I don't think he had any assists last season, although obviously that doesn't account for knock-downs, scrambles, etc from his free kicks. He just wasn't directly putting any set pieces onto the head or feet of our players to score. He was great at hitting the net from those kinds of positions for sure though. According to Transfermarkt he only has one assist for this season and no goals, but I don't know if he's on set piece duty for Wigan.

Problem is I looked back at the goals Mulgrew scored last season a while ago and I don't think we won any game he scored in. Possibly one - but generally speaking his goals counted for nothing other than a slight improvement on our goal difference. I'm not sure Mulgrew coming back under Mowbray is realistic anyway. His sudden departure was very strange and it feels like something happened between them which might not be reconcilable.

Frankly we'd still have overpaid.

All managers eventually get to the point where things begin to get stale, typically nowadays after 2 or 3 seasons max. We're even seeing it with Pep at City this season. Eventually a change is needed. Obviously the risk of Venky's appointing a total dunce is high, but equally how long can we realistically sustain these types of losses plodding around in mid-table Championship purgatory? Nobody knows for sure but the only way I see us becoming a genuinely sellable asset is by gaining promotion to the PL and I think almost everybody is in agreement that Mowbray isn't the man to achieve that. Even with FFP in mind it's a case of ambition - keeping Mowbray is at best guaranteeing us lower mid-table finishes every season, at worst relegation if the squad begins to get sold off and the manager makes even more poor signings. Dack aside our best and most consistent players, by and large, have been the ones Mowbray inherited as opposed to the ones he's brought to the club. Raya, Lenihan, Travis, Evans (on and off), Graham... once these players are gone, and if they have any ambition they will be gone sooner rather than later, I really fear for us if Mowbray is still in charge. His attempts at replacing Graham have frankly been appalling and thus far we've had Walton on loan as replacement for Raya. I dread to think how he'd replace Lenihan (who isn't even that good, but we can certainly bring in worse), Travis or Dack (as and when he moves on). Our youngsters may fill some of those holes but Travis aside we haven't seen many of our youth players truly elevated to become legitimate first teamers. Raya was sold after inconsistent form and public criticism from the manager, Nyambe has been in and out of the team - often behind Bennett, Buckley has had a few starts but doesn't look ready yet, and... well, that's about it isn't it? Lenihan was 22 or 23 when Mowbray arrived and already a first teamer so can't really be counted in the same bracket. We need a manager who can genuinely develop our younger players whilst finding bargains in the transfer market and I'm not confident at all that Mowbray is the man to do that.

Mowbray himself has said he was resposible for signing Brereton so unless we're calling him an outright liar we have to put the blame for that at his door. I actually see a lot of similarities between Mowbray and Bowyer in how they deal with Venky's and how their teams perform. Two outwardly affable blokes who don't rock the boat, get on with the job and have the majority of players and supporters on their side. Both have issues with tactics, substitutions and motivating their players to go beyond merely acceptable long-term performance.

We're still scoring goals, we're just back to conceding 2+ a match which Mulgrew isn't going to help with.

Tony's target was 70 points minimum. As it stands we're at 36 with just under half the season gone, so theroetically we're still on target. We're going to need another very good run of form between now and the end of the season though, and we'll need to do it without our best player... so I don't rate our chances. Think we'll do well at this point to match the 60 points we got last season - which would likely once again put us around 15th/16th. Considering Mowbray hasn't had to sell any of our best players (not that there's many mind, basically just Dack. Raya was a sale Mowbray engineered himself) and has had decent investment a failure to improve on last season will be very disappointing. Am sure it'll be blamed on Dack being injured though.

It was weird at the time and seems downright insane now. If they were thinking they were going to develop the lad and sell him for £20m+ then that plan is truly up in smoke. We'd be lucky to get £700k for him right now.