Pretty much agree with you. Honestly outside of TNA I haven't seen a great deal of Aldis. I've been impressed with him on Powerrr but it's a very limited production. Not sure how well he'd handle stepping back up to the big leagues, although I think he has the look and ability to carry himself there if he's handled correctly. British people almost always sound awkward in american wrestling tbh... something about the traditional English and Irish accents just doesn't sound quite right. Well, for me anyway. Even when Becky is talking I find a lot of it more cringey than compelling.

Yeah completely agree. There are a lot of characters on Dynamite that aren't clicking with me at the moment and I think that's translating to the broader audience, hence the drop in both live attendence and ratings. There's almost too much freedom there, without a clear vision running through the entire company. I thought this week's Dynamite show was alright, but there were still some problems. - significant audio issues on the TNT broadcast, which has been happening for multiple weeks now. This is amateur stuff that needs to be addressed ASAP. Makes them look really bush league. - first two matches and the Cody interview were good. Although Cody showing off how rich he is was a bit weird for a face character, particularly the son of Dusty Rhodes. - Don't understand Jericho fighting with the Jurassic Express. Why does he need another bunch of people to feud with? This is what I mean by a lack of clear vision. I don't buy the Jurassic Express as a legitimate threat to the world champion (they've lost all their matches and Jericho even pointed that out). If they were going to go with anyone fighting Jericho it should have been Luchasaurus, not Jungle Boy. Regardless the whole Jurassic Express concept is a bit too hokey for me and it doesn't jive with the more serious and realistic storylines going on in the main event. It's admirable that Jericho wants to help put over the younger members of the roster but doing it with no build up is just jarring and out of place. I don't think it does anybody any favours. - Kris Statlander is a good wrestler but her gimmick is ridiculous. Also disagree with putting her over Shida. - How many cult like factions does this promotion need? We now have the Dark Order and the Nightmare Collective, both of whom are doing initiations into their families and other nonsense. You've also got this Butcher/Blade/Bunny team who are in the same mould. It's too much of the same thing. - Main event was okay but is Joey Janela really main event level talent? Again they could be using Moxley a lot better. Lack of star power is starting to hurt the brand imo. It's not that the match between Moxley/Janela was bad, it was fine, but I don't know and haven't been given a reason to care about Janela. I'm a bit down on AEW at the moment to be honest. I thought they got off to a strong start but they're starting to stumble and I'm finding myself far more invested in NXT right now.

Agreed, it would be an excellent replacement on a normal wrestling company, but I'm not sure how it'll translate to a retro show like NWA. I guess we'll have to see.Corny's authenticity will be missed. I didn't think much of him when he was Magnus in TNA, but he's come on leaps and bounds since being NWA champion. His match with Cody at All In last year and the build up to it was great. He's definitely got the "look" of an old school champion, plays the role well and is solid in the ring too. I think he deserves a shot somewhere bigger - probably AEW at some point in the future.

My concern with Nyambe is that he seems to struggle to maintain fitness, and I don't rate Bennett much at RB at all. You're right that we can probably survive with those two as our primary options for now, but if we want to progress I think it's an area we need to address. If we're going to sign another striker we need to offload at least one of Gallagher, Brereton, Samuel or Armstrong. Ideally I'd say sell Samuel and loan out Brereton.

A goalkeeper and a left back are absolutely essential imo. Could do with a CB and RB as well but that'll probably have to wait until the summer at least.

Great, another young attacking player... just what we need! I'd rather see us linked to good defensive players.

I'm already getting consistency headaches watching AEW Dark. Apparently it was supposed to be Excalibur and Shanna on commentary this week but Shanna is out because Nyla Rose attacked her at some kind of fan event. The response from AEW was apparently to punish Rose by putting her on commentary instead. OK? Brandon Cutler's gimmick is "I play Dungeons and Dragons" which is amusingly pointless.

Another clip-heavy episode of NWA Powerrr this week. It had more matches/live segments than the last episode (which means more than zero) but there was still a clear effort to limit Cornette's contributions as much as possible. He wasn't shown on camera at all except at the very end, although his commentary was on the live segments. They also showed some "unaired" footage which assumedly was from last week's binned episode. Suggests that the excuse from Aldis last week about episode 8 being 'normal' was BS. They obviously had a bit more time to edit this week's so they were able to throw in a small amount of live segments, but only where Cornette is nowhere to be seen on camera. They also thanked Cornette at the end of the episode, which is hilarious considering his recent comments. The only positive is that there will be a totally new batch of episodes now, so it should be back to normal. Just a question of how much momentum they've lost in the last two weeks.

Unless we get relegated I doubt we'll see Wharton as a regular CB here.

I would love for it to be the case too, but I'm too cynical to believe until around May time!

History suggests it won't continue for very long, but we live in hope nonetheless.

Pretty much. I think Roy also struggles to deal with a collective set of big egos. He can handle one or two but not a dressing room full of them. He made some terrible signings for us at the end, but from recollection he had completely lost the dressing room in the last couple of months which pretty much spells the end for any manager. The same happened at Liverpool.

Hodgson does well at smaller clubs with low expectations. Struggles at bigger clubs. Rovers, Liverpool, England (big job if not club) - all with high expectations not met. In comparison he's improved almost all of the lesser clubs he's been at. Some managers are just suited to certain roles and Roy is an underdog manager.

Pukki from last season being a prime example. He was a free transfer from Brondby I believe.

Sometimes yes, the problem is that most of the time we have to win 3-2 or 4-2 because we concede two goals so often. It can be done - Norwich as an example last season - but it's the exception rather than the norm. I think from recollection Norwich had conceded the most of any club to go up automatically last season since the First Division was renamed to the Championship. Interestingly I believe Mowbray's West Brom were up there in terms of being automatically promoted with a lot of goals conceded, too. Might even have been second behind Norwich.

In fairness we've scored two more goals than Forest who are 4th and two less than Leeds who are 2nd. Our problem isn't that we need to keep a clean sheet, but that too often we concede at least two goals. We've let in 27 goals despite scoring 26, by comparison Forest have only conceded 14 and Leeds 10. If we want to progress then we need to sort out our defence. The last couple of games have been an improvement but we had this earlier in the season when Del first switched to CB, then it eventually regressed back to normal. In terms of goals scored we're more or less on par with the teams above us, but not so much in terms of goals conceded. Now granted we do have an issue with shots on target which needs to be addressed, but defence is still a bigger problem at the moment.

Just a guess but perhaps Mowbray has been feeling the pressure, and was worried how the crowd would react if Rothwell wasn't in the starting lineup - especially if we went on to lose. At the end of the day we won the match so regardless of how Rothwell played the lineup was ultimately the right one. Worth noting that Rhodes played 4018 minutes during the 13/14 season, whereas King and Gestede played 1868 and 1714 minutes respectively. That's obviously going to skewer the percentages somewhat. I would be interested to know how many games Rhodes started compared to King/Gestede - I imagine the difference would be fairly significant.

I reckon Jericho will have the title for a while yet, unless ratings really start to tank in which case they may decide to shake it up. Mox should definitely be in the title picture soon though as other than Jericho he's the biggest name they have by some distance. There's still no mid-card singles title at the moment so it's not like he can hold or challenge for any other strap.

From what I remember from some stats I posted a while back that is indeed the case. Statistically we were more likely to drop points if Armstrong and Gallagher both started.

Yeah I guess, it was also Thanksgiving eve so always the chance for some strange ratings in the US. This week will give a better idea of the state of play. NXT have gone in hard with established WWE stars, which AEW obviously can't do. My concern (as I've already said) is that the stars I feel they should be building to increase their audience (Omega, Cody, the Young Bucks, Pentgon Jr & Rey Fenix) are being treated like they are already "mainstream" stars and therefore able to take losses to give others the rub. I don't think that is the case and for a national audience they first need to prove these guys are stars before booking them in consistently vulnerable positions. Also I don't feel like Moxley has had much direction lately. He (and most of the rest of the roster) need some proper storylines to sink their teeth into. AEW often has a lot of good matches on Dynamite, but outside of the Inner Circle there isn't a whole lot of other storylines going on.

AEW took a massive drop this week, down to 663k viewers, whilst NXT scored 810k. NXT appears to be holding its audience, but a 300k drop for AEW is pretty brutal. I personally didn't think this week's Dynamite was very good, but that's still a scary loss of viewers.

From what I read apparently the stats are going to be reset annually. So the slate is effectively wiped clean yearly. Again I don't really see the point, and just strengthens my belief that it should be dropped or at the very least pushed into the background.

Bowyer should have a stand named after him then!

I tink we'd be looking at a lot more than that, especially with him being English, which always adds a premium to transfer fees. I could see a newly promoted PL club taking a punt on him with much bigger wages on offer. We'll probably have to make do with utilising his abilities for this season and then look to a more permanent solution in the summer.

Just noticed the own goal is now being credited to Evans, not Dack.