DE.

Is Holtby injured?

If Holtby was the full package he wouldn't have ended up here on a free transfer in fairness. It's obvious he has some natural talent, arguably more than anybody else in the squad, but he's hit and miss when it comes to implementing that. He also appears to have some fitness struggles which mean we probably won't be able to rely on him to regularly appear and contribute as Dack has been over the past couple of years.

Agreed it's far from concluded, just my gut feeling that the current three are really going to struggle to get out of it. I don't think Luton and Barnsley quite have the quality needed to survive, although they both have enough endeavour that they could still catch an underperforming team above them with a bit of luck. Wigan's away record is so utterly poor that they are facing a serious task to stay up imo. A lot of people seemed to be impressed with them after their draw with us, but I was just left feeling that if they couldn't beat us when we were that bad then good luck for the rest of the season as there won't be many teams putting in a more insipid performance than Rovers during that dire 0-0.

It must be a pretty small list of players who have transferred to PL clubs from the lower leagues (having never played in the PL before) 27 years or older though. I believe our own Keef would be on that list as I think he was 27 or 28 at the time? I could see a recently promoted Championship club possibly taking a punt on Dack if he comes back looking decent but that's about it.

This is ultimately a bit of a circular argument as it is Mowbray and his team who select and coach the players on the pitch making poor decisions. The blame lies somewhere in the middle although the reality is that the buck stops with the manager - he's been here long enough now to have created a team that should be able to follow his orders and not make poor judgements that deviate from his instructions. If that is still happening now then the manager should be concerned. With that said we're still in a decent enough position with January approaching, but we need to shake ourselves out of this malaise sharpish or our form will end up swinging in the wrong direction and the pressure will begin to build again.

Smallwood didn't want to leave in the summer because he apparently felt he could challenge for the first team. Hopefully now he sees he is way, way down the pecking order and has a rethink. Although honestly I think best case scenario is that we loan him out for a % of his wage until the summer then release him. Same for Samuel. Bell will probably hang around due to our lack of options at LB. No idea what Hart is on or even what he looks like tbh.

Stoke now out of the bottom three and I suspect the current residents of the relegation zone will be the ones to go down, although Barnsley are looking better under their new boss.

Same old same old. Hopefully we won't be back to waiting another couple of months for the next win.

Did you miss the Charlton, Luton, Barnsley and Wigan matches? It's obvious why people wouldn't be confident about our chances today as we continue to struggle against teams in poor form some way below us in the table.

Happy Christmas all, hopefully Rovers can cap off the festivities by smashing big club on boxing day.

I never thought he was Championship quality, but he seemed to have enough about him to do a job in League 1. I didn't expect he'd end up at a struggling League 2 club. At 22 he still has time to improve but I figured he'd be good enough to do that at Blackpool - seems not!

I don't think we've beat anyone by 3 clear goals this season so sadly unlikely! In fact since Mowbray has been here it's hard to remember many games where we've won by three more than the opponent. We had a couple last year with Wigan and Hull, but both were in the second half of the season and weirdly the Wigan result was sandwiched between that horrendous run where we lost 9 out of 11.

I think we've got quite a job on in the summer assuming we don't get promoted tbh. New keeper needed as Walton is a loan, still needing at least two, maybe even three centre backs with Tosin going back, Mulgrew likely leaving (and not good enough anyway) and Del not being a long time answer even at back up imo. Left back needs addressing urgently if we don't do anything about it in January, we also have decisions to make on the likes of Brereton, Chapman and Rothwell. Graham surely will be gone and before last night I would have said Dack likely going too, but with his injury now who knows. Still going to be a lot to do if we don't do much in January.

We'll realistically need to aim for around 72-75 points, so yeah we need to be slightly better in the second half of the season and avoid any major nosedives in form.

I honestly thought Nuttall would do alright at Blackpool but it doesn't seem to have worked out for him.

It was obviously in context of failing to win and/or play well in similar circumstances this season (and similar types of performances going all the way back to League 1, eg. Bury at home which I believe was also on TV) - to be honest I didn't think it needed to be pointed out specifically, but hopefully now there is a bit more clarity. I appreciate you haven't been on here recently but I haven't done a 180 on Mowbray since we've started winning and began talking about him getting us promoted. I've stated multiple times that we've been here before under TM and the real test is how we react to poor results such as this one. If we beat Birmingham on boxing day then that will give me a little more optimism that things are changing and this result was a one off as opposed to restablishing the norm of going on a poor run of form after a string of good results. Also as a side note and not related to the above, the idea that Wigan "don't deserve" to be where they are is nonsense. You can say that after a handful of games, but not after 23. We're literally half way through the season. Wigan are down there because they've been poor for half a season - the table doesn't lie at this point. Doesn't mean they can't get out of it and are doomed, but they still deserve to be where they are at present.

Saying "football is played on the pitch" is like saying "the sky is blue". Yes, of course. That doesn't have anything to do with our inability to impose ourselves on teams that are objectively not as good as us - whether that be in league position, form, squad value or whatever else. WBA are favourites for most of the games they play and have only lost one match this season, Leeds are similar with only 4 losses in 23. There will always be the odd surprise result and draw, but when it becomes a pattern of failing to impress against weaker teams then that's something to be dealt with rather than ignored with a shrug of the shoulders saying "that's the Championship for ya!" - to have a proper winner's menality you simply can't take that stance, and I desperately hope Mowbray isn't thinking that way.

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.