DE.

Confidence is obviously sky high at the moment across the squad and it shows with how we play. I was bamboozled by today's team selection but fair play, we won the match and looked good so absolutely no complaints from me. TM got it right and has been getting it right for the past few games. I think our defence being largely unchanged was key. Other than Downing being swapped for Bell it was the same backline we've seen throughout our resurrection and it continues to look solid. My biggest fear right now is one of Lenihan/Tosin getting injured (especially Lenihan) as those two look really solid together at the back. Nyambe looking very solid at RB and it's a real shame Bennett was shoehorned into that position for so long at Nyambe's expense. Still, what's done is done and hopefully that position now belongs to Nyambe going forward.

Now that's funny.

What the fuck. It's like his brain has exploded from the pressure of picking so many unchanged lineups and splattered that over the wall.

Sort of. We brought in Walton, Tosin and Cunningham (all on loan) and let Downing, Raya, Mulgrew and Rodwell (who I'd personally class as a midfielder but mostly played in defence for us) go. So we technically ended up on -1 in terms of goalkeepers/defenders and with Cunningham's injury we're now on -2. If you class S. Downing as a defensive signing then you could put it back to -1 I guess. Realistically though all of our permanent signing were midfielders and strikers, we didn't bring in a single permanent defensive signing which I don't think is what most of us envisioned when Mowbray promised that defenders were coming at the end of last season.

This week's audience share: AEW 778K, NXT... 778K. Yes, according to Nielsen they tied at the same number of viewers. AEW slightly ahead in the 18-49 demo (0.28 to 0.24) but overall the shows seem to be locked neck and neck for the moment. Personally I thought AEW was much better this week than it has been as of late. I really enjoyed the overall show. NXT was good but not great. The opening and closing matches were superb, the rest largely passable. I definitely give AEW the "W" this week in terms of show quality.

That time Goldberg joined the #VenkysOut campaign...

I feel like Swansea will be more disappointed than us by last night's result, particularly as their ten man disadvantage only lasted ten minutes and we weren't really at the races compared to previous games. It was a good chance for them to improve their home record and they blew it. We were always going to run out of steam at some point. The question now is how we respond to our winning run coming to an end, particularly with a difficult match coming up at the weekend.

We'll find out in a few days...

Crap game, decent result. Dack being banned for Bristol means our unbeaten run probably comes to an end on Saturday though.

Really disappointing half, as soon as they equalised our energy levels seemed to drop into the comatose range. We look like a team that's lost four in a row rather than won four. Big improvement needed in the second half if we even want a draw out of this.

Can't remember the last time we had such an extended run of consistent team selections.

Yeah he technically left at the end of August, although he only appeared once for us in L1. Fair to say he hasn't been missed.

Seems like a matter of time until Stoke overtake Luton, at which point I think the bottom three of Luton/Wigan/Barnsley will be pretty much set for the rest of the season. Luton and Barnsley especially are well short of what's needed to survive, whilst Wigan will (imo) need a change of manager to stay up.

Well it's possible, but evidence suggests they're more likely to sack him if we're mid-table as that's where we were when Bowyer was given the boot. I'm sure Mowbray knows as well as the rest of us that guessing our owners future actions is a pointless exercise.

Owen Coyle has essentially built an entire career around one lucky promotion, I think the benefits to a manager's reputation outweigh any hypothetical negatives tbh.

I can remember people saying similar things about Bowyer tbf, although I don't think there's any truth in either scenario.

I believe to embed an image it needs to end with an attachment like .jpg, .png, etc. So for example whilst your initial link won't work, if you paste the direct link... It embeds automatically on Imgur you can get the direct link just by right clicking the photo and selecting 'open image in new tab' (there might be better ways but that's how I do it)

This is exactly what needs to change. We've been on winning runs before, but a couple of poor results and we seem to mentally collapse and it takes too long for us to recover from that. We need to be more resilient mentally. If we have a couple of bad results but then turn it around and start winning matches again, then I'll believe it might have finally clicked. Until then I'm enjoying our current run of form but wary about what happens when it comes to an end.

Whatever way you look at it we won't get promoted with our form see-sawing throughout the season. Our periods of good form need to be longer than our periods of bad form. Let's not forget our horrific run last season between Feb-Apr was our worst since Venky's took over, and we struggled badly between November-December that season as well. Those nosedives need to stop happening for us to be successful.

I don't think Del is a good left back at this level so I wouldn't want him and Bell as our only options if Downing got injured. He's fine as CB cover though.

In fairness there isn't much competition there save for Lenihan!

I like Mowbray as a person but I don't like the way he has historically approached football matches. Negative thinking, trying to make out that average opponents are something special, constantly starting matches like the team had just come out of the pub (the dreaded Ewood HT 0-0), strikers being pushed out wide ineffectively, constant tinkering and rotating, playing favourites even when said favourites are in extremely bad form, dropping others for what seem to be smaller indiscretions, wasting our transfer budget on non-performing strikers whilst failing to strengthen the defence ('defenders are (not) coming), criticising certain players in public whilst never mentioning others far more deserving of criticism... I mean, that all happened and four wins doesn't erase history. We won four on the spin last January so we aren't exactly in unprecedented territory here. If our form continues and we mount a genuine playoff push then I'll be delighted. I've never had a problem with Mowbray as a person. A month's worth of results isn't enough to sway me yet though. This is how it's always been under Mowbray - periods of awful form followed by unexpected good form and then back to bad form. Maintaining consistent form for longer than a month is what we require and we can only live in hope that the penny has dropped and we'll see a more consistent team and approach adopted for the rest of the season. I don't think we'll see many complaints directed at the manager in that situation even if we do fall short of the top six pre-season target.

I personally don't consider Mercer's posts offensive enough to censor. Obviously other mods may have a different opinion!

Mercer isn't breaking the rules with his posts, as annoying as they may be to some people. Trolling is largely deemed as insulting other posters, not predicting a Rovers win. As roversfan99 points out, if nobody responds to his posts then they gain no traction and are easily scrolled past.

Please don't bring politics into the football threads - there's a general election thread in ICBINF for that.