DE.

Beautiful. Boro now one up against Barnsley as well. Looking like that first relegation spot is destined for Barnsley, much like it was for Ipswich last season. I reckon Luton will take the second spot, but it's anyone's guess as to who takes the last one.

Hull currently beating Preston 2-0.

"Joe, you're dragging everybody else down. Sort it out son."

Let's hope we can sustain a full 90 minute performance this time. I'd kind of prefer the players to stay on the pitch and away from the manager to be honest.

Probably pretty rusty after only being used for cameos for most of this season, especially at his age. Still more confident of him scoring whilst on the pitch than any of the other strikers we have, even if he isn't playing so well.

Great start. Funnily enough whenever we are forced by pressure or injury/suspension to make major changes to the team we suddenly seem to look so much better. Win tonight and there's no excuse to bring Bennett, Gallagher or Bell back into the team any time soon. Hopefully we can keep this up. A win and a clean sheet would go a long way to boosting our confidence.

I totally agree, but at the same time there are going to be a lot of AEW fans who don't know too much about him, and I don't think he's necessarily being shown in the best light at the moment. In fairness to him and the Young Bucks they are all doing their bit to get other talent over rather than get themselves over. Maybe even a little too much.

Mowbray hasn't spoken sense in months tbf, not since the end of last season when he admitted our defence was poor and we needed better. Ever since he failed to deliver on that promise his words have become more desperate and ridiculous. Admittedly that wouldn't bother me if we were doing well on the pitch, but it's just extra insult to injury when looking at where we are right now.

If you've followed WWE for a while you know they'll derail their own momentum soon enough. Until Vince is gone they will just shoot themselves in the foot over and over again. Vince has been out of touch for over a decade now - still has occasional flashes of brilliance but is never able to sustain it. Interestingly WWE got no post-PPV boost from Survivor Series for Raw. It was actually slightly down in viewership from the previous Monday. Goes without saying that isn't a good sign. A shame as well, considering Raw was actually good this week. It's disappointing if the NWA are going to erase the episodes they had in the can featuring Cornette. Assuming he didn't make any other stupid gaffes on commentary I don't think many would have minded if they had aired the rest of those episodes whilst making it clear Cornette wouldn't be working past those tapings. I enjoyed watching the Thunder Rosa stuff on Power this week, but it was a bit of a momentum killer to have such a patched together show after they had been building so well. AEW Dark was actually pretty good this week. A really great segment with Shanna explaining her journey to AEW (including being told by TNA she was too fat for TV - wtf), and some good matches. Although I have to say AEW's use of Kenny Omega perplexes me. He had a pretty even match with Jack Evans for some AAA Championship few people would likely have heard of. Omega is one of the biggest stars they have, but putting him in matches with the likes of Janela and Evans on AEW Dark is counterproductive in my mind. It'd be like Hulk Hogan in WCW's heyday being put in matches with people like Alex Wright or Jim Duggan on WCW Pro and the matches actually being competitive. It's no slight on Janela or Evans, but a top star shouldn't be having competitive matches with lower mid-carders on the B-show - imo at least. It makes Omega look weaker than he should and I don't think it really gives a rub to the other guys as it's largely forgotten about or not even seen by a good portion of the fanbase. Dark stuff is rarely mentioned on Dynamite.

I imagine Raya's improvement for you compared to us is partly down to better and clearer coaching, and partly having a more solid and reliable defence in front of him. Both would lead to a huge increase in confidence, something Raya seemed to lack towards the end of his time here. Mowbray pretty much always blames the players before turning the microscope on himself, something that is becoming more ridiculous as time goes on and the manager continues to fail at addressing our most basic issues.

Players rarely if ever come out and bash former managers or employers in interviews. You'd be stupid to as you may be working with those people again in future. At the end of the day he was dropped, he was bashed in the paper by the manager, and unfortunately for us he was sold for peanuts in today's market. I'm sure he's happy to let bygones be bygones as he's obviously moved on to a place where he's playing better, likely being coached better and is appreciated far more by the staff and fans. We're the ones who got screwed by letting him go and bringing in an inferior replacement who doesn't even belong to us.

Wonder how long Derby will give Cocu? They're only three points better off than us and got pasted 3-0 by Fulham tonight...

If the games were meaningless does that mean we disregard the results too? That makes Mowbray's record worse so I don't think anybody backing him should be saying that.

"Let's hope Wednesday is our day". More inspiring words from our fearless leader. Is Rothwell about to become "ill" again for a while? It's all so predictable.

The problem for me is that he's no better than Raya - in fact I think he's worse. We moved Raya out for a relative pittance and loaned in a keeper who is at best no better and at worst a downgrade. It's bad recruitment either way.

I tend to agree, Becky's performances very much depend on who she's in the ring with. Her matches with Charlotte and Sasha for example are always solid, but against the likes of Lacey Evans or Natalya not so much. They're obviously trying to make her a female Stone Cold and it's worked to some extent, although at times I've found her character more irrtating than cool and I still cringe at some of the things she comes out with. They came very close to completely derailing her momentum by putting her together with Seth onscreen, but fortunately they seem to have completely backed off from that idea. Speaking of Seth his heel turn on Raw was great. The crowd obviously want to boo him and it's good that for once WWE actually listened to their audience and tweaked Seth's character into more of a heel role. He's much more suited to that than being a babyface. Raw as a whole this week was surprisingly decent.

We had a really solid start to the 18-19 season which provided a good platform, so even our poor results in Nov/Dec didn't do too much damage and those four wins in January had us right back up there again. Unfortunately as you say we didn't look to solve any of our issues in January, and I'm sure I can remember Mowbray saying he didn't think we had any major issues to address at the time. The warning signs had been there in the previous two months but the manager ignored them and it came back to bite him hard in February/March which were even worse than Nov/Dec. He has absolutely no excuse for failing to strengthen the defence in the summer. He even admitted at the end of last season "I don't have a defence". He threw every defender at the club under the bus and then started them all in the first game of the next season. Total madness. Until the last day of the window we had done nothing more than loan in Tosin and swap Raya for Walton. The last minute emergency signing of Cunningham (with Mulgrew being pushed out) was a good piece of business but it was noted at the time we were screwed if he got injured, and so it has unfortunately come to pass as our backup options are simply nowhere near good enough.

The wheels had already started falling off in November 2018 when we got thrashed 4-1 by Preston and beaten 3-1 by Wigan. We also had the Birmingham and Leeds games where we threw away points at the death and we were also beaten by Norwich and Sheff Utd during that period - tough games granted but another late goal conceded against a Norwich team who didn't play well and three goals conceded after the 70th minute against Sheff Utd. January provided some respite with four wins on the spin, but we then went right back into another downward spiral which didn't lift until April when most of the teams we played had nothing left to play for. IMV our poor form has pretty much been going on for a full year now with brief spells of decent results in between.

I just finished watching that and it was really good. It's rare to see Taker in such a casual setting, just discussing his history and thoughts on the business. I think he should have retired a long time ago (probably before the Brock match) but he has an incredible legacy nonetheless.

Overall I enjoyed Survivor Series, particularly that it wasn't drawn out. I expected it to be 4 hours plus but the main show was just under 3h 30m which was just about right. The women's SS match was mostly good but I didn't get the ending. Why were LaRae and and Shirai allowed to constantly interfere in clear view of the ref? Were they actually still in the match or had they technically been eliminated through "injury"? Why didn't any Raw or Smackdown people come out to even things up? Why make the heel Banks out to be sympathetic by giving her a 3-on-1 disadvantage? The ending made little sense to me although the match itself was fine. Styles/Strong/Nakamura was solid enough and it was cool to see Strong getting the win for NXT in this one. I do feel like Fish and O'Reilly should have been out there with Strong to counter-balance Sami Zayn with Nakamura, but then I guess the OC would have needed to be out with Styles too and that might have made things a bit too crowded. Cole/Dunne was great, but no surprise there. Wyatt/Bryan was okay but the red lighting in the Fiend's matches is hokey and annoying. I wish they'd have gotten rid of that after his terrible HITC match with Rollins. This was a better and more believable match than the Rollins nonsense, and I'm assuming we'll get a Fiend/Bryan/Miz triple threat at the next PPV. The men's SS match was really good imo. Didn't like Walter being eliminated so quickly, but otherwise the match told a good story and everybody got their chance to shine. Keith Lee was made to look great despite losing at the end. The NXT guys as a whole were once again made to look like a real force despite not coming out on top. Lesnar/Mysterio was pretty poor. Nobody expects Lesnar matches to go for very long but considering Heyman's hype of "miracle or massacre" it was kind of disappointing that it ended up being neither. I thought the Dominic interference was fine and made sense from a storyline perspective, but if it's leading to him doing more stuff in the ring I'm not sure people really want to see that. Not sure why Becky/Bayley/Baszler went on last. A weird match to end the night on and a pretty bland match with nothing memorable happening. The men's SS match should have been last on the card. Baszler winning was interesting but I thought Becky looked a bit weak selling a pretty inocuous table bump for so long, whilst Bayley looked like a chump as usual. Anyway, good show overall and NXT got put over in a big way which is a relief, as I thought they might get buried after being made to look so strong going into the PPV. I guess now that they are opposite AEW on Wednesdays they are suddenly a lot more important.

We've shipped an average of two goals a game in the last ten matches, and haven't kept a clean sheet since September 14th. Of course people are anxious and irritated. If he's genuinely this stung by what was a pretty tame reaction to another dire, defensively shambolic performance then, as Dunny once said, he needs to "get real". It would be nice to hear honest Tony for once admit that he hasn't gotten it right so far and is working on improving our form, rather than blaming the fans, Rothwell, Travis, Nyambe, etc. He admitted at the end of last season that we weren't good enough defensively (although seemed to put the blame on the players again) yet here we are with the exact same problems going into December with no admission from the manager that it has anything to do with him.

Definitely echoes of the end of Bowyer's tenure when he started sniping back at the fans. Once it gets to that point it rarely ends well. We are performing well below expectations (that Mowbray himself set), playing poorly week after week, still have no clear starting XI, have recruited badly both in defence and attack and there appears to be no answer from the manager or the players except to continue on the same increasingly unstable trajectory. Every manager has a shelf-life and Mowbray is at that point now unfortunately. The writing is on the wall and whilst I'm still not convinced he'll walk, it seems more and more likely that his time here is coming to an end.

Not enough intelligence across the rest of the team unfortunately. Armstrong has none, hence why he's always getting caught offside. Gallagher doesn't appear to have a whole lot as he's rarely in a position to be a serious threat. Downing and Holtby definitely know what they're doing on the pitch but the former has to conserve his energy at his current age and the latter is yet to be fully integrated into the team, most likely for fitness reasons. None of our full backs have anywhere near the intelligence required to be consistent threats, whilst Travis and most of our other CM's seem to be mentored to play it safe rather than try to push forward. Graham undoubtedly has it in bucketloads but is obviously being phased out. Hard to tell with Rothwell as we don't see enough of him on a regular basis. When you have a lot of soldiers and few artists then there needs to be a good, consistent style of play which the entire group is comfortable with. I'm not sure that's the case at Rovers. I think Tony changes the plan from game-to-game based on the opposition and with our squad that's just going to result in confusion and disjointed play, which is often exactly what we see.

That's where Dack comes into his own. He knows exactly where to be to get goals. It's a part of footballing intelligence which often goes ignored - he isn't in these positions to score by chance. He knows the areas he needs to be in to create danger.

I'm certainly not saying Rothwell is some kind of superstar - I just don't think he could do worse than Armstrong or Gallagher on the flanks. We saw glimpses of genuinely exciting play from him last season, and a few flashes this season too. I'd just like him to get a solid run of games for us all to get a better judgement.