Derby, they beat us just before their bad patch of form started, and even then they were lucky. If not for our lack of concentration they'd be looking at 5 losses out of 6!

Rotherham 1-0 Leeds, 4 losses out of 5 now if they don't turn that one around!

Usually when we have these kinds of spells against teams we fail to capitalise, so it's nice to see that change. This recent string of wins combined with Bennett's return and Travis' emergence has really lifted us back off the floor.

Won't get too carried away yet, but scoring two in the first half at home? That's unusual!

That just means my money will start to disappear on things I don't enjoy instead I'll give this junk collecting a little more time before resorting to extreme measures! Initial thoughts on FFXV from the first twenty minutes or so including tutorial... - it's very Final Fantasy, which is both good and bad. - not my preferred choice of combat system, but I guess I'll get used to it. Still prefer turn based. - it's cool that the game allows you to select Japanese VA and English subs. I still have vivid memories of when you were forced to have English VA or nothing. - graphics are extremely impressive, especially in the cutscenes. - loading times are longer than I expected.

When it comes to judging a player's character, I trust Mowbray to know when something is amiss. Admittedly I think he's probably signed too many "nice lads" and not enough proper winners with a bit of a nasty streak in them, but by the same token under Mowbray's management we've had no players like Murphy, Etuhu, DJ Campbell, Leon Best, Bradley Orr, Shane Duffy (good player for us but a collossal bell), or countless others of the past seven years who have disgraced the shirt. It's obvious that Rodwell has the natural talent - it's his personality and character that Mowbray will be observing, and it sounds like he's still waiting to be convinced that a long-term investment is worthwhile.

I downloaded it on my PS3 when it was on sale for something like £3 a few months ago. Unfortunately it's one of a worryingly large number of games I haven't gotten around to playing yet. I've got so many now. VR games, steam games, PS4 games, PS3 games, 360 games, not to mention a shedload of retro games that I really want to get through. Yet despite this I KEEP BUYING MORE.

Something doesn't quite sound right there. Tony certainly doesn't sound as keen to sign Rodwell up as our fans seem to be. I have to say I'd be wary as well. Rodwell has done alright recently, yes, but he wouldn't be the first player in our colours to play well for a contract and then sit back to coast for the next few years until the expiry date creeps up again. We've got a certain player in the team right now who's an expert at it.

I'm not expecting much, but sometimes that's the best way to approach something. When I was a kid I wanted "WCW Vs the World" for Christmas, but instead got FF7. Being an uninformed idiot I was pretty confused and disappointed. Turns out FF7 was one of the best games of all time, whilst WCW Vs the World... wasn't. Granted, I'm not expecting FFXV to come close to FF7, but I may enjoy it. For £7 it's worth a shot. Game Collection are also doing Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom for £9.95, which is supposed to be very good. Might pick that up too. Why not. It's payday on Monday so it's all good.

Game Collection are doing Final Fantasy XV for £6.95, so figured I might as well pick it up at that price. Not sure I'll play it but I have all the others (excluding 11 & 14, but imv MMO's don't even count as official FF titles) so thought I might as well grab this one too. Maybe it'll surprise me.

By we I assume you mean Venky's? Balaji looking at Mowbray when he suggests loaning out the new £7m signing like If Mulgrew & Rodwell pick up injuries and Lenihan a suspension we could legitimately see a back line of Bennett - Nyambe - Williams - Bell. Even typing it out gives me chills.

Unfortunately that probably tells you all you need to know about our ambition for this season. If Mowbray considers Nyambe, Bell and Williams good enough cover at centre back for the rest of the season then he's either praying for a miracle in Mulgrew & Rodwell both staying fit or isn't targeting anything close to a top six finish.

No offence intended towards Downing, but the fact people are worried about him leaving shows how utterly bereft we are of real quality at the back.

Agreed, but this is GB we're talking about! Given the choice between a steady 6-7/10 every week player or an inconsistent player who could be a 4 or 5/10 but had the ability to be 9-10/10 when he's in the mood, GB would always go for the steady eddie. In fairness most managers would, and our current manager definitely would as well!

Can you remember many games where King impressed playing wide? I only ever remember him running into useless space and frustrating everybody by losing the ball. He rarely used his pace effectively on the wing, although whether that is down to King or down to the fact he wasn't coached very well on wing play whilst he was here is another matter. His best performances by far were those cup games where he played through the middle and absolutely ripped Swansea and Stoke's defences apart with his pace.

In fairness I think blame can be shared to both King and Bowyer when it comes to his tenure here. Bowyer obviously didn't use King very effectively, but there were a few issues surrounding that which people have forgotten. King tended to only play well for us through the middle, so as blueboy says, who do you drop for King? Both Rhodes and Gestede were scoring truckloads at the time so it would have made no sense to bench either of them. The other major issue was that King was pretty injury prone here, and spent plenty of time in the treatment room which hampered his ability to achieve a consistent run of form. There were also times he looked disinterested and was very selfish, often preferring to run down blind alleys and try to take on players as opposed to bringing his team mates into the game. He was very young at the time so you can forgive that to some extent, but when you're talking about dropping one of two goalscoring strikers during a time when we were generally doing fairly well you can understand Bowyer's hesitation. In retrospect what we were doing was not enough to get into a playoff spot, and maybe King should have been given more of a chance, but it's easy to say in hindsight. There wasn't exactly an outcry when King left the club. Some annoyance but he had been so inconsistent during his time here that nobody was sure which way his career would go,

Tbf we normally sign strikers for that.

Pretty much. My main concern going into next season would be whether we can keep Dack, as replacing him would be very difficult. We also have to consider the likes of Graham and Mulgrew getting on in age, which means performances could drop off or injuries start increasing at any time. We've been quite lucky so far for both as far as injuries are concerned, but as it stands we realistically have nobody to take Graham's spot if he is suddenly out for an extended period. Nuttall has done well in the last couple of matches but there would be a huge drop in quality if he was to replace Graham long term. There are a lot of questions for next season which will concern me even if we have a good top ten finish this season.

No chance of us getting into the playoffs imo, it'll be the same as under GB, as soon as we get close we'll start falling away. The consistency and quality just isn't there yet. A top ten finish would be a good start and a base to build on assuming Venky's don't randomly decide to do something stupid in the next 12 months. You can never be sure.

From a different article: It's enough to make me wonder if the Ipswich Star is actually a parody site.

Same old stuff, "nothing to do with us guv" ... although apparently Paul Lambert has "genuinely fallen in love with the club", which is just hilarious.

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/sport/ipswich-town/stuart-watson-s-sunday-verdict-blackburn-2-ipswich-0-1-5859004 An interesting if not somewhat baffling insight into the mind of an Ipswich Town supporter/reporter these days. TL;DR: Lambert's record is as bad as Hurst's statistically and he's bringing in a ton of loans despite saying that's exactly what the club shouldn't be doing, and he's freezing the youngsters out of the team, but that aside it's good that he's said he's staying.

It's the same with the Ipswich Star tbf. They've been bottom of the league most if not the entire season, losing to practically everybody, but you rarely see a player get scored below 5. Most of the time it's a 6 even though the description will read something like "made mistakes and never imposed himself on the game, but ran around a lot". I dread to think what a player would have to do to get a 1 or a 2. The reporters here would have given Shane Duffy's performance for us against Cardiff a 6. "Two own goals and a red card aside, solid enough". That said they were particularly harsh this week!

No idea. If the EFL want this to be illegal then make the necessary regulations. Don't see how you can punish someone for breaking a rule that doesn't exist. Not sure why we're complaining about it, anyway. We beat them first time around, and were about to do the same the second time around before our team collectively shit the bed in the final minutes. Nothing to do with spying. In fact, if Leeds' performance against us was the result of them spying on our training we should invite them round next time.

I thought it seemed a bit odd that he had no assists last season at all, but it's certainly something that will need to improve at this level. With the way Mowbray ultimately wants to play (with two inside strikers and the dreaded three at the back) the wing backs are a crucial part of the assists mechanism along with the no. 10 (in our case Dack). If the wing backs don't provide assists in that formation then it's basically all left up to Dack, which is what we've seen for large portions of Mowbray's tenure, and it severly limits our creativity. That said we still seem really far away from Mowbray's ideal system at the moment. Whenever he tries three at the back it seems to be a bit of a disaster, and a standard 4-2-3-1 leaves the inside forwards as wingers and negates the wing back role entirely.