I'd like to see Keano back in the dugout alongside O'Neill just for the comedy aspect. It's been over five years since O'Neill was in club management, after nearly relegating Sunderland and getting sacked. Strange move imo.

Scored a couple of cracking free kicks from memory. Did better for us than Grimey, at least. Looks like after his loan here Gomez went to Wigan for a year, than played in the Spanish second division and is now in Cyprus so... yeah.

Yeah, I remember there being a real buzz about him for a little while during his earlier days at Brentford. A broken leg is a hard one to come back from at his age. Ironically his leg was broken when playing against Ipswich. The player who broke his leg left in the summer though.

I see Alan Judge being linked with Ipswich. Think it comes from Nixon though so with a pinch of salt and all of that.

Unfortunately I still think Smallwood is below the required standard - although better than Lowe - and there have been too many bad times with Evans for me to ever be completely comfortable with him in midfield. A pairing of Reed and Travis would be pretty interesting, although Mowbray may think there isn't enough defensive discipline between them to work the way he wants.

Awful control by Lowey, but why was the pitch wide open behind him? From the video it looks like they've had five players sent off.

Dack had an excellent start to the season. His form only started to drop off when Mowbray started playing him as a CF, for reasons only the manager can explain. After that, even back in his preferred role, his performances waned a bit - but in fairness the whole team was struggling throughout December, so it wasn't just Dack. Mowbray subbing him off the past few games is interesting, as it wasn't happening before. Is it fitness, attitude or just that Dack doesn't fit into the shape Mowbray wants to play towards the end of our past few matches?

Whilst Nuttall is far from the best CF we've had, when I watch him play I can't help but think back to the likes of Varny, Delfouneso, Browny and Koita and think 'actually, this isn't so bad'.

Horrific game, good result. Not too dissimilar to the QPR match in November. Tony said the same things then about the level of football not being good enough. He seems to be more critical when we win than when we lose! Not convinced Nuttall is the answer to the back up to Graham dilemma, but Travis will surely be staying put now.

To be fair that just shows he has ambition, which is exactly the type of player we need to move forward as a club.

Karanka does seem very tempermental, from recollection he nearly quit Boro when they were in the automatic promotion spots. I wonder if that might be his last English job.

Bloody ambiguous tweets.

Or don't because he's a terrible football player. Decisions! From Sharpe's tweet I assume we have somebody lined up to replace Palmer? Either that or he's expecting/been told we'll be bringing in a replacement.

Obviously you rely on big players to give you an extra edge, but goals should be much more spread out across our team than they currently are. The inside forwards (who, remember, are naturally strikers) should be scoring far more. If this formation was working correctly they would be. Instead half the time our inside forwards look useless because they're strikers being forced to behave as wingers. To say the formation is fine after we've been hammered 4-1 by Bristol City & Preston, also beaten 3-1 by Wigan and ended up on a 9 game winless streak only recently ended by a scrappy home win against WBA doesn't hold water with me. Overall league position is OK at present, although more or less where I expected us to be, but 42 goals conceded and -8 GD tells us that there's still something not right with the current system. Whether you believe it's down to personnel or formation is up for debate, although surely you play the formation best suited for the players you have, rather than shoehorning players into roles they clearly aren't comfortable with? I'm far from convinced that the way we're normally set up with two defensive mids, two inside forwards and full backs who sometimes play as wing backs is the right formation for our current personnel. Defensively it certainly hasn't been good enough. Our last clean sheet was 3rd November, ten games ago (eleven if you count the cup match just gone).

We had a decent start to the season but I think teams have worked out how to nullify us (just stop Dack) and there's no evidence that our "wide forwards" are having any impact. We're extremely reliant on Graham, Dack and Mulgrew and have been lucky they've been available for most of the season. To make Tony's formation work properly you're looking at quite significant upgrades across the park, imo, whereas getting a more traditional and attritional formation to work may only require bringing in a proper winger/wide midfielder or two alongside a decent centre back.

In retrospect the deal for Palmer was a bad move all around. It'll be interesting to see how he fares at Bristol City. What's the betting he plays and scores against us when they come to Ewood? He'll know better than anybody how fragile our defence is. Our recruitment this window will be interesting as it should show whether Tony is determined to stick with the inside forward formation that isn't really working, or whether he's accepted the need for proper wide men to give the team a bit of balance.

Stoke have definitely been underachieving, but then you could say the same for Farke and Norwich last season, and look at them now. Moyes the rumoured candidate for Stoke.

After being out for so long he'd ideally be sent out on loan somewhere for a few months to get his fitness and game readiness back up to scratch. Then in the summer work out if he's any good to us as a squad player. I would say probably not but Tony is sometimes too loyal for his own good.

VR's biggest drawback is, ironically, how immersive it is. Unlike with 2D games you can't really just pause and text somebody back, or have a quick chat with the missus whilst continuing to play. VR takes all of your senses and forces them into solely focusing on the game. Obviously it has to be that way, or it wouldn't be VR, but being taken out of reality for hours at a time isn't exactly easy to find time for. I love my Rift but haven't used it for a few months now. I still use my PSVR on occasion as it's a lot easier to set up and I have more 'pick up and play' games I can have 20 minutes or so on - Wipeout, RIGS, etc. I never played Elite 2D, but playing it in VR was still very cool. I even found a mod which lets you watch YouTube in the cockpit when you're on long journeys I could never get the hang of dogfighting though, I always died in about ten seconds so just started running away to avoid fights. I think that's probably what stopped me playing it tbh. Other games most definitely worth picking up: Robo Recall (free) Rec Room (free) Lone Echo/Echo Arena Beat Saber Moss Holoball Skyrim (with mods) Fallout (with mods) Googles Maps VR (free and amazing) BigScreen VR (cinema app, I think it's free?) There are probably others but those are the ones off the top of my head that I really enjoyed. Need to get my Oculus hooked up again really, just wish there wasn't so many bloody wires everywhere. The only other major downside.

I love how it isn't even really being reported as an upset. Ipswich are basically already considered a League 1 team.

Completely agree. Hopes of Chapman coming here, his injuries suddenly disappearing and the lad tearing up the wing are based more on sentimentality than reality imo. For a start we don't even play a system that needs wingers (it's supposed to be inside forwards!) but even if we did switch to a system with genuine wide men the chances of Chapman being able to start more than a handful of games at this level is pretty slim imo. His injuries indicate a serious defect in his body when it comes to athletic competition. It's really sad but it's not often a player has as many injuries as he's had at that age, in basically the same area, and goes on to have a normal career.

Whenever I saw or heard that old "Browny" was coming on I felt like I might as well give up and go on do something else. Him being on the pitch seemed to destroy any chance of us scoring.

These comments about Brereton not being a natural goalscorer contrast sharply with Tony's comments that he's the best finisher on the training pitch. Is it a case of him not being able to handle the pressure on match day, or is Tony exaggerating?

Winter was one of very few journalists who fully stood behind the fans when the Venky's/Kean saga was in full swing. Don't remember him ever taking a shot at us, only pointing out what the owners and the bald snake had done and were doing to us.

I'm hopeful that performances and results will continue to improve with Travis in the centre (assuming he's kept there), as it will prove that what we need is only one truly defensive midfielder assisted by a box-to-box midfielder who can support both attack and defence. I'm not sure there's a situation when I'd ever really want us playing with two DM's. All it does is leave the attack isolated and invite pressure onto our backline - which has already proven to be ineffectual at dealing with said pressure.