DE.

Barton is a thug who masquerades as some kind of intellectual. A disgusting human being who, by the looks of what happened today, has once again shown his true colours. I still think Sunderland will get automatic promotion but they are making hard work of it. If they end up in the playoffs I'm not convinced that they have the mental fortitude to get through it. We'll see. A club that size will come back up at some point, but they could end up in the Sheff Utd bracket of taking some time to get back up off the floor.

It is indeed 61 years. Ipswich have been in the Championship for the last 17 seasons so it'll be strange for them not to be there next year, and personally disappointing for me as with Norwich likely going up and Ipswich going down that's two easy-travel away days I won't be able to attend next season. Difficult for me to have any sympathy with the Ipswich fans as they had no understanding of the position they were in whilst McCarthy was at the helm. He was doing a remarkable job there and played the only football he could to keep their heads above water. A lot of people outside of Ipswich foresaw a very difficult season for them this season, but I don't think many believed it would be this bad. Just shows how the wrong managerial appointment can very quickly torpedo a season beyond all repair. Even Coyle didn't do to us what Hurst did to Ipswich, although both awful appointments contributed hugely to relegation. Honestly I thought Lambert would do slightly better at Ipswich than he has. No real improvement on Hurst, in fact I think his record might be worse, so even though he came into an incredibly difficult job I don't think he's covered himself in any glory. Most of the fans are still with him primarily because he isn't Paul Hurst and he's a master of PR. He knows the right things to say to get the fans on his side, but the proof is in the pudding and he hasn't come close to doing enough to give them a fighting chance of staying up. I've seen Ipswich fans compare themselves to us, but for me those comparisons are wide of the mark. We went down on a very high number of points and also had a number of players who were far too good for League 1. We kept all of them and we saw that even when performances weren't there, the quality of our team was usually enough to get the results needed. I don't see that same quality at Ipswich, nor do I see Evans releasing the money to bring in a Bradley Dack to act as the talisman that is needed for promotion campaigns. Ipswich have gone down after a miserable season and unlike us there won't be the belief that they should still be in the Championship. They know they deserved to go down, changing manager didn't help, and that's a tough position to be in. The infrastructure is there for the club to come back up, but they'll need to start next season well. If they start similar to how we did then I'm not sure they'll have the belief to turn it around.

Sadly we're unlikely to be able to move Mulgrew on in the summer, so short of a contract termination he will be around next season on very big wages for a back up player. Williams might work as a backup CB, basically taking Downing's spot. Technically with the added advantage of being able to play LB, although that's debatable at this level. Delighted to see Rothwell taking his opportunity. Hopefully giving Mowbray no choice but to make him a major part of our plans next season. I just hope it isn't as a replacement for Dack. I'd rather see them playing alongside each other.

I don't think we'll learn much from these last games. Pressure is off, and both manager and players will have a different mindset. Every time we've come close to the top six we've bottled it and in the past few months in particular came close to putting ourselves into an unlikely relegation scrap with such dismal form. It's all a bit Bowyer-esque.

L1 standard at best. Not a young lad either, he isn't going to get much better than he is now. I'm not sure he's even good enough as backup, so I'd be looking to move him on. LB is a massive problem position for us.

Ipswich relegated as things stand, looks like Bolton won't be far behind them.

I might even raise you 96.

Let's try to avoid conceding in the first 20 at least.

It is possible to beat Emerald without KOTR, but it takes a loooooong time. If you get the Underwater Materia then it takes away the 20m time limit, at least. I think it took me about 35m to beat Emerald weapon. Ruby is far harder. The tactics you need to beat it don't really make any sense - for example starting the battle with two of your characters KO'd so that it can't knock them out of battle straight away. Feels like Ruby was made a little too strong, and requires manipulating the materia/battle system in order to win, which isn't really the point.

We're far worse defensively away from home, so there's really no point in switching back to a more 'defensive minded' formation with the likes of Evans and Smallwood ambling around in midfield. It's been proven 100% ineffective. We aren't going to go down at this point so why not keep the faith with the lads who put in such a good performance on Tuesday and see what happens? I'd rather lose by being brave than lose by reverting to the same cowardly tactics and team selection we've seen for months now.

Just the 44 goals conceded away compared to 19 a home. A minor inconsistency/the most away goals conceded of any club in the division. Just a minor issue.

Yeah, that's definitely too much effort for me I might just have to accept never being able to beat Ruby weapon. Fun fact, Ruby and Emerald weapon weren't in the original Japanese release. They were added in for the international releases and then that version was re-released back in Japan, fittingly as "FF7 International". I get the feeling there will be a lot of changes to the Wall Market section in the remake. Unfortunate but I'm not sure the cross-dressing and prostitution will be something modern Sony or Square-Enix are willing to promote! As a kid I didn't really understand wtf was going on during that whole section.

A quote I saw from the Ipswich forum...

In fairness for £1.75m Armstrong has been an OK signing. He still has a lot to improve on but there is some raw talent there, and he's contributed decently enough despite being played repeatedly out of position on the left wing. In fact I'd say during our January run of wins Armstrong was our most important player, with multiple goals/assists. Without that we might be looking at a relegation battle right now, so even though I've been critical of Armstrong in the past I wouldn't put him in the category of bad signing. For me our worst signings, Brereton aside, weren't who we brought in but who we offered new contracts. Those are going to become an albatross around our neck in the next couple of seasons.

I think I'm on something like level 62/63 with most of my characters and still can't beat Ruby Weapon... even with god mode on! I was able to beat Emerald handily though, it just took forever as I believe he has 1 million HP ?

It's just mind-blowing that Mowbray is even suggesting that Reed needs to learn how to play CM from Evans and Smallwood ffs. The only thing he can learn from them is how not to play CM. Oh, and maybe how to get a new contract even when you haven't really deserved it. Evans especially is a master of this.

I find it funny that before the Stoke game Mowbray came out and said it's no time to experiment with line ups, but then a few days later picks a team with Reed/Travis in midfield, Rothwell starting and Williams at centre back. Granted Mulgrew was out injured, thank god, but I would have expected to see Rodwell at CB before Williams. Smallwood meanwhile wasn't even on the bench - although I don't know if he was injured/suspended? https://www.rovers.co.uk/news/2019/april/harrison-played-the-position-to-perfection/ Mowbray's full comments on Reed. Comes off as a bit condescending to me. Imagine him trying to tell Reed to play more like Evans and Smallwood? Madness.

I think it's being very generous to assume that this is some kind of elaborate plan by Mowbray to mould Rothwell into some kind of star player. Based on what we've seen of Mowbray the most simple answer is likely the right one - he's terrified of other teams and thus prefers to play defensive-minded players rather than take any risks. Yesterday's line up seemed to be TM throwing his hands up and saying screw it, might as well try this because nothing else is working. My guess would be that TM feels deeply uncomfortable about how much better we were last night compared to how we usually play,

-looks at our goal difference- They do?

Honestly, what is wrong with him? To say that after last night's performance just boggles the mind. It's almost spiteful, maybe because Reed has already told Mowbray he won't be coming back next season - and who could blame him? I'm not sure what TM thinks "playing their position better" means exactly, but for the team it's meant losing on a regular basis. Last night's result probably irked Mowbray a bit because it was a condemnation of everything he's been doing up until this point, proof that he's been getting it wrong time after time. If he's embarrassed then good, he should be, but don't make snide comments like that in some attempt to justify what's been happening.

Yeah, unfortunately whilst it's easy to say "Tony must be ruthless and get rid of <player>", it's all dependent on whether anybody else is going to be interested - also keeping in mind we're probably paying the likes of Williams, Smallwood, Evans and Mulgrew well in excess of what other clubs would be willing to offer. The big mistake was handing out contracts so generously this summer. Should have waited to see how these players (all of whom either helped relegate us or in Smallwood's case helped relegate another team) performed in the current campaign. I don't think many would have been calling for any of the four players mentioned there to be renewed now.

Whilst ideally Williams would be sold in the summer, I don't foresee there being a huge amount of interest in taking him off our hands. He's here until 2021, most likely, but at best he should be in the Downing position of 4th choice/emergency CB when all our other options are injured or suspended. He shouldn't be anywhere near the LB position.

We have to hope that tonight is a turning point for Mowbray, and he has finally seen what so many of us have been saying for months - we don't need to play defensively in every match, and it's okay to let the opposition worry about us rather than it always being the other way around. The talent is there in the squad, the manager just needs to trust in these players to go out there and take the game to teams. I'm absolutely sure the performance of the team tonight reflects their relief that the shackles were finally taken off, and it gave them a determination to show that if trusted to do so they can go out and dominate the opposition. It's time the manager started having faith in our players rather than fretting over how our opponents can hurt us. Caution is commendable but not to the detriment of the players' belief, and tonight we saw that these players do still believe in themselves to deliver. They just need the manager to believe in them too.

Needs to start every match from now until the end of the season. Similarly Smallwood and Evans need to disappear. I don't care if Reed isn't going to be here next season, we're still better off playing him alongside Travis.

A good win tonight but it doesn't excuse the last 2 months I'm afraid. If Mowbray can continue on this trajectory until the season's end then I might gain a little more faith back in him, but if he reverts to type then tonight will just be a blip. Desperately hoping TM has finally seen the light and realises it's time to take off the shackles and make teams worry about us.