Venky's are the ones who put the club in danger of administration in the first place. Would you be grateful if somebody stabbed you in the face but then had the courtesy to take you to the hospital afterwards?

End of this season is the cut off point for Villa and FFP isn't it? Don't see how they can avoid at the very least being fined heavily. If they aren't then it sets a precedent for every club to ignore those rules and take any punishment to court for a lengthily, drawn out process. The only clubs still hiding behind FFP rules will be those whose owners use it as a convenient excuse not to invest.

Smith seems to have gotten them going in the right direction. four wins and a draw from their last five matches. Cahill would be a decent addition. Only 32 so you'd assume he's still got a few years left in him. Momentum seems to be with Villa at the moment but their poor start has given them a mountain to climb if they want to avoid the playoff lottery. Does suggest either Bruce had lost the plot this season or the players weren't playing for him as their form was frankly embarrassing considering the talent in that squad.

Problem is it would probably take Huth a few months to get up to speed after being out of action for so long. By that point the season would almost be over. Most of the golden oldies being mentioned from our past had still been playing regularly or semi-regularly for their previous clubs before joining us, which is where Huth has a severe disadvantage.

In fairness they also called Bowyer's sacking about two months early!

Tbf I imagine if anybody else was serious about him they probably would have signed him by now! Don't think we'd have much if any competition.

I agree with Chaddy on this one. If Huth is such a hidden gem surely somebody else would have picked him up by now? He's obviously still on a free transfer for a reason and I don't see why we would be desperate enough to be hunting around the free transfer bin for backup players. I've had enough of bringing in over the hill players for one last payday. I'm absolutely sure Downing is and will continue to be a more suitable back up CB for us than Huth would be.

They didn't seem to have prepared at all for us. Either that or the players deliberately ignored the manager's instructions? He was just sitting in the dugout the entire match looking vaguely bored - have to assume if they weren't executing the game plan he would have been getting orders out onto the pitch? All very bizarre. It was easy to see why they've been spiralling downward though.

He was given the freedom of the park to be fair. You can guarantee he won't get that amount of room very often this season.

Can we stop the "recently promoted" talk? It's starting to annoy me a bit. It seems like a way for positive posters to justify having little faith in Tony or the team to actually achieve something decent this season. Whilst it's technically true to say we're recently promoted, we spent a single solitary season in League 1 and absolutely smashed it. Reason being we should never have been there, and the only reason we were was because our idiot owners sabotaged us with Coyle. Mowbray's points per game ratio after he was appointed proves that we had a team in 16/17 that should have survived relatively comfortably, and probably would have if we had appointed, say, Warnock - as was supposed to happen. We also went down on a record points total - in the vast majority of seasons we would have survived with the points we accrued, even with Coyle's mismanagement taken into account. That said, talk of being "recently promoted" - as if we're fucking Shrewsbury or Burton Albion - might have some credit if we had lost a lot of our better players upon relegation and TM had needed to rebuild from scratch as a result. This, however, did not happen. We retained all of our better players. Raya, Nyambe, Lenihan, Mulgrew, Evans, Conway, Bennett, Graham - ALL RETAINED. We also added a Championship-ready player in Bradley Dack to supplement an already strong side. So, all of that considered, why is it being considered some kind of miracle that we're in mid table and able to compete with the likes of Sheffield Wednesday? We were recently promoted out of a division we should never have been in, with a squad that had by and large already proven itself more than capable of competing in the Championship. I don't think there's any need to talk down the club, the players and the manager by referring us to a "recently promoted" club like we spend years in League 1 and finally have our shot at the big time. It was only a few years ago we were competing for playoff places in this league ffs. Granted we've had a pretty significant turnover of players since then, but it's not like Nyambe is any worse than Todd Kane or Adam Henley, or Williams/Bell are that much of a downgrade from Tommy Spurr. Smallwood is no worse than Jason Lowe and according to most on here Jordan Rhodes was a huge hindrance to the team so surely Graham is an upgrade in that department? TM was as furious as the rest of us after the non-performances at Preston and Wigan, and rightly so. He clearly has ambitions for the club and I'm with him on that. We deserve to be in this league and we are completely capable of competing. Getting mauled by the likes of Bristol City, Wigan or Preston is in no way acceptable, irrespective of the league we were in last year. Judging from Mowbray's reaction to the defeats I'm pretty sure he feels the same way.

Ipswich are down. At this point they would need to see an incredible upturn in form to survive. Stoke away next.

The Ipswich TWTD forum is the worst. Like a really boring and repetitive stream of consciousness with topics starting all over the place, some about football, some not. Polls, podcasts, news items... makes me appreciate the organisation here!

"Dyche Out" definitely gaining traction now.

So, the game. Just saw the highlights and Conway looked incredible. His experience and intelligence shined through. I hope Armstrong was watching because there was a lot to learn from how Conway played today. Second goal was a superb, incisive move too. Wish we'd do that more often, but I imagine most teams wouldn't be as open as Sheffield Wednesday were. Nice to see us pushing for the 4th rather than sitting back and trying to protect the 3-2. Well worth the risk in the end. Great strike from Joao too. He must be missing something personality wise, as he has the talent to be somewhere far better than Sheffield Wednesday. Mowbray interviewed on the Quest highlights show. Nothing mindblowing, but says they've been talking about needing more intensity after the last two games. Graham a big personality for the team, best finisher at the club, has a good relationship with Dack. Called Dack a "lovely lad" and "effervesent". Tony suggesting that he reminded Dack to enjoy the game after the recent slump in form and he needed to work a little harder. Said we'll be improving "bit by bit" and is expecting us to be at the level of Villa, Derby, Boro, etc in a few transfer windows. Wants us to get to a point where we expect to get out of the division. Praised the owners, as unfortunately seems to be required from all our managers.

Yeah most of the blame seems to be going towards the manager, his moustache and the staff. Fans angry about team selections, lack of passion being shown on the touchline, etc. Haven't seen Coyle mentioned but have seen Bruce, Jokanovic, Roy Keane and Mark Hughes all speculated on. Can't see Hughes or Bruce going anywhere near that and I think Jokanovic could do better. Keane is a possibility but not sure if he wants to go back into first team management.

The OwlsTalk forum makes for interesting reading. Reminds me a lot of how it was here when Coyle was in charge.

That's because he hasn't had a good game there in nearly two years. Doesn't mean the general concensus that we should play actual wingers on the wing rather than strikers is in any way the wrong thing to ask for. It's great that Conway rolled back the years today against a poor team, but we shouldn't expect him to be producing that type of performance week in week out. Instead we should be bringing in players who can actually play on the wing, rather than shoehorning attacking midfielders and strikers into the role.

Question is will Tony learn from it, or will we keep blowing money on strikers to play out wide?

Great to see Conway have such an impact, but also worrying how in one game he arguably looked better than Armstrong or Palmer have the entire season.

Rovers winning and Burnley losing makes for a great weekend. Still work to be done sorting out our leaky defence though.

We're in a situation again right now where we have to score at least 3 to have any chance of winning a match. It's not good enough and not sustainable long term.

Players I'm confident are good enough for this level: Dack (despite recent form) Graham Raya Mulgrew Reed Bennett Should be good enough, but question marks or not seen enough of to judge: Nyambe Rodwell Armstrong Rothwell Davenport Brereton Lenihan Travis Tomlinson Evans Conway (as a sub) Palmer Not good enough: Williams Bell Downing Leutwiler Smallwood Samuel Gladwin Nuttall So... still a decent amount of players who could stick around and be useful, with a small chunk who I would be showing the door to ASAP. Thanks for that League 1 campaign lads, but we're trying to move to the next level now.

I thought it was Bury but you're right, it was the Oldham game. Total madness and a real insight into why we are like we are under Mowbray's management.

Didn't work particularly well last season either but the opposition was so turgid it usually didn't matter.

This has been one of the consistencies of Mowbray's tenure. We've never played good football but we've been getting results so most of us will let that slide. It's very noticeable that regardless of whether we're playing a side at the top or a side at the bottom our performance levels remain roughly the same. I'm never confident of dominating a team, even if they're bottom of the table, because TM gets himself into such a state about every little thing regarding the opposition that he sabotages us. Look at Bury last season. An awful team at the foot of the table and we set up to try and neutralise their fucking right back. It's ridiculous. Until recently I would have said that it seems to work out better when we're playing top teams, but Derby and Sheff Utd embarrassed us so that was probably more of a League 1 thing.