DE.

Beginning to tumble down the league now. This result isn't necessarily a surprise as Norwich are far superior to us in every respect, but points thrown away against poorer teams are making the second half of the season look increasingly daunting. Another goal conceded near the end of a match as well.

Agree completely. Obviously there's nothing wrong with having long term plans, but sometimes in football you need to be ready to seize opportunities when they present themselves. I don't think our summer business prepared us to do this at all. We've found ourselves in a league where the poor teams are really poor (seriously, the bottom end of the Championship is just tragic) and the teams at the top end of the league are all capable of dropping points and stumbling. If there's any season to get an unexpected shot at the playoffs it feels like it's this one - but we've left ourselves so weak at the back that it's simply impossible for us to protect leads or stop leaking goals, even with a formation that is supposed to help with that. Of course finishing mid-table this season is far from a disaster and most of us would have taken it if offered at the start of the season. With the way things have panned out though, especially with a number of teams being significantly weaker than most would have predicted, it's hard not to feel a little disappointed that we're more than likely going to finish somewhere in the middle, well short of the top six. With Venky's in charge there really is no point looking much further ahead than the current season, so I think feelings of discontent at the moment are understandable enough. For all we know Mowbray could be out on his arse in the summer, with all our better players sold off and Steve Kean back in charge. With this lot you just never know.

I'd say 5 points is being pretty optimistic to be honest. I see us being much further behind, maybe as much as 10-15 points. Teams around us will gain momentum as we stumble our way through the season without ever picking up a proper run of form, whilst the better clubs will be able to hold onto winning positions in a way we simply can't. Barring a very good January transfer window, which I am not expecting, I foresee a decent but uninspiring mid-table finish with a lot of uncertainty as to whether we can progress as we go into the summer.

No question about it. The PL is littered with bang average teams all the way up to 6th spot (and nowadays you could even include Man Utd in that). Burnley came 7th having barely spent anything. It's a bit of a joke. Clubs that get relegated to the Championship tend to struggle to get back out, even if they keep a lot of their better players, whereas even teams like us and Sunderland who get relegated to L1 in total dissarray tend to dominate that league without even needing to play very well.

Just shows how utterly abysmal League 1 is really.

Getting three points today would have been hugely beneficial. We would have been 8th and 2 points off the playoffs, despite a fairly poor recent run of form. Instead we're 12th, with just one win in five games and looking over our shoulders as QPR, Preston and Bristol City all start catching up. With the run of fixtures coming up all three could easily overtake us by the time December is finished.

They weren't wrong.

Yep. You can look to individual players when it happens as a one off, but when it's a repeated occurance then it's an overall mentality and coaching problem. Worryingly it's one that's, imo, existed from day one under Mowbray but has spent a long time unaddressed because in the dregs of League 1 it just wasn't necessary to be particularly good defensively.

I'm not sure I can take any more strikers being brought in to play "inside forward". What's ironic is that we actually will bring in an actual winger in January, but it'll be Harry Chapman and Mowbray will either loan him out or his hamstring will go in his first training session and we'll see him less than we saw everybody's favourite crock Vince Grella.

6 so far, which is more than I'd have thought in all honesty. However, we've conceded 2 or more goals in 10 matches so far this season - two goals or more conceded in nearly HALF of our games this season so far. Nowhere near good enough. Will our esteemed local journalists bring this up with Tony though? Doubtful.

Stats suggest Birmingham at the very least deserved their draw. We had more possession but did far less with it. That said, attacking wise by the 46th minute we had done what we needed to do. Two goals clear at home with over half the game gone should usually be enough. Not for Rovers though. We are throwing points away and leaking goals all over the shop. We've now conceded more than Bolton who are 23rd, we've also conceded more than both Hull and Wigan. The same as Rotherham. The main difference is we score more goals than all of these teams, hence our higher positioning in the table. However, of the teams above us only Villa and West Brom have conceded more than us, and both have scored A LOT more goals than we have. WBA nearly double and Villa 14 more than us. Realistically this means that unless we work out how to stop conceding or how to score a significantly higher amount of goals we are going to likely end up finishing roughly where we are now. Is that acceptable? I suppose, but I can't help but look at the form of the teams in and around us and wonder whether we're missing out on an opportunity which is disappearing with every point from a winning position we throw away.

No. I'm not saying I would have sacked or indeed would sack Mowbray either, but the fact remains for all the positives he's brought to the club - and there's plenty - he's never solved our defensive issues. I would rather he'd have brought in a coach or a better assistant in the summer to sort our defence out, as it's our achilles' heel. Some fans ignored it in League One because we were still winning matches as it was easy to outscore the opposition, not so much this season and a blind eye can't be turned anymore.

What's sad is that the playoffs are there to be taken this season. Better investment in the summer and either a coach or a different manager who could organise a defence and this could have been a very interesting season. As it stands it's going to be a season of wasted opportunities, with poor summer investment meaning we're still a long way from even being back to where we were three years ago, let alone when Venky's first darkened the doors of Ewood with their presence.

We must be top by now.

2-2, then. Mowbray needs to be careful. Letting the fans down like this repeatedly will become almost as insidious as losing matches. We're already at the point where unless we're 3 or 4 goals up we can't trust the team to see the game out. That's not a situation that can continue for long.

Fine. Let's ultimately focus in bringing in better though.

Meh.

Confident finish from Phil Jones there. Wrong net mind, but well taken nonetheless.

I can remember laughing out loud, it was like a comedy sketch. You just needed the "wahh wahh wahhhhh" sound effect and you'd be good to go. Wouldn't have been laughing for long if they'd gone on to score, mind, but I had at least a few minutes before that happened.

My "favourite" J-Lowe memory is one of the few times I got to watch him play at Portman Road. I believe it was December 2013. He received a pass in no real danger around the centre of the pitch. He miscontrolled the ball, which instantly caused an Ipswich player to dart towards him. Panicking, Lowe got his feet tangled up, fell backwards onto his arse and lost possession. Thanks for the memories.

Alex Ferguson once said Phil Jones could become Man Utd's "greatest ever player": http://en.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/203772.html Instead he became a more injury prone version of John O'Shea. Opinions are what they are.

Paging Jim to the thread...

Tbf most people do, it's literally only a few posters who don't.

Just ordered Final Fantasy Origins for the PS1 off eBay (because I have a compulsion to start wasting money I don't have during Christmas season) - I think it completes the mainline Final Fantasy PS1 games for me? FF Origins FF Anthology FF6/FF7/FF8/FF9 I know technically Tactics and Chocobo Racing exist on the PS1, but to my knowledge Tactics (criminally) didn't come out in the EU on the PS1 and Chocobo Racing is so stupidly expensive it's not even worth trying to get.

It's funny because the league is more wide open than it has been in a while - the teams at the bottom are just really, really shit, and there's quite a few of them.