Yep, Hurst has made a rod for his own back in many ways. It's just inexperience. He had no idea how to handle a squad that was used to - with no offence to Hurst - a proper, experienced manager. They weren't going to be automatically in awe of a bloke whose career highlight is getting Shrewsbury to 3rd place in League 1 before losing the playoff final. He's come into the club acting like the big man and all it's done is turn a significant portion of the squad against him. Even after the QPR match he was still saying that the players need to take responsibility. He's been shifting the blame their way since day one and it's just further proof that he's way out of his depth. He wasn't ready to step up and Ipswich need to remove him from his position before he does any more damage.

Game stats are more relevent when looking at results over a sustained period of time, on a match to match basis they have less meaning. Look at when we faced Derby a few weeks ago, they had 20+ shots and battered us, but the match ended 0-0. Having a hundred shots counts for nothing if you don't take your chances. However, if Derby continued having that amount of shots over a long stetch of games then you'd expect them to be scoring a healthy amount of goals and winning most of their matches.

On October 21 we beat Portsmouth 3-0, with Big Dom getting a red on 87 minutes. We went up to 6th in the table with 23 points from 13 games.

We can only hope that if a Premier League club comes in for him that Venky's set a price that puts them off. With the way the market is at present we should be looking at £25m+ for him, if not more. Incredible to think we picked him up for just £750k. Has to go down as one of the best pieces of business the club has done, certainly in the last decade.

Playoffs is a realistic aim if we're able to strengthen in January. Otherwise I think we'll finish mid table this season purely because our squad depth isn't quite there yet. Injuries to any of Raya, Mulgrew, Dack or Graham would be difficult to cope with at present. If we can bring in a decent centre-back and proper competition for DG in January then who knows.

That's their biggest problem. It's not exactly an attractive proposition to any decent manager: - No transfer budget - Poor, demotivated squad - Jaded fanbase willing to hound the manager out if he doesn't play the style of football they want - Limited ability to bring in staff Form an orderly queue... They'd probably have to gamble with another lower league manager. Or go for an out of work manager who's had past glories but fallen on hard times and hope it's just a slump - kind of like we did with Mowbray. I hear Coyle is still available.

That first half performance was probably the best 45 minutes I've seen so far this season. Our pressing and work rate was genuinely phenomenal. The second half was more of a slog and you could see by the end most of the players were knackered, but it's impossible to fault the effort that was put in today, and that only happens when a team has full faith and confidence in their manager.

What's funny is that if the idea was to bring in a manager to play more attacking, expansive football, Hurst shouldn't have even been on the shortlist. His Shrewsbury team weren't known for that at all, quite the opposite. They were a defensive, counter attacking team that won games by the odd goal. Not too dissimilar to how McCarthy had Ipswich set up! It feels like Hurst knows he's expected to play a more entertaining brand of football, and as a result as compromised his own ideas to try and placate the owner and the fans. It would explain why Ipswich often look so clueless on the pitch. Ipswich fans are hoping it means he's had enough and will be imminently sacking Hurst. I'm not convinced. Today's performance was really, really bad though. At half time they'd had a single shot on goal, at home to QPR, coming off the back of beating Swansea 3-2. You would have expected them to have gained some belief and confidence from that result, but they played like Swansea had beaten them 10-0.

I probably should have clarified a little - McCarthy himself wasn't the symptom, but the style of football he was playing was a symptom of the lack of investment. He overachieved by playing an extremely rigid style, but he had no choice. They have aimed it at Evans online, but at the ground it was all aimed at McCarthy. Evans attends quite a few games, he was there today but apparently got up and walked out when QPR got their penalty. Didn't stick around to see if they even scored it.

A shame they aimed all their ire at McCarthy last season instead, then. They targeted a symptom of the problem rather than the root. McCarthy was the guy frantically bailing the water out of a sinking ship, whilst Captain Evans sipped a cocktail on top deck. The fans decided to throw McCarthy overboard.

Similar in a lot of ways. Particularly when it comes to overrating the ability of the squad and underestimating the knowledge and experience needed to get the best out of limited players. The main difference is that we had no idea how Venky's would act as owners. Ipswich fans knew full well that Evans wasn't going to invest any more than he had done previously, and that outside of Mick he had a pretty poor track record of selecting managers. I think a lot of them became complacent, thinking that keeping a club in this division was no big deal and even if the new manager turned out to be a dud at worst they'd be lower mid-table again. Alarm bells would have been ringing for me the moment Hurst came out with his line about the Championship and League 1 not being any different, whilst publicly berating the existing players at the club before the season had even started. He was clearly out of his depth from day one and the only question is how long Evans is willing to play the waiting game before realising he has no choice but to twist again and hope somebody is available to get what is a very poor team out of trouble on little to no budget. Good luck with that.

So are Ipswich fans, which is funny as pretty much everybody outside of the anti-McCarthy crew saw the writing on the wall as soon as the supporters forced him out. They're still refusing to accept responsibility for it, too, which amuses me. They keep saying "it was his time to go" - but Mick didn't want to go, the owner didn't want him to go and the players definitely didn't want him to go. The only reason it was time for him to go was because a section of the fans made it impossible for him to do his job properly. I'd argue that regardless of what anybody thinks of Mick and his style of play, that is a poor state of affairs, and the fans who showed him the door should accept their culpability for the current situation they find themselves in.

I understand the thinking behind the substitution, but I would have expected Rothwell or Palmer to come on instead. You'd assume they'd be more suited to the role. As for Brereton not being a target man, that's unfortunate as our system relies on having a target man, especially away from home. Are you saying we brought Brereton in with the intention of converting him to a winger/wide-forward, or that you think we'll eventually change our system to adapt to a different type of striker?

Great. So why bring him on as a winger and move Dack into the striker role then? Mogga seems to think striker and winger are synonymous for some reason.

Back to normal at Ipswich. 2-0 down, getting battered. At home. To QPR. Hurst looking likely to go down as one of their worst ever managerial appointments. Suffice to say Mogga made the right decision when he told Ipswich he wasn't interested.

A combination of their good start to the season and Bielsa's reputation led to them being massively overhyped. They aren't the first and won't be the last team to start well and then fall away. Look at our first season in the Championship. On today's showing Leeds will be lucky to make the playoffs. We bossed the first half and could have been two or three up by the break.

Up to 5th. Who could have seen this happening back when Mowbray was first appointed?

Superb result. The sheer effort put in by the team today was on another level. Could have easily let our heads drop after conceding at the end of the first half, but kept going and got our reward. Well done Rovers!

Conway's first touch an assist from the corner. The next twenty minutes or so are going to be torture.

Lenihan, 2-1!

Because Mowbray. Loves playing strikers on the wing.

Brereton playing on the right, Dack is now essentially our striker. OK.

Graham off for Brereton. Time for our £7m man to come on and change the game.

A couple of nice touches in the first half but hasn't imposed himself on the game at all. Other than the early goal Graham hasn't been able to get into it either. Our best players by far have been Reed and Armstrong.

I suppose I should have said theoretically, Bell should be a better attacking option due to his pace. Bell's main flaw is his decision making, it just isn't very good at all. The positive is that it's something that can be worked on and should improve over time if he has an extended run in the team. At one point in the first half he made a great run through the middle of the pitch, but once in the final third seemed to have no idea what to do next and lost the ball, even though he had a couple of passes on.