DE.

The problem is that at Brereton's age he's going to need to be playing fairly regularly to improve to the level where he can be a regular first teamer. Twenty minute cameos here and there aren't going to help much, especially if he's out of position.

I'm guessing he brought Conway on for his experience, particularly with another older head in Graham having come off. A bit worrying if Mowbray would rather bring in a 19 year old kid out of position than play Palmer. At the very least I think we should be looking for a loan option to bring in as back up to Graham/Brereton, ideally one who can play the target man position now as opposed to some undefined point in the future. Graham being out for any extended period of time could cause big problems. The last thing we need is all the pressure being put on Brereton to perform when he isn't ready to do so.

Roman Reigns diagnosed with leukemia for the second time, having first had it when he was 22. He's now 33. Really sad stuff. In the modern era it's the equivalent of the Rock or Stone Cold announcing this back in the Attitude Era. Roman is the guy as far as WWE are concerned and who they've essentially built the entire company around. It was surreal to watch last night - he came out to the usual boos, but as soon as he announced he had leukemia the crowd went completely silent. Hopefully he can get past this and get himself back in the ring again.

Yeah, but the fact Brereton was brought on before Palmer or Rothwell to play that position suggests one of two things - Mowbray either sees Brereton as a very effective wide forward, or he was brought on purely because of the pressure of needing to field a player that's going to cost us a significant amount of money. I'd like to think it's the first option, as the second would be wrong on many levels and I don't think Mowbray would compromise the team to do that.

What if Mowbray doesn't see Brereton as a striker though? Thus far his appearances suggest an Armstrong type role of being a wide forward rather than the main striker going through the middle. I mean, he had the chance to put Brereton in the middle on Saturday and instead chose to put Dack there and have Brereton play on the wing. Tony kind of has form for playing strikers out wide (as in he does it constantly).

I agree that DG is looking good at present, but at his age things can change very quickly. The last thing we want to do is get caught out because we hadn't accounted for a 33-year old striker getting injured or struggling for fitness. Whilst the Brereton signing continues to baffle me, Armstrong has clearly been brought in as a wide man. He isn't clinical enough to be a striker anyway. If our entire budget for strikers was given to the Brereton transfer then we've taken a pretty big gamble imo.

Players aren't always the best judges of their own fitness. I'm sure right now DG feels on top of the world but whether he likes it or not the body's ability to cope with physical stress decreases with age. We need him to stay fit until January at least, but at that point it should be an absolute top priority to bring in somebody capable of challenging him for that position. Brereton is not that person, it needs to be somebody who can come in and hit the ground running.

You ever been here chief?

Bowyer would be an interesting one actually. He'd definitely take it if offered and is used to working with no budget. It'd be a hell of a task to get that squad to safety though.

I think that's the first time I've ever seen Moyes and appealing in the same sentence. Seriously though, there realistically are very few options available to Ipswich right now. The likes of Allardyce, Bruce and McCarthy aren't going to touch them. I very much doubt Lambert, Pardew or Moyes would be willing to take that chance either. Even the likes of Carvahal or Redknapp would probably have second thoughts considering the squad and budget. Warburton would probably be their best choice if they could convince him to come. Otherwise chances are it'll be a Burnley and Butcher combo which would be crowd-pleasing but most likely futile.

Part of the problem with forcing McCarthy out is that he had strong support from a lot of the club's better players. After witnessing the crowd turn unfairly on a manager they respected, most of those players then wanted out. Hence Hurst had little choice but to let the likes of Waghorn, Garner, McGoldrick and Webster leave. Replacing them with L1/L2 players was I think just down to his mindset that there isn't much difference between the Championship and L1/L2, and I imagine these were the kind of players he was planning to bring to Shrewsbury if they got promoted. He's obviously finding out the hard way that he was wrong about the quality gap between the leagues, and probably realising he should have come up with a better plan than essentially sticking to the targets he'd already identified at Shrewsbury.

Possibly, but most of them won't admit it. It's just shifted to "it was his time to go" and "it's Evans' fault for hiring the wrong man" - even though the reaction to Hurst's appointment was pretty much universally positive.

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?