DE.

The problem for Villa is that I doubt their ownership would get the next appointment right. Much like Ipswich they'd go from relative stability into the unknown, with decisions made by people who really don't have much of a clue. They apparently wanted to appoint Thierry Henry in the summer so we aren't talking sensible decisions here.

We're certainly not down with the likes of Ipswich, Rotherham and Preston in the financial stakes, as you say we're somewhere in the middle. As such I'd say we're doing just fine. Villa fans on the other hand have a right to be disappointed imo. With the money they've spent they should have gone up last season, and I wouldn't bet on them going up this year either. A lot of money spent and wasted. To some degree we've been there in 2012/13, but Venky's swiftly started cutting their losses after that abject failure of a season. Villa have just kept ploughing money in at an unsustainable level, making huge losses and barely improving. From what I was reading in the summer it could be a pretty bleak scenario if they don't make it back to the PL this season.

I was primarily talking about wage budget when comparing ourselves and Villa, but if you look at the cost of building each club's starting eleven from our match a few weeks ago: Rovers Raya - £0 Nyambe - £0 Lenihan - £0 Mulgrew - £0 Bell - £250k Smallwood - £0 Evans - £800k Bennett - Unsure but unlikely to be more than a few hundred thousand Dack - £750k Graham - £0 Villa Nyland - undisclosed, transfermarkt has it down about £2.5m. Hutton - £4m Tuanzebe - Loan Chester - £8.4m Taylor - £0 (swap deal) El Mohamady - £1m Jedinak - £4.1m McGinn - £2.8m Adomah - £3.1m Grealish - £0 Abraham - Loan And keep in mind Villa's first team there doesn't include Scott Hogan (£9.5m), Henri Lansbury (£3m), Connor Hourihane (£3.1m), Bjarnason (£2m), Kodjia (£11.8m). Add in the wages for the likes of Hutton, Tuanzebe, Chester, Abraham, and Yannick Bolasie and it's clear Villa are operating on a completely different financial level to us. A suicidal one, but even if they have been more prudent this season their overall squad is built on financial levels we haven't ever seen under Venky's.

Would be below us if not for that bloody 94th minute free kick. They started the season fairly well but have hit a poor patch of form. 1 win in their last 5, drawing far too many games. Similar to us except they have a much, much bigger budget.

Ended 3-3... can't fault the Championship for entertainment. If we get our act together defensively (ideally stop giving away penalties) there's no reason we can't have a shot at top six. There's a lot less to fear in this league than I thought at the start of the season.

OK, now 3-2 Preston

Villa go from being 2-0 up against Preston to 2-2, at home. Can't see Bruce surviving much longer. Regardless of what you think of him as a manager their performances are nowhere near good enough with the players they have available.

Boro haven't even been that good. Been pretty shaky themselves at the back, and misplaced a number of passes going forward. They've just been gifted two ridiculous early goals.

Ipswich fans being taught a harsh lesson that the defensive side of the game isn't an automatic gimme that any manager can achieve. There's a reason they weren't trying to play free-flowing attacking football under Mick - you need the personnel for that, and if you don't then you need to be solid as possible at the back and nick goals as and when possible. We're fortunate in that we have a lot of decent attacking options to stick goals away even if we are at times defensively suspect. Ipswich have Nolan and Jackson. Enough said.

My God Ipswich are terrible. 2-0 down to Boro already, their defence makes ours look absolutely stellar in comparison. Both Boro goals came from defending you wouldn't see from a non-league side.

He should definitely be playing ahead of Downing. Have to assume fitness is the only reason he didn't.

Ended Birmingham 2-2 Ipswich. In isolation not a bad result for Ipswich but they needed three points today.

Considering our CB pairing was Lenihan and Downing only conceding two has to be seen as a success.

Cheated out of three points.

You have to take your chances. Still time to get back into it.

Big Club two down at home to Ipswich.

If we had any other realistic options Lenihan would have to be dropped. Can't afford to have a player in the team constantly giving penalties away. You can overlook a couple as bad luck, but three in a row? Something not right there.

Bruce is the one I'm most interested in. There were some pretty strong rumours he was going to be ousted in the summer in favour of Henry, but that suddenly died down and it was business as usual. I don't think Bruce has done as badly there as the Villa fans do, but there's no doubt they should be doing much better this season with their current squad. Three wins out of nine matches and they were very lucky not to lose to us as well. They're conceding a lot of goals which isn't typical for a Steve Bruce team. Makes me wonder if it's just gone stale there and it might be time for a change. Villa surely want to get promoted, and early signs during this campaign aren't good. I said before Hurst desperately needs a win from at least one of the next two matches. If Ipswich can't get at least 3 points from the next couple of games then surely they need to seriously consider a change before it's too late.

At least Burnley had a humiliating night, and United did as expected and got knocked out by a better team. There are positives to take from tonight, the big negative is obviously another late goal conceded. We were realistically never going to win the Carabao Cup so time to put our focus back on the league and then look to have a decent run in the FA Cup in a few months time. Considering our lack of depth in defence it might not be a bad thing to have less games to risk injury. You always want to win and have a good cup run but sometimes it just isn't meant to be. We got a tough draw... and at least we didn't get beaten by a mid table League 1 team

It must be a mental thing. It's a shame as that aside we're a decent team.

This team never gives up, does it?

I'd generally agree with that, except I think we need one more decent striker on the books. If Graham went down with an injury I wouldn't be confident that Palmer, Armstrong or Brereton would get us the goals we need. Dack does score goals but he's more like a Frank Lampard type - will score plenty from an attacking midfield position, but doesn't necessarily have the attributes to be a pure striker.

Yeah, worth noting I wasn't solely placing the blame on Lenihan there. If we hadn't conceded two goals in the space of two minutes he probably wouldn't have been so hyped up and thus wouldn't have committed the foul. We had the chance to see out the game with a comfortable lead and totally blew it, leading to panic in the last ten minutes. The players still gave everything to finish the match with three points, and you can't fault that resolve, but if Stoke had a decent penalty taker we'd be talking about another two points completely thrown away. So far we've only conceded last minute equalisers against Ipswich and Villa so I wouldn't say it's a big deal at this moment in time. We managed to hold Derby last Tuesday as well despite coming under heavy pressure. This is just something Mowbray needs to nip in the bud before it becomes a bigger issue.

Our tendency to self destruct towards the end of games needs to stop if we want to make the playoffs. Lenihan's panicked shove on Berahino at the end of the Stoke match was a prime example of the type of behaviour we need to remove. I don't know if it's a mental thing or just tiredness but we could have easily lost a 3-0 lead in 13 minutes and that's concerning. Mowbray will hopefully be working on it as a priority.

Yeah, agreed. The sad fact is that top level football is now all about catering to players' egos. The days of the fire-breathing manager are gone - at the top two levels anyway. I think it'll still work to some degree in League One and below, but it's a totally different game once you get any higher.