DE.

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.

As has been said before on here, it's easy to build up a team spirit when you're winning all the time, as we were during most of last season. We didn't even have to play particularly well to win matches. That sense of determination carried over into this season, but finally seems to have cracked. I imagine the first fractures began to appear when we got murdered by Bristol City and Derby (even though the latter was a draw, we deserved to lose that one heavily too). We have been getting less convincing by the week and it feels like we're getting close to rock bottom with the last two "performances". How we react in the next few matches will show how much character and spirit this group really have.

Tony seems to be looking so far forward that he's losing touch with the present. It's nice to have long term plans but they can't be enacted at the expense of what is required in the short term. Brereton being a prime example of a long term goal that's been brought in to the detriment of our present need for a striker as backup to Graham.

Can we not just put Brereton at left back? At least he'd be on the pitch and I genuinely don't think he could be worse than Williams or Bell.

Tbf I'd say a number of them aren't decent Championship standard to begin with. They've been bailed out by Dack and Graham so far, but now both of those players are suddenly off form we see what we're left with... and it isn't much. The left back position is critical. Centre back questionable. Right back OK but if Nyambe is injured we have to stick Bennett there. Centre midfield underwhelming with the typical EvansWood pairing. Outside of Graham and Dack our attacking players have largely been disappointing so far this season. Granted some of that is down to Tony's rotation policy, but I'd have expected more from the likes of Armstrong and Palmer in particular. When you think back to the kind of squad we had under GB, you realise how far we still have to go before our current team is capable of genuinely challenging for a playoff spot. I'd argue staying up this season would be a decent achievement considering the general lack of talent or depth in the squad. It's going to come down to team spirit and pure determination, so we need to get both back quickly and out the last couple of results behind us.

The manager's position should only come into question if we suddenly find ourselves within touching distance of the drop zone. We're 9 points clear at the moment, so we'd be talking about a fairly drastic downturn in form which, even with the last two games taken into account, seems unlikely. That said, we've got a tough December. Morale could be in pieces by the end of it. I'm a bit concerned, especially remembering how we couldn't beat the likes of Ipswich or Reading. We've struggled against a lot of the teams below us which isn't a good sign. In fact we were hammered by three teams below us in the table - Wigan, Preston and Bristol City. We weren't able to beat Reading, Ipswich or Rotherham. We'll see if Sheffield Wednesday are added to the list Saturday. Regardless the warning signs are there. This isn't a sudden bad turn of form as some are making out. We've not been playing well for most of the season so this is in fact more of a swift, hard bump back to reality. There is a lot of work to be done and I think we need a much better January window than we had in the summer to address some major issues across the team.

Our general performances have been concerning all season imo. We're fortunate to have the points we have and it's only been an incredible fighting spirit and never-say-die attitude that has gotten us this far. It hasn't been tactics or player quality, because both are generally below average. Once that fighting/team spirit evaporates, as it seems to in the last couple of matches, all you're left with is a group of poor players being given baffling instructions. Better hope Tony can get morale back up.

7 goals conceded in two matches against Preston and Wigan. Embarrassing.

I said earlier I wouldn't be averse to Williams staying on as backup. Changed my mind. Terminate his contract now.

15 shots to 3 as well. Obliterated like we don't even belong in the same division.

Two local derby humiliations in a row. Cheers Tony. Dat website statement though.

On the plus side we usually do have at least one decent half. Weird substitution though. Assume it's a switch in formation rather than even Williams being ahead of Brereton in the striker pecking order.

Unsurprising. Even in L1 our first half performances were usually garbage. Mowbray seems unable to motivate our team to play well for longer than one half. You can get away with it in L1 due to the terrible quality of the opposition but not in this league.

Sounds like we are well and truly off the tracks now. Arguably Mowbray's toughest test since he failed to keep us up when he first joined. With the way we play (generally not particularly well) this kind of slump was inevitable at some point. We need to snap out of it sharpish though.

Nah never really had any desire to pick up FF15. In all honesty the only FF games I really enjoyed were 6, 7 and 8. The games pre-6 are too grindy for me. I got bored of 9 very quickly and only got about half way through 10. I own 12 (PS4 remaster) and 13 but haven't gotten around to playing either of them. Persona 5, for me, has just about the right mix of old school elements mixed in with newer, innovative mechanics. Plus the graphics/presentation and soundtrack are just sublime. I always play with Japanese VA + subtitles so can't comment on the dubbed voices. I don't own a Wii U or Switch so never played Breath of the Wild. I bought Wind Waker for the Gamecube a while back and really need to play that. Haven't played Link to the Past either, which I am told I really should. Not to mention the N64 titles. I've missed out on huge chunks of the Zelda franchise. I've usually got one game going at any one time, although sometimes it'll be an RPG supplemented by something like Football Manager or a VR game every so often. Is mostly due to the lack of general free time I have though.

I certainly recommend it. One of the big plus points to me was Persona having a traditional turn based battle system. It's old school these days but that's what I prefer. One nitpick I do have, and something to keep in mind if/when you pick it up, is that if the main character dies in battle then it's a total game over - even if all of your other party members are alive. Doesn't make much sense to me and caught me out on a couple of occasions. Apparently it's always been that way in the Persona games though.

Persona 5 for me. Had no expectations for it at all going in, just bought it because it was on sale and had rave reviews. Ended up sinking over 100 hours in it, which I never do with games these days. Probably the most fun I've had playing a JRPG since FF7, which was a very long time ago. I ended up getting Beat Saber on Oculus as you can import new songs and maps with a mod. You can also create your own map but it takes a ton of time. Really fun game though. I just bought Astro Bot on sale so will be getting into that shortly!

They'll be fine. The Lynchpin © will grab that team by the scruff of the neck and drag them to safety.