DE.

Same with Holloway and Mackay. Both successful in this division previously but bombed last season. Then you have the likes of Neil and Karanka who come out of nowhere and succeed. Sometimes the risk pays off, sometimes it doesn't, but very rarely does a manager at the end of his shelf life turn things around.

Depends on Rhodes really. Without him we're as bad as anybody else, as we don't have any other players contributing to the goals for column.

Don't worry, we'll be there soon enough at this rate.

We used to. I think we all remember very fondly those ten minutes we spent in 6th last season.

Agree with most of this, but keeping Bowyer in any position would be a no-no imo. We need a fresh start, and having the ex-manager in the backroom could serve to undermine the current manager. Also selling Rhodes should only be an option if we can get out of the embargo for definite in the same window and we have realistic targets to replace him. Otherwise we'd be heading for the trap door as other than Hanley contributing a couple of headed goals from set pieces, no other player in our team can put the ball in the net. In fact a lot of them are noticeably bad at it.

This is a big part of it, and IMO it's what causes people to actively dislike Bowyer. He comes across as either dishonest or stupid when his assessment of games are at odds to what everybody else in the ground has seen. Nobody's asking him to lambast the players, but he should at the very least be honest about our failings. His inability to do so suggests his interviews are being directed towards Pune and not towards the fans, which further suggests the fans are an absolute irrelevence in the manager's eyes.

I thought Cairney was a useless, lazy sod with crap hair? can't keep up with general opinion on here these days.

This is probably the easiest a lot of the players have ever had it, so yeah, I imagine Bowyer does still have them. But that's suggestive of a squad with no ambition. The ones with ambition - Gestede, King, Rhodes, Marshall, to name a few - have either left or suggested they want to move on. The rest know this is as good/easy as it's going to get for them.

There were plenty on here who had a go at those of us who suggested we were in for a relegation fight this season. They are strangely quiet now.

Or bring in a better manager.

We seemed to play everybody everywhere in Souey's final few games. Personally I'm glad Souey left before he relegated us and/or resigned. We ended up getting a decent amount of compo for him and managed to upgrade with our next appointment. Meanwhile Souness left with the majority of his legacy in tact.

It was all over for Souey when he started playing Dominic bloody Matteo on the left wing.

For those wanting a trip down memory lane, here's the page in the Allardyce thread where his sacking was announced: http://www.brfcc.com/mb/index.php/topic/20232-sam-allardyce/page-567

Jeez, all this arguing over a throw away comment about Spurr's long throws And of course as usual we've ended up at reductio ad Allardyce...

Not sure. He persisted with Andrews for long enough and must have been doing a few things wrong last season at West Ham for them to plummet in the manner they did during the second half of the season. He was a good manager but by no means infallible.

I genuinely can't remember us scoring any goals from MGP's long throw, but assuming we did the ratio of useful/useless must still be significantly skewed towards useless.

The only team I've ever seen the long throw tactic work for long-term is Stoke with Rory Delap. The way we did it with MGP, and how we're now doing it with Spurr, is just a slow, looping ball in which is dead easy for the defenders to deal with. It wouldn't be so bad if we had players in position to retrieve the ball once it's headed away, but we don't!

On the plus side, we get to witness the return of the brilliant long throw tactic that served us so well in the past.

I think Rotherham are worse this season, but wouldn't conclusively say we're better than them. We'll see in due course.

Considering we couldn't beat either Cardiff or Bolton at home I'm not sure we can proclaim to be better than them. Of all the teams in the division I'd only say Rotherham are definitely worse than us. Without Rhodes even that might come into question.

With Bowyer at the helm I believe we are destined for the drop. Not being able to beat a pitiful Bolton side at Ewood is almost as bad as failing to beat Blackpool last season. There are not enough goals in this team to survive under the current non-style of play. We need a big change, very quickly. Too many players in the comfort zone and if Bowyer's grin at the end of the match is anything to go by, a manager in the comfort zone as well.

Probably overqualified.

Anything less than a win at Bolton will leave us in deep, deep trouble. The only positive of drawing/losing that game is that it might be enough to trigger some serious dissent from the fans towards Bowyer, which could increase his chances of walking away. Unfortunately for us, Venky's would probably then go and hire somebody even worse.

Even if Jordan does get his usual 20-25 goals we're still relying on a lot of players who do not have good goalscoring records chipping in fairly regularly under a "system" which has only ever seen the strikers score with any remote form of consistently. Who else was scoring our goals before Gestede arrived? We must have had a couple of others contributing. Was it Cairney? Conway? Marshall? I can't remember. All I know is the players we have in the first eleven at present, Rhodes aside, have not historically put the ball in the net regularly... and that should be a huge concern even if we do keep Rhodes. GB gives it a right good go and does ever so well given the circumstances. You're so negative yoda. Real fans can see what he's trying to do here, y'know.

I don't dispute he's a good player but he's nowhere near one of the best players in the league. He's a solid Championship wide-man and can provide well for goal machines like Rhodes or Gestede, but he's no more than that for me. He's not a game-changer, if he was he'd either be gone by now or would at the very least have had some clubs chasing him.