DE.

If you can't afford a decent outlay on a striker, then your next best bet is to make your team defensive and hard to beat. Squeeze out victories from small margins and concede as few as possible. We sold our last reliable, experienced defender at the end of the transfer window instead. Gross incompetence if the goal is to stay in the division.

I think our relegation rivals will be Sheff Weds (basically already gone as they will surely be hit with a points deduction at some point, so one slot guaranteed), Oxford and Derby. Sheffield United will get out of it with Wilder there, and I think Wrexham & Birmingham will spend enough to keep them clear. Teams like Watford, Swansea and Southampton look to have too many good players to go down. Portsmouth could get dragged in, but I think Mousinho is a good manager who will keep them safe. QPR and Hull seem to have done well in recruiting their managers. PNE could tumble, as they did last season, but at the moment don't look to be in danger. As far as the teams who, at this moment, look to be scrapping it out with us for the foreseeable future in those relegation spots... Oxford have a canny operator in charge when it comes to Rowett, but are financially weak in comparison with most of the division. They'll struggle but have fight in them, so they won't go down easy. Norwich will likely sack Manning fairly soon, and their next appointment will be crucial. You feel they have enough talent, particularly with a player like Sargent up front, to avoid going down. Derby are looking weak, but you wouldn't bet against Eustace ultimately keeping them up. Worrying start for them this season though, a lot worse than I expected. They've also spent some cash and may spend more in January. Then there's us. A poor manager who is highly unlikely to be sacked, and even if by some miracle he is, in typical Venky fashion it will be far too late. We have a desperately poor squad heavily reliant on a single player (Cantwell) for any form of creativity. The majority of Championship experience has been lost. We have as wretched of an attacking unit as I can remember in the famous blue and white halves. Ryan Hedges is a first teamer. Owners offer no hope for salvation, and neither do our senior officials. Very difficult to see anything other than relegation for us.

Tbf us "playing well" this season just means us being somewhat competitive. Standards are, understandably, through the floor.

Wonder if Rudy is still sanctimoniously replying to fans on LinkedIn?

Monumentally stupid decision to hire him in the first place, with a predictable outcome. One assumes that will be that for Ange in England.

Have to agree. I remember absolutely fuming after that match - not the fact we lost, but the fact we barely laid a glove on them and didn't look up for it at all. JDT's lack of apology - I think he actually called it just another game - was galling.

I was, at times, slightly more critical than most of JDT's tactical nous whilst he was here. Nonetheless I understood he was an inexperienced manager learning on the job with us. First season saw some minor experimentation in play - second season felt like he was just being stubborn because the project had been undermined by the owners and he wanted to be sacked. Difficult to make much of a judgement on it. If he'd been backed in his first season I think we'd have made the playoffs, which would have been very impressive considering his relatively limited tactical flexibility. Alas, we'll never know. I appreciated his candour and always felt he was on the fans' side rather than the board. Wouldn't have done much for him professionally here, but it was nice to have someone willing to take the board to task (and deservedly so). His repeated jabs about the coach farce were particularly amusing. I was surprised he went to international management after us. Weird move for a manager his age with mostly club experience. In hindsight, the wrong move. Will be interesting to see where he pops up next. Don't think this will be his last job, and I assume he'll return to club management next.

Javi Gracia: Watford reappoint former boss after sacking Paulo Pezzolano - BBC Sport The Watford managerial merry-go-round continues. Gracia hops back on.

Have to admit I didn't expect it to go quite that wrong for Martin at Rangers. His final season at Southampton aside, he's always been more of a deeply average manager than an outright bad one. It was obvious he was going to sink when he criticised the players after league game number one, though. No chance of it ending in anything other than tears after that. As an aside, if we'd treated Kean how Rangers fans treated Martin, there would have been media campaigns to have the club dissolved and the fans jailed. Guess Russell needs more friends in high places.

Disappointing. It was fun while it lasted.

What worries me is that a lot of performances people are classifying as "good", like WBA, I found to be very average if not poor. From memory we had a single shot on target in the WBA game. We finished 7th last season and have been in and around the playoffs in most seasons since L1 promotion. I understand standards being lowered a lot due to the choice of manager and suicidal transfer policy, but still, it's tough for me to call much of what I've seen this season as good. At best the odd 15-20 minutes here and there where we look a bit threatening, but is that where the limits of our ambitions should be?

Even though Ipswich didn't play especially well, it was obvious their players were a class above Norwich's. Much smarter passing and movement. Another superb goal from Philogene as well. At some point defenders will presumably be advised to close him down rather than stand off and let him pick his spot. The lad is clearly deadly from outside the box if he's given time.

Coventry are one of very few teams in this division who look like the real deal. The difference between us and them is tragically vast these days, and the best we can realistically hope for is a smash and grab.

Not old enough to remember Iley, so has to be Ince for me. Woefully out of his depth. The only positive of his tenure was that we acted fairly swiftly in ending it when it was obvious things weren't going to get better.

From the reviews I've done this season he is generally very good, but definitely has mistakes in him too.

Not based on that performance, or quite a few of their recent ones. Robins was excellent at Coventry, time will tell if he can replicate that success at Stoke.

They aren't, they just had a good start. Their recent form shows that they'll be back in mid table pretty soon. My fear is that we have a lot of players who can play well in short bursts, but few players who can consistently perform for an entire match.

Have to take a point gratefully in the circumstances, but it would have been more acceptable if we hadn't lost to Swansea midweek. Tough run of fixtures coming up. Really needed to win one of this or the last match, a single point from both is pretty disappointing. At least we're temporarily out of the relegation spots, I suppose.

What a missed opportunity this is going to be for Stoke if they walk away without three points. Looking at their recent form they are reverting to normal after a good start, though.

Indeed, almost like getting rid of all of our Championship experience and replacing it with bargain bin nobodies was not the master plan certain friends of the recruitment team and the boardroom would have us believe.

Could do with a rainstorm right about now.

Ideally the owners.

When you're playing Football Manager you can download tactics to plug and play - sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. It's more rewarding to develop your own tactic and style, but if you're struggling then downloaded tactics can at least give you some idea of how the game engine works. Managers like Ange and Amorim are essentially the real-life equivalent of an FM player who downloaded a tactic, it worked once and so they use it all of the time, unable to change it even if it doesn't work because they don't really understand the game itself particularly well. No modern manager should have one style & shape that they are anchored to come hell or high water. It should be an instant red flag to any managerial recruitment team.

In fairness it is quite funny when things get so bad even Chaddy starts to turn (eg. Ismael's first few games), everyone falls over themselves to praise and congratulate him, only to then react with shock and dismay when after a win he returns right back to his default position.

Lost all of their home games so far, which is a very quick way to get the fans to turn on you.