DE.

You can argue whether Hedges' contact was enough to cause the player to go over or a foul to be given. The bigger question for me is why did he give the ref/lino a decision to make in the first place? He could have just come around the Wrexham player and shielded the ball from going into the area. Or took a tackling position from a more sideways position. He had time. He didn't need to go into the back of the bloke. As one of the most experienced players in the squad he should have made a better decision.

Isn't it potentially something like 9 points? If they were to go on a good run of form and finish 3rd or 4th then they could still possibly keep their playoff place even with the points taken away. I think automatics are extremely unlikely, but playoffs could still happen in theory. They'd need a really quick turnaround in form though, pretty much immediately, and sustain it for most of the rest of the season.

They have the highest wage bill in the division so I'm not sure you can seriously claim financial poverty as an excuse for them being 16th. They're either paying very average players a lot of money, or they've got a manager who is making a talented squad look very average. If the owner can't find money for any further serious transfers then Cifuentes isn't going to be able to build a new team for promotion in the near or distant future. Any points deduction makes it even more imperative to have as many points as possible before it kicks in (if it's applied this season). I guess we'll see what happens in January. They're either going to have to back Cifuentes in the transfer market (not just freebies and loans as they did in the summer), or roll the dice on bringing in someone who can get a tune out of the very highly paid players already at the club.

Exactly the cliché that's used when players are under offer or being hawked around for sale. Do we have players in the team that should play even if they aren't "right in their mind"? What "type" of player is this, versus whatever "type" Cantwell supposedly is?

Seems odd to me that the Wrexham player would personally speak to Ismael after the game and admit it wasn't a free kick. I'm curious as to exactly what was said and why. I get the feeling some context might be missing. At the end of the day if our home form wasn't so shocking we wouldn't be in a position where a good point away from home isn't enough, regardless of circumstances. Of the teams below us we've lost to Norwich, Swansea and Sheffield United at home. We haven't played any of the others at Ewood yet. Keep losing to relegation rivals at home and that will do us in, not last minute draws away from home. The fact we're even in a relegation scrap after finishing 7th last season is disgraceful in of itself. No comment on that from Val, though. He's incensed to even be asked such a question, apparently.

Putting on subs is clearly a bad idea for us.

Considering our team that was about as good of a half as we could have realistically hoped for. Dom and his boys have been absolutely dire, but probably not likely they'll be that bad in the second half.

Looking at the current scores, what a bonkers league. Zero consistency for any team other than Coventry, who are losing. Norwich and Wednesday have had negative consistency and they're both winning as well. Sheffield Wednesday don't even have a full senior squad ffs.

Hopefully my withering criticism will enact the reverse curse and Forshaw will in fact have a stormer and lead us to victory. It's the Championship so you never know.

It would be nice for the "star signing" / loan that we apparently chased all summer to be fit to contribute at some point. An absolute failure of recruitment that we're needing to start Forshaw.

Bloody hell. Forshaw has looked knackered coming on as a sub, let alone starting a match.

One would imagine the end is near for Cifuentes. He has royally botched that job.

At most clubs who had finished 7th the season before, this dire home form combined with our league position would see the manager and board under severe pressure. Not here though. Just another day. A long, dark nightmare of a day that began on 19/11/2010.

I don't think there was any better way of telling QPR "we're done, go for it". Appreciate we don't have much squad depth, but at least stagger the subs if they're going to be such poor quality. Try to keep the better players on for a bit longer.

Is the suggestion that in previous seasons the home atmosphere has been so electric that it's been the reason why our home record has generally been decent? That this season is so much worse in terms of atmosphere that it's having a negative impact on performance? Feels like a stretch. Most likely it's just that we have players better suited to counter attacking football, who are not talented enough to adapt to teams sitting back and playing on the break themselves because they are mostly cheap imports.

We will go down if we can't sort out our home form. "But we can't counter attack" isn't an excuse - every team playing at home in the league has to deal with their opponents being more defensive. That's totally normal and the game plan should be tweaked accordingly to compensate. Putting all our eggs in the away form basket is asking for trouble in a big way.

Coventry are walking the division and they aren't even a parachute payment club. Other than them I don't think there's any other team in the league who you'd look at on game day and say "yeah, they're probably going to win this one". Maybe if Sheffield Wednesday are the opponent, or they're playing us at Ewood, but otherwise... Our problem tonight was that we took a while to get going, and when we were in the ascendancy we missed very good chances to score. For whatever reason the effort was only partially there for the players tonight, summed up by De Neve's inexcusable laziness when we conceded. When we were trying we looked like we could come away with three points, but for too long in this match the players coasted and we ultimately got punished for a combination of wastefulness and lack of desire.

We can't keep losing home matches. It will relegate us, especially once managers figure out how to neutralise us away from home.

Positives, we aren't losing and have half time to reset. A new gameplan needed for the next 45, because that was dire. So frustrating that we don't seem to be able to play properly at Ewood. We can't go through the whole season relying on away games for points. Still all to play for at least, and with the scores tied fortunately things can change in an instant in this league.

The ref probably got a good telling off for putting world cup revenue in jeopardy for something as silly as the rules.

Ipswich are definitely building momentum now - it'll be interesting to see if they add in January. They could do with a proper goalscorer, but they may feel like they have enough already. They're still scoring enough in most matches, they just have the odd game here or there that they should win but instead end up drawing or occasionally losing. Boro have taken a pretty big risk hiring a relative unknown to replace Edwards. Much like with Vitor Matos at Swansea, it could either be an inspired appointment or one that tanks their promotion chances. They've only won one of their last six games now, so Hellberg is going to have to get a grip on things quickly if they want to remain in the promotion hunt. Southampton are going well under Eckert - not sure if he wants the gig full-time, but he's certainly making a strong case for it if so. With their squad they should be targeting playoffs as a minimum, so as long as they don't hire another dud you'd expect them to be up there. It's hard to know what to make of the rest. A lot of fluctuations in form for all of them at various points so far. Stoke's strong start has kept them up there, but they've already lost five matches, which is more than anyone else in the top six at the moment. Some strong, experienced managers at a lot of the clubs in and around the playoff positions - you'd have to think January is going to be vital for those who ultimately make it. I wouldn't rule out Leicester giving Cifuentes the boot in the near future and getting themselves back into contention either. With that squad it shouldn't require a world class manager to get them moving in the right direction.

"BBC Sport understands that the fact it was his first red card in 226 international appearances was taken into account." Ah right, so past good behaviour allows the rules to become flexible. Who knew. I'm sure they'd do the same for a player who was less financially lucrative.

When it comes to FIFA and commercialisation, nothing surprises me. Next they'll announce top seeds have an automatic bye to the knockouts regardless of where they finish in the group. Maybe they can create a new rule where top ranked players can be transferred to other countries if their team exits the tournament early. Keep the superstars around as long as possible.

Only six points now with Sheffield United winning today (albeit with us having a game in hand). With that said, I'm not too concerned at the moment. Portsmouth and Oxford are going to struggle this season. Portsmouth will probably be okay in the end, but Oxford will do well to stay up again. I don't think their squad as a whole is Championship standard, so Rowett is going to have to pull everything out of his bag of tricks to keep them safe. Swansea are looking poor again - a lot riding on the hiring of Vitor Matos, who has only ever managed one club in his short career in the Portuguese second tier. Could be an inspired appointment, could be an absolute disaster. Massive risk. Sheffield United had a good win today, but it was Sheffield Wednesday so I'm not reading anything into that. Their overall form, even since Wilder arrived, is still pretty dire. I expect Wilder will keep them in the division, but it hasn't been the swift ascent to safety that many were predicting when he arrived. January will be crucial for them. I'm not convinced Philippe Clement of all people is the answer to Norwich's problems. He's been failing in management since 2022 and doesn't have any track record of reviving struggling clubs. He's almost exclusively been hired at clubs which already have a sizeable reputation and aren't in serious danger of being relegated. Maybe it'll work, but his previous work doesn't really align with what Norwich need, so it's a shot in the dark. I don't expect many others will get dragged in, but WBA are falling fast with a rookie manager (Ryan Mason) in charge. I don't think realistically they're going to get sucked into a relegation battle, but if we won our game in hand we'd be above them, and the table doesn't lie. Rovers should have enough to stay up this year, assuming our injury situation doesn't get too serious and Venky's don't do their usual and sabotage us in January. Neither of those scenarios are guaranteed by any means, so I remain concerned, but at this moment in time we look reasonably OK.

I think Ekitike is a decent signing, but they absolutely didn't need Isak. They should have cut off that pursuit the moment he downed tools and went on strike. It's not like £125m was a cut-price deal. Salah hasn't been great but he's still their top scorer and joint-top assists so far this season (granted that's only 2, but still), so 🤷‍♂️ he's a 33 year old right winger - if they're still relying on him to drive everything then they only have themselves to blame after the amount of money they've spent. I actually thought Salah was one of the only Liverpool players to come out of the Forest game with any credit. There are a lot of players ahead of him in terms of needing to be criticised. he's obviously declining as any player begins to at that age, but I don't think he's even close to being their main issue.