DE.

Selling Szmodics would be tantamount to announcing "we want to be relegated". Unless we are financially on the brink of going onto administration it's an unfathomable scenario.

Not sure I agree that you can't replace Gallagher for that kind of money, when you look at some of the top scorers in the league. Morgan Whittaker was around £1m. Jack Clarke reported to be £750k. Crysencio Summerville reported to be around £1.25m. Conor Chaplin around £750k. Our own Sammy Szmodics was £1.8m according to the Peterborough chairman. Good deals can be done if recruitment is up to scratch. Our current recruitment team's record on strikers is pretty appalling thus far though, so would I trust them to find a decent striker with £1.5m? Probably not. Besides of which, we'd probably see none or barely any of the money anyway, making selling Gallagher a pointless exercise.

I know, I was kind of following on from your answer as opposed to directly responding to it. Should have made that clearer.

Eh, they've been utter rubbish plenty of times when Trav was here too, so probably nothing in it beyond Travis having a lot of friends in the dressing room who genuinely want to see him do well. Agree on Hyam - not even close to being captain material from what I've seen. We don't have many leaders in the team, which is part of the reason we are where we are, but Szodmics and JRC - when fit - are better picks imo. With that said, players know who the actual captains/leaders are, regardless of who is wearing the armband.

I lost count of the amount of times people stated Mowbray had "lost the dressing room" during a death spiral only for results to eventually turn. Very rare for a manager to actually lose the dressing room. Low confidence and inability to implement the manager's ideas isn't the same as losing the dressing room. I don't think it's much more than that.

Boss Jon Dahl Tomasson told BBC Radio Lancashire that he does not blame his players for mistakes after the defeat. "Don't blame the players for individual mistakes, give the coach the blame," he said. "If you look at the whole game we were just as good as West Brom but games are won in each box, by winning personal duels and are you smelling danger and scoring goals? That's football. "November was a good month for Rovers, December was not a good month, a period when there were too many games for a stretched squad."

Possibly, but I don't think he's an idiot, and he must look at our goals conceded column and realise this is not working. Our form for the past year, almost a full season, has been pretty poor overall. Bombed from 2nd to 7th last season, now bombed from 7th to 18th this season. Either he can change things and is refusing, or is unable to change things and just hoping things improve once injuries start clearing up. Neither is ideal, to say the least, but the latter at least is one of the pitfalls of hiring rookie managers. Bowyer couldn't adapt either. Mowbray, for all his faults, was able to change how we approached games if needed. We had that spell of possession football which did not work, so we switched to something different. Our underlying flaws were never addressed which is why we saw the same seesaw pattern of streaky results, so in the end it counted for little, but nonetheless.

At a normal club, maybe. Here... not convinced. Not sure who's giving the order. It would require someone to actually care. Tough to explain otherwise why he is absolutely refusing to change anything. He's either incredibly stubborn, incredibly stupid or just pissed off and trying to get sacked.

I think he potentially does have enough about him to turn it around, I'm just not convinced he's motivated to do so. Almost feels like this is being done out of spite. You brought me in to play this style of football, so here you go, this is how it goes when you fail to back me - so either back me or sack me. His comments in the press certainly suggest he isn't scared about being binned at this point.

If we fail to improve in these fixtures then it'll be fair to say the players have lost confidence in JDT's style, whatever you'd call it. We surely have to get at least a couple of results from these fixtures.

Rovers commentators (probably) = "nothing out of the ordinary here"

Walsall put 3 past us back in August.

Gone way beyond acceptable now, even with the myriad of genuine reasons JDT can point to. This inability to defend is absolutely embarrassing.

Good to see JRC back... Gallagher kind of... just hope we aren't rushing them back too soon. I was under the impression both were initially penned for a February-ish return to the team. Maybe a case of needs must.

Sometimes it's like watching somebody who won a competition to be out there.

That'll take a while.

Ennis making Vince Grella look like a bastion of fitness, assuming he's once again injured or unfit.

Yep, but what we need to be successful and what he's said are two different things. His remit is developing players to increase value, mine as a supporter is for my team to be as successful as possible. Ideally the two would go hand-in-hand, but for that to be the case one imagines JDT would have been more practical by this point.

Indeed, if you look at our goals scored column it's perfectly reasonable compared to other teams in the division. The primary issue is the goals against column which is second-worst in the entire division. We need to find a way to grind out scrappy 1-0 wins when required - mainly because due to a weak mentality we can't win when we go behind, so scoring first is a must.

We know from his time here never to take anything he says to the press seriously. Good appointment for Birmingham in the circumstances, although only required because they completely unnecessarily hit the self-destruct button.

I'm guessing his age factors in somewhat. If he was a couple of years younger I'd assume he'd have a lot more attention. Clubs may see this as a one off/fluke season for him, at this level at least, based on him spending most of his career in League 1. Not how I see it, as I think he's extremely hard working with solid ability, but one imagines most clubs at this level and below will be looking for a younger prospect to drop significant cash on. But then again, maybe someone should offer to loan him. We can then get a cheap youngster in to strengthen the almighty model.

Probably the last 13 years to be honest mate. Not sure what to tell you if that doesn't make sense.

Cup run is probably the only thing we have to potentially look forward to this season, so obviously nice to progress. Just hope we can score enough to keep our heads above water in the league, as defensively we are nowhere near where we need to be.

Also may have been very different for him at Rovers. Hirst was useless here but has been solid at Ipswich. Sometimes a different club just suits better.

Lol, I wouldn't worry about that JDT. Considering they're 8th and we're 17th I can't imagine they'll take much offence to being told a player they weren't using suits our style of conceding two games a game better than their style of not doing so.