Just made me bored tbh. Turned it off after two minutes as his monotone voice was doing my head in and it was nothing but excuses. Thought Dolan was onside (wrong), thought it was our most 'complete' game whatever that means. Wanted the penalty to stand even though it was the correct decision not to give it. Stopped watching when he started blaming injuries as well. That was only two minutes in and the interview went on for over five minutes. Can't imagine it got any better.

Listened to Ismael's post match interview but gave up after 2 minutes. Excuse after excuse. Seems to think we played well.

Venky's don't let managers resign, lol. He's either stuck here for 3 and a half years or not working for 3 and a half years.

Looks like Ismael is where Waggott and Suhail's luck runs out when it comes to bringing in unemployed cheap managers expected to keep the titanic afloat. And believe me, it's been nothing but a ridiculous streak of luck for the pair of them.

Shameful from the lot of them, from our incompetent boardroom to our pathetic management to the bottle jobs on the pitch. Burn it all down and start again.

Looking forward to another "rallying call" next week Trav.

Read my next post and please answer this question directly: What I'm asking you Chaddy is whether you believe that our club's leadership are responsible for allowing a severely dysfunctional setup to continue, and ultimately lead to the season becoming yet another mess? We can make educated guesses as to what happened, roughly, but looking at the bigger picture, do you think Waggott and Suhail hold ultimate accountability for what occurred? If not, why not?

It's also possible the club negotiated a cheap break clause in the contract which allows them to terminate without any major financial penalty at a certain point. This would suggest a degree of competence which seems unlikely based on past history, but nonetheless.

Let me break it down a little further. Eustace is hired to be head coach, according to Unleaded he has the remit to coach the players with some input into what he would like in terms of reinforcement. There is a recruitment team put in place by the board (Owens/Gestede/Park) who are responsible for providing the head coach with players they believe will satisfy his requirements. Somehow by the summer Eustace has already 'gained influence' to the point where he is actively causing problems with recruitment and butting heads with that team. This is strange to me as he hadn't done anything special by that point and only been with us a few months. It's not like he'd pulled off some miracle escape from certain doom - we limped to the finish line the previous season mainly thanks to a couple of shock wins at the end. Majority of the results were not particularly good at all. It's never been answered how Eustace would have gained this influence, if we are to believe this happened. He isn't a board member so it's not like he could put his foot down and say "I'm not having this player". He wasn't a Kenny Dalglish figure with significant reputation, nor was he a Mowbray type figure with a long tenure at the club. He was a manager who had just arrived and not done a great deal beyond pull off a couple of great results at the end of what was otherwise a dismal final part of the season. Paul Mani has suggested Eustace offered to resign in the summer. I'm inclined to believe this on the basis JDT did the same the year before, and Eustace's post-summer behaviour (if we are to accept he was applying for practically any job in the division) indicates he wanted out at any cost. Probabilities suggest he wanted to leave, and we can reasonably assume this was in large part down to his inability to see eye-to-eye with the recruitment team. According to Unleaded, however, this wasn't a one-sided thing where Eustace was having his opinions ignored and players he didn't want forced on him. He outright says transfers were delayed and effectively fell through because of Eustace's influence. He also cites Eustace's alleged meddling as the reason John Park left in November, suggesting this nonsense was still going on far beyond the summer. This is where we have to look at the responsibility of the board (basically Waggott and Suhail). If we are to believe there was a power struggle of sorts between Eustace and the recruitment team - it begs the question of where Eustace was getting his power from. He's ultimately just the head coach, so somebody higher up must have given him enough stroke to cause problems with recruitment. A situation like this requires strong leadership to sort things out. Only two options exist at this point to rectify a situation which has somehow already spiraled into chaos despite Eustace barely being at the club a few months. One, Eustace is told he was brought in as head coach and needs to be reasonable with suggestions from the recruitment team. If he can't do this then he will be unable to participate at all in transfer selections, or his resignation will be expected/accepted. Two, the recruitment team are told that Eustace will be giving them suggestions, and they are expected to follow up on those suggestions and bring those players to the club if at all possible. The blame will lay at Eustace's door if his signings fail to deliver. By the sounds of it, neither happened, and so we ended up in no man's land with arguments, disagreements and frustration from both the head coach's side and the recruitment team's side, with no leadership above them willing or able to control the situation. What happened instead, if we are to broadly accept what Unleaded says to be the case: 1) Eustace allegedly caused problems with our transfer dealings, undermining the recruitment team's efforts 2) Eustace became so annoyed by the process that he wanted to leave, but much like JDT was denied 3) Senior leadership do not intervene in any noticeable way to improve the situation 4) Eustace becomes disenchanted and decides he can't operate in this environment, and thus allegedly begins looking for opportunities elsewhere in the division 5) The situation is allowed to fester, to the point where Park, our head of recruitment, leaves the club - according to Unleaded this is because Eustace is continuing to undermine the recruitment team's efforts, although no reason is given as to why he is able to do this 6) By January nothing is resolved and the situation is deteriorating on the pitch now as well 7) Eustace leaves for Derby, a team in the relegation zone We surely have to look at this as a whole and say it is a monumental failure of the club's leadership team to allow the situation to develop. I appreciate we don't know and it's all speculation, and that's fine. Unless one of us was there we will never know for sure, as even if we heard about it from one of the horse's mouths, you'd have to factor in that they'd be an unreliable narrator due to presenting a biased view. The point is that our leadership team designed things in a way that we would have a recruitment team and a head coach working in some kind of synergy, and yet this almost immediately fell apart and they seemingly totally failed to get a grip on the situation. Instead they simply allowed everybody involved to become undermined and ineffective. What I'm asking you Chaddy is whether you believe that our club's leadership are responsible for allowing a severely dysfunctional setup to continue, and ultimately lead to the season becoming yet another mess? We can make educated guesses as to what happened, roughly, but looking at the bigger picture, do you think Waggott and Suhail hold ultimate accountability for what occurred? If not, why not?

You keep saying what happened but not considering why.

You have referred a few times to Unleaded's posts though, and he said: So, do you believe this or not? There's a difference between highlighting positions he needs and being directly involved in picking shortlists of players and being part of the committee. If he was signed on to just be the head coach, and by summer was already inserted into the transfer committee and was interfering with transfer policy - who authorised that change to his role and why? Or do you not believe that to be true?

January of Mowbray's final season was certainly where Operation Fuck Everything Up started. It was a summer with little expenditure, but also only Arma leaving in terms of actual decent players (a massive loss for sure, but nonetheless) and some decent enough loans in Van Hecke, Poveda and Khadra - although the latter two never really got going for us, with Poveda getting injured in November and Khadra not really fitting into Mowbray's way of playing. Reinvesting precisely zero of the Armstrong cash was obviously the first big warning sign, though, and we got lucky that Brereton discovered his Chilean roots and became BBD for the next few months. We didn't sell anyone in January, but we probably should have sold Rothwell at least to give us some money to play with. Instead our big push for the PL was Giles and Zeefuik on loan and Hedges on a free. Rothwell clearly didn't want to be here after January and Brereton was only ever good for half a season, and he'd had his purple patch already, so we were effectively down three players (Poveda included) and had done nothing to strengthen. We then lost Dack to serious injury in March, having only been back a few months after coming back from his first major injury. Oh, and we also had the manager out of contract in the summer and being given absolutely no communication from our esteemed leadership on whether they were planning to retain him or not. It's gotten no better since then, basically worse every year, so it really is bizarre that we've managed to continue being in and around the playoffs for most of that time (the final half of last season aside). It can't last though. I think this season with Eustace was probably our last chance at realistically getting a crack at a playoff finish, but of course we got the usual implosion from within. With the summer looking to be as bad as ever transfer wise, players aplenty not having contracts renewed, and Venky's showing no signs of changing their ways, Ismael has his back against the wall. I don't think it's going to end well, which isn't exactly genius insight but you get the feeling something has to give pretty soon.

Tbf we wouldn't have been in playoff contention for most of the season if the division wasn't packed full of extremely average teams. It's been like this for a number of seasons now, which is why even under Mowbray and JDT we were still in the hunt despite the club being run like a circus. Mowbray at least had some money to spend, and JDT benefited from some of that 'investment' still being around during his first season. Once the taps were turned off during his second season, though, we were doomed. Eustace getting us into playoff contention is probably the most impressive considering he had bugger all to work with budget-wise and most of our better players had already been shown the door by the time this season began. He knew it wasn't sustainable though, hence the release clause and the desperation to get out in spite of our league position. Venky's mismanagement was always going to catch up with us at some point, and it does feel like that time is rapidly approaching. If they've got it wrong with Ismael then it's going to be a brutal 25/26 campaign.

The question remains - why hire Eustace as head coach, supposedly without any major input into transfers,, only to then allow him to influence transfer dealings to the point where he was allegedly holding up deals and creating major headaches for the recruitment team? That would surely only have been possible if someone in a position of power was giving Eustace the power to somehow throw a wrench into the works. The story only makes sense to me if you assume the club is still extremely dysfunctional and lacking direction at board level. I don't think it's a stretch to believe that almost certainly is the case - but then the issues Eustace became embroiled in were just a symptom of poor leadership at the club, and that should be the focus rather than Eustace being a snake and the recruitment team's arch nemesis.

Difficult to take Travis' words seriously when we've seen many of these players capitulate in the second half of seasons time and time again. I understand that as captain he has to say something, and it's reasonable for him to say the players take responsibility, but there's no reason for anyone to assume things will be any different from the last 4 or 5 times this has happened. That benefit of the doubt, for me at least, has long gone. The fact is if they genuinely haven't been sulking and performing poorly because of what's been going on at the club, they've likely already thrown our chances away with the last few dismal performances. Not for the first time, but maybe for the last time, as next season and beyond is looking pretty grim if Venky's remain in situ.

I have a question for you actually Chaddy. If we assume Unleaded was correct about Eustace interfering with transfers in the summer, do you think it's strange that the head coach somehow had the authority to delay or change transfers? It would suggest Eustace had someone higher up on his side, as otherwise how would he be able to interfere, right? So does that suggest structurally the club is still not particularly stable?

Odd choices. If he's thinking about selecting Henderson and Walker for next year's WC then lol. Good luck. If he isn't then why bother calling either up now?

Funny how it was less than a month ago that the recruitment team and players were being eulogised, yet here we are now with the same old pattern repeating. It's been quite the rapid downfall.

Cool, blaming the players already. That'll help them take to him.

Please tell me he said we wanted it even more than Saturday, which is why we lost again.

Unless it's an inside job to get them to raise tickets to such an obscene price nobody can afford them.

You boys will be fine. Robins is a decent manager who I think will prove himself with a bit of backing. As for us, E I E I E I O, down the football league we go.

Unless we both somehow get relegated by the end of this season, unlikely.

Maybe it's just a final F U to Suhail, Waggott and Venky's.

Just a question of how low we finish now. Hard to see us winning another match, so 15th or 16th entirely possible.