Well, at least they aren't beating us 3-0 this time... progress?

Hanley doing us a favour with an OG, still fighting for the cause behind enemy lines. Good lad. Need Bristol City to help us out now.

Boro within 3 points of them now and with equal GD... they may well outdo us for throwing away an automatic spot - we were never as far ahead of 3rd as they were. In terms of the teams around us winning, not really a surprise. WBA playing Cardiff who are horrendous, Norwich playing Huddersfield who seem to have accepted relegation about three months ago, and Luton playing a Bristol City team who have only managed 4 away wins all season (although we only have 6 wins, so can't really say much). Luton most likely to get pegged back as Bristol at least have a few away draws under their belt...

4 now... their bonding session doesn't seem to have had the desired affect.

They've put him in the wrong position anyway. If Mowbray was manager he'd be out on the right wing.

If Stoke are promoted to the Prem again one day and the opportunity arises, I'm sure it could happen. That scenario aside I don't really think there's any chance in the near future, at least not until Brereton's career is winding down and he's potentially entering free agency around the time he hits 32/33. One has to imagine at this point in time he's aiming a lot higher than moving to another team in the same league, who have finished below us in four of the last five seasons.

National League as a bare minimum imo.

You see it quite often in the FB groups too. As soon as we lose a match or our form dips it's "told you all to be careful what you wished for, disgraceful treatment of TM coming back to bite you all now" etc. Still no JDT flags as far as I'm aware. Why exactly did we have those for Mowbray? That was proper cult of personality stuff and I never understood it. Summed up where we were as a club and as a majority fanbase at that point though - all hail our humble lord and saviour. For the record, despite being baffled by the above I don't hate or despise Mowbray. The way his final season ended, combined with his disparaging remarks towards the club since leaving, do leave a very sour taste in my mouth though. Those snidey comments about Dack as well a few months ago, trying to undermine JDT... nice bloke. Yeah, right.

In fairness from what I've read on their forums a lot of their fans are being quite realistic and accept that a mid-table finish would be solid for a first season back in the Championship. The main sentiment from those who expect a playoff place is that it's a poor league and if there is a genuine shot at the playoffs every season counts, regardless of initial expectations. Also a somewhat fair point. They all accept that their recruitment team/board screwed them over by not bringing in a striker in January - not too dissimilar to us in that regard.

Even if we ultimately fall out of the playoff spots this season, it won't compare to the absolute disaster that was the last few months of the 2021/22 season. It almost felt as bad as being relegated, and was compounded by the utter inevitability of that end of season collapse that we'd all become accustomed to under the last manager. Even if we finish outside of the playoffs JDT has shown enough to have earned backing from all parties in the summer. Just have to hope he's still around at the start of next season.

Your lads deserved it tonight. Looking like you're building a decent foundation for next season with Neil in charge. Expect you'll be in and about the top six again next season, the benefits of having a manager who has been there and done it in the recent past.

We started playing roughly 86 minutes too late. Until then we simply didn't fancy it on a cold night in Stoke. Oh well, on the plus side our GD isn't quite so badly impacted now. Little choice but to move on, and hopefully JDT can work out why we suddenly went back to no-showing an away game against opposition we should be competing with. Leaving it until the 86th minute isn't good enough.

What a shitshow. Nobody can bring their fans back down to Earth with a crashing thud quite like Rovers.

Per BBC... of course.

Anyone between 1-11 based on this half.

It's unlikely Linekar needs the money at this point, so if he wants to take a stance then good for him.

Pretty much. XG can be meaningful and add significant value to a model that incorporates other relevent statistics, but on its own can only reveal a small piece of the overall puzzle.

They used to play football on plastic (thesefootballtimes.co) A good article here on the plastic pitches of the 70s and 80s. An interesting read.

Eh, you'd have to be pretty naive as a manager to go into the Watford job presuming you'll last much longer than six months if you haven't met expectations. No manager is going there in ignorance anymore, and they never have an issue getting someone new in - presumably because the job is a bit of a jackpot. If you do well then you do well and your reputation increases. If you don't then you're likely to get paid at least double what you've worked, if not more, and in future job interviews can point to Watford's high managerial turnover as a reasonable excuse as to why things didn't work out. Better their way than hanging on to the likes of Mowbray for 5 years.

Stoke have some players who should be excellent at this level, but if they were a good or consistent team they wouldn't be 16th. It's a potential banana peel but certainly no reason to expect we'll drop points here.

Tbf considering Sunderland's next opponents, right about now would be a good time for the spiral to end...

One of their fans on that thread summed it up pretty much perfectly: "Even when we were playing well, it always seemed in spite of Mowbray, that he had stumbled onto something without quite knowing why. When it stops working he doesn't have an answer, just hopes to stumble onto something else that works." Exactly what it felt like when he was here as well, hence the constant see-sawing form.

I'm curious as to how he explains it away at interviews. Do the interviewers even ask about it? The pattern is so obvious that you'd be negligent not to, and yet...

Yep, good of old Tone to keep the tradition going and give us one less competitor for the top six.

Another outstanding result. As Tim Flowers would say, these lads have got bottle.