DE.

The sooner we can get Dack on the better. The only player I'm confident can find the back of the net right now.

I'm just consoling myself for when it gets to the end of the season and we finish 8th again.

Tbf we only had two shots on target and scored one of them, so a 50% conversion rate of our chances is good going.

I know the playoffs are essentially cup games and anything can happen, but if we stumbled into them on our current form you can't help but think Boro with their 82 goals would absolutely smash us over two legs if we got them in the semis. Yes they've conceded 52, but we have no decent strikers so that probably wouldn't help much.

We're lucky that results went our way over the past couple of nights, and we're still clinging on to 6th. A horrible way to drop two points though. At this point if we announced tomorrow that BBD had been released early to join Villareal I'd be happy with that. Would rather see Leonard on the pitch for the last four games. Looking at our GD compared to the teams around us, it really is bizarre that we're in the mix at all. -2 whilst every other team in the top ten has a GD of +8 or higher. It's been a strange season.

Feels like we could sub Kaminski on for Brereton and see a better performance. Lad has truly and utterly lost whatever it is he had during his purple patch. Villareal in shambles. (Hoping this comment leads to a BBD second half masterclass)

Still time to get into double figures for the season Gally. A hat-trick would do nicely.

Always confident we'd take the lead.

Have a bad feeling we're going to get hit with a sucker punch... BBC says we've only had a single shot on goal?

Worried that we're showing as having 65% possession. Exactly what we don't want. We're far better with low possession and counter attacking.

Mentality is definitely a key issue which needs to be addressed. We aren't going to be able to completely solve it by changing the entire team, as we simply don't have the money to do that, so it's something the coaching staff need to figure out how to solve. It's apparent not only in our regular late season collapses, but also in our inability to come back and win matches (or this season rarely even draw them) when we go behind. It's been going on for too long to be put down to coincidence or bad luck. 8/11 of the team that started against Hull were either signed by Mowbray or have developed at the club during the period when this mentality has seeped in. That's obviously a concern. At the very least I think we need to sign a couple of genuine leaders in the summer who won't accept this kind of attitude from themselves or from their team mates. Championship versions of the likes of Roy Keane, Patrick Viera, or if we're going further back in Rovers history Todd, Savage, Dickov, Bellamy, Nelsen types. Players who may not be the most technically gifted (Bellamy excluded) but who absolutely hate losing and leave everything on the pitch.

Been like that for as long as I can remember, even pre-Venky's going back to the Souness days. It's the same across pretty much every club, too, and across multiple fandoms - so I think it's just a psychological thing for certain people to want to get on their high horse and belittle others. I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons as to why that behaviour develops in individuals, but it just seems now more than ever people crave these dividing lines, even within groups that are supposed to be united.

After over a decade of failing to get into the playoffs, and actually getting relegated during that time, it's not hard to see why people would have a glass half-empty view at this point. Especially with our current form being so poor, our strikers being so woeful and our football fluctuating between being very good and utterly appalling. With that said, I agree that we are where we are on merit. After 41 games we aren't 6th by fluke - we're 6th because, so far, we've been the 6th best team at gaining points, no matter how it's been done. It suggests neither the manager or the players are really as bad as is being made out in certain quarters - or that the rest of the division is simply even worse. Either way, we've shown we can scrape points despite having a very lacklustre set of attacking options. Whether we can stumble our way into the playoffs remains to be seen. I'm not remotely optimistic, but the possibility does still exist. Lose on Wednesday however and I suspect that will be that. Since we threw away the quarter final in the last ten minutes our form and confidence as a whole has taken a big hit. They need to pick themselves up though, and fast, as we're running out of games to get our momentum back.

Tbf to Diaz I wouldn't put him in the same bracket as Gallagher. This season he has double the goals (14/7) and assists (4/2) and last season over double the goals (22/9) with the same amount of assists (3). Even in 2020/21 Diaz only scored 1 less goal than Gallagher (7/8) and had 1 more assist. Keeping in mind also that BBD is 4 years younger than Gallagher, who should be in something like his "prime" now - although if this is it, lad has done very well to make a career out of football. Whilst BBD's form has gone off a cliff in 2023, he's still our top scorer and one of our highest assist makers (only Dolan has more, with 6) - so what does that say about the rest of the team?

Interestlingly when you look at the table after 23 games a lot of teams around the top end of the table have collapsed, even worse than us, whilst the teams who are now right up there and challenging were very much in mid-table. The playoff spots at that time were: 3. Rovers +1 GD 39 points 4. Watford +8 GD 37 points 5. Norwich +5 GD 35 points 6. QPR 0 GD 34 points As of now Watford are 12th, Norwich are 10th and QPR are 20th. We've fared the best of all of the teams at the half way point by some margin. QPR have only gained 9 points from 19 ganes. Meanwhile, Millwall were 9th, Boro were 13th, Coventry were 14th, Luton were 15th. At the time we had a gap of 7 points on Millwall and 9 on the other three. We were more or less equal on GD with all of them, but our GD is now -2 whilst Boro (Carrick's first management job) are now on +28, Millwall on +9, Coventry on +9, Luton on +17.

I don't believe there is a good excuse for finishing below either of those teams, considering where we were at the mid-point. You obviously do, but they haven't had piles of cash or top tier players to call upon to close the gap, so for me yes, it would be considered a failure. Not "because 1995", just because we'd let a huge gap between both teams narrow to nothing. It's all hypothetical at the moment though, and I really hope we can pull out of this nosedive in the remaining few games. Over a decade and we haven't been in the Championship playoffs once. I don't think that's entitlement, it's something systemically wrong at the club which still hasn't been addressed. Whether JDT is the man to address it still remains to be seen. It may be beyond him or any manager, ultimately.

It's nothing to do with divine right, that's just a lazy cliche used to avoid engaging properly. People make excuses about ffp, the squad, parachute payments, but none of them hold up when you look at many of the clubs around us who are in similar positions - Luton, Millwall, Coventry, Sunderland. They've adapted to their situations and made progress. If we go from being 2nd midway through the season to finishing below them I don't see how that can be spun as anything other than failure, but it was done often enough with Mowbray so I'm sure it will. That's not to lay the blame solely at the feet of JDT either, significant amounts of blame lie with the players, many of whom have track records of wilting under pressure, and our recruitment team who let everybody down in a massive way in January. There's still a chance to salvage the season. We're clinging to 6th despite losing momentum. Wednesday is now critical.

Would certainly be something if the team who sold us their top defender because they were in dire financial straits ended up pipping us to the playoffs. No excuses about ffp, parachute payments or anything else can paint that as anything other than a huge failure. I don't even want to consider that Mowbray's Sunderland might finish above us, although I imagine some people would be fine with that. I like JDT but we have no excuse for finishing below the likes of Coventry and Sunderland (who have an even worse striker situation than us), so let's sort this out on Wednesday before the season becomes another crushing disappointment.

Ah, yes, it was Sherwood. I can remember as a kid feeling utterly robbed when that was disallowed - still pisses me off now, despite knowing how that season ended.

United essentially cheated to beat us in both league matches in 94/95. The ridiculous sending off of Henning Berg in the first match and Shearer's goal being inexplicably disallowed in the second. The final day of that season, even though we lost, was justice being done.

12 goals conceded in our last 6 games in all comps is our problem. It isn't bad luck, it's poor defensive work and a major issue when we don't have any decent strikers at the club. We're down there with the lowest scorers in the division so we simply can't afford to have a leaky defence.

The referees at the WC showed how it needs to be done. Add on as much time as is needed, even if on the surface it looks ridiculous. As for why referees here don't do that... I'm sure it all circles back to where the money trail leads.

Probably would have concluded with them making it 3-1 anyway. We know the script. Maybe this will work in our favour.

Hopefully a sign that the clock is ticking on Gallagher's time here. One of the first that needs to be shown the door in the summer, even if we make a significant loss on him.

Just unfortunate that we've given ourselves a huge mountain to climb again. That defensive solidity that fuelled our playoff charge has evaporated recently. Puts too much pressure on our weak frontline to score goals, which none of them have been especially good at since November or so.