A fair point on Hedges and Dolan. Despite buying Hedges Mowbray, for whatever reason, never really used him properly or effectively. Dolan has definitely been more productive this season but you would hope for that as he gets older and gains experience. Gallagher I feel is fairly similar to last season in that sometimes he looks useful and other times not so much, his stats so far this season suggest he's trending towards a similar impact to last season (17 games, 4 goals, 1 assist this season, 37 games, 9 goals and 3 assists last season) so we'll see how things look at the end of the season for him. It'd be nice for him to at least get into double figures with a goal return. Kaminski has had some excellent games this season and some poor ones, which does remind me of last season, and I still think his distribution needs work. A solid keeper at this level though for sure. Ultimately it's only a few months into JDT's reign so I'm not going to judge any of the players too harshly at this point - I think we'll have a clearer picture at the end of the season as to who is going to thrive long-term and who is likely to be departing or reduced to a lesser role going forward.

Again though, the entire team had form issues under Mowbray... hence the death spirals. Trav's decent start can likely be put down the JDT not having yet really established his style within the group. It feels like as time goes on certain players are regressing very quickly. Others are at best standing still. It's hard to really think of any players that have shown a significant improvement from last season. The sad fact is that most of the existing squad is unlikely to be able to properly adapt to how JDT wants us to play. With that potentially being the case we're either looking at a near-total squad overhaul over the next few transfer windows, or JDT himself will need to compromise somewhat in regards to his ideals. The former will be a real challenge considering budget limitations and the level we're playing at, whilst if the latter doesn't happen I don't see things ending well, regardless of where we currently sit in the league. It'll be interesting to see how things progress... or don't progress.

Completely agree. I think the stick Trav has been getting recently is pretty harsh. He's clearly struggling for confidence and hasn't been able to adapt, as of yet, to the way JDT wants us to play. To be fair he's not the only one. Also consider he's had a bit of a rotating door of partners in midfield which can't help. When Travis is on form he's very good at what he does, it just doesn't seem like what he does suits JDT's style of play. I wouldn't give up on him yet, but obviously if it comes to the end of the season and he's still struggling then a decision will have to be made on whether it'd be better for him to move on elsewhere.

As it stands I don't think I'd take Hirst on a free, let alone £5m.

Could you not argue that unforced errors (particularly multiple ones) are down to a lack of concentration though? Maybe I'm being too harsh, people have been eulogising the Norwich performance, but sitting at Carrow Road freezing my arse off it just looked like two mid-table plodders scrapping it out to me.

Effort was my issue with last night, not cohesion. I didn't see the bare minimum of 100% from a lot of the players and I think that's reflected in the stats. I genuinely think a team much further down the pyramid would have given it more of a go last night and I can't really accept that regardless of who was on the pitch.

As roversfan99 said in the other thread, put a poll up and it's highly likely votes to sack JDT would be minimal. There are always going to be outlier opinions, they only gain legitimacy when they're highlighted by others as being more prominent than they are.

For me a lot of that is on the players rather than JDT. We have seen most of them (Mola and Hirst aside) have some ability. Pears actually did well last night. Most of them just opted not to show up for whatever reason. Granted you can argue motivation is also down to the manager, but still. I don't think we can brush it aside as "weak team of nobodies fielded, performance expected". A lot of these are in and around the first team, in most cases direct backup. For them to play that poorly is pretty concerning to me.

We put a weakened team out last night but there should have been enough there to give Forest a challenge. Travis, S. Wharton, Hedges and Szmodics have all been considered first teamers at some point during the season, two of them were first teamers all of last season. Mola is supposed to be our primary cover on the flanks. Hirst is supposed to be our primary cover in attack. A. Wharton and Garrett have both impressed in the first team occasionally this season. It wasn't exactly a ragtag crew of no hopers, but they certainly played like it. I didn't see any major effort put in by anyone except Pears, and that's a shame. Still, it's the Carabao Cup. Ultimately one of the usual suspects will win it and nobody will really care. An abject performance against Mowbray's Sunderland (especially after our pathetic performances against Burnley and Preston) would be far more angering to me than the Forest result.

Exactly the point I was making. The idea that JDT has taken us to new heights this season is misguided, we were actually slightly better off at this time last year under Mowbray and look what happened. As far as the team is concerned we still can't recover from going behind, generally play terrible football and signings have been largely poor. Not difficult to see why some folk would be worried despite us being 3rd, although obviously suggesting JDT be sacked at this point is nonsense.

Appreciate people want to ignore the Mowbray years these days, but worth pointing out at this time last year we were 3rd on 42 points with a GD of +14, having just thumped Birmingham 4-0...

Stats make for horrific reading. If we're being honest Forest could have scored 6 or 7. I know we had a reserve team out, but at home this was really dire. Forest wouldn't post those kind of numbers against a League 2 team. I don't think anybody made a case to be considered for the first team. Pears had a surprisingly good game and helped keep the scoreline almost respectable. As for the rest... looking very much like reserve players without much motivation to prove they deserve a chance in the first team, which is disappointing. How many more abhorrent performances does Hirst have to put in before we accept he's utterly useless? If we can we need to send him back. If not then what a waste of a squad space.

Our 3 shots to their 21 suggests not.

Yep. If we had a player on the level of Messi we'd have made the final imo.

Disillusioned is how you feel after watching the final of Italia 90, not this one.

In terms of losing possession, it's because our passes are too obvious. Not enough movement, so they're easy to anticipate. It happened a few times yesterday too.

Ultimately Messi didn't have to cheat to win a world cup.

If France had played from the first minute instead of waiting until the 80th maybe they'd have won it. Argentina GK an absolute beast when it comes to penalties, he was the difference at the end.

It was a true statement at the time tbf. If it lit a fire under France then so be it 😎

It's been a really disappointing and uncompetitive final. As was the Argentina/Croatia semi. Tournament definitely peaked in the quarters.

France bottling it big time at the moment.

According to Mowbray he doesn't really have a say in transfers for Sunderland, so I don't think it'll be his call either way. He did say he had "all the spreadsheets" here, which I take to mean he had far more involvement in recruitment. I suppose that's the difference between being manager here (which historically under Venky's means you basically are in charge of everything related to the playing squads) and just being the head coach at Sunderland.

I mean, we were a penalty shoot out away from winning Euro 2020. It's the closest we've got to winning a tournament since 1966. I think Southgate needs an additional staff member or two to help with his tactical decisions, but generally speaking he's done a good job as England manager. I also wouldn't trust the FA to appoint anybody better, based on the last 20 years or so of average-to-terrible appointments. With Euro 2024 only being 18 months away this decision makes sense to me, and I think the best time to assess a change will be after that.

Travis has definitely been struggling the past couple of months. Might be worth him having a spell out of the first team and knuckling down in training, trying to improve on the areas of JDT's style he's struggling with. I don't want to write him off as I think he can and has in the past brought a lot to the team, he's just not fitting in with the way we're trying to play at the moment.

The level of vitriol the Norwich supporters had for the manager and team today really surprised me. I didn't realise there was such a deep set discontent there. The atmosphere was pretty toxic, with the fans turning against the team really early on and loudly booing them off at half time. It's not like they were losing heavily to a team significantly below them. It felt over the top, but if the negative feeling is that strong it's hard to see how that can be turned around short of a very, very good run of form. On the basis of today's showing it's tough to see Norwich getting the results needed to change the perception in the stands that change is needed.