Well another trademark Mowbray week. Start it off in a good place, looking up the table, starting to be taken seriously as a play-off contender after impressing against a rival side in Bristol City. Ten days later two appalling defeats against two poor sides, two golden opportunities wasted, no goals, four against and ending up a disorganised rabble with baffling subs, lineups, formations. In the end he falls back on his career long solution of chucking an array of attackers on for the last 15 minutes in the hope that one of them manages to conjure up some magic, but in the end they rarely do and the scoreline gets worse rather than better as we look completely lost and are wide open at the back. He isn't going to change because he did the same thing 10 years ago at Celtic. He is either incapable or unwilling to do it any differently. He gets sympathy from me insofar as I am gutted that after such impressive performances we have now seemingly lost both Travis and Evans to injury for the rest of the season. Meanwhile who knows what is happening with Bell and Williams but i have my suspicions on that front. Point is that we all expected fatigue with such a schedule of games but to be missing so many so soon after 3 months without a game is a big problem. But at the same time this is his squad, and the woeful lack of contribution from his signings in Samuel, Gallagher, Brereton, Rothwell and Chapman means he shoulders the blame and must ultimately pay the price for it. We aren't ever going to get up from this division with this manager because we can't defend properly and can't achieve any level of consistency in selection, approach or performance. There should be an analysis taking place upstairs as to whether they are happy with that or whether their aims are going to be met by this group of staff but instead there will be nothing of the sort. Waggott will tell fans we are lucky to have Tony, they'll go and tell the owners everything is fine and dandy and ticking over nicely, Trav, Nyambe and Lenihan's values have gone up a bit more, happy days and off we go again.

Think Leeds might be tempted to.

Watch that and weep. Imagine Warnock in our dressing room after trash like that tonight when 3 points off the playoffs. Those players wouldn't do it again, that's for sure. Instead we've got merry go round Mowbray. Does anyone believe he gave the team a bollocking after the game? Anyone think he's distraught/devastated after once again wasting a glorious chance to move into the top 6? I dont. It will be 'hard luck lads' or oh well always next week/month/year. Plenty of time, nice lads etc. He's not a winner.

I said this after Saturday. Can see it coming.

I'm not a businessman but I would have thought having new shirts on sale now or asap would be a good idea, as would season tickets. Many people who have been unable to go on holiday, to matches or to the pub etc. over the last few months will have some spare cash to spend. As the lockdown relaxes and we get into July and August the chances are people will find other things to spend money on, including potentially taking the kids away on a summer holiday. I've lost track but I think we have at least another year of Umbro. Can't remember if Bet 10 signed up for 2 years or 3 or if they are carrying on. I saw something yesterday that the intention was to start next season in September to ensure it is finished in time for the Euros next June.

If we needed a new manager then yes, McCarthy and Hughton would be at the top of my list. As would Neil Warnock. I think all 3 are 'achievable' managers for us and all 3 with some reasonable support and backing would have us in or around the promotion picture. I anticipate all 3 will be in work in the Championship by this time next year and will be proving themselves as skilled operators. As i said earlier, i think our best chance of promotion out of this league isnt via Mowbray's fairytale ambitions of us emulating Bielsa's Leeds or Bilic's West Brom or unique club Brentford. It is going to be through emulating Warnock's Cardiff, Bruce's Hull, Hughton's Brighton or Dyche's Burnley. No frills, no ideals of nice possession football or outplaying the opposition and talking about how many chances we had. It will be through being defensively tight, really tough to beat, nasty, streetwise and being built upon having a settled XI who know themselves inside out, back to front and only changing things when we need to. Sadly I don't think Mowbray is the man to every deliver that, because he isn't capable of organising a defence along those lines, confuses himself with what he is trying to deliver and has these fanciful principles of football purity. It worked for him 12 years ago at West Brom because they were the best squad in the division. It won't work here, in my opinion, if we want promotion. But ultimately it depends on which way we want to go as a club. The above would be ideal if we wish to stick with a 'traditional' approach of allowing the manager to run the show including recruitment and essentially manage the club on the owners behalf as Mowbray has done. Many managers of the older school variety would relish such conditions, the freedom to run things as they wanted, dictate recruitment and not have to accommodate interfering directors. I've no problem if the club does want to go down the head coach route but I'll take some persuading that throwing experienceless Damien Johnson into the madhouse of the Championship tasked with delivering results under a 'head coach' structure will work in any sense of the word. Rather than following some grand plan of succession a la Brentford it will simply be the easy, cheap and popular in-house route that the likes of Waggott and Venkys would relish to avoid having to conduct a proper search and pay accordingly. The talk of copying Brentford is nonsense because as a club were are simply a million miles away from being able to implement such a structure. What Brentford have now has been almost a decade in the planning, a result of their owner having a well thought out plan of how to grow them whilst balancing the books and overcoming their small size, crowds and pulling power. To that end they have assembled a very well structured backroom staff and are the envy of the division. If it was as simple as jealous clubs wanting to copy them then everyone would have found out how to by now. We are just about as far away from that as any club can be. Rather than have a thought out strategy from the owners down and employ staff to deliver it, we have no idea at all from the owners, a manager who likes to tell people that we are copying Brentford but is ill equipped to deliver it. As Brentford showed with the ruthless sacking of Warburton after they got into the play-offs, if the manager doesn't fit the plan you get rid. Imagine if that had been here, You credit the scouting network under Mark Hughes as being good and having regressed since then. I would agree although i think we also brought in some good bargains under Allardyce using his contacts which did well for the club. The trouble is that i believe the excellent recruitment under Hughes and Allardyce were due to those managers, their contacts and skills in the market in conjunction with their team of coaches and scouts, rather than a result of Rovers and their structure. The only credit anyone above the managers gets is that they appointed those managers and backed them when they asked for the players. Brentford is completely different as the 'club' takes centre stage in identifying and recruiting talent, and that process continues uninterrupted whilst the head coach does his job on the pitch. Head coach moves on or gets fired - find a successor yet the plan and recruitment continues without disruption. I appreciate Mowbray's efforts at rebuilding scouting from the shell it was a few years ago. But I stop short of believing he has installed some super duper Brentford-rivalling network that is going to benefit the club with brilliant signings for years to come. My view is that he has assembled a scouting department, which is an improvement on what the owners had left us with before he arrived, but i don't think we are remotely near to most other clubs at this level and won't be any time soon. I also think when Mowbray goes there will be no plan for succession and the next bloke may well have a different view entirely and have to spend years changing things again. The 'European scouting' system Mowbray has talked about since his arrival and is now more than 2 years in the pipeline still hasn't delivered a single hidden gem signing to suggest it is working. The only 'European' signing we've made was Holtby although he was well known around the country already. There's more to it than that. It shouldn't take 2 years to deliver. I don't criticise Mowbray in that respect, nor do i want to give the impression I don't like the bloke. He has done well all things considered and if we go close but fall short this season i think it probably represents a decent season. But I've little faith in things going to the next level, more to do with the lunatics upstairs than anything else.

Nor does anyone else. Many have been selling throughout the pandemic. I'd buy one now to use when fans can return regardless of when that might be. Would you? Isn't it worth doing to get people tied down and their cash in the bank?

Done

Chance would be a fine thing Why are season tickets not on sale now? Do we not want money coming in?

I dont know whether to laugh or cry with Mowbray's comments. Our route to promotion is unlikely to succeed if we are trying to copy the top 4 for style. Leeds and West Brom have appointed world class managers and have spent millions on players to go with it. Fulham have a ridiculous squad and have spent fortunes on the best players around. We can't copy Brentford because their operation is on another level to the rest of the Championship. We are incapable of replicating that, but if Mowbray wants to try then the first job is for him and Venus to resign so the club can appoint a head coach and director of football. We need to be trying to copy Burnley, Cardiff, Brighton and Hull. Limited sides that got promoted through organisational ability, good management, a set way of playing and minimal disruption to it. Mowbray thinks he is better than he is. I'd just like him to put a side out that can defend and is hard to beat.

Sooner or later big decisions and gambles have to be made. If not then we can forget promotion. Ever. Let's suppose we were 8 points clear at the top when Dack got injured. Would you have been happy doing nothing and jeopardising our best chance at promotion just to make sure we didn't run any Ffp risks? Do we never sack a manager ever again because doing so might push us towards the limit even though not doing so could cost us League status or a chance of promotion? All the clubs charged with breaking the rules have avoided punishment simply by taking the League on and challenging it. Their owners will have paid fortunes for good lawyers to advise them and clearly think they have a case to run. We are one of the few who meekly accepted our punishment, slashed our squad and got relegated to League One as a result and now use it as an excuse for everything rather than just admit the owners don't want to spend more. 'Compromised the entire football club' is a slight exaggeration. I don't accept that is what doing some business in January would have been. But yeah, if I were running the club and we were sat on the cusp of the top 6 in January with the star man out for the season and numerous other deficiencies in the squad I would have worked to address it in the window rather than hiding behind theoretical future problems from rules that other clubs have got away with breaking. Looks like Derby with their Rooney stunt are going to show us that finding ways around these rules and taking them on is the way to go if you want promotion as they steam past us towards the top 6. They might go up, in which case they're laughing to the bank whilst Waggott wails about the same rules Derby broke. I wish Venkys and their cohorts would grow some balls and take matters into their own hands rather than sitting on them moaning about everything.

1) FFP rules are almost certain to be ignored or delayed due to Covid 19. UEFA have already confirmed their rules will be and the EFL are likely to follow. If they dont it is going to be impossible to enforce the rules given the collapse in income clubs have had. 2) If the rules aren't ignored and they try to enforce them then we will not be alone in having difficulties. Everyone will. 3) Derby, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday and Birmingham have all broken the rules and yet none of them have been punished. Why are we worried about it? 4) We can afford refunds to supporters. We have chosen not to offer them because that is Waggott and his approach in a nutshell. Meanwhile Mowbray splurges tens of thousands of pounds on the likes of Sam Hart and Richie Smallwood to not play for us. 5) How come every other club, including those closer to Ffp threshold and those who have many more season ticket holders and stand to reimburse far more than we do, manages to find the money needed to do so? 6) When people refuse to renew in part due to Waggott's disgraceful approach to refunds, the Season ticket base will diminish further, causing further problems re. FFP in years to come. Short termism at its finest here. 7) If serious about going up and determined to do it, with owners keen to spend, we would have gone and got a replacement for Dack in the position we were in. If not willing or able to do so from just outside the top 6 at Xmas with the best player out long term, then when?

Take the Dack situation in isolation and ignore all the other issues in our squad. We lost Dack v Wigan well before the transfer window opened. We knew the moment it happened that he would be out for the season, possibly longer, and that we would have to cope without our best attacking talent. I simply can't believe that we just sat back and allowed another window to pass by without any attempt to fill the Dack void, even just with a loan. Given the position we were in it seems senseless to not strengthen.

I agree, but IF we were to push for the top 6 over the next 7 games I think Derby would be the ones to fear and watch out for, more so than Cardiff, PNE or Swansea. Derby have had excellent home form all season but were hampered by dreadful away form. Now they've sorted that out they are on a roll. Always one side comes up on the rails late on. They slaughtered us at their place.

I'm most worried about Derby. After last weekend I felt Forest were within reach but now 8 points above us, we aren't overtaking them either. 6th is the limit and with Cardiff and Derby hitting fine form at the right time, along with our tough run I can't see it happening.

And they can defend, keeping plenty of clean sheets. Something we need to improve upon.

Some good managers out there ready to get to work. Mick McCarthy and Chris Hughton. Slavisa Jokanovic. Middlesbrough getting Warnock in a masterstroke. More or less guarantees survival this season and if they had any sense they'll offer him another year with a huge bonus for promotion. Promotion can be done on the cheap as he showed with Cardiff and for all Middlesbrough's problems this year he could rapidly turn it around. Never really got what the fuss is about with Johnson. Steady but unspectacular in 3 jobs. Seems to always have Bristol nearly in the top six before dropping out again. Bristol fans aren't happy with him.

We've been over this many times before. For some reason we don't invest in the keeper or defence. We haven't done since relegation despite going through 7 managers all with different styles. The result is that we can't turn to decent alternatives when struggling and players are as safe as houses even when they don't play well.

Luton and Barnsley have to be favourites for the drop but both have responded well after the break. Luton under new management and have an excellent 4 points from Preston and Swansea. Barnsley an excellent 4 points from QPR and Millwall. Both have work to do but some momentum, whereas Huddersfield, Stoke and Hull don't really have any. From a selfish point of view I'd like Stoke down as if they survive and sort themselves out they could easily challenge next season, the others probably won't.

I fear we are now embarking upon one of Mowbray's cycles. Impressive win against rivals puts us on the cusp of the playoffs. Poor defeat in a derby sets us back. I expect we will struggle against lowly Barnsley battling for their lives. Then we will play Leeds and probably play really well and get a good point or three. Around it goes on and on.

I see Warnock has sent Gestede packing after he failed to commit. Can't imagine him dishing out new deals to people just to keep them happy and not play them.

In two games against them this season we've barely had a sniff, when on both occasions a win would have put us in the top 6 (or very close to it, without checking). Bitterly disappointing but that's the story of the last two seasons. Sooner or later if we are to kick on as a club we have to learn and change. Unless we are happy to be mid table for ever more in which case the cycle can just continue. The managers who resort to the darker arts like Neil and Cook have been able to have the better of Mowbray. Mowbray won't change because he has principles which is all lovely when we play nice stuff and win but we need that extra string to our bow to get out of this league.

Gap now 9 points. I wouldn't bet much on that lasting the season on form and today's performance.

Bayes is a nob ender. He hides it well but scratch beneath the surface and it's there.

Mark Venus was sat face down staring at the floor twiddling his thumbs with 10 minutes to go. Not what I want to see.