Admiral Nelsen

I don't agree that the England team of the 00s were overrated. Quite a lot of time has passed now and we can look more dispassionately with a fair amount of hindsight, and there's no getting away from that side being comprised mostly of really excellent players. Gerrard, Scholes, A. Cole, Terry, Ferdinand, Lampard, Rooney, Owen at the start of the decade. Beckham. They all shone in Champions League teams (Owen aside), so they weren't just overhyped by playing in a substandard league. They underperformed - no question - but even there I'm a bit of Sven apologist. 2002 - knocked out by a freak goal against the last great Brazil side and eventual winners. 2004 - knocked out on pens to the hosts and eventual finalists after having a perfectly good winning goal disallowed. 2006 - knocked out on pens after playing an hour with 10 men, and still looking the stronger side as I recall. An unfortunate run of tournaments, which preceded a real downturn in the quality of the squad until arguably the last few years. It goes to show the importance of striking whilst the iron is hot, because you're not always going to have very strong sides. The difference between England and the more successful nations is that when Germany, France, Italy & Spain have produced a great squad of players, they have done a better job than us of making it count.

A real shame. We've done a full 180 degree turn in that respect - we used to have a CL winning centre half as fourth choice and not even take players like Johnathan Woodgate to tournaments, all whilst dishing out caps aplenty to forwards like Darius Vassell. The complete opposite situation now.

Delighted for Wharton (and England), but I think leaving Maguire at home is an error.

I don't think I ever thought Derbyshire would be that good, but a year or two earlier I remember thinking similar about Gally and Stead!

Funnily enough, I think someone passible but obviously not brilliant could end up be the most harmful option for you. Lampard, given a good Championship squad like he had at Derby (or will have with you lot) won't be a disaster week on week. He'll look the part and do enough to keep himself in a job and you broadly at the right end of the table, but does he have enough to get you promoted? Much less certain, and at least with someone as obviously awful as Kean, you could have him booted out by bonfire night and start again.

Some big calls from Southgate which I didn't expect, so fair play to him for that. I'm slightly uneasy about leaving Rashford out. He's obviously been very poor this season and doesn't deserve his place, but nobody else offers the pace and power running in behind like he does. He's always been good for England too, so I'd have been tempted to find a place in the squad. Maybe Gordon can be that player coming off the bench.

Take your point, playing for Celtic/Rangers is arguably better preparation for a keeper compared to a relegation fodder prem team. You're not expecting to make 7 or 8 saves a game, but you need to be mistake free under massive pressure.

I've no idea how disappointed to be by this news - but there's no doubt whatsoever that he hasn't been given the tools to do his job.

You can play with a back 3/5 and be more attacking, so I don't particularly mind if we stay like that. I think the issue with McFadzean is he forces us to defend really deep - be it a back 3 or a back 4 - because of his lack of pace. I'd be happy to keep him as back up on the cheap and I respect what he has done for us in his short time here, but if he starts more than a handful of games for us then it tells us a lot about the sort of season that we'll be having. And it isn't good.

Not for me. He's dropped more than a couple of clangers and it's not as though he compensates for them by making lots of unbelievable saves. He's 26 - so pretty young for a keeper but not to the point where he can use it as an excuse. There was probably a bit of an overreaction to the Sheffield Wednesday howler(s), and I'd happily have him on the bench. But at the same time his and Leo's errors were almost the difference between us going down or finishing comfortably safe. There's a capable enough keeper in there, but he's too error prone to have as 1st choice.

Really tough to limit this to three. Partially because we need more, but also because we don't know how we're setting up and how we play has a really big impact on whether certain players are in the i) flawed but useful or ii) get rid completely categories. Looking at the reasons why we came within a hair's breadth of going down, the biggest factors by a distance were goalkeeping errors and Sammie having to be our sole decent attacking outlet. So GK and forward are absolute necessities, irrespective of how we want to play. After that, Trondstad playing alongside JRC/Trav is decent if not very creative. We'll 100% need another centre half if we play three at the back, but I'd say a second new forward is probably the most urgent. But yeah, we definitely need more than three.

Yeah, a lot of recency-bias going on with Hyam I think. A bad season for his standards and a particularly poor few games in the last couple of months, but on form he's still our best centre back. Carter's ceiling is higher, but he's not there yet. Factor in that JDT's system is almost tailor made to expose centre-backs like Hyam who aren't that quick or pass the ball like Beckenbauer, we should expect much better from him next year.

I think they show how tricky it is to get players who are ready to do a full Championship season unless you're going for the most expensive loans. It's a seriously tough league, and a baptism of fire players with no experience of men's football. Moran is a perfect case in point. He had a half dozen appearances under JDT where he looked like a very handy player. But We flogged him too much when too many of our other attackers were injured, and he never recovered. I think he'll probably be a decent player at some point, but this season was a real shock to the system for him. I was worried that it would be too much too soon for Chrisene and Ayari too, but they both won me round to a point. I think our problem was that we were relying on loans to be too important to our squad.

His deficiencies are there for all to see, but I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we go down this year without signing him. It's panic stations if we go into next year with him being anything other than cover, but he's played a massive part.

On loan? I think he would be and I'd definitely take him so long as Villa aren't looking for silly money. It remains to be seen how we set up next season - and that probably makes a big difference if we want to play with wing backs or not - but he's grown on me as the season has progressed.

Love that you did this, well done.

I wouldn't go that far. He was brought in to fight fires, so you cut him some slack, but the results haven't been good enough all in all. Having said that though, his first task was just to keep us up and he's delivered. Give him a pre-season and a transfer window and see what he can do. I bet Birmingham fans are wishing they still had him in charge!

We must sit in different parts of the ground! I think there was always a bit of suspicion that his style of football would end in tears, but I always got the sense that he was personally very popular. Compare him to Big Sam for instance, who I always got the sense was tolerated rather than liked. The trouble with Mowbray is that he didn't have a bitter end as much as a bitter middle, and that bitter middle was when we legally had to stay away from football grounds. He was never going to get stick when we were in a promotion/play off shout in his last season (at least until about April anyway).

I think that's completely right, but again, nobody was a match goer when things were going badly for Mowbray. If we didn't do so well in the first season back post-covid, we would've heard much more discontent. I think you could tell in his interviews towards the end that he didn't exactly feel flavour of the month anymore, even if he still had his backers. And I can only speak as I find, but I genuinely don't remember anything at Ewood towards Tomasson which wasn't praise until possibly right towards the end. In fact I'd say he was one of the most popular managers we've had in my time watching Rovers. It says something about the fans being behind him when goals are conceded and the crowd immediately turns on the CEO and not the manager.

I think both were a lot more complicated that that! Mowbray had spells where he was loved but he was fortunate the covid season was behind closed doors. Wasn't there a poll on here (highly unrepresentative, granted) around then that showed about 99% wanted him gone? I never got the sense that match going fans were anything other than very supportive of JDT either, although to be fair there were plenty that were never really convinced about playing out from the back. On Eustace, I agree that there definitely seem to be some grumblings on the last few home games' evidence. Fair or not, it's probably to be expected when you're not winning. I'm a season ticket holder who does a few aways, and I've not seen us win since November, so nobody's going to be happy in those circumstances. I think he'll get a clean(ish) slate from a lot of fans so long as we stay up. Everyone can see that the squad has issues and he came into a pretty grim situation, so whilst this hasn't exactly been a Hughes/Big Sam-esque rescue, if we can stumble over the line he can be judged a bit more fairly next season.

Agree - their results have improved but everything I've seen of them (including when we lost at Hillsborough) indicates that they are a very poor side. They were getting absolutely battered by Norwich until they scored from two corners, so I'd match them with three centre backs and back us to have more quality.

Good to hear that Vale is impressing. He turns 24 next year, so I think it's best for all concerned that he goes elsewhere to play regular games. We won't get much for him, but maybe a couple of hundred grand and a decent sell on is better than we would've managed in January.

For some reason I expected him to be a sicknote, but I've looked again and he seems to have played near enough every game. I must've seen him on his good days, and his goals probably helps mask some of the weaker aspects to his game. I like how physical he is - it's really stood out comparing him to some of our midfielders when we've played them.

Some interesting ones there. As a rule I don't like going for players just relegated and used to losing every week, but that doesn't always work. I don't think they'll go down, but there are massive red flags around Chair and especially Willock from QPR. Talentwise they should both be amongst the best players in the league (and might be beyond our reach), but they've looked like they've downed tools for really long spells over the last few years. Risky. I'd definitely be interested in James and Bacuna from Big Club. There'll be loads of interest in James though with him being so young. Don't think I'd take anyone from Wednesday. Rathbone stands out because of his name and that he always seems to do well against us, but he's older than I thought he was. Wouldn't be against signing him for the right price.

I think he'll be in the Championship next year. No idea of what he'll cost (£1million?) or if we'll be interested, but he's a good keeper.