Admiral Nelsen

I don't think this is a straightforward call, personally. At the moment he's clearly 5th in the pecking order, arguably 6th if Mowbray would play Johnson in the middle of a back three (we can argue whether he should do or not, but he's showed signs against Posh that he would favour that option). He's just turned 22, and I think it's vital for the player to have a decent number of games under his belt before he enters his mid 20s. I accept it's a bit of a risk though - maybe if we get an extra right back in January & keep Nyambe, then that could provide extra defensive cover there too.

I know we were going through something of an injury crisis, but Branthwaite was the perfect example of the sort of Prem loan that you don't want. I.e. a player who has all the attributes for a good career but needs a spell of making mistakes so his parent club can feel the benefit. A player who'll probably have a good career, but a few of the performances he put in for us were up there for some of the worst for a centre half in our recent history. Agree with @tomphil though that our possession game was partially responsible too.

This is a good point. The prospect of losing to Scotland at a major tournament when you have Scottish in-laws was up there with the prospect of losing to Burnley when we had the 30 year plus unbeaten record.

Definitely Rovers. I get really involved in major tournaments & this summer was brilliant (until it wasn't), but at the same time I often don't even watch the Qualifiers during international breaks. Completely different with Rovers. Only things which take up more of thoughts are family and work, and there are times when they're debatable!

Johnson's shirt has been posted as hanging up in the dressing room on Rovers' twitter, so presumably not him. The plot thickens! Got a funny feeling that Gally will end up being a big player for us today. Maybe not the worst idea to play him from the start given the sort of team they are. Going for 2-0 to the Rovers.

I think for his sake and ours, the best thing would be to let him go on a free and see if we can slip a large sell on clause there if we can. You can make an argument that he's been messed around slightly, you can make an argument that he's been unlucky with the timing of injuries, and you can make an argument that he doesn't have what it takes mentally to make the most of his talent in professional football. The end result though is the same - he's entering mid career and he's a million miles away from where we need a first teamer to be at our level (never mind next level where we should be aiming for). Exciting player to watch in L1, genuinely wish him the best, but the only way I can ever see us getting any value from him is that he can eventually put some form together for a small club and we might get a few hundred grand from him moving on.

It shouldn't do really, but they're in such a desperate state I can see why. Club that size who have spent (relative) megabucks in that league and in their third season they're as close to the relegation spots than the play offs. Then there's Mowbray, a former player with a recent record of getting out of that league at the first attempt, buying a player like Dack for the same sort of fee they've been paying, playing reasonably attacking football and currently sitting 4th in the division above. Obviously that's ignoring the long list of negatives that come with TM as manager - but I think if you were to offer our last five years or so to Ipswich fans (or Sunderland fans) they'd be throwing street parties.

Sounds like Pears is getting another game here

I was much more worried about Ayala missing PNE than this one. Can't see the centre halves needing to head as many balls as they were expected to last weekend.

One win in six. Not many teams go through a Championship season without a sticky patch but they can't afford to carry on like this for too much longer.

For all this talk of Fulham & Bournemouth being streets ahead of everyone else - of what I've seen I wouldn't put them both in the same category. It wouldn't shock me at all if Bournemouth drop out of the top 2 at one point during the season. That said, I think we'll lose this one. With Big Club, Hull, Barnsley & Huddersfield coming up, a draw would be more than acceptable.

Thanks for this - a lot of detail there that I'd completely forgotten. I think taking everything together you'd probably say i) the club was in a state post-Kenny and the title win where plenty of players wanted out for football reasons, Le Saux included, and ii) he still had a fairly legitimate gripe with the club over a serious injury which could have been handled more professionally. Probably still an overreaction from him in my view, but an injury like that must've been very difficult to deal with. You'd like to think it would be chalk and cheese with how we've handled Dack's injuries. Interesting that Robert Coar rubbed the players up the wrong way. I was at an event a couple of years ago where David May was the surprise guest, who when asked about his contract situation when leaving Rovers said something along the lines of "Who told you that? Robert Coar? The F*****g W****r" to the whole room.

Very fuzzy memory about what he said exactly (reading over Christmas probably didn't help!) but I vaguely recollect that he took the hump about not being visited when he was in hospital, basically implying that Rovers didn't want to know once he was out of the picture. I remember thinking that it sounded like a pretty manufactured grievance anyway, whether that's fair or not. Easy to forget how much of an extraordinary fee that was at the time. Had Jaap Stam not just signed for Man United, he would've been Britain's most expensive defender I think. I'm pretty sure he wasn't even getting that close to the Scottish XI at that time either. And to think it was the same window as Kevin Davies and Ashley Ward! People talk about us supposedly buying the title with Jack's money, but the real profligacy came with our slightly-too-late attempts to stay at the top. Some absolutely baffling signings.

I was given his book for Christmas when it first came out a while ago. Seem to remember that he wrote about feeling hard done to by how he was treated when injured, basically feeling underappreciated. I think there was something about Rovers demanding too much money after how much we paid for him too, but I've not read it in ages so I might be mistaken on that. I like Le Saux too and it's good that he speaks fondly of his time here now, but I really don't think he comes across well at all in his book. You can't really begrudge him for complaining about how he was treated as a youngster at Chelsea and especially the notorious Fowler incident, but the overriding memory I have is that he paints himself as a bit of a victim throughout. Real contrast to how he seems whenever he's on the media these days.

I'd still give you a very decent chance of staying up in a scrap if there's not much in it with a couple of months left to go. It does look possible that you could get cut adrift if you're not careful though, that Watford game in particular looks absolutely massive now.

Must admit I'd forgotten how bad the scheduling for this was last year. I've just looked back and about 40% of the games were played on the Sunday. Assuming that's because of demand from broadcasters, that's an absolute disgrace.

Really hope they don't. Beyond the obvious reasons, they've had some absolutely woeful FA cup gates over the years (they're not alone I suppose) so it won't do much for the 'magic of the cup' if a 20% full stadium is plastered on the TV screens. Not a classic draw by any means, so maybe a supposed derby has a chance of getting picked, but fingers crossed they'll be sensible and look elsewhere. Interesting view about Richardson. I don't really follow their results closely enough to really know one way or another, but having spoken to a couple of their fans there's a perception that he might've been the brains behind Cook's success. Obviously easy to make 5 from 2+2 when Cook was doing badly at Ipswich, but that perception is definitely there. Their squad looks like your standard 'good for league 1, not good enough for the Championship' outfit with the likes of Max Power, Will Keane et al. Will have to wait to see what sort of team we put out, but I expect us to win.

I'm from Wigan so I'm very happy with this. Hopefully the pricing is sensible and we'll take a bumper following.

There's Webster there too, who they paid decent money for and is only mid 20s. I think they're well stocked for the next couple of seasons anyway. You could well be right, but it's not obvious to me that Van Hecke is being earmarked as a likely starter for them in the near(ish) future. They'll probably still want to keep him to see how he develops all the same, but at least it seems feasible that they'd let him go in a way that was never on the cards with a Tosin or Harwood-Bellis.

Not so sure. I'm not confident that he'll be available but they already have four senior centre backs at a good age. Apparently Ostigard at Stoke is actually their player too, so he's got a fight on his hands if he wants to play there in the next couple of years. This doesn't mean that we'll be able to get him on the cheap, obviously, but I think both him & Khadra might end up being realistic signings in a way that other loans we've had in the last couple of years haven't been.

I hadn't thought about Phillips to be honest with you. The boy's only 16 though, so even if he is exceptional (fingers crossed!) it doesn't seem likely that he'll be considered to be regular for the first XI for a couple of years at least. By which time Carter will be 23 & I'd guess too that Ayala will probably have been phased out by then. I think he'll get a window to show that he's ready, even if we sign Van Hecke permanently. I think he just needs to play as much as he can before then and not stagnate.

Both of those made all the more impressive given we did it without Ayala, who (probably fairly) was getting most of the plaudits for our 'proper defending' earlier in the season.

They're certainly still the better side on paper, no question. I think there's an element of us getting slightly giddy at our recent form, but at the same time it would be a great time to play them when they're absolutely in the relegation mire and their already pretty small squad has just gone through the Christmas period. Dyche has never really treated the cups seriously at the best of times, so the prospect of losing to the big rivals when they're in the division below puts them in a sticky position in terms of how seriously they should take the game. I'm still not sure if I actually want to play them, but this is the first season where I'd not necessarily expect a hiding.

I'm not overly concerned about Carter in the long term, but there's no doubt that he needs to play. I can understand why we kept him involved in the first team given where we were at the start of the season, but he's well and truly 5th choice now (arguably 6th if Johnson is considered there when we play 3 at the back). He has all the raw materials of being a good player for us in the future, and we have the perfect example in Wharton of what a couple of good loan moves can do for development. He should have several L1 teams who will be happy to take him for 6 months after how well he did at Burton last year, so that's a no brainer for us in January. Sadly I think you're right about Magloire. I think he'll have a perfectly decent professional career if he wants it enough, but he's 23 in a few weeks and he's not really ever looked like taking his chance when he got near the first team.

Remember thinking that Southampton were unbelievably harsh when they sacked Adkins to bring in Pochettino. What a decision it turned out to be though, arguably still paying dividends to this day and you can make the case for it making the club hundreds of millions in revenue. Promoted teams usually suffer through making too many changes rather than not enough in my view, so in the still highly unlikely event that we go up I'd still be ultra cautious about doing anything beyond adding a fairly small number of players to the squad. Not exactly going full Norwich City, but using an unexpected promotion to get the club as a whole in a healthier state. For me that would need to include giving the manager (who, in this still very hypothetical scenario, would have worked wonders) a fair crack of the whip, but I accept this could be seen as being too squeamish to pull the trigger if we have someone lined up who could take us to the next level.