Benno’s got pictures of Mogga piping icing, surely.

Tough to say. It’s all relative. Going down on a pretty much unprecedented 51 points by goal difference suggests that a lot more teams around us won a lot more games. I take that as the league is tougher for the lower half now than it was that season a couple of years ago, or you could say that there are worse teams this season, it’s up for debate. Ex Premier League Stoke, Swansea and the impressive Brentford are still within touching distance (technically, yes I know we are wank) and will do well to break the 60 point barrier. Its mad this league. Just a couple of crap moments that the manager nor the overall performance can prevent have us the difference between top 10 and 16th. So luck evens out, We have been very good in spells this year. The table proves it. We’ve been beyond abject for a couple of months though, and the lack of belief today frightened me as much as it warmed me in January. God, we were really bloody good until a couple of months ago. Thats when I bet a Wendy 100 notes we’d finish above them ?

I’ve become very disillusioned with Mulgrew and Bennett. They’d have carried a few teams out of league one. But they’ve been arguably our worst regular starters this year. Fight can only take you so far. It looked like they’d lost even that today.

I didn’t think he was lucky at two nil up vs Brentford two months ago - I was genuinely googling “Travelodge Wembley”. We have a buffer because we have been good. Solid results bar the odd battering in 2018 and in January we looked unbeatable, a completely different side than today. The fact we are discussing it is because since that moment we’ve been absolutely dire. An unprecedentedly bad run. DID I JINX IT? Credit where it’s due though. If he takes responsibility for the losses, he takes credit for the wins.

Ah I thought you meant today. If that second half urgency was due to a self directed team talk I’d sack the lot of them. If you’re playing well, and the lads are up for it - let them take care of it. The “leaders” we’ve got on the pitch in Benno, Mulgrew and Graham were absolutely nowhere today. Lifeless. Need surgery.

Sorry which post match interview are you referring to? Nothing on Radio Lancs Twitter and the ifollow one is a whole lot of nothing as I remember.

It is odd. TM signs some very exciting young forwards. But they aren’t integral to the first team yet. I think they are good young players, and I’m happy to let him stockpile a few more. But I’d like him to start bloody using them.

He fell in the Vince Grella hole.

I don’t think TM thinks we are safe, therefore DG starts and we revert to the “trusted” lads. But DG is really not mobile enough to get the best out of our attackers bar Dack. Not many read the game like Brad. Danny needs to start seeing the bench a bit more, and surely has to next season.

Ergo why I’m only just getting on the concern train. Nothing today felt like we were trying to get out of our comfort zone. The attritional, team spirit percentage play has taken us a long way so far. , and I love that style. But we missed that one spark we need in Dack. Im really worried that the fight and belief wasn’t there. Last season’s Benno could have played in goal and kept a clean sheet. Today he was asked to dictate our attack and looked like he couldn’t be arsed. Id have taken a 3-0 loss today with Brereton, Chapman, Rothwell, Travis, Buckley. Judging from the post match comments, TM is more worried about Rotherham than we’d like to think.

I think you could call it a modern approach. The kind of thing that works with a Pep or a Solksjaer in comparison to a Mourinho. Difference is a lot of our “big characters” are not Kompanys or Pogbas and have been pretty fucking shit.

Getting towards the kind of football that gets the best out of the Armstrong’s,Brereton’s and Rothwell’s is going to take some major surgery. A change of formation, a change of intent and approach to games, and likely dropping DG. I don’t expect these things to feasibly happen until preseason.

Meh, there’s a million Kasey Palmers. I’d as soon as have Jack Payne. (another one)

End of the season I’ll have a good hard think. After today I genuinely don’t know where the next point is coming from. Thats a worry. It was the complete lack of fight or urgency that worried me today - my favourite aspects of the last couple of years and what has still kept me believing we have something to work with.

I’d say most of the chances he’s had that were “unlucky” or produced saves were all of his own making off the right. Not many number 9s anymore that are four foot tall. Neither of our ways of playing currently suits him, but he’s a good little player. Should play off Graham.

I’d say he got enough of the ball to do something with it. But he faded badly. Maybe match fitness but that direct running is incredibly effective off the bench, but easily managed when you’ve worked out where to position defenders down the blind alleys. Surely others saw why I agree with Mowbray about his defensive nous too? Rothwell is a 10 in this system, but needs someone with ability to play off. 4-3-3 with Dack in the middle and he’ll shine.

I’d say competent to good. But he needs to be up top to do anything of note, or playing with an effective no10/no 8 that can pass the ball into his path. He didn’t have that today in Bennett/Evans.

I think he’s a got some cracking finishes in him when he’s on song. Wasn’t he playing his way back into the team at the start of January? That kind of desire is what he needs. But he also needs to know that in this squad if Dacky isn’t playing, and Rothwell is wide, that HE is playing off DG. Not fucking Elliott Bennett... I loved Benno more than most last year, player of the season. But number 10? No. Just no. He takes about five touches to do anything and then it’s crap when he’s in a forward position. That is the worst crossing I’ve seen in ages. He’s should be a backup RB. Pretty much. Hes a fantastic impact sub. He offers running and directness. It waned after about 20mins as no one else was bloody moving around him, he got sloppy, and he probably should’ve closed the ball down for their goal.

We’ve only ever had incompetent wankers since they’ve come in. The only two we’ve even had flashes of universal praise for are the two that seem like genuine blokes. We are still very much a Venky run club and don’t ever forget it.

Don’t worry we’ve got Forest away after that. ?

Thats kind of the core of my argument that we can’t be going into seasons expecting a play off push. Look at our owners. Look at the debt. I’d like us to become a bit different. A club that doesn’t whinge, as Bowyer did, that we can only offer 10k a week - then signs Koita and Peschi. Imagine being a Championship club bordering on self sustainable. There needs to be some realism because if we keep getting it wrong at this level we don’t have the fiscal means or responsibility to dig ourselves out of it. The academy, frees and loans has to play a HUGE part. Experience wants money. Rovers spending money concerns me.

This is the unfortunate line of thinking that I’m starting to entertain. A bit.

Exactly. So next best guess is someone that can keep us solvent and competitive by utilising our academy. We grab someone that throws £20m at it like Karanka would and sign 29 year olds on four year contracts again then down the road we will be in a worse position than we are today.

Cheers. Its not to be sniffed at though. He shut them up by signing Dack, Smallwood, and Armstrong. Jacking Steele for Raya. By shipping out the likes of Lowe and giving the captaincy and a consistent centre half berth to Mulgrew. He built the right team and right spirit and belief for League One and that carried through to the first six months of this season. I wouldn’t have trusted Appleton, Coyle, Berg, Black, Lambert or even Bowyer to get us out of that league tbh.

Changing manager is the biggest gamble you can take. In nearly a decade Venkys have had a decent spotter of players (with a good budget) fall into their lap via Bowyer, and made one good decision at the time in TM. So one out of six or something? The best chance would be an “in the club falls into their lap” situation again.