Very true. Are we really having a poor season or boring to watch when all we do is either win games or lose them, and we've won more than we've lost? Don't get me wrong, I'd be happier if we'd won more than we have, or drawn some of those that we've lost, but I don't think we're boring to watch overall, nor underperforming overall. If anything we're overperforming, but I guess that must be in spite of JDT. How stupid & mentally gymnastical of me!

There it is, a pre-formed judgement that you won't budge from despite lots of valid evidence to the contrary. It's clear that you were never on board with JDT's appointment in the first place even before he set foot in the door, so as a consequence he's fighting an uphill battle and being judged as no good on the back of a few admittedly poor performances and results, whilst the bigger picture is being overlooked. By the way Jack (God rest his soul) oversaw the appointments of such successes as Ray Harford (RIP), Roy Hodgson & Brian Kidd. As wonderful for this club as Jack was, he was far from perfect in his managerial appointments.

I sincerely hope not.

Jeez, the be all & end all of this season is not beating Burnley, Preston, Blackpool & Wigan. It's coming 1st or 2nd, or 3rd - 6th & winning the playoffs. That's thinking big; thinking just about local bragging rights is small-minded (as symbolically important as they obviously are). Put it another way. If Jack was still here, would he have sacked JDT after the Burney & Preston games? Course not. If you think beating local rivals is all that counts, then winning the Prem title in 94/95 or the League Cup in 2002 must've meant nothing to you, and you'd prefer it if we'd have won the Manx Cup instead!

From dictionary.com: "Must win - a contest, project, scheme, etc., of which a successful or victorious outcome is essential because anything less would negate all preceding efforts" You're misunderstanding the concept if you seriously believe that every match we play in a 46 game season is "must win". A failure to beat Cardiff would not have negated all previous efforts. Was it important? Of course, but "must win" it absolutely was not. I suggest you stop tying yourself up in knots to justify the unjustifiable.

Ok, it was "must win" if the goal was to ensure that we stayed in 3rd place after that round of matches. But that counts for nothing in May, as there is no direct season-defining consequence of winning or losing that match alone; it wasn't must win in terms of our overall chances of promotion, which is what counts and which was the context of the discussion being had. Someone else on here mentioned mental gymnastics... keep on cartwheeling! 😉

There's no mental gymnastics going on here, the choice being discussed was lose the derbies but get into the playoffs, or win the derbies but miss out on the playoffs. Surely getting into the playoffs is the goal if 1st or 2nd is unachievable, regardless of who we win the points from??

Not anymore I live near Knutsford, but there's a Burnley fan in the village who I've been avoiding for 2 months! But anyway, however realistic it might be the choice between winning 8 local derbies but going down, compared to winning none but then reaching the playoffs, literally should be a no brainer for any fan who wants the club to get up off its knees.

You get nothing for winning 8 derbies either, other than bragging rights & a chance to fight for the L1 title next season. I'd rather lose in the playoffs than that.

The Burnley game was a very stringy rump steak sure, I said as much on here post match; I didn't see the other two matches but clearly they were no better. In mentioning those 3 though, you've omitted mentioning the equally good 28 day-matured sirloin performances & results v Swansea, Blackpool & Watford, for example. I'm just saying there's 2 sides to the coin but everyone seems to focus on the poor whilst ignoring (or worse, dismissing as fortunate) the good. We're still 3rd, for me I'd take losing all 8 of our derby matches in the regular season if it meant we qualify for the playoffs, because that's what really counts come May, right?

Sorry, no white flag waving here. If I was I wouldn't have bothered going yesterday, unlike many others who seem to me to be the ones waving white flags having surrendered to the belief that there's no hope until JDT is gone. I wasn't delighted that we didn't win L1, but I was delighted that we got promoted straight away (which we all knew was the objective) & didn't languish there for 2, 3 or 4+ seasons like many other clubs have of similar stature to us. We're in the top 3 and have been for 2+ months. We're ahead of 2 of the 3 relegated clubs with parachute payments, ahead of more than a dozen city clubs with bigger gates / income than us. To my mind JDT is going for it, whilst managing his limited resources. Whether the club backs him this window we'll see, but if it doesn't that's not his fault. Who said yesterday's game was inconsequential? Straw man argument there because I didn't. You say every match is must win, sorry that's not true. Every match is could or might win, some are should / expect to win, but only games with critical outcomes arising from their result are truly must wins (cup games, play-offs, the last half dozen games in promotion or relegation battles, or when a loss in that games make something unachievable, like going up or staying up). No need for the not-so-sly dig at the end either, we're only expressing points of view on a message board, backed up by objective stats. 👍

As I said, each to their own but I try to look at things both subjectively as a Rovers fan, as objectively as a realist. What JDT does & what the team / players do game to game is not the only thing that impacts the outcome. He's got us far better organised than we were. But it's also injuries, form, opposition, weather, referees, pitch, KO time, luck, all of which conspire on any given day to bring an outcome. I would argue that with us being 3rd after 24 games, he's done far more right than he has done wrong in his brief tenure to date, and has coped better with those variables than 21 other managers in the division.

As I said in the match thread, I'm pretty sure those boos were for the ref, not the team. Look each to their own, but I just don't think the criticism is coming from a place of realism or context. I wish we were steamrollering teams 3 or 4 nil week in week out, but that's not realistic of any team in this division. Look back to the first few pages of this thread. Comments of "he needs cash from the board", "he needs at least 3 windows", "he'll need time to acclimatise & get used to this league", "let's set about rebuilding this squad" etc. No "promotion here we come", "promotion or bust", "I'll give him until Jan 1st, if he's not in the top 2 by then he must be clueless". Why the change in attitude when he had 6 weeks to get to know the squad before the season started, a squad which was shorn of several 1st teamers that had just come off TMs worst ever "death spiral" of relegation form, a much shortened transfer window, has had nearly half a season squeezed into 3 and a bit months with barely any time to train between matches, has had to integrate half a dozen academy graduates into the first team squad, yet is still 3rd in the league?? It baffles me, it really does.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." "Practice makes perfect." Two well known adages that highlight the importance of keeping on plugging away at what you believe in & standing by your principles. Look at what Potter did with Brighton over a period of time, Dyche at Burnley, even Fergie at United way back when. If JDT's approach had us languishing in the bottom third of the table then I could understand this point of view, but that's not where we are is it? Yesterday was a good example of how we can mix it up; playing it around patiently, looking for opportunities, playing through the lines, using longer balls over the top or diagonally, or hoofing it when required. I just don't get the grief he receives, or your conclusion that he clearly doesn't know what he's doing.

OMG, they were for the ref!!!

He had a great game, esp as he was on a yellow since about the 10th minute. I've not read beyond here yet but I hope you've acknowledged since that this was a bit of a hasty point of view.

Every manager near the top of the table plays down their chances in public! Kompany's brief was to get promoted, as was Heckingbottom, neither of them will say they've nearly done it. Arteta has only recently admitted being in a title race and they're a similar distance ahead of City as we are behind top two, having been top all season! I very much doubt that behind the scenes JDT is telling the players "try your best, but don't worry if it's too much, I'm here for 3 years." You could see today, the way he was urging the team to push up on 90 mins, that he shows passion & desire to succeed, but he just doesn't yet have the right raw materials to be able to find a consistency of performance. I think JDT is a victim of his own success to a point, and is also a victim of the stagnation (at best) that has plagued the club from before he arrived. He can't do much more with this squad than have us where we are IMO and, after everything that's gone on at this club in the last decade, if folk aren't tolerant of being in 3rd position at just past the halfway point with a comparatively young, threadbare squad that was tipped by many to be fighting relegation when JDT arrived, then I truly do not understand that rationale.

(Sorry for the delayed reply, I started writing this at HT and have not had chance since then to finish it until now!) Come off it, no league game on 2st(!) of Jan is must win. If we finish 7th then it's an improvement on anything Mowbray achieved in his tenure & in far more difficult circumstances. The brief when he arrived was not to finish top 2 or even top 6, so why is he now being judged against that benchmark? If anything you could argue he's a victim of his own success if this is the sort of OTT reaction that comes from a short run of bad form that sees the top two press ahead whilst we stay at the head of the chasing pack. It's almost like if he had us 8th or 9th with a record like W11 D5 L8, with the 2 defeats to Burnley & Preston being draws, some people would be happier & calling it a solid start to his tenure. Yet that team would be 4 points worse off than we currently are. As for Burnley, let's stop obsessing with them for now; for many reasons that are nowt to do with JDT, right now sadly they're in a different league to us in all but name, so let's just focus on us. On that point, great result today in difficult circumstances. We were comfortably the better side & could've won it more comprehensively, but a win is a win. Many around me were complaining it was not intensive, entertaining or convincing enough, but in context it was a great result. 3rd game in 7 days, the 2nd of which was with 10 men for a half, on a v leggy pitch with another poor ref against an opponent who, albeit bottom 5, had drawn their last 4 and were technically in better form than us. JDT was urging the players to get out faster towards the end but I don't think they had the legs, so it wasn't a tactic of his to sit so deep I don't think. I was a bit concerned at changing formation when JRC went off but we needed Travis' steel in the middle so when JRC went off there was sense & logic to switching to 3CBs & wingbacks. We lost some momentum but never really looked in trouble. A good time now to give some rest to Ayala, Gally, BBD, Pickering & Dack, to bring in the Whartons, Edun, Mola, Hirst & Markanday etc. for the cup next weekend.

That doesn't make it a must win game though; to say it does is hyperbolic in the extreme & unnecessarily adds pressure to a situation which is far from as dire as some would have us believe. Anyway, Happy New Year all the same! 🙂🎆

Short memory here, the death spirals under Mowbray were so named for a reason! I get the frustration of the last few games, but overall this squad & backroom team, given the challenging situation that existed when JDT walked through the door, have exceeded expectations, have they not? It's not fair to say that all the wins are fortunate and the defeats well deserved. No team has been promoted or relegated on 1st Jan. JDT has a huge task on his hands and won't get everything right, nor will he turn us into the perfect team in a few months. The club is working with a budget of peanuts behind the scenes. A bit of a reality check is needed. Someone mentioned tomorrow being a must win game, why put that much pressure on a match on New Year's Day?? I'm gonna confidently predict a win. Would be nice to see both Whartons start,and Markanday get a run out too to see what he can do, but whatever happens tomorrow I do believe that JDT has more of a clue what he is trying to achieve than most people seem willing to give him credit for.

I was definitely entertained on Thursday in the first half and so was everyone else imo, there was not a murmur of discontent at half time about any aspect of the performance. If we can produce football like that regularly, with the squad we have plus some decent January additions, then there's no reason we can't stick around the top 6, where none of us thought we had a chance of being back in July. Folk are way too impatient nowadays, give the guy a break.

I'm quite happy with that lineup. There's 4 first team regulars with decent experience, (Travis, Hedges, Szmodics & Scott W) plus 5 young talents looking to impress, plus Hirst & Pears. I think that's about right given the context. As for Forest,a strong team in terms of the players but nothing to be scared of & they'll likely be a bit rusty.. I'd expect them to win but we'll give a good account of ourselves I reckon

I still can't believe this is even being discussed anywhere. Were 3rd in the league & 1 game off a cup QF, with a young thin squad which he had a little over 1 month to get to know before the season kicked off, and the games have come thicker & faster than ever before. He's new to the division and has had half a transfer window in which to improve the squad. He has to be given more time to fashion the squad & style of play he was brought into the club for, surely?? Otherwise what was the point of appointing him in the 1st place!

I'm giving it a miss today, it's usually an hour's drive for me which last season took nearly 3 hours, only to get within 500yds of Ewood for it to be postponed. I can't afford to waste that amount of diesel this year!

That was dire. Got it all wrong. First proper cock up for me from JDT, we shouldn't be putting in a performance like that in game 21 when there's so much riding on it. Overall he's been excellent so I'm not going to go ballistic on him, but he needs to admit that was completely unacceptable from everyone involved, barring TK. 5 weeks to the next match is a long time to wait for a chance of redemption.