I’m not sure I understand why Sam Allardyce (35% win record) is venerated for his ability to grind out results whereas JDT (64% win record) is lucky, naive, still learning, suicidal etc etc Our back 5, when we defend a lead, is as strong a line up as I can remember - hardly a mistake in them. The way we seamlessly switch formation to defend a lead shows how well drilled everyone is. Even Kaminski, with his amateur Sunday league coach, is miles better this season. 14 leads seen through to 14 wins is a staggering statistic.

We might not like it but shutting up shop when ahead has a 100% success rate for us this season.

Is it just me that thinks this season he has regressed somewhat? Loses the ball a lot more and when he stays rooted on the left wing we never do well. If this was his breakout season, no one would be talking £20 million.

Not sure I agree about the sacking bit: you’d need normal owners for that, and us being second from bottom, not from top. He’s here for the long haul IMO.

JDT’s decisions only make sense to me if you take literally what has been said multiple times: “project” and “win promotion to stay promoted” (I paraphrase). ”Project” tells me there is no pressure to get promoted this year - none. “Win promotion to stay promoted” means not doing a Norwich/Watford and accepting you will definitely go down the year after, but also not doing a Forest to spend £150 million on a new team and get relegated anyway before going bust. These two combine in my mind to mean that his every decision is predicated on building a much better team than we have now that can play a style that will survive in the Premiership. Hence the focus on one/two touch, which, when it does work, results in some really good goals. But, when it doesn’t work, means not that he doesn’t have a plan B, but that he doesn’t want to go to one. Playing to the strengths of the current squad makes no sense if you don’t see the bulk of the current squad making the step up - then we’d just be Norwich/Watford. Throwing Dack on makes no sense because you won’t stay in the Prem by throwing Dack on. Maybe he even believes that our youngsters, who will make the step up, will learn more from the adversity of Wigan and Coventry than from booting it up to Ayala and Dacky to scab a goal. Even lunatics think what they do makes sense, you just have to see the world as they do to figure out why. Add in the supreme confidence/arrogance he must have to have had his playing career, and you have a man who most certainly is not for turning.

There’s nothing random about JDT’s selections, just a plan we have to figure out once the game gets going.

I wonder if JDT has a problem with Bucko’s playing style and he’s having to learn a new way of playing. Last season, the three things he did well were winning the ball high up the pitch, running past players with the ball (gliding more than running) and ambitious long passes. I don’t think JDT is a fan of either of the last two, especially as JB had a tendency to give away possession doing both of them.

I wonder if six league wins in a calendar month is a club record?

You can easily train a player to look, but you can’t train them to see. He also releases the ball a step before opponents expect him to, thanks to that awareness.

Great shift by Vale so far. Surprised to see Dacky, hopefully the Mowbray fiasco brought things to a head.

Three excellent examples in a few mins of why Gallagher will never be a 15-20 goals a season striker.

Seems to be that both Travis and Pickering are tucking in tighter to the centre halves and Brereton and Dolan have the responsibility to track the overlapping player. Morton gets better every game, running the show. Should have been 2-0 with Brereton’s chance.

IMO, with the Mowbray thing and his girlfriend posting to a million people a day that the manager is running a circus, he’s made it impossible for JDT to back down. Falling out with a new boss for whatever reason almost always goes badly. Win or lose tomorrow, He won’t kick another ball for us again.

Actually I might believe that of someone who gets into trouble with the law, doesn’t show up to their community service, and comes within a whisker of being jailed. He has many attributes, but being sensible and thinking things through probably aren’t two of them.

Probably the epitome of what Team First isn’t: on the evening we won to go top, Dack telling the opponent’s manager he doesn’t understand why he isn’t in the team. I’ll be amazed if we see him kick a ball again for us in the league, unless JDT feels like taking Mowbray’s and Olivia Atwood’s advice. Hedges out till after the World Cup is a big concern, have we played well without him?

The manager.

Fabulous find! Can’t imagine Sam Gallagher setting up that first one like The Don did. Both sets of fans mixed in the Darwen End too.

Who knows what’s happening behind the scenes. But if the ONLY things that had happened were his girlfriend’s online posts and the fact he’d been sharing his complaints with an opposition manager, he’d be in big trouble with any manager worth his salt.

My perception is because Dack doesn’t follow instructions, of which there are clearly many from JDT. Against Brizzle, Dack kept coming back to tippy tap with the centre halves and got the hook at half time, probably for the first time in his career.

Who would you have brought on as our 5th best centre half?

Two excellent goals and a top performance by TK. Bit worried by the Hedges injury, looked like it might be not trivial.

Woah, that Wharton hip wiggle totally bamboozled the defender, Duggie-like.

“The manager claims that Dack, who suffered back-to-back ACL injuries 2020-21 and 2021-22, has not reached peak match fitness. But former Rovers boss Tony Mowbray told the press after his Sunderland side’s defeat at Ewood Park that the player claims his physical metrics are the best they have ever been.” I would think both these claims are true, but there has to be something more to it than that Thomasson has been dropping fat hints all along that Dack doesn’t go all out in training, and really who would after those two injuries. From him saying in pre-season that “you can’t be scared” to his Tuesday night Dack comments, all in the context of his “team always first” mantra and his repeated mentioning of players being contracted to do what is best for the team, it seems to me that he responds extremely negatively to any hint of personal entitlement from a player. Or from a player’s WAG.

Even after multiple slo-mo’s from different angles, I wasn’t entirely sure if he’d made contact with the ball, made contact with the player, or the player made too much of it. Shouldn’t be giving penalties when it’s absolutely not clear in real time what happened.

I don’t know why people aren’t raving about the game more, best one I’ve seen for a long long time, from both teams. It had everything! Two excellent goals, lots of fast attacking play, brilliant defending by our back 5, 3 great saves from TK, a melee, a tackle that put the opponent into next week. Loved it - proper football.