I was right with you until that bit in bold. Before he came in we were heading for relegation from the Championship and we needed Warnock. Instead we got Mowbray and relegation was assured. He was then given the biggest budget in the division and got us back up at the first attempt. Kudos and he earned his chance in the Championship. He didn’t live up to the hype last season and (like Waggott with ST sales) didn’t make the most of the momentum we had. We have now slipped backward since last Summer and our squad is going to need a complete rebuild in the Summer and another full season to gel, then the season after to see if that rebuild has worked. I don’t believe that this will be successful and I fear a second relegation. Not this season but next.

On a similar note, I’m looking forward to our late surge when we “just run out of games”.

It can’t be that lucrative, we can’t afford to buy players - and even if we could Mowbray won’t pay them the market rate. Although I think you are right that it is due to commercial factors. What a club we have become. I just hope they don’t name the training pitches. If they can’t do it right, don’t bother.

Didn’t they work out the process before naming the BBE and DE stands?

Seemingly, despite Venkys money and ambition, yes, FFP is something we need to worry about. The person responsible needs to be removed from their position. Whoever decided that we should gamble our future on two lads and play the out of position needs to be replaced. Our manager said, and continues to say, that top six is the aim yet we are woefully under resourced to cope with injuries - it is by some miracle that our defence isn’t in tatters. That’s just not realistic but it continues to be the message coming out of the club. The only mugs falling for the rhetoric are in Pune. We are continuing to reward failure and the one person in place to ensure that targets are met is allegedly waiting for the manager to come to him to tell him he’s had enough before he will even begin looking for a replacement. Chuck in the Bennett situation and we are captainless, leaderless, and rudderless - and have no contingency plan.

“Cocker” is a term that a really old person would say to a youngster. If you want to be friendly then I’d go with “lads”.

Even worse when the fans are then blamed for not cheerfully handing over their hard-earned like good “committed” supporters. Self-defeating.

The River Darwen is a mess today apparently.

There will always be an excuse. She says ‘over-simplification’, I say ‘Occam’s razor’. If I spend my entire monthly wage on garden gnomes and then can’t afford my mortgage and utility bills, do I get to blame market forces for high prices and my employers for not paying me enough? Or am I oversimplifying?

Some good points, well put. For all the sympathy Mowbray is now getting (from those you’d expect tbf) it is baffling why he continues with the ineffective approach of having strikers out wide. This is his decision, and it isn’t getting the best out of our two most expensive players. Is he afraid to upset Armstrong? But your last paragraph is the most important. Williams once made a correlation about the PL table mirroring the wage bill which was about right but it doesn’t mean the whole football league works like that, or that there aren’t exception, e.g. Burnley, Blackpool. It isn’t the teams with this biggest budgets who get promoted from the Championship - plenty of parachute sides have struggled - it is the teams with the best managers.

Let’s hope your suggestion is taken up.

Why is Mowbray the right man to be given that opportunity having created our FFP problem?

I stopped reading right there. By no measure are Rovers a small club.

I don’t think you get banned for having an opinion. Not looking for an argument either, just noting that you would not be defending Mowbray’s record (£12m and never got in the play-offs) if he was the manager at any other Championship club. I think it comes down to expectations. Leeds “big”, high expectation; Rovers “small”, doing the best they can. It’s a real bug-bear of mine that our own fans see us this way.

We certainly aren’t. We lack ambition, strategy and class. But folk talk a good game though.

“We’ve done all we can”

Mowbray has had more that £6m each season in the Championship and can’t get into the top 6 for 5 minutes! It seems your yardstick is set differently for Rovers and every other team. The number of other clubs’ managers you’ve said should be sacked over the years!

They won’t be naming the stand after him, Matty. Waggott’s comments said everything for me. I expect he will be looking for a new RFS first.

Really sad to see Tony like that yesterday. Seemed so unsure of himself - there is also footage from in the tunnel where he is being shown his own name on the legends wall. You can see why his daughter said it isn’t the same man.

Funny watching the Mowbray comments (from 8:58). We agree quite a bit on the match analysis, we just disagree on who is responsible. He says the players (and their game management) and he singles out JRC (while curiously defending him, by saying “he’s no Dack”), I say him. Mainly due to his tactics but also for where we have ended up since he wasted our transfer budget. It seems like he is happy to pay well over the odds to other clubs but wants to maintain a wage structure to keep players happy. Surely he should be bringing in the best players he can and make the others hungry for more? It’s a false economy to pay £12m to Forest and Southampton to save £2m on the wage bill.

Good post. When Mowbray does finally leave everyone will say the same thing: “Do you remember when we used to have Gallagher trying to cross the ball to Armstrong?”

Disagreeing while sticking to the debate topic. “The adults are talking“ amongst other barbs crosses that line and you certainly don’t like it when anyone points out that you don’t attend matches.

“Unless Tony comes to me and says he’s had enough...”

He is under even less pressure than before to get results. Must be a nice job. His longest gig in football.

Anywho... Today’s game. Dire. We are back where we were under Bowyer. Trying to keep a 0-0 at all costs and then when that is lost we throw the kitchen sink at trying to get a 1-1. You do wonder though - in a game where Mowbray fans will say “they are promotion candidates we can’t possibly expect to win” - could he have thrown caution to the wind and gone out to try to get a goal before they scored? In a division where “anyone can beat anyone” and two wins separate 8th from 15th we do seem to think ourselves as huge underdogs and set up accordingly. Cant fathom why we brought off Armstrong and started pinging balls out wide left to Gallagher. Surely it should have been Gally off and Arma out wide? A lot of huffing and puffing but no real end product. Limit passing was woeful. The only real gripe would be the offside flag for our disallowed goal in the second half. Didn’t look offside when the ball was played. Maybe Tony could point to that and feel a little aggrieved but then we wouldn’t have had a mildly exciting last 5 minutes.