For me Gallagher is the new Corry Evans. Stealing a fortune off the Club by being one of the top earners whilst conversely being absolutely shite week in week out, month in month out and season in season out. And even more bizarrely being picked by multiple managers. If we're ever to succeed we need to overperform slightly by having eleven players pulling their tripe out and performing to their maximum potential every single game. The Championship is so tight and competitive you can't afford to be carrying any passengers like Gallagher or before him the likes of Bennett, Evans and Lowe et al.

I'm not quite in the JDT out camp yet but I really don't see where we're going with this. We were playing badly even when we somehow found ourselves in second and now results are reflecting performances which is what we anticipated. Gallagher who has been stealing a living since returning to the Club mysteriously finds himself more or less an automatic pick, JRC is back in the first X1, our only credible striker seems to have finally lost interest, Dack's been marginalised and our own young talent in the form of the two Whartons and Phillips can't get any game time. At least Liverpool will be happy when the ordinary Morton returns having played every minute of every game. We'll have "added value" to him all right.

There's always some excuse whether it was under Mowbray or JDT. Fifth defeat in six competitive matches incoming. Plus ca change.

Would prefer it if he did his business on the pitch as opposed to describing his business off it. If we wanted a comedian we could have signed John Bishop.

Absolutely spot on. To continually dismiss unacceptable performances as inevitable and only to be expected because we have a young side is lazy in the extreme and an abdication of responsibility.

I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate.

Oops sorry. Door was shut but not locked as far as I was aware 😳

Morton is bang average for me chaddy. For better or worse I'd rather one of our own youngsters was getting the game time. Gallagher and Hirst simply aren't good enough and no sound of game time will change that. We will never be successful with either of those two as staples in the side.

That didn't work at all for Mowbray and Samba up front didn't work at all for Allardyce. I don't really recall Dalglish putting Hendry up front but if he did that's a bit of an exception as when he first arrived he from Dundee in his first spell at the Club he came as a centre forward. Putting a CH up front isn't really a credible option.

Markanday?

Gallagher and Hirst must be as poor a pair of strikers as we've ever had at the Club at the same time.

Wish we still had him instead of the perennially injured Brittain.

That was woeful. Terrible substitutions as well. All that was needed was Markanday for Gallagher but instead he brought on the useless Hirst and brought off Dack (who had produced the only genuine moment of quality in the entire 90 mins) and thereby cost any limited momentum we had started to build up.

I'm astounded that anyone expected anything different from Hirst bearing in mind he had a record of 0 from 32 at this level before arriving. And to think there was such a heated debate when he signed about whether a loan with an option to purchase at £5m was a good deal or not for us!!

Couldn't make the game tonight, due to work commitments, would have liked to have gone, and very disappointed that we seemingly treated the game as being such a low priority having done so well to get to this stage in the first place! That said think some of the criticism of JDT is a bit OTT, the other fella spent five years and spunked away countless millions of pounds in transfer fees, loan fees and wages getting us precisely nowhere before leaving us with half a starting X1 by the time he left so I think the current incumbent deserves a bit more time before the latest "project" is automatically deemed a failure. We need a win against Sunderland though to justify the eleven changes last night, a defeat and it will be four extremely bad results out of five either side of the WC break.

And after that........?

That would be beyond bizarre. To the extent there's any fuss over Morton I don't see what it's about at all. I'd describe him as average at best and even that may be extremely kind based on recent performances.

Currently I'm finding it hard to disagree with that line of thinking........the main reason I'm prepared to allow JDT a fair amount of slack however is I would still maintain Mowbray** left us in a world of trouble which would take anyone a couple of seasons to sort out. **(Who MP also loved)

The latter quote is very good. Was it Arsene Wenger? Shankly also came out with another cracker which I can't recall exactly but it was something along the lines of his wife complaining that he'd rather watch Everton than take her out to which he retorted that he'd rather watch Tranmere or Tranmere reserves. No doubt MP will manage to find something in that that offends him as well.

I find that a very strange and extremely tenuous comparison to make but it is your prerogative I suppose in your role as the site's resident contrarian as someone else correctly identified.

⅝ Exactly this. The FA needed someone to pour oil on troubled waters after the Allardyce debacle and that's exactly what they got with Southgate. He never says anything controversial, appears to be good at keeping the players happy in a tournament situation and appears to have created an environment whereby players now enjoy playing for England as opposed to it being a chore. That said we have a squad of very talented young players playing in if not the best certainly the most competitive League in the world and are ranked 5th in the World so we SHOULD be reaching the latter stages of tournaments as a minimum expectation. What we need is someone who can make the difference and get us to overachieve slightly by winning something as opposed to consistently coming up short against decent opposition.

For me it's the other way round. England losing is just "meh - shit happens". Rovers: Well it's like Bill Shankly's quip "Football isn't a matter of life and death ' - it's much more important than that".

I think it's fairly relevant to discuss whether the England manager is an elite level manager chaddy. For me Southgate is just another FA blazer albeit the modern touchy feely PC version for the current age. I think the majority of us would have looked at our World Cup wallcharts prior to the tournament and predicted we would top an extremely weak group, win the last 16 game against either Ecuador or Senegal, then go out against France. And that's exactly what happened. I've just heard a stat that Southgate has played 24 games against teams in the top 10 in the Fifa rankings and won only 4 of them. When push comes to shove he just hasn't got it, he could stay in the job until he was 80 and we still wouldn't win anything under him.

Tend to agree on Mourinho but Southgate's had his chance (three of them) and failed Gav. Would he get a job at a top Premier League Club? Do we want to waste our chance with this talented crop of players like we did with "The Golden Generation?"

You could say that about Dack and Adam Wharton as well but I don't think you can argue against the assertion that all three are extremely talented.