You know times are desperate when you're allocating own goals to your underperforming strikers to make them look better.

Gallagher's a poor player imo who is never going to be a prolific scorer but if he is to have any chance at all and at least make a bit of a nuisance of himself he needs to be down the middle. Ditto Brereton I actually think he would offer a lot more than Gallagher if he was given a decent run up front but he's never been given a proper chance in that position and seems to have disappeared off Mowbray's radar altogether.

Yet he signed him. Twice.

Imo Raya definitely should not have been sold. Regardless of that however I think it's beyond any doubt whatsoever that he shouldn't have been allowed to go without a replacement at least as good having been secured. We seemingly just sold him without any real idea of who we wanted to bring in, just assuming we'd be able to get someone but then ended up being surprised by how much decent keepers cost. And ended up with a big useless pudding who makes John Butcher and Alan Fettis look decent and who isn't even our player. (Thankfully as it turns out) Massive mistake which could be instrumental in sending us down.

You'd think no-one else ever got injuries or strains. Run of the mill injury niggles must be absolutely common place and most ex pros seem to be of the opinion that a player is only at 100% fitness for half a dozen games or so a season yet these seem to being held up in advance as a reason why we won't be able to compete with Brentford and if we get any sort of result it's being built up as though it would be some sort of minor miracle. It's absolutely pathetic. The only reference to injuries should be a brief comment that we have a couple of injury concerns and we won't be able to finalise the line up until the outcome of those is known. We have a squad for a reason and there shouldn't be the slightest suggestion that one or two injuries will lessen our chances in the game.

If Chapman is Northwest Counties level goodness know what level Gallagher is in that position. With apologies to the late David Bowie and Harry Chapman. To the tune of Starman: "He had to sign someone so he picked on you Hey that's far out 'cos you know him too Turned on the TV picked you up for a Bob or two Looked out my window saw you on the right If you can sparkle you might play tonight Don't tell old Mogga or he'll get you bogged down inside There's a Starman waiting on the right He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow Tone's mind There's a Starman waiting on the right We'd like the chance to see him but Mowbray thinks he's s***e Let the Rovers use him Or the Club will lose him Let all the children view him".

Exactly, if he does go (and I'd wager we're still some way away from that unfortunately) there's absolutely no way he's just walking away of his own accord from a massive pay off. His advisors will probably negotiate a suitable pay off and the deal will be deemed to be by "mutual consent". Nice work if you can get it. Helps if you've craftily installed your mate as your boss and persuaded him to give you a lengthy new deal in the meantime mind. Working class bloke from the North East indeed.

Those would be my thoughts as well but if he is given anything to spend I'd say a half decent keeper has to be the first priority. If it was possible to send Walton back in January, I'd do it at the earliest opportunity.

I'm not sure what you've seen to lead you to that conclusion, whilst I was watching the 2nd half yesterday I thought it would be no great surprise if I was watching the two teams that finish first and second bottom come the end of the season. If Mowbray stays that is.

I disagree with the negative review on Rothwell anyway, particularly in the first half he was the only one showing any sort of energy or desire to try and make something happen. After the international break the lack of intensity from the rest of them was quite frightening, we looked completely demotivated as though Mowbray had finally completely lost the players with his bizarre tactics. After being comprehensively outplayed by Barnsley in the second half I did wonder at 2-2 if the atrocious result and performance would be enough to seal Mowbray's fate. However as there doesn't seem to be any indication whatsoever he's under any pressure we're probably better collecting the three points. We limp on for the time being.

Can't say Southgate has dealt with this particularly well by saying Sterling will not be considered for selection on Thursday(?) but has allowed him to stay with the squad. There's two ways of dealing with this, either get the two players to sort it out in private and subsequently if both are happy, issue a statement to that effect, or if you feel such behaviour isn't acceptable and you need to make an example and it's only fair on Gomez who imay well have been a completely innocent party then send Sterling home altogether. Don't still have him hanging about the squad, what Southgate has done is neither one thing nor the other

A full on relegation scrap is more exciting than "the battle for 15th"?

Rumour has it we were piddling around with a derisory offer for a loan this season followed by a permanent move. Then Fulham came in offering what Southampton were actually asking. As such we would never have been realistically in the running regardless of what his girlfriend wanted. Offering the vendor Club the going rate for a quality player you really like. Who' ever would have thought it? Our usual modus operandi seems to be to offer a fraction of what the player is worth, hope the vendor Club are daft enough to take it and then act all hurt surprised and complain how impossible the market is when they don't.

Possibly. Other players of all types of background and ethnicity seem to manage without being involved in these sorts of incidents on a regular basis though.

Taking nitrous oxide, missing a plane and turning up for England duty a day late, having a machine gun tattooed on his leg and then complaining about the coverage when it caused a furore in the Press, complaining in general that he's been singled out for unfair attention off the media and now this latest incident with Gomez. He's extremely high maintenance off the pitch to say the least.Thank God Gomez wasn't white.

I've always thought Sterling was a complete knob. Yet the way he's been portrayed in the media of late you 'd think he was Mother Theresa and Gandhi rolled into one.

If it was your own money, would you give Mowbray any money to spend in January? If the owners do entrust him with any more then we still need as a bare minimum exactly what was needed after Raya was offloaded. Quality keeper, experienced no nonsense centre half and a quality main striker. Won't be easy to find in January especially as we seem to find it virtually impossible to get anything over the line even when we have all summer to do it.

Who's Paul Yates?

I do not agree with the personal abuse directed at you above but as a fan's column should your role not be to cast an independent over view of what is happening down at the Club and to call a spade a spade if things are not going well? You'd probably sell more papers or attract more viewers if you told it as it is rather than just accepting everything the manager says without question. There's more of enough from that from Rich Sharpe who probably doesn't want the Club to fall out with the so you can afford to take a more objective stance.

So if we continue to lose matches by the odd goal and get relegated but don't get drubbed by anyone score wise that's ok then? What a load of cobblers. Bit like his post match comment about Leeds' 15 shots on goal not being 'hundreds". He's really struggling to say anything constructive whatsoever now. Once again singling out Nyambe by giving him a back handed compliment but at the same time inferring it's his fault we're struggling is an absolute disgrace. He should have added to that comment 'RN's doing his best but isn't helped by players like Elliott Bennett who are absolutely dog***** every week." Assuming all the players all like each other you do wonder how the treatment of Raya, Nyambe, Brereton, Chapman, Rothwell, and Mulgrew sits with the rest of the squad. It's hard to imagine squad morale is that great when certain players are obviously treated so much more favourably than the rest and at the other end of the scale certain other players are singled out for criticism or frozen out altogether. The more I hear from Mowbray the more I'm becoming convinced we'll go down unless we make a change.

A new man needs to come asap and assess the squad ahead of the January window. Why wait until January to make a decision? By then we'd be struggling to get another manager in before the end of the transfer window which would be another one gone and wasted and we'd be in real difficulty avoiding the drop. We made this mistake in February. TM should have been axed then and a new man been brought in for the last ten games or so to assess the squad and have a clear out and stamp his authority on the squad in summer. By not doing so what could have been a very good campaign in the most mediocre Championship I've seen will instead be at best another wasted season where we've gone backwards and at worst another relegation to League one. I'd take Warnock if he was interested. Not sure what he would make of the attitude of this squad of players though and the relaxed holiday camp "we're aiming to make a challenge for promotion sometime within the next ten years' type mentality which seems to be prevalent. I think he'd be disgusted by both.

Think Hughton comes into the Warnock sort of envelope. Decent manager at Championship level, not really up to it for the Premier League. Would be an upgrade on Mowbray but would probably believe he could still get a bigger job at the moment.

The same as anyone else. Nothing.

Sorry, think this theory is absolute nonsense. It would indeed be naive to think the owners had no input whatsoever into transfers and if they said any major expenditure had to be on younger players with a sell on value that wouldn't surprise me one bit. Strikers are also in general a lot more expensive than defenders so if successive managers have decided to concentrate the majority of a limited budget into forwards that wouldn't surprise me either. I don't believe however that the owners would interfere with transfer policy to the extent of saying you can spend decent money on forwards but not defenders. If the argument was put forward that at times during Venky's tenure the overall budget hasn't been big enough then it would be hard to disagree with that but I actually think TM has been well backed financially since we were relegated. We've also had numerous managers under Venky's stewardship and not one has ever said or hinted that they were prohibited from signing a certain type of player. As far as we know TM wasn't precluded from going after Bauer either, he decided he didn't want to pay Charlton's original asking price and hung around for 12 months hoping to get him on a free before on his own admission cocking up the negotiations with the spiel about Bauer coming in as a squad player. As far as keepers are concerned as well, Walton would presumably be very expensive at his age were we to sign him permanently and if only he was any good. We weren't to know that he would as another poster memorably put it "make Alan Fettis look like Dino Zoff" so that doesn't necessarily tie in with the theory either.

I'll agree up to a point, we need promotion at some point and if we were lucky enough to achieve that it wouldn't particularly matter what the style of football was. Once you go up however you need more than that these days imo. It would be nice to have such problems to worry about I guess.