Nail hammer, head. Have no idea what Nyambe has done to upset Mowbray, probably won't sign a new deal and who could blame him, but not playing him whilst we've still got him is cutting off our nose to spite our face. Also have never seen what Evans offers, doesn't get stuck in so offers little defensively, and if he gets the ball he either gives it straight back or if there's anyone nearer passes it to them instead. Complete waste of a space in the team, must be a master of convincing some people he's doing something when he's actually doing nothing like Jason Lowe before him.

Why bother? We've never been anywhere remotely near the play offs, let alone promotion in the seven years Evans has been at the Club. We're going well, Mowbray brings him in for two games which we lose, drops him, we win 4-0 away, he brings him back in and we get stuffed at home again. Then he consistently leaves out one of the five best permanent players at the Club who's a RB and instead plays a lad who isn't a RB there. Mowbray’s taking the piss and I'm completely fed up with it now. Groundhog day over and over again.

How did Armstrong manage to miss that?

Thought you'd put a caveat in about how good Reading supposedly were. At least this puts the Nyambe v JRC debate to bed. Or it would do with any normal manager who didn't have his favourites and the odd one he liked to scapegoat.

Talented group of players with no real direction or motivation. Will never ever get anywhere under this manager.

This is a joke. It's almost like Mowbray deliberately sabotaged the team by putting Evans in when we're doing too well. And why isn't Kamisky playing?

Came in, saw kick off, let the dog out, came in 20 seconds later and we were one down! Great equaliser. How the fook does Evans get in again? ?

"Anyone with football knowledge can see" ? Pretentious? moi?

Be that as it may Rhodes at his peak was a far better and more consistent player than Armstrong. Maybe if AA manages to score 80 goals at better than one in two over several seasons in the Championship it might be possible to mention him in the same breath as Rhodes. That said in either case if they were scoring in most games they should be one of the first names on the team sheet irrespective of overall performance. At our level complaining about either is a bit like comparing Messi with Ronaldo and trying to find fault with one or the other relatively speaking.

My thoughts entirely. He sort of had a freer role playing from the middle across to the left hand side and looked a different player to me, far more effective. I thought today we were terrific, looking at the season as a whole I think we've been very inconsistent, exceptional in the three games we've won, very poor against Cardiff, Forest and Watford and good in the game against Bournemouth which we nevertheless managed to lose. Unfortunately you still only get three points for winning four or five nil so we'll have to cut the percentage of poor games right down if we're to challenge. Hopefully we can achieve that greater consistency if the manager continues to pick what most people would consider to be more or less the strongest line up and doesn't succumb to the temptation of starting the likes of Evans and Gallagher again, although personally I much prefer Nyambe to JRC at RB.

Another great assist from BB.

It was £7m but who cares. Sensational play from him for the goal. The £5m we wasted was on Gallagher.

Incredibly sloppy and wasteful half in front of goal, hope we don't come to regret it. Elliot needs to step up a bit, all show and no end product on that evidence. Brereton and Holtby the stand out performers again, but you don't really want Holtby on the end of headed chances. Still not impressed with Armstrong. I'd take 1-0 and no disasters now.

Sloppy passage of play there. Can't understand why Mowbray prefers JRC at RB, think Nyambe is miles better. Edit: BB went down very easily there but we'll take it. Surely even we can't blow it now against 10 men.

Not getting why anyone thought that was a terrific performance or we dominated play at all. Yes, you could argue we were a bit unlucky to go in at HT 2-1 down but I thought we were really disappointing second half, especially after going 3-1 down and only a really good save from Kaminsky and Watford making a hash of a simple chance prevented a 5-1 defeat. Even if Armstrong had scored the soft penalty we were gifted we'd still have been 2-3 down! Holtby had a good game, Brereton looked a bit more like the player he did in the first few games and I thought both full backs played quite well. Elliot had a promising first half before fading out of the game completely in the second. Against that our new keeper cost us a goal with an appalling bit of keeping, both centre halves were poor and our big money acquisition in that position has only lasted two and a half games. Evans is an absolute embarrassment to professional football yet the manager keeps picking him (which in general is actually our biggest problem). Armstrong was atrocious, not for the first time this season, and playing with Evans makes Johnson look a poor player. As one or two other posters have said, this squad just don't have a winning mentality and it probably stems from the manager downwards. When Dolan came on he was drawing three Watford players to him so if the rest of the team were that bothered about getting back in the game they'd have been making themselves available to Dolan and then quickly switching play to take advantage of the space created. Instead we couldn't be bothered and left him to try and win a throw. I thought overall it was dire. If that's a good night I'd hate to see a bad one.

Amen to that.

In reality, the game was probably lost when he selected Evans and Johnson together again. The new Evans and Smallwood. We look to have some decent players, just need the manager to draw it all together. Only six games in and in a Mowbray death spiral already. Probably last a couple more games then when it looks like we'll have to sack him we'll unexpectedly pull out a couple of wins.

Terrible keeping.

Was about to say great play by Nyambe at one end then we conceded ?

Above all else we need the 3 points tonight to get the show back on the road regardless of performance so we'll have to see if it works but...... Mowbray has quickly reverted back to his true colours imo. Couldnt wait to chop Dolan after 2 games in which they were ALL terrible. Conversely, Evans who barely ever has a good game, comes in out of the cold, has a stinker, and retains his place.

As long as Evans is nowhere near the squad I wouldn't be that unhappy. Edit: looks like he is, how the hell does he warrant a place in the side? ?

Might turn out to be our key player. Even more so than Armstrong or Dack in isolation.

We've had all these arguments over the last 2 seasons. What you say is of course correct but another way of looking at it is we're 3 points off it after ONLY 5 games. Extrapolate that over 46 games and....... We're also 3 points off 18th. Massive improvement needed on performance levels shown in the last 2 games. I'd say we need 4 points minimum from Watford and Coventry.

This. Can anyone say we really looked up for it yesterday? We didn't really look that arsed, moving the ball around at snail's pace and standing about completely stationary waiting to receive the ball. We've done exactly the same as in recent seasons, get into a promising looking position then chuck in two terribly lame performances. The new faces may help but there'd have to be a complete overhaul of the general attitude and tempo as well. If you didn't know any better you'd think someone else like Johnson had been in charge of the side for the first three League games and Newcastle and that Mowbray had resumed duties for the last two.

Here we go already, "let's give him until Christmas" etc. Hopefully we won't have played ourselves completely out of contention barring a miraculous run by then. Seemingly we have the players to mount a realistic challenge this season, we just need the manager.