Do you think so? I thought he'd put a really strong side out in the circumstances. Playing well but not taking your chances is a characteristic of sides that generally end up in trouble as has already been pointed out by jim and others this season.

Haven't we loaned him out? (Fisher)

Looking at the replay of the second, Leutwiler should have done a lot better with that. Fairly nothing shot into the middle of the goal which only curled into the corner at the last minute.

That's the problem though for the latter five if Smallwood and Evans get over-run in midfield, it's only really fair to judge them playing with the first choice midfield.

No, he doesn't at all. In fact on certain things the worse something goes and the more the criticism mounts the more he seems to dig his heels in and persist with it despite the fact it clearly doesn't work and we have better options. Bennett getting an extended run at RB being the latest example.

They were glaring long before then, every time they turned out together, but we got away with it in League one.

I haven't seen him this season yet Paul, when he was here in League 1 I thought he looked absolute quality and head and shoulders above anyone else we had bar Dack and should have walked into the team, especially at home where we have always struggled to break teams down under Mowbray. Yet the manager more or less completely overlooked him then and has completely overlooked him since re-signing him permanently making spurious excuses about him not being fit enough to play when he landed in January. Fairly bizarre for me. Once again he walks into the team for me if it's a choice between him or a central striker attempting to fill in out wide. I really don't understand either why you you would re-sign a player you clearly don't fancy and will do practically anything to avoid selecting.

Yep. Let's have it right, ever since Dack joined the Club it's been a case of if he plays particularly well or even not particularly well but nevertheless pulls us out of the **** with a moment of magic we do ok. If he doesn't we don't. And two years on it appears absolutely nothing has changed.

Best since Botham's Ashes in 1981 at the same ground. One day cricket doesn't even come close. Helped having a tame umpire though!

Thanks for that. I enjoyed that post. Reading that article by his brain dead girlfriend about her "contributing" a lot to Towie as if she were discovering a cure for cancer was beginning to make me question my sanity.

Certainly do. Certain fans can't tolerate the idea that other fans might possible have a different point of view to their own and waste no time in whinging about it!

To be fair I do think he is absolutely top drawer but for whatever reason he hasn't been at his best for some time. Be a real shame if he doesn't fulfill his potential and becomes a run of the mill player at this level.

I might have meant the wrong international break. Imo he's been well below par since the break prior to Preston away last season. In her own words they split their time between Essex and Manchester. Souness wouldn't have allowed it, the players were generally expected to rest if they weren't training or playing and I remember Ken Beamish telling me the players needed permission if they wanted to do the most innocuous of things such as make a brief appearance for charity etc.

Arguably Dack hasn't performed anywhere near his best since after the first international break last season. At a time when Waggott is spouting claptrap about extracting "marginal gains" from stuff like installing a viewing gallery for the Academy lads, it's fair game to question whether your star asset should be commuting non-stop between Manchester and Essex just so his girlfriend can keep her face in down there!

"We split our time between Manchester and Essex anyway". Surely that's not ideal to start with either?

We'll have to disagree on this, I'd say that being in or being very close indeed to finishing in the play offs should be the minimum expectation. I've been watching us a long time and in my experience you don't usually improve gradually bit by bit over a number of seasons. In any given season a certain manager with the requisite talent can bring in and get rid of the right players and everything just suddenly clicks irrespective of what's gone on before.

JFHC. Maybe I'm being old fashioned but the idea of Dack or indeed any professional footballer appearing in that sort of sheeeite is beyond ridiculous. The Club need to nip that firmly in the bud straightaway if there isn't some sort of clause in his contract precluding him from certain types of other activity.

Surely top 6 isn't an unrealistic expectation? What's the point in turning out at 3p.m. if that isn't your minimum goal? Mowbray has had 3 transfer windows to make us competitive in that respect and try and have us knocking on the door of top six. You're probably right when you say the squad isn't a top six squad but should that turn out to be the case there's only one person to blame for that, the manager. Recruitment has been generally poor, players haven't been cut loose that should have been cut loose because they were rewarded with unnecessary contract extensions and imo when he has had decent players at his disposal he has either ignored them completely or not got the best out of them, Nyambe, Brereton, Palmer, Rothwell, Chapman etc. Imo there's absolutely no point whatsoever in aiming for for a marginal improvement in last year's 15th position. You might as well have a target of finishing 21st as if you neither go up nor down, positions 7th to 21st are largely irrelevant. Obviously unless we completely imploded it would be unlikely to be held against the manager if we narrowly failed to make the playoffs on goal difference by a point or so. But nevertheless the play offs should be the minimum target before a ball is kicked. There's no point in us being here and you're just fulfilling fixtures otherwise.

Two efforts on target at home isn't acceptable either. The defence has been uncharacteristically stingy the last three games but I wouldn't bank on that continuing and the problem will come when we start letting a few in again. I would say it's fairly obvious we'll get nowhere with Graham up top and Gallagher out wide. Imo the manager will have to try and get a tune out of Dack and one of the strikers other than Graham through the middle and bring in Chapman and/or Rothwell to create some fluency out wide.

Disappointing, typical of us over the last 5-6 seasons really, every time we look like we're getting somewhere we flatter to deceive.

Nice quip by Mowbray but in all seriousness I hope he recognises that he Travis is a proper player who gives the ball away on occasion because he is always available and tries to make things happen as opposed to a fraud like Evans who does the minimum possible and only passes the ball two yards sideways to the nearest player.

Never said Bell is the greatest left back in the world but he's more than decent enough to fill in for a game or two imo. Graham is now completely immobile and somewhat past it. People don't like facing up to the truth because he's been a popular player since he's been here and has done ok here on the whole apart from the season we got relegated. Hopefully though he can provide reasonable back up or a different option for the last 25 mins or half an hour of games although he was very poor when he came on in that role on Tuesday night.

Probably the best business we did over summer was tying Travis down to a new deal. Doesn't mean that much if a really big Club were to come in but at least it prevented him leaving immediately.

He's right though. A draw isn't good enough. We have to win our home games.

We don't have a one in two striker.