Indeed, would like to echo Stuart's sentiments, Merry Christmas to all and don't let the football ruin your festive ribaldry. Lol.

Actually, we are, but it's only when we have a dangerous break or situation on or have the ball in our own half, we pass the ball interminably sideways and backwards until the opposition have recovered their shape and any danger is gone.

Errr..... he isn't, he is well past hs prime and is a mid table Championship player at best. Sorry, for the 7m spent on Brereton I'm not having it that thete was no -one either at home or abroad that wouldn't have been an upgrade on Graham if only in terms of being nearer his physical peak. I suspect the problem was that we misjudged the market in the summer, went back to the owners for more money at the last minute then started trying to throw money about like water at anyone who would entertain us just before the window shut.

Tony: "We're not used to seeing us lose at home". Me: "We're not used to seeing us win at home either!".

You keep making this assumption that BB is on very low wages. May or may not be the case. Furthermore you keep trying to justify the signing on the fact that other Clubs with bigger budgets may have committed to spending more on other players. That's irrelevant. You can only judge our situation relative to OUR budget and the fact is 70% of the transfer budget was splurged on a player who after half a season has yet to make a start. Even if he'd only cost £1m and was on 5k p.w. if he'd never started or impressed off the bench it would still be a waste of money. Still blame the manager rather than the player for the situation unless and until he is given an extended chance to shine from the start in his natural position and fails to take it. Hope you got your pressies wrapped. Merry Christmas.

We did need at least one, maybe even two strikers but ones who the manager would be prepared to put straight into the team. I think we all expected Armstrong to do a bit better, but ideally we needed a new first choice striker as well allowing Graham to fulfill the role of reliable back up.

Sod it. If we're going to go down, let's go down in flames. I'd like to see us stop humping the long ball up to Graham and start playing the ball cleverly into channels for the likes of Armstrong and Brereton to run onto. I'd go Raya Nyambe Mulgrew Lenihan Bell Palmer Reed Rothwell Dack Brereton Armstrong .....but I suspect TM will be ultra cautious and I wouldn't be surprised to see him pack defence and midfield and maybe even come up with some weird formation without an out and out striker like at West Brom or Preston.

I hope we don't regret the decision to give TM a new long term contract. It would have been more than adequate to keep him on a one year rolling deal with handsome performance related bonuses imo. I wasn't comfortable when TM was instrumental in landing Waggott (with whom he's worked before) the Chief Executive's job at Ewood. Waggott gets the job, gives Mowbray a new long term deal and in the meantime suggestions are starting to emerge that the manager might be acquiescing to signings being brought in who might not be his choice. All feels a bit too cosy to me.

You're making yourself look a bit silly now, it doesn't really matter whether the fee is payable up front or is spread over the life of the contract, it still has to be paid - there isn't a "you don't have to pay us if he's crap" option. As things stand there doesn't seem to be much defence in favour of the Brereton signing. Either he was TM's choice in which case it looks like a bad signing up to press and it's even more inexplicable why after half a season he has never handed him a league start. Or he was brought in by someone else as a long term investment and whilst not TM's choice he has gone along with it. If the latter is the case then that might have been ok in theory if we had had say £35m to spend and £28m had been spent on players who went straight into the first team and 20% of the budget had been allocated to a development punt. There's no way the manager should have been agreeing to 70% of the summer transfer budget being spent on a speculative punt on a player who wasn't his own personal choice though.

If he does make it to the Premier League one day he'll be able to wave at us yo-yoing between the Championship and League 1 with Evans and Smallwood in midfield.

At the moment it feels like Palmer might be sent back or recalled in January and anyone else who comes in would have to watch from the bench as the team of Raya Nyambe Mulgrew Lenihan Williams Reed (out of position) Smallwood Evans Bennett (or Conway) Dack and Graham plod on until the end of the season irrespective of form or results. Thank god for the momentum created by winning promotion last season. It carried us along early on and we should have enough points in the Bank to survive. Things are starting to remind me of the relegation season though. TM came in and steadied the ship and we fleetingly got our head above water. Then we went much too negative and were trying to nick a result here and there and went on a seven game winless run when victories were required. With two games to go we had no option but to be more adventurous and won them both but by then it was too late and we went down on goal difference. I get the impression TM would stick with his "favourites" too long as well. Luckily we should be ok this season.

Only one person to blame if that is indeed the case. The manager for agreeing to pay a huge fee for him, thereby presumably leading him to believe he would be a key player for us this year, then fteezing him out by refusing to hand him a League start, then when he does get an occssional few minutes, playing him out of position.

Thanks. Normally I'd say two of our main failings are we don't press but sit off and when we have the ball we indulge in too much sideways and backwards passing but it seems from what everyone says the overall performance wasnt that bad.

Thanks. The stats also say we only had 39% possession but I'll believe you!

Ended up missing today's game but the bbc live stats say they had 2 goals ruled out and we only had one shot on target so we can't have had them under that much pressure? Our home form has been terrible. Re: Palmer met him after the disabled supporters do (nice lad) and he said his best position was as a number ten behind the striker. So bearing in mind we already had Dack it strikes me as either poor scouting or he was signed as insurance in case Dack was sold. Strap yourselves in. Could be a bumpy second half to the season.

That was my thought when I first heard the stuff about aiming for gradual improvement and being on a slow burn long term plan etc. Improving slowly sounds all right in theory but only works if hardly anyone else is improving at all. I'm not sure how you can plan to improve gradually, if everyone is improving faster than you are then the reality is you're moving backwards. You can't control what happens elsewhere but imo you have to try and improve as much as you possibly can at any given point and hope that that takes you forward overall. Nor can you overlook windows of opportunity just because you're doing a bit better than you thought and they don't fit in with your original strategy - they may never come round again , or at least not for a very long time. On the other hand, if you're promoting the idea of a long term plan, you can get away with all manner of mediocre performance in the meantime if you can convince everyone it's all part of some grander long term design and everything's on track etc. Then 5 years on you realise you're no better off after all except in our case we'd have added another 100m to the overall debt.

Did TM not go on record as saying he was having to calm the owners' expectations down?

If we're giving him a contract he can prove his fitness with us. Anything else is completely pointless.

Tend to agree Stuart, and probably shows why TM isn't the man to take us forward in the long term. What's all this rubbish about trying to "finish near the top end of the table"? That is so vague it could cover anything from doing well down to aspiring to finish somewhere near 12th. A manager with real ambition would be knocking the owners door down right now demanding the signings that would give us a chance of sneaking into the play offs given whilst we still have a mathematical chance of same and try and ensure against plummeting down the table in the second half of the season which we could well do if we continue our recent run of form of five points from the last five games. There's no guarantees in anything of course. But you have to try. This might be the closest we get to the playoffs for quite a long time. That said TM hasn't helped his cause by agreeing to spend £7m on a player he won't start.

Signing Chapman then immediately loaning him out again would be absolute madness and completely pointless. Signing him and then immediately putting him in the team, now that would be a major step forward, bearing in mind we are desperately short of pace and width. Gallagher - meh. Ordinary at best.

I would be far more reassured if he was the manager's choice but he deliberately hasn't been handing him a start because we have to pay a hefty premium every time he starts prior to signing permanently. .......But the plan is to unleash him all guns blazing in January. Somehow I cant see that being the case though. I'm not at all easy with the suggestion that players are being brought to the Club not exactly completelyagainst the manager's wishes but who wouldn't be his own preferred choice.

Ah, so now we're straying into "not the manager's choice" territory for which I've been branded a conspiracy theorist whenever I've put it forward as a possible reason why he wasn't getting a chance. I have to agree with blueboy and blue bruce on this though, if he does flop we'll get very little back and his value isn't going to increase by sitting on the bench alone.

So even by your own estimate, for the overall cost of Brereton, we could hypothetically have spent about £4m on an established player who was on around 25k p.w. I have no objection in principle to either sort of deal but if we'd gone down the established player sort of route and he hadn't started a game either, he'd have been a complete waste of money as well. I really don't know what the argument is here. People are trying to defend the indefensible and I'm not having a pop at the player, he hasn't had a chance and we don't know if he's any good or not. I'm talking about making a major outlay by our standards and then not using the player.

Thank you Stuart.

Oh ok. Not certain if I get it even after that's been explained but I'll go with it. Don't rely too much on rubbish posted on random websites or you could find yourself in a sticky situation.