RevidgeBlue

Good post. I'd add Raya Travis and Reed (if he signs) to the players who are good enough going forward and if they were ever given a chance you'd hope Rothwell and Chapman would stake a claim as well. It really doesn't help that the players who imo need clearing out were nearly all given new deals. The owners must be looking at that and the £7m spent on Brereton and wondering what's going on.

At the very most, Graham should be an option for half an hour off the bench or the occasional start in case of injuries next season . He should be able to cope with and play at 100% doing that. Evans is a shocking player in my book, not that much of an upgrade on Lowe. You might be able to make a case for giving Mulgrew another 12 months as back up, however there's no value at all in keeping Bennett around, he's simply not good enough either.

The absolute bare minimum priorities in the summer are a commanding specialist centre back, a top class central midfielder and a top striker to replace Graham. That won't be cheap in itself as top strikers at this level have gone for £10m plus. If we can land Reed for CM that would help but if we lose him and Rodwell then the squad suddenly starts looking even worse on quality than it is now. For me if we lose Dack as well we might as well give up now and Im not sure why TM has suddenly started floating the idea of selling Dack because if there is money available like he says (and I was told) then that shouldnt be necessary. That's the bare minimum required and ideally we obviously need pace and ingenuity on either flank as well so instead of wasting the rest of this season with the same tired old faces TM should be trying to integrate Rothwell and Chapman into the starting eleven to see if they can save us some money in the summer. Big clear out of the old guard also needed. Williams, Mulgrew, Evans, Conway, Bennett and Graham need to go for me. I don't really trust TM to do any of this, I don't think he'll be able to bring himself to be ruthless enough with many or any of his favourites and I fear we'll start off with the right sort of soundbites but as the summer goes on and nothing much is happening we'll start hearing the same sort of excuses about players' demands being excessive that we did last summer.

Now now lads, don't be "negative.' We held out for a whole 16 mins and it's only nine defeats in thirteen if we lose!

About what? If it's about us under Mowbray you'd better include the manager in that as he now seems to be agreeing with what I've been saying since the summer.

Yep, Tony also needs to be dissuaded from the notion that we could sell Dack, bring 3/4 players in and the side would be better as a whole. Never works, managers always think they are a genius in the transfer market and can offload the best player, get jiggy in the transfer market and pull a few rabbits out of hats but it rarely works and usually ends in disaster. EIT may quote Gordon Lee selling Tony Field at me at this point but its the exception that proves the rule. The way to be successful is to get Dack back to his best and add more good players round him.

Have had most of the above confirmed by a friend's son who went. So the manager, who's been in football all his life and who is paid thousands of pounds a week is only just coming round to realising what was obvious to most fans in the summer and who could all have told the owners this six or seven months earlier for nothing. Marvellous. It's only 3 weeks or so ago he said he wasn't bothered we hadn't added in January because he was happy with the squad. Maybe he can an will revamp the squad in the summer, but at best it's been a wasted season. At worst it will be too difficult to rebuild in one window and next season will be a desperate struggle.

Oops ok, missed that completely. Thanks. I think you have to take a view on it either way now. The problem with "reassessing in summer" is that it may be too late by then. The summer window will be crucial imo and we simply can't afford to get it wrong (again).

Unless it's me, at least 2 of the 4 poll options don't make any sense whatsoever? "No he hasn't for a long time" Eh? "Just only just" Just only just what? Presumably the final option refers to backing him. If there was an option that said "Would reluctantly let him go because can only see things getting worse if he remains" then that would be nearest my position I have little doubt however that he won't be sacked barring something fairly catastrophic so that being the case I hope he guts the squad in summer, builds something fresh and exciting and proves me wrong.

Agreed, but players who could come straight into the first team were exactly what we needed last summer and in January as well and nothing was done about it, indeed the manager apparently didn't see the need. Will it be any different this summer?

Blimey, they were in a completely different class to us yesterday, and whilst we missed a couple of very good chances right at the end they could and maybe should have scored at least 5 or 6. 2-5 or 2-6 certainly wouldn't have flattered them.

Agree on a centre half but I'd say a top striker was far more of a priority than a LB myself, I don't think Bell is anywhere near as bad as many make out on here. Williams on the other hand......... Whilst the summer is going to be absolutely massive in terms of rebuilding the squad and our short to medium term future we might not be looking too bad if we could give the team a spine by bringing in a commanding centre half, quality central midfielder and top striker. Next season If we could line up something like Raya Nyambe Lenihan (New CH) Bell Reed (or NewCM) Travis Chapman Rothwell Dack (New main striker) ... then you've got the nucleus of a promising side. (Spacing gone wrong sorry. Obviously Chapman, Rothwell on either flank and Dack behind main striker)

If the players aren't happy for any reason I'd have thought it was more likely to be because many of them are out of position. Of the front men only Graham gets to regularly start in his preferred position. Armstrong and Brereton are both out of position imo on either flank as was Samuel before them. God knows where Dack is meant to be playing at the moment, he was like a third centre half bringing the ball out today. In midfield Reed is out of position out wide and in defence arguably our most promising talent in Nyambe keeps getting chopped to accomodate Bennett playing out of position at RB and on the other side Bell can't get any real consistency going because he's in and out of the team to facilitate the abysmal Williams getting game time in a role he's clearly not comfortable with, he spends more time in his favoured centre back position than where he's meant to be at LB.

When we got sruffed by Preston and Wigan, some people did comment that we played as if something had happened behind the scenes during the international break and it looked like the players weren't playing for the manager. Since then we've had a couple of good performances and thankfully we managed to put those 4 consecutive wins together but overall results have been very poor, it's only seventeen points from the last seventeen games now.

Today I thought Reed was very poor first half, perhaps he is becoming completely disheartened with constantly playing out of position out wide, but I also thought he played much better second half playing more centrally alongside Travis.

Not sure what the answer is. It might seem harsh to call for his head the season after winning promotion but i can honestly only see things going badly South if he stays mainly due to his reluctance to ditch his established favourites and to try to improve the side. Does anyone trust him to restructure the team in summer even if funds are available?

Not sure what he expected after announcing we hadnt achieved what we wanted this season with nearly one third of it still to go. Tbe most blatant invitation to lay down tools imaginable. Nothing new we didn't know arising out of today. Nyambe and Bell need to be in either full back position, we need a proper centre half, Travis needs to play, we could do with adding Reed in summer and him and Travis need to be the CM pairing. Dack playing way too deep recently. Williams Bennett Evans Graham Conway not good enough. Get rid in summer. Will Tony do it? Doubt it.

We don't want another Graham type though, if we're going to improve the style of play, (and I would say the results) we need a completely different type of player who isnt as one dimensional. Or failing that someone who is one dimensional but a lot more prolific and who regularly registers 20 + League goals a season. Whether BB can be that man remains ver much to be seen admittedly but he's hardly being helped by the manager constantly playing him out of position.

No. If we needed to win the last six games to stay up, he wouldn't be saying "Ah well it looks like we're going to go down, that's just the way it is" he'd be saying that the team would be fighting tooth and nail to the very last to try and pull off an unlikely escape. The manager may think privately (as we all do) our play off hopes have gone. But he shouldn't be hoisting the white flag in Public with 14 games to go as that is sending a clear message to the players that it doesn't matter if we stink the place out between now and the end of the season as we wouldn't be going up anyway. The message coming out from the manager is "Relegation isn't acceptable, any thing else is." and it's a very uninspiring one. He also doesn't give the impression that he has any desire whatsoever to improve the side from the level it is at now. He gives the impression he merely seems to just want to manage and look after players he already knows and likes and gets on with.

What absolutely bizarre comments from TM. Hypothetically, if we were to win the next five or six games then we would still have a sniff of the play offs but those comments sound like the green light for the players to take the rest of the season off. "We haven't done as well as we've liked but it doesn't matter, it's "where we're at" so we might as well give up for the rest of the season." Hardly going to have people flocking to the ground for the rest of the season or queueing round the block to renew their ST is it?

Similar at Sheffield United away in the first half. Came short for the ball and linked up very well with Travis, Reed and Palmer. He needs a goal or two desperately. Might work wonders for his confidence. For that though he needs minutes on the pitch and he probably won't get the chance the way he's been utilised so far this season

The lad needs a run of nine or ten games up front before we can decide if it's a complete waste of £7m or not. Not out of position on the wing. Not dropping him again either after one game as soon as he doesn't score or as soon as Danny Graham's aching bones recover sufficiently for him to turn out for an hour in the next match.

2 questions: First, What do you class as midtable? I'd call it 10th to 12th. Second, Our form since Preston reads W5 D2 L9. 17 points from 16 games. Does that not concern you? Bit more than a blip isn't it?

Good post. It doesn't bear thinking about if what money we do have has already been spent on the players who were given extensions.

Each to their own but Im astounded anyone could think that. The guy can hardly move or get off the ground.