If we finish the season there I will be very happy. I don’t think we will though, on current performances I think we will be further away than last season.

I’m personally not shouting for his head yet, but what were pre-season expectations? Where is an acceptable finish this season? Mowbray failed to deliver a playoff spot last year, which was seen as a failure and we parted company with him (too late for my liking). Why should we be accepting anything less than playoffs this time round? Plenty of JDT’s biggest supporters are delighted with our transfer business. Nyambe, Lenihan and Rothwell apparently aren’t being missed at all and at least 2 have supposedly been replaced with far superior players, so surely anything less than top 6 shouldn’t be acceptable this year? I’d also like to pose this to @chaddyroverstoo as he often makes similar comments. I expect the answer will be “We are third”. Use it while you can, because we won’t be for long. The bar will become lower and lower, just like it did with Mowbray’s staunchest defenders last year.

Buckley’s red card sums up a lot of our players generally. Petulant, snidey, immature, cowardly, undisciplined and moronic. Reminded me a bit of the red Malumbu got for West Brom soon after Allardyce took over there, but at least he had the balls to boot the ball with a bit of force. I don’t think the officials were left with any choice. Better first half, with the goal being far more direct than the way we are being coached to play. Typical second half. It was obvious Boro would be a different beast after half time and after they scored so quickly there was only going to be one winner.

Our manager, sorry, head coach, is literally saying that we aren’t aiming to get promoted. He’s dumbing down expectations at every opportunity. All talk of strategies, projects and journeys is complete nonsense. And our recruitment department need to pull their fingers out. Maybe use their eyes and brains instead of a spreadsheet.

Our current reality is that while we don’t have parachute payments we also don’t have overinflated premier league salaries that would swallow them up. We are subsidised to the tune of 20 million a year by our idiot owners with very few questions asked. We have a category one academy that has paid dividends and provided a large proportion of our first team for a long time, and despite the lies we have been fed over the last couple of years, some of the best training facilities in the league. We have been fortunate to have had several players at this level who score a lot of goals, including one currently. You are absolutely right that competing with the very top teams in this division is a tough task. However, there is no reason we could t mKe the playoffs. Surely being one of the best 26 teams in the country shouldn’t be beyond us? Nobody is demanding promotion, but it should be the aim. A playoff spot would be a good achievement and is realistic. The main barriers to achieving this seem to be lack of accountability and desire.

We need a manager who will win us enough games to get us promoted. That’s should be the primary objective, not an afterthought. Out strategy is failing before our eyes. I’ve pointed out we have found ourselves in a no win situation with Brereton - unless we go up, which I see no chance of.

They have even binned off the £6 monthly magazine because, shock horror, nobody bought it. Who’d have thought replacing the programme with something more expensive and sub standard would sell less!?

I’ve got very low expectations for this window. If anyone is willing to take Dack’s wages off our books I think he will be off - just get the feeling JDT couldn’t wait to sub him off against Sunderland and will drop him at the first opportunity, probably tomorrow. As soon as Rankin-Costello has a poor game (which again could well be tomorrow up against an in form Ryan Giles being played in his natural position) he will be out in the cold and probably off on loan. Mola has been bombed out of the squad after one too many horror shows. Which is good. However, he has at least occasionally shown glimpses of being a potentially competent player, unlike Hirst who is persisted with. Alarm bells are ringing a bit that we will end up taking Hirst on a permanent deal, why would we be persisting with such a poor loanee otherwise? It’s pretty likely we will bring in another player or two on loan, benefitting the parent club far more than us. Any signings we do make will not be done to address the glaring gaps in the squad that we can all see, they will be based off a massive spreadsheet full of stats and flawed projections of potential re-sale value. Nobody from Venky’s down seems remotely bothered about results. One member of our new look recruitment team that was in the news the other week told me on Twitter a while back that concentrating on results was “surely a backwards-looking methodology”. Remember when Waggott was on about finding Mowbray’s successor and they seemed to be concentrating on finding someone to “carry on Mowbray’s journey” or words to that effect. Even Mowbray himself was banging on about how he hoped we went for a “development coach” to replace him. If Brereton goes, our fall down the table will be spectacular. If Brereton stays, it highlights how incompetent we are from the top down, and is a complete failure of any purported long term strategy. The journey is purgatory.

Kaminski Harlock Ayala Hyam Pickering JRC Buckley A. Wharton Hedges Dack Brereton Subs: Phillips, S. Wharton, Edun, Garrett, Travis, Gallagher, Burns

With that logic if we take out the parachute payment recipients from the equation we should comfortably be the top of the next pack. The likes of Luton, Millwall or Preston don’t have the level of owner subsidies we do. Who else has a category one academy in this division? Therefore a playoff spot should not be out of the equation.

This particular one is attempting to shut down any criticism of our current regime or deflect from inexcusable performances by repeating “We are third in the league”. With the discussion we had you are pretending you didn’t blindly defend Mowbray until it became obvious we weren’t making the playoffs and his departure became the most obvious scenario.

Nah, too much in there that doesn’t suit his narrative.

you didn’t think Mowbray was stubborn in mid March did you? Only one of us seemed to be advocating a change then.

This is pretty unbelievable revisionism. Mowbray could do no wrong in your eyes until he’d completely sabotaged our shot at the playoffs. I said he was stubborn numerous times, which you argued with me about, until you did a complete about turn.

Agreed. More widely we’ve been out of the top flight for 10 years now without even troubling the playoffs. That’s unforgivable considering the footing Jack put us on. Enough finding excuses. Enough embracing mediocrity. There’s absolutely no reason we shouldn’t be making the playoffs.

Actually I said Wharton or Ayala, but same applies to Phillips too, and I completely stand by it. You tried to mock my suggestion asking if I’d been hacked by Mowbray, the man who could do no wrong in your eyes this time last year. Hirst’s “performance” today has done nothing to prove me wrong. He was utterly useless. Managed more booking points than touches of the ball. Your claims he’d have had a tap in are very presumptuous. From Kaminski - crap distribution, so play it back to him all the time - to Gallagher - come short and get on the ball, never set foot in the box - and every player in between, NOTHING about the way we play currently suits our players.

Obviously you think that’s a decision worth mocking now, but was Luton away before or after your complete 180 on Mowbray? Because if it was prior to your change of heart you’ll have been praising the decision at the time. Ayala was far more useful to us in Sunderland’s box today than Hirst was.

Followed it up with another clumsy challenge. Would have been fitting if he’d got a red card without actually touching the ball.

Shearer in his prime would struggle to hit double figures playing in this side. We create absolutely nothing. This so called brand of football, philosophy, style, whatever you want to call it is crap. It’s boring. It’s completely and utterly stupid. Again, our goal today was not a result of Tomassons playing style, which results in far more goals against than for.

Why do Rovers fans peddle this false narrative?He plays when he’s fit. Starting for Wigan today.

You’d need a bloody vivid imagination.

I think that assessment is based on hope rather than anything. He’s produced very little in his admittedly limited opportunities. I think he will get eaten alive here. The system is far more of a problem at the moment than the personnel. We aren’t even giving Brereton anything to run on to. Gallagher hasn’t had a header to contest. Dack hasn’t seen the ball in the final third.

Sunderland look to move up the pitch every time they get the ball. They move forward and pass forward. Our first instinct is to put a foot on the ball and go backwards, occasionally sideways.

I can’t recall Mowbray ever throwing a centre back up top, unfortunately. Better managers have done it frequently though. Dalglish utilised Hendry up front to good effect many times. Allardyce recognised it was more useful putting Samba up top than Maceo Rigters. And Hirst makes Rigters look like Haaland.